Collected Works (Vol. II)

AN ESSAY IN ONTOLOGY 243 sphere, can the causes, subtle and coarse, the unborn causes whose seed is hardly sown, of continued existence be grasped and anni- hilated, so that the Arahat is sure of being abolished in the utter extinction of Nirvana, while even in this world of pain, where he must remain until the ancient causes, those which have already germinated, are utterly worked out (for even the Buddha himself could not swing back the Wheel of the Law), his certain anticipation of the approach of Nirvana is so intense as to bathe him con- stantly in the unfathomable ocean of the apprehension of immediate bliss. AUM MANI PADME HOUM.