The Bodhisattva Doctrine

Overview

Recall questions on the bodhisattva, Basham and Rahula on the ideal, the Lotus Sutra on the vehicles, skilful means and compassion, wisdom, the perfections and stages of the path, the ideal in Theravada, and merit transfer.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is a bodhisattva?

   Model answer

   A being set on full buddhahood rather than on individual liberation alone, who cultivates wisdom and compassion over an immense span of time for the sake of all beings. The word was first used of Gautama in the lives preceding his awakening, and Mahayana made it the vocation open to everyone.

2. 2

   How did Arthur Basham explain the bodhisattva doctrine?

   Model answer

   Historically, as something that evolved. Basham traces the term from the Buddha's own previous lives in the birth stories, through the appearance of many bodhisattvas, to great compassionate figures functioning as helpers and objects of devotion, and he sets that development against the religious and cultural conditions of the period, including contact with the world beyond India's north-west.

3. 3

   What is Walpola Rahula's argument about the bodhisattva ideal?

   Model answer

   That it is not the property of Mahayana. Rahula argues from Theravada sources that the tradition has always recognised three ways of reaching awakening, that a Theravada Buddhist may undertake the bodhisattva vocation, and that this has actually been done. He also rejects the caricature of the arahant as selfish, pointing out that arahants taught and served others.

4. 4

   Set Basham and Rahula against each other on the bodhisattva.

   Model answer

   Basham is a historian describing how the idea grew and changed; his question is causal. Rahula is a Theravada monk making a doctrinal and apologetic case; his question is whether the ideal is exclusively Mahayana, and he says it is not. Basham's account implies development, which a traditional Mahayana reader may resist; Rahula's implies that the arahant-versus-bodhisattva contrast has been overdrawn, which some Mahayana readers also resist.

5. 5

   What does the Lotus Sutra teach about the vehicles?

   Model answer

   That the apparently separate vehicles are provisional and there is finally one vehicle leading everyone to buddhahood. On this reading even those who thought they were aiming only at their own liberation are on the way to becoming buddhas, and the text has the Buddha predict buddhahood for his senior disciples.

6. 6

   Explain skilful means as the Lotus Sutra presents it.

   Model answer

   Upaya is the adapting of teaching to the hearer's capacity, so that a teaching may be true as a method without being final as a description. The sutra makes the case through parables in which a rescuer offers what will actually move people to safety, and it uses the idea to explain why earlier teachings differ from what the sutra itself asserts.

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