Buddhacarita by Ven Asvaghosa - Ancient Buddhist Texts

Buddha-carita, or Life of Buddha - 172
Book XIV [Enlightenment]
1. Then, having conquered the hosts of Māra by his firmness and
calmness, he the great master of meditation set himself to meditate,
longing to know the supreme end.
2. And having attained the highest mastery in all kinds of meditation,
he remembered in the first watch the continuous series of all his
former births.
3. ‘In such a place I was so and so by name, and from thence I passed
and came hither,’ thus he remembered his thousands of births,
experiencing each as it were over again.
4. And having remembered each birth and each death in all those
various transmigrations, the compassionate one then felt compassion
for all living beings.
5. Having wilfully rejected the good guides in this life and done all
kinds of actions in various lives, this world of living beings rolls on
helplessly, like a wheel.
6. As he thus remembered, to him in his strong self-control came the
conviction, ‘All existence is insubstantial, like the fruit of a plantain.’
7. When the second watch came, he, possessed of unequalled energy,
received a pre-eminent divine sight, like the highest of all sight-gifted
beings.