Page:The Development of Mahayana Buddhism - The Monist 1914.pdf/16

580 took place another change in the Mahâyâna concerning the ideal man, that is, as to what constitutes the true ideal Buddhist, or what kind of being he must be who really embodies all the noble thoughts and enlightened sentiments of Mahâyâna Buddhism. Arhatship was not satisfactory in this respect, and ceased to be the goal of religious discipline for the followers of the Mahâyâna. They considered the Arhat as not fully realizing all the inmost aspirations of religious consciousness; for is he not a Buddhist who seeks only his own deliverance from the whirlpool of birth and death, in which all beings are struggling and being drowned? So long as karma was understood in its individualistic aspect, Arhatship was quite the right thing for Buddhists to aspire after; but karma could be interpreted in another and a wider sense, which made the doctrine of parinâmanâ possible, and the Mâhayâna Buddhists thought that this was more in accord with the deepest yearnings of a religious being who wants to save not only himself but the entire world as well. Therefore, the speculative Buddhists came to establish the ideal of Bodhisattvahood in place of Arhatship, and for this reason the Mahâyâna is often designated as Bodhisatvayâna in contradistinction to Shrâvakayâna and Pratyekabuddhayâna. (Yâna means a vehicle on which sentient beings are carried from this shore of ignorance to the other shore of enlightenment and eternal happiness.)

The development of this ideal of Bodhisattvahood was quite natural with the Mahâyâna Buddhists. Grant that the Hînayâna followers most faithfully adhered to the moral, monastic, and disciplinary life of primitive Buddhism, and that the Mahâyânists in the meantime were bent on the unfolding of the religio-philosophical significance of the teachings of the Buddha, and it will be seen that the further they advanced the wider grew their separation from each other. To the moralists, such a bold flight