But Sakka knew better. He said, ‘Let be till tomorrow: later on I shall know,’ and he went to the hermit hare. ‘Sir Brahmin,’ said the hermit hare, ‘I have neither oil nor any beans nor fine young rice. But I have something simple to offer you. Please, please, I pray, sir, prepare a holy fire,’ and Sakka by his mighty power caused a heaped-up fire to appear. Then did Sakka see an unforeknowable act: the hare, rising from his dabba-grass couch, shook his body over and over again. ‘If there be little beasts in my fur,’ he said, ‘I beg of ye, fall down, slip down, fly.’ And he sprang, a royal swan of joyful mind, unto the heaped-up fire. But the fire would not burn him, and he felt he had entered a cave of snow. And therefore it is that Sakka said: ‘Wise hare, be your virtue manifest throughout this age,’ and squeezing the hillside, he took the hill essence, and on the round-going moon scratched the mark of a bunny hare. That’s the mark you see on the moon every day, to this day.

And the hare was none else than the Bodhisattva—the Buddha-to-be.3

For it is on sacrifice that the supreme swan be created. ‘O Swan,’ runs a popular song of the south, ‘know you are the Supernal Soul. You are not life-linked, O Swan, but of doubt and ignorance rid. Truth, Consciousness and Liberation—and the ever-blissful, non-dual—your form, O Swan.’ For Swanhood is man’s goal, and unreason and ignorance are the sacrificer’s offerings. Unreason is only reason’s reflection, and ignorance the reflection of wisdom. Hence it is that the universe is called a deer’s mirage. The myth is only the inversion of Truth—thus the change is only a change of perspective. Sacrifice is only an act of seeing differently—and seeing rightly is seeing the seen is ever the seer seen: Yattvam pashyasi tatranikastvameva pratibhasase (Ashtavakra Gita, XV, 14).

If there were no duality there would be no world.

I see, I hear, I smell, I touch, I taste, I think—these are the functions of my five senses plus the mind, which is sometimes considered as the sixth. There can be no world for me, if these six functions in myself do not operate. I see an ox means, my eyes through the background of Consciousness apprehend a form. If the background of Consciousness were removed, there would be no seeing, and as such there would be no form. Consciousness is thus the ‘common factor’ between the ox and myself. Now, it is through the eyes that I see the ox, that is, an object with three dimensions plus time.