[15] This is a peculiarly Indian religious practice, which consists in counting one’s exhaling and inhaling breaths. When a man is intensely bent on the practise, he gradually passes to a state of trance, forgetting everything that is going on around and within himself. The practise may have the merit of alleviating nervousness and giving to the mind the bliss of relaxation, but it oftentimes leads the mind to a self-hypnotic state. ([return])
[16] Here Nirvâna is evidently understood to mean self-abnegation or world-flight or quietism, which is not in accord with the true Buddhist interpretation of the term. ([return])
[17] The sentiment of the Golden Rule is not the monopoly of Christianity; it has been expressed by most of the leaders of thought, thus, for instance: “Requite hatred with virtue” (Lao-tze). “Hate is only appeased by love” (Buddha). “Do not do to others what ye would not have done to you by others” (Confucius). “One must neither return evil, nor do any evil to any one among men, not even if one has to suffer from them” (Plato, Crito, 49). ([return])
[18] The Buddhacarita, Book IX, 63-64. ([return])
[19] According to one Northern Buddhist tradition, Buddha is recorded to have exclaimed at the time of his supreme spiritual beatitude: “Wonderful! All sentient beings are universally endowed with the intelligence and virtue of the Tathâgata!” ([return])
CHAPTER II NOTES.
[20] His date is not known, but judging from the contents of his works, of which we have at present two or three among the Chinese Tripitaka, it seems that he lived later than Açvaghoṣa, but prior to, or simultaneously with, Nâgârjuna. This little book occupies a very important position in the development of Mahâyânism in India. Next to Açvaghoṣa’s Awakening of Faith, the work must be carefully studied by scholars who want to grasp every phase of the history of Mahâyâna school as far as it can be learned through the Chinese documents. ([return])
[21] Be it remarked here that a Bodhisattva is not a particularly favored man in the sense of chosen people or elect. We are all in a way Bodhisattvas, that is, when we recognise the truth that we are equally in possession of the Samyak-sambodhi, Highest True Intelligence, and through which everybody without exception can attain final enlightenment. ([return])
[22] Mahâyâna-abhidharma-sangîti-çâstra, by Asanga. Nanjo, No. 1199. ([return])
[23] Yogâcârya-bhûmi-çâstra, Nanjo, No. 1170. The work is supposed to have been dictated to Asanga by a mythical Bodhisattva. ([return])