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APPENDIX VIIL
The Key-note of the Great Vehiole."
Had I had time for another Lecture, I should have been glad of
the opportunity of enlarging further on the idea of a desire to
save all living creatures, quoted above, p, 112, from the
Sutra of the 42 Sections.
It is acknowledged that the Great Vehicle, the Mahayana,
entirely supplanted in Northern India the older Buddhism of the
Little Vehicle, the Hmayana. "What was it that gave to the later
movement that superior vital power which enabled it to outlive the
earlier teaching! Mr. Beai, in the Introduction to his Travels
of Fa Hian, pp. lvii and foil., places the distinguishing charac-
teristics of the newer school in certain metaphysical subtleties which
could scarcely have gained for it the ear of the multitude. I venture
to think that the idea referred to above, as summarized in the theory
of Bodisatship, is the key-note of the later school, just as Ara-
hatship is the key-note of early Buddhism. The Mahayana doctors
said, in effect: We grant you all you say about the bliss of attain-
" ing Nirvana in this life. But it produces advantage only to your-
" selves; and according to your own theory there will be a necessity
" for Buddhns in the future as much as there has been for Buddhas
"in the,past. Greater, better, nobler, then, than the attainment of
" Arahatship, must be the attainment of Bodisatship from a desire
"to save all living creatures in the ages that will come."
The new teaching, therefore, was in no conscious contradiction to
the old; it accepted it all, and was based upon it. Its distinguish-
ing characteristic was the great stress which it laid on one point of |
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