The History of Buddhist Thought c25.17

c25.17

The first chapter is devoted to repeating in different ways that the bodhisattva wins complete enlightenment by not accepting any dharma as real. Form, feeling, all the skandhas are delusion (māyā). The actual nature of things (dharmatā) is dependent upon the nature of such delusion. Just as a clever conjurer may produce the illusion of a crowd of people, but when he makes them vanish he has not killed them, so a bodhisattva takes countless beings to Nirvāṇa, though there is no being who attains Nirvāṇa. The same teaching is given in the next chapter, where it is addressed to the gods. The gods are laymen, and it is clear that this is the popular form of the doctrine addressed to laymen.