Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.130

c8.130

One night, the old traditions narrate, the decisive turning point came, the moment wherein was vouchsafed to the seeker the certainty of discovery. Sitting under the tree, since then named the Tree of Knowledge, he went through successively purer and purer stages of abstraction of consciousness, until the sense of omniscient illumination came over him: in all-piercing intuition he pressed on to apprehend the wanderings of spirits in the mazes of transmigration, and to attain the knowledge of the sources whence flows the suffering of the world, and of the path which leads to the extinction of this suffering.