Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.117

c8.117

The king's son returns from that drive during which, by the appearance of a religious mendicant, thoughts of a life of peaceful renunciation had come home to him. When he mounts his chariot, the birth of a son is announced to him. He says: "Râhula* is born to me, a fetter has been forged for me"—a fetter which tries to bind him to the home-life from which he is struggling to part. A princess, who is standing on the balcony of the palace, beholds him as he approaches the city on his chariot, diffusing a beaming radiance. She breaks out at the sight of him into these words: "Happy the repose of the mother, happy the repose of the father, happy the repose of the wife, whose he is, such a husband!" The young man hears her words and thinks to himself: " well might she say that a blessed repose enters the heart of a mother, when she beholds such a son, and blessed repose enters the heart of a father and the heart of a wife. But whence comes the repose which brings happiness to the heart?" And he gives the answer himself: "when the fire of lust is extinguished, when the fire of hatred and infatuation is extinguished, when ambition, error, and all sins and sorrows are extinguished, then the heart finds happy repose."