THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS 
77
the bulk of cases one should certainly  abstain 
from destroying life, that is, wantonly  and 
wilfully: but I cannot drink a glass of water 
without killing countless m yriads of living 
beings.  If you knew as I do, the conditions 
of existence: struggle deadly and inevitable, 
every form of life the inherent and immiti-
gable foe of every other form, with few, few 
exceptions, you would not only cease to talk 
of the wickedness of causing death, but y ou 
would perceive the First Noble Truth, that 
no existence can be free from  sorrow ; the 
second, that the desire for 
existence only 
leads to s orrow ; that the ceas
ing from 
existence is the ceasing of sorrow (the third) 
; and you would seek in the fourth the Way , 
the Noble Eightfold Path. 
“I know, O Arahats, that y ou do not need 
this instruction : but m y words will not stay  
here : they will go forth and illum inate the 
whole system of ten thousand worlds, w here 
Arahats do not grow on every  tree.  Little 
brothers, the night is fallen : it were well to 
sleep.”