the dance and song, and lovely as heavenly virgins, brought their musical instruments, and ranging themselves in order, danced, and sang, and played delightfully. But the Bodisat, his heart being estranged from sin, took no pleasure in the spectacle, and fell asleep.
And the women, saying, "He, for whose sake we were performing, is gone to sleep? Why should we play any longer?" laid aside the instruments they held, and lay down to sleep. The lamps fed with sweet-smelling oil were just burning out. The Bodisat, waking up, sat cross-legged on the couch, and saw them with their stage properties laid aside and sleeping — some foaming at the mouth, some grinding their teeth, some yawning, some muttering in their sleep, some gaping, and some with their dress in disorder — plainly revealed as mere horrible sources of mental distress.
Seeing this woful change in their appearance, he became more and more disgusted with lusts. To him that magnificent apartment, as splendid as Sakka's residence in heaven, began to seem like a charnel-house full of loathsome corpses. Life, whether in the worlds subject to passion, or in the worlds of form, or in the formless worlds, seemed to him like staying in a house that had become the prey of devouring flames.[1] An utterance of intense feeling broke from him — "It all oppresses me! It is intolerable!" and his mind turned ardently to the state of those who have renounced the world. Resolving that very day to accomplish the Great Renunciation, he rose from his couch, went to the door and called out, "Who is there?"
Channa, who had been sleeping with his head on the threshold, answered, "It is I, sir, Channa."
- ↑ Literally. "The three Bhavas seemed like houses on fire." The three Bhavas are Existence in the Kāma-loka, the Rūpa-loka, and the Arūpa-loka respectively: that is, existence in the worlds whose inhabitants are subject to passion, have material forms, and have immaterial forms respectively.
