it.

_R._ Mother, what is a Buddha?

_Y._ A Buddha is a man who has found the truth.

_R._ How does a man find the truth?

_Y._ By enlightenment. He must find out the cause of evil.

_R._ Why must he find out the cause of evil?

_Y._ He teaches the people how to avoid evil.

_R._ Has father found the cause of evil?

_Y._ Kala Udayin says he has.

_R._ What is the cause of evil?

_Y._ Father says that selfishness is the cause of evil and selfishness
comes from the belief in self.

_R._ Self?

_Y._ Yes, self! Man, as a rule, believes that he is a self.

_R._ What? A self?

_Y._ Yes, a being by himself, who lives only for himself, and the
thought of self makes him selfish; and selfishness begets all evils.

_R._ [_with a childlike serious conviction_] I believe it, mother.

_Y_. Father says there is no self, that self is an illusion.

_R._ What does that mean?

_Y._ It means that we are not separate beings. I think a thought and
speak it out and you hear it. I believe in that thought and so do you.
Whose is it then, yours or mine?

_R._ It belongs to both.

_Y._ But where does the thought come from? If it is true it belongs to
the truth, and it was true before I thought it.

_R._ Yes, mother.

_Y._ And if it was wrong, it is evil, and it was evil before we
thought it.

_R._ Yes, mother.

_Y._ And so are all our thoughts, but almost everybody assumes that
his self thinks these thoughts and invents them; and that is an
illusion.

_R._ I see.

_Y._ [_to herself_] His eyes close. He is tired. [TO RAHULA] Now go to
sleep again, Rahula, and dream of your father. I will sing you one of
father's songs.

_YASODHARA lays RAHULA down in the high bed and sings:_

By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure.
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.
No one saves us but ourselves,
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path,
Buddhas merely teach the way.

_The boy sleeps. Then YASODHARA herself lies down on the mat
on the floor. Above her appears the vision of her dream.
Under the Bodhi tree in a forest landscape SIDDHATTHA sits.
He is surrounded by a halo of light. MARA approaches to tempt
him._

_M._ Thou art ahungered, worthy Sakyamuni,
Ahungered art thou from continued fasts,
And thou wilt starve unless thou take and eat.
I bring delicious food, take, eat and live.

_B._ I shall not