The University of Nalanda c10.216

c10.216

There was the desire to be one with the Infinite or as the Vajrayānist would say to unite with the Universal Śūnya, to be omniscient, or as it was the avowed declaration of the Avalokiteśvara and his followers, the Bodhisattvas, to free humanity from its continual pangs, to break its chain of birth and death and offer eternal peace. To the man standing on a lower sphere of mental development, knowledge of the Śāstras, obtained without much trouble, appeared as a goal, while the Tāntric student of a still inferior calibre, longed to get miraculous powers, to ward off disease and sickness, to gain earthly comforts--perhaps the most common and yet the most trivial, the company of young and beautiful apsaras.