Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s7.2

c24.s7.2

is enlightenment because he aims at that end in the form of Buddhahood. The Bodhisattva is indeed the characteristic feature of the Mahāyāna, the ideal which distinguishes it from the Hinayāna with its conception of the Arhant intent on his own salvation in the attainment of Nirvāṇa. The path of the Bodhisattva appears, indeed, sometimes as the only true way of salvation; the ideal of the Hinayāna is essentially merely a stage on the route which is mistaken by the Çrāvakas for the reality, even as travellers are cheered on their way by the sight of a magic city created by the clever leader of the caravan; we are all sons of the Buddha, and Buddhas to be, but we may long fail to realize the high glory to which we are called, and think even the reward of Nirvāṇa far too great for our humble merits. The supreme meditation of the Hinayāna is deemed but a preliminary exercise (bālopacārika) by the Vijñānavāda of the Laṅkāvatāra. The Hinayāna indeed commits the fundamental error of not realizing the difficulty of realizing the truth, for he does not understand the truth; he accepts the non-existence of the self, he strives to eliminate desire. But he believes in the aggregates as real, he accepts misery as real, and he does not know that in thought there is the food which nourishes desire for ever. To destroy thought is essential, and that is far from easy even for those who know that all is void; it is impossible for the Çrāvaka; all his efforts in earth can procure him merely a few minutes of unconsciousness, or if he die in trance—no easy matter—rebirth in the world of the unconscious gods, which again is a mere transitory state, one into which the Buddha has never deigned to enter. There is absurdity also in the idea that the desire of Nirvāṇa is anything else save egoistic; the Çrāvaka goes a very little way in his conception of the true dangers of egoism which his own career too closely illustrates.¹