The Buddha’s Life.
This spirit of universal love prevails in all Mahâyâna literature, and the Bodhisattvas are everywhere represented as exercising it with utmost energy. The Mahâyânists, therefore, could not rest satisfied with a simple, prosaic, and earthly account of Çâkyamuni, they wanted to make it as ideal and poetic as possible, illustrating the gospel of love, as was conceived by them, in every phase of the life of the Buddha.
The Mahâyânists first placed the Buddha in the Tuṣita heaven before his birth, (as was done by the Hînayânists), made him feel pity for the distressed world below, made him resolve to deliver it from “the ocean of misery which throws up sickness as its foam, tossing with the waves of old age, and rushing with the dreadful onflow of death,” and after his Parinirvana, they made him abide forever on the peak of the Mount Vulture delivering the sermon of immortality to a great assemblage of spiritual beings. In this wise, they explained the significance of the appearance of Çâkyamuni on earth, which was nothing but a practical demonstration of the “Great Loving Heart” (mahâkarunâcitta).
The Bodhisattva and Love.
Nâgârjuna in his work on the Bodhicitta[124] elucidates the Mahâyânist notion of Bodhisattvahood as follows:
“Thus the essential nature of all Bodhisattvas is a great loving heart (mahâkarunâcitta), and all sentient beings constitute the object of its love. Therefore, all the Bodhisattvas do not cling to the blissful taste that is produced by the divers modes of mental tranquilisation (dhyâna), do not covet the fruit of their meritorious deeds, which may heighten their own happiness.
“Their spiritual state is higher than that of the Çrâvakas, for they do not leave all sentient beings behind them [as the Çrâvakas do]. They practise altruism, they seek the fruit of Buddha-knowledge [instead of Çrâvaka-knowledge].
“With a great loving heart they look upon the sufferings of all beings, who are diversely tortured in Avici Hell in consequence of their sins—a hell whose limits are infinite and where an endless round of misery is made possible on account of all sorts of karma [committed by sentient creatures]. The Bodhisattvas filled with pity and love desire to suffer themselves for the sake of those miserable beings.
“But they are well acquainted with the truth that all those diverse sufferings causing diverse states of misery are in one sense apparitional and unreal, while in another sense they are not so. They know also that those who have an intellectual insight into the emptiness (çûnyatâ) of all existences, thoroughly understand why those rewards of karma are brought forth in such and such ways [through ignorance and infatuation].
“Therefore, all Bodhisattvas, in order to emancipate sentient beings from misery, are inspired with great spiritual energy and mingle themselves in the filth of birth and death. Though thus they make themselves subject to the laws of birth and death, their hearts are free from sins and attachments. They are like unto those immaculate, undefiled lotus-flowers which grow out of mire, yet are not contaminated by it.