The Buddhist Path
purification of 'knowing and seeing what is the path and not
the path'; the meditator then passes to the sixth purification of
'knowing and seeing the way'.
So the meditator returns to the practice of the contef11plation
of the rise and fall of dharmas, which had been disabled by the
ten defilements of insight. Now, like the lion, king of beasts, whofinds delight, not when put in a golden cage, but only in the three-
thousand-league expanse of the Himalayas, the meditator sees
delight not in the pleasant rebirths of the sense, form, or form-
less realms, but only in his three contemplations of impermanence,
suffering, and no self.^37 In addition to the knowledge (r) of see-
ing the rise and fall (of dharmas ), the sixth purification is said to
embrace seven other knowledges, making eight in all: the know-ledge (2) of contemplating breaking up (of dharmas), (3) ofthe
presence of danger, (4) of contemplating distress, (5) of con-
templating disenchantment, (6) of the desire for release, (7) ofcontemplating with discernment, (8) of equanimity with regard
to formations. This sequence of knowledges niay be illustrated
by the story of a man who set out to catch a fish:
Taking his fishing net, he sank it into the water. When he put his hand
into the mouth of the net and seized hold of a snake by the neck, he
thought he had caught a fish and was delighted. Thinking that he had
caught a big fish, he lifted it out to take a look but when he saw the three
markings and realised it was a snake he became frightened. Seeing that
he was in danger, he felt distaste for what he had grasped and wished
to be released. Devising a way of getting free, he unwrapped [the coils)
from his arm, beginning with the tip of the tail, and then, raising his arm
and swinging the snake round his head two or three times in order to
weaken it, he flung it away thinking, 'Be gone damn snake!' Then with-
out delay he climbed up the bank of the pool and stood there looking
back at the way he had come thinking, 'Goodness! I have escaped from
the mouth of a huge snake!'^38
A person's initial satisfaction with his sense of his own individu-
ality is likened to the man's initial delight at grasping a snake. A
meditator's seeing the three marks of impermanence, suffering,
and no self through (r) seeing the rise and fall and (2) the break-
ing up of phenomena is like the man's seeing the three markings