Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c7.s3.t27.6

c7.s3.t27.6

It is for these deluded so-called individuals that Buddhism prescribes the eightfold path. By following it an individual ultimately realises the transitoriness of things, to which he has hitherto attributed some form of existence, and finds that the elements, by which he thought himself constituted, are ultimately not constituents peculiar to him but common to all other so-called beings. He is then said to have attained Nirvāṇa, i.e., a mental state in which he can no longer distinguish himself as an individual different from the infinite elements constituting the universe. In other words, all individuality ends in it. In that state of Nirvāṇa Gautama Buddha is not different from Śāriputra—all are one and the same.