The Surangama Sutra said that when Ananda passed by Matangi's residence, he fell under a powerful illusion and nearly broke his vows. At that moment, Buddha was at a banquet. Sensing that Ananda was in trouble, he manifested as Buddha-light and dispelled the evil spell.
When Ananda later saw the World-Honored One again, he did not hide the fact that he had nearly broken his precepts: "Thus do I love and delight, through my mind and eyes; through my eyes, I behold the Tathagata's supreme form."
Buddha told Ananda, "As you say, what you truly love and delight in arises from the mind and eyes. If you do not know where the mind and eyes reside, you cannot subdue worldly afflictions."
The ancients warned rulers that acting out of pleasure brought misfortune; one must "act with clarity."
When taking a wife, one should value propriety over adornment, and so on and so forth.
Most people would ultimately seek advantage and avoid harm, Georgiana included. She had not wanted to go into that filthy ditch. But if that secret passage truly led to the granary, then she would have to go where she had originally refused to go. Running toward something she liked gave her far more strength, like a galloping horse.
There had originally been two bronze horses outside Sforza Castle, placed on the fortress by the entrance. Now that the outer wall had been demolished, they had been moved indoors.
They were nowhere near the size of the eighty-five-ton copper horse Sforza had originally commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to design. Aside from the difficulty of determining that statue's center of gravity, the casting process itself had run into problems.
The Portuguese royal family's extensive palace renovations attracted many artists. A French priest solved the technical problems involved in moving