Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c9.s7.1

c9.s7.1

Notwithstanding their idealistic philosophy the Mahāyānists did not underestimate the value of the rules of conduct as formulated by the Hinayānists. It was regarded as a mūlāpatti (grave offence) if a bodhisattva dissuaded a person from the observance of the Prātimokṣa rules and asked him to read Mahāyāna sūtras⁴, and by mistake if one believed that purity could be attained by reading the Mahāyāna texts without observing the rules of discipline⁵. But again it is sometimes said that the aspiration for Tathatā or Śūnyatā or Sarvajñatā absolves one from all sins¹, and hence the observance of samudācāras is not essential. The significance of such a statement is that a person, who is striving to realise Śūnyatā or Tathatā, endeavours to raise his mind to the height where he cannot find any distinction between positive and negative, between offence and non-offence, vinaya (rules) and avinaya (absence of rules), saṅkleśa (impurities) and vyavadāna (purification). He endeavours to go beyond the realm of vikalpa or saṃvṛti, under which fall the disciplinary rules, whence it appears to him that there is no such thing as samudācāra (rules of conduct); and he can therefore be regarded as free from karmāvaraṇa (obstacles due to action²). But this aspiration for śūnyatā³ cannot be had without going through a certain amount of samudācāra for it is often said that they who say that bodhi can be attained by one means (ekanayena) and that means is śūnyatā are foolish. Thus we see that the Mahāyānists felt the need of samudācāra or śikṣāsaṃvara as much as the Hinayānists, and for this, they drew upon the stock of disciplinary rules of the Hinayānists as also upon the common heritage of the Indian religious orders.