Elements of Buddhist Iconography c5.8

c5.8

It is thus apparent that a particular significance attached to the (Mahā-) Bodhimaṇḍa with respect to its position in the Universe. We have already understood that the Wisdom-circle is an extent ideally equivalent to that of the whole Universe, and in gnosis realized as such. Now the meaning of a circle is with respect to its centre, which is a mathematical, and undimensioned, point, not with respect to its actual extension in physical space. It is in fact precisely at the centre of the Bodhimaṇḍa that the Bodhisattva took his seat. As related in the *Nidānakathā*, he first essays to find a seat on the north, south, and west of the Tree, but in each case the Great Earth (*mahā-pathavī*) fails to maintain its level, it seems to move up and down, like a great cartwheel lying on its hub (*nābhi*, "navel," "nave") when the circumference is trodden on; only when he takes his stand to the east of the Tree, that is evidently *on* the hub of the "wheel," is the level maintained.⁹⁴ Here there rises up a seat (*pallaṅka*) called "Unconquerable" (*aparājita*), and "of impartite, or adamantine, form" (*abhejja-rūpa*), and the Bodhisattva takes his seat with his back to the Tree. Māra, embodying the Will to Life, *libido*, *lubet*, claims the throne;⁹⁵ he assaults the Bodhisattva with every weapon known to him, but every weapon is transformed and reaches the Great Person in the form of a flower. Māra's daughters present seduction in all its most attractive forms; thè Bodhisattva is equally unmoved, he does not "look," for he has passed beyond "affection" to "perfection."⁹⁶