The History of Buddhist Thought c24.52

c24.52

All through the career of the Bodhisattva run two motives, the aim of becoming a Buddha in order to save beings and the attainment of absolute truth in the Perfection of Wisdom. The two do not appear to be essentially related. Indeed, the bodhisattva has to avoid realizing the highest truth. When he meditates on the Causal Formula he has to take the view that particular things are real, and when he preaches to beings of other disciplines and religions he actually assumes the form of a teacher of those religions and sets forth relative truth. The reason of this combination was the existence of Buddhism as a great religion for the laity at the side of its existence in the schools as a carefully taught body of doctrine. Hence on the one hand the popular sūtras describing the marvellous achievements of Avalokiteśvara and the Land of Bliss promised to his worshippers, and on the other the philosophical sūtras which set forth a doctrine of the unreality of the world of experience, the doctrine of the Void. Even these latter sūtras have a popular character, as they state in oracular language (attributed to Buddha) the principles which were argued and maintained orally in the schools. Their full exposition is found not in these sūtras, but in the works of eminent doctors like Nāgārjuna, who expounded them in systematic treatises.