The Buddha calls himself the first chick in the world to burst through the egg-shell of ignorance. He had a long period of incubation-six years of rigorous asceticism. Matured by that austere heat, he prodded the egg-shell of ignorance that enveloped him, with the ‘three signs’ - impermanence suffering and not-self. He burst out of it to see the world as-it-is. It was not a sight but an insight.

He had aroused a dustless stainless eye-of-truth - the Dhamma-eye that transcends the world. ‘The world is blind’ - says the Buddha, because the worldling is encompassed by ignorance.

Insight meditation helps one to break through that thick egg-shell of ignorance. Passing through a series of insight knowledges one attains the supra-mundane state of a "Stream-winner". It is equivalent to a birth into the lineage of the Noble Ones. Already in this first stage of sainthood the prospect of possible births in this endlessly agonising samsara is reduced to seven. Encouraged by this immense initial relief, the stream-winner courses along the stream of Dhamma, progressively reducing the prospects of possible births to become a ‘Once-returner’, a ‘Non- returner’ - and finally - an Arahant who puts an end to all births and deaths. With this attainment of ambrosial Deathlessness, the turmoil of Samsara subsides into the