The History of Buddhist Thought c24.24

c24.24

(10) Tenth stage, *Abhisheka*, “consecration as king.” The bodhisattvas are born in the Tushita heaven, and then have a desire for a human existence. Although they are spoken of in the plural, the individual described is always Śākyamuni. A long account is given of his conception and birth with the special doctrines of the Mahāsanghikas concerning the nature of bodhisattvas. The bodhisattvas are not really produced by parents. They arise of their own choice, and their birth is apparitional. When they are born they have the knowledge of all human arts. They do not indulge in sensual pleasures. Rāhula was not Buddha’s son in the course of nature, but arose (as universal monarchs do) by apparitional birth. This is the logical result of the doctrine that the Buddhas have extinguished the passions and are undefiled by contact with the world. Although bodhisattvas develop into beings in whom human action is a mere appearance, yet they have begun as ordinary fallible creatures, and it is through their great compassion and desire to save all beings that they have arrived at a state beyond the world of impermanence, pain, and soullessness. This is unlike the gnostic docetism which represented the essentially divine as assuming the mere appearance of the human. Indian thought never conceived any fundamental difference in kind between the human and the divine. Whether as in Vedic thought they started with the One and reached the individual, or as in Buddhism extended the individual into a universal principle, the conception always resulted in pantheism or pancosmism according to the aspect emphasized.