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BUDDHAHOOD
within, such a peace as one perceives looking outward into the vast ethereal realm with its sublime display of transient forms. He is taught to experience, gazing inward, through successive stages of self-control and meditation, an ethereal essence of his own-sheer voidness, unsullied by any process of the mind and not changed by any effect of the senses in their contact with the outer world. By imbuing himself completely with an utter aloofness comparable to that of the celestial atmosphere in relation to the various luminous and darkening phenomena that pass through it, he realizes the real meaning of the Buddhist transcendental wisdom, the nature of the view from the yonder shore. He comes to know that fundamentally nothing whatsoever is happening to the true essence of his nature, nothing to give cause for either distress or joy.
The disciple Subhūti said: "Profound, O Venerable One, is the perfect Transcendental Wisdom."
Quoth the Venerable One: "Abysmally profound, like the space of the universe, O Subhūti, is the perfect Transcendental Wisdom."
The disciple Subhuti said again: "Difficult to be attained through Awakening is the perfect Transcendental Wisdom, O Venerable One."
Quoth the Venerable One: "That is the reason, O Subhūti, why no one ever attains it through Awakening."
"" 18
And the two-we may imagine-roared with laughter. Here is metaphysics as the intellect's greatest game.
18 Astasähasrika Prajñāpāramita 8.
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