PSALMS OF THE BRETHREN
Canto III.
Psalms of three Verses
CLXXXIII
Gotama
Translated from the Pali by Mrs. C.A.F. Rhys Davids.
Public Domain
Reborn in this Buddha-age in the Sākiyan clan, he came to be known only by his gens name. He found faith when the Master visited his kinsfolk, and entering the Order and studying for insight, acquired sixfold abhiññā. Now, while [172] he was dwelling in the bliss of emancipation, his kinsfolk asked him one day why he had put them aside and gone forth. And he, to show both the ill he had suffered in Saɱsāra and the happiness of Nibbāna which he then had gotten, said:
[258] Lo! as I fared through being, I came to the kingdom infernal,
So to the dolorous realm of the Petas, times without number.
Evil[1] befell me again in manifold shapes of the beast-world.
[259] Glad enough reborn as human, rarely I won to the heavens.
Yea, in the realms of vision, in realms where all sense was abolished
Have I been placed, and in realms 'twixt consciousness and the unconscious.[2]
[260] All this becoming lies clearly before me as void of real value,
Born of preceding conditions, unstable and constantly drifting.
So comprehending the coming to be of this self of me, heedful,
Came I at length to find Peace, yea, the Peace [wherein I am resting].
[1] The oddly redundant dukkhamamhi the Commentary gives in the verse, but restates in paraphrasing as dukkhamhi.
[2] On these planes of existence see Compendium, p. 137 ff.
