Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s7.22

c24.s7.22

This is not very intelligible, and there are some fundamental issues worthy of attention. Has the monk any real choice? Is the only way to salvation the road of the Bodhisattva, so that the desire to acquire enlightenment and the vow undertaken are inevitably connected? If this query were to be answered in the affirmative,¹ the merit of the Bodhisattva would sensibly be reduced, and there is, as we have seen, Mahāyāna evidence in favour of this view. But the more orthodox doctrine of the school seems otherwise; Hiuen-Tsang evidently did not accept the view that all men were destined to be Buddhas, and we hear of Arhants in the heaven of Amitābha, so that the choice of Bodhisattvahood seems a genuine act of free will. But is the career of the Bodhisattva so full of real self-sacrifice as the terms used of it suggest?