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V. TANTRA
Who Seeks Nirvana?
THE LATER Buddhist change of attitude toward the final goal is paralleled exactly by the contemporary Hindu development. As we have seen,' in Hinayāna usage the term bodhisattva denoted a great being on the point of becoming a Buddha and so passing from time to nirvāṇa, an archetype of the Buddhist lay-initiatc escaping from the world, whereas in the Mahāyāna the concept was translated into a time-reaffirming symbol of universal saviorship. Through renouncing Buddhahood the Bodhisattva made it clear that the task of mokşa, “release, liberation, redemption from the vicissitudes of time," was not the highest good; in fact, that mokșa is finally meaningless, saṁsāra and nirvāņa being equally of the nature of sūnyatā, "emptiness, the void.” In the same spirit the Hindu Tântric initiate exclaims: "Who seeks nirvāņa?" "What is gained by mokşa?” "Water mingles with water."
This point of view is rendered in many of the conversations of Sri Rāmakrishna with his lay disciples.
"Once upon a time," he told them one evening, "a sannyäsin 1 Supra, pp. 534-535.
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