The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE SEVEN PORTALS 4. The rugged Path of fourfold Dhyana winds on uphill. Thrice great is he who climbs the lofty top. 5. The Péramita heights are crossed by a still steeper path. Thou hast to fight thy way through portals seven, seven strongholds held by cruel, crafty Powers—passions incarnate. The distinction between the two Paths is now evident; that of Dhyana is intellectual, or one might better say, men- tal, that of Paramita, moral: But it may well be asked whether these Paths are mutually exclusive, whether a good man is always an idiot and a clever man always a brute, to put the antithesis on a somewhat lower plane. Does anyone really think that one can reach supreme mental control while there are ‘seven cruel, crafty powers, passions incarnate,’ worrying you? The fact is that this dichotomy of the Path is rather dramatic than based on experience. 6. Be of good cheer, Disciple; bear in mind the golden rule. Once thou hast passed the gate Srotapatti, “he who the stream hath entered” ; once thy foot hath pressed the bed of the Nirvanic stream in this or any future life; thou hast but seven other births before thee, O thou of adamantine Will. The author does not state what is meant by the “golden rule.” A Srotapatti is a person in such a stage that he will become Arhan after seven more incarnations.’ There is nothing in Buddhism about the voluntary undertaking of incarnations in order to help mankind. And of course the talk about “Nirvanic bliss” is misleading when one reflects that this quality of bliss or Ananda arising with the first 1 See Crowley’s “The Three Characteristics” in his “Sword of Song” for an amusing but illuminated story on this state. 81