Hinduism and Buddhism, Volume 2 | Page 5

of the merits of reading particular sûtras.
While rendering to it and the faith that produced it all honour, we must remember that it
is typical of the Mahayana only in the sense that the De Imitatione Christi is typical of
Roman Catholicism, for both faiths have other sides.
Sântideva's Bodhisattva, when conceiving the thought of Bodhi or eventual supreme
enlightenment to be obtained, it may be, only after numberless births, feels first a
sympathetic joy in the good actions of all living beings. He addresses to the Buddhas a
prayer which is not a mere act of commemoration, but a request to preach the law and to
defer their entrance into Nirvana. He then makes over to others whatever merit he may
possess or acquire and offers himself and all his possessions, moral and material, as a
sacrifice for the salvation of all beings. This on the one hand does not much exceed the
limits of _dânam_ or the virtue of giving as practised by Sâkyamuni in previous births
according to the Pali scriptures, but on the other it contains in embryo the doctrine of
vicarious merit and salvation through a saviour. The older tradition admits that the future
Buddha (_e.g._ in the Vessantara birth-story) gives all that is asked from him including
life, wife and children. To consider the surrender and transfer of merit (pattidâna in Pali)
as parallel is a natural though perhaps false analogy. But the transfer of Karma is not
altogether foreign to Brahmanic thought, for it is held that a wife may share in her
husband's Karma nor is it wholly unknown to Sinhalese Buddhism.[11] After thus
deliberately rejecting all personal success and selfish aims, the neophyte makes a vow
(pranidhâna) to acquire enlightenment for the good of all beings and not to swerve from
the rules of life and faith requisite for this end. He is then a "son of Buddha," a phrase
which is merely a natural metaphor for saying that he is one of the household of faith[12]
but still paves the way to later ideas which make the celestial Bodhisattva an emanation
or spiritual son of a celestial Buddha.
Asanga gives[13] a more technical and scholastic description of the ten _bhûmis_ or
stages which mark the Bodhisattva's progress towards complete enlightenment and
culminate in a phase bearing the remarkable but ancient name of Dharmamegha known
also to the Yoga philosophy. The other stages are called: _muditâ_ (joyful): _vimalâ_
(immaculate): _prabhâkarî_ (light giving): _arcismatî_ (radiant): durjaya (hard to gain):
_abhimukhî_ (facing, because it faces both transmigration and Nirvana): _dûramgamâ_
(far-going): _acalâ_ (immovable): _sâdhumatî_ (good minded).
The incarnate Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of Tibet are a travesty of the Mahayana which
on Indian soil adhered to the sound doctrine that saints are known by their achievements
as men and cannot be selected among infant prodigies.[14] It was the general though not
universal opinion that one who had entered on the career of a Bodhisattva could not fall
so low as to be reborn in any state of punishment, but the spirit of humility and
self-effacement which has always marked the Buddhist ideal tended to represent his
triumph as incalculably distant. Meanwhile, although in the whirl of births he was on the
upward grade, he yet had his ups and downs and there is no evidence that Indian or Far
Eastern Buddhists arrogated to themselves special claims and powers on the ground that
they were well advanced in the career of Buddhahood. The vow to suppress self and
follow the light not only in this life but in all future births contains an element of faith or
fantasy, but has any religion formed a nobler or even equivalent picture of the soul's

destiny or built a better staircase from the world of men to the immeasurable spheres of
the superhuman?
One aspect of the story of Sâkyamuni and his antecedent births thus led to the idea that
all may become Buddhas. An equally natural development in another direction created
celestial and superhuman Bodhisattvas. The Hinayana held that Gotama, before his last
birth, dwelt in the Tushita heaven enjoying the power and splendour of an Indian god and
it looked forward to the advent of Maitreya. But it admitted no other Bodhisattvas, a
consequence apparently of the doctrine that there can only be one Buddha at a time. But
the luxuriant fancy of India, which loves to multiply divinities, soon broke through this
restriction and fashioned for itself beautiful images of benevolent beings who refuse the
bliss of Nirvana that they may alleviate the sufferings of others.[15] So far as we can
judge, the figures of these Bodhisattvas took shape just about the same time that the
personalities of Vishnu and Siva were acquiring consistency. The impulse in both cases is
the same, namely the desire