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BUDDILISM
Such is the paradoxical truth as expressed in the rationalizing terms of the Yogācāra.82a
The Way of the Bodhisattva
THE GREAT Mahāyāna Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara is a personification of the highest ideal of the Mahāyāna Buddhist career. Ilis legend recounts that when, following a series of eminently virtuous incarnations, he was about to enter into the surccase of nirvāṇa, an uproar, like the sound of a general thunder, rose in all the worlds. The great being knew that this was a wail of lament uttered by all created things-the rocks and stones as well as the trees, insects, gods, animals, deinons, and human beings of all the spheres of the universe-at the prospect of his imıninent departure from the realms of birth. And so, in his compassion, he renounced for himself the boon of nirvāņa until all beings without exception should be prepared to enter in before him-like thic good shepherd who permits his flock to pass first through the gate and then goes through himself, clos. ing it behind him.
Whereas in the Hinayāna the term bodhisattva denotes one
R2* Editor's note: Dr. Zimmer's notes on this subject break off at this point. For further information concerning the doctrines of the Hinayāna and Mahāyāna schools. sce Takakusu, op. cit., pp. 57-73 (Sarvāstivada), 74-79 (Sautrântika), 80-95 (Yogācāra), and 90 109 (Madhyamika). See also Daisetz Tcitaro Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, London, no date, pp. 116-160.
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