The History of Buddhist Thought c21.42

c21.42

The teaching of the Mahāvastu is essentially the same. "Nothing in the fully enlightened Buddhas is comparable to anything in the world, but everything connected with these great sages is supramundane ” (i, 159). When a Buddha is born from the side of his mother, he is uninjured, for he has a mind-formed body. He is, however, not really born from a mother and father at all, but arises as an apparitional being by the force of his own qualities (i, 145). The Sarvāstivādins, on the other hand, emphasized the human character of Buddha. Their Vinaya even speaks of the union of his parents at his conception.¹ The Lalitavistara (100), in a passage which probably preserves Sarvāstivāda doctrine, says that unbelievers will arise who will refuse to believe in Buddha’s birth from a mother, but that it was not as a god that he turned the Wheel of the Doctrine, for then human beings would be discouraged, thinking, “ we are mere men and unable to reach the state of a god.” But it also has docetic passages, pointing out that Buddha acts like a human being in order to conform to the custom of the world. It was for that reason that he allowed himself as an infant to be taken to the temple, though he pointed out that he had already been addressed as devātideva, god surpassing the gods.² So when he first saw the signs of old age, sickness, and death, of which he had been kept in ignorance, he asked his charioteer what they meant. But the sūtra says that he asked “ although he knew ”.