{"id":4089,"date":"2015-08-17T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/?p=4089"},"modified":"2016-01-08T17:01:08","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T22:01:08","slug":"the-bodhisattva-buddhisms-hero-of-wisdom-and-compassion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/2015\/08\/17\/the-bodhisattva-buddhisms-hero-of-wisdom-and-compassion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bodhisattva: Buddhism’s Hero of Wisdom and Compassion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"9781590306338\"<\/a>By Richard Mercer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout the long course of Buddhist thought and practice, two role models have dominated the landscape\u2014the Arhat and the Bodhisattva.\u00a0 For the early Buddhists, the consummation of a human lifetime derived from a withdrawn, often monastic, existence marked by poverty, chastity, and obedience.\u00a0\u00a0 The successful monk or nun who realized nirvana became an Arhat.\u00a0 For the later Mahayana Buddhists the ideal life changed into one marked by involvement in the world, an engaged life infused with wisdom and compassion\u2014the latter often spoken of as highly skillful teaching of the Mahayana way.\u00a0 The man or woman achieving this enlightenment became a Bodhisattva<\/em> and potentially a veritable Buddha.<\/p>\n

The popular and famous Vimalakirti Sutra, written in India around 100 CE in Sanskrit and translated into Tibetan in the 8th century and into Chinese seven times between the 2nd\u00a0 and 7th\u00a0 centuries, tells of a miraculous episode in the life of a legendary Bodhisattva living in the city of Vaishali.<\/p>\n

Vimalakirti is a rich man, not a monk,\u00a0 He has a home, a wife, children, relatives, and servants.\u00a0 He dresses fashionably, eats and drinks like others.\u00a0 He visits gambling parlors, listens to discussions about other religions, knows secular literature, conducts all kinds of business transactions and reaps profits.\u00a0 He visits government offices and courts of law. He enters brothels and wine shops.\u00a0 He is familiar with every level of citizen.\u00a0 In all of this his motive is to use skillful techniques and expedient means best suited to the people he meets to bring them the relief that is the goal of the Mahayana Buddhist way.<\/p>\n

To accomplish this on what quickly becomes a grand\u2014even cosmic\u2014scale Vimalakirti makes it appear that he has fallen seriously ill.\u00a0 This gambit is very apt because the fact of illness, and the goal of health, is central to the Buddhist view of the human condition.\u00a0 The first noble truth articulated by Shakyamuni Buddha on the night of his enlightenment is that human life is marked by suffering, perhaps better \"thich-nhat-hanh-quote-a-bodhisattva-is-someone-who-has-compassion-with\"<\/a>put as disease or dis\u2013ease.\u00a0 The remaining three Noble Truths spell out for early Buddhists the way to cure this dis\u2014ease.<\/p>\n

For Mahayanists the cure is not the monastic way of the early Buddhists.\u00a0 Vimalakirti counsels Subhuti, a famous early disciple of\u00a0 Shakyamuni Buddha, on what constitutes real merit far beyond begging for one\u2019s meals.<\/p>\n

“Subhuti, if you cannot cut yourself off from lewdness, anger, and stupidity and yet not\u00a0 be a part of these . . . ;\u00a0 if without wiping out stupidity and attachment you can find your way to understanding and freedom from attachment; if you can seem to be a perpetrator of the five cardinal sins and yet gain emancipation . . . ; if in this manner you can master all phenomenal things and yet remove yourself from the ways that mark them, then you will be worthy to receive food.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The Bodhisattva way is to be in the world but not of it, to know this, and to work toward understanding the implications of this truth.<\/p>\n

Later Vimalakirti instructs Manjushri, a cosmic Bodhisattva representative of perfect wisdom, that illness springs from deluded thoughts, the upside-down thinking and desires of\u00a0 one\u2019s human past, remembered and forgotten,<\/p>\n

“Manjusri the ailing Bodhisattva should go about regulating and controlling his mind.\u00a0\u00a0 By doing so he cuts off the suffering of old age, sickness, and death. . . .\u00a0 A person who has overcome a sworn enemy deserves to be called a hero in the same way one who has overcome old age, sickness, and death may be called a bodhisattva.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The Bodhisattva is an enlightened hero whose essence is skillful teaching by word and example that leads people to emancipation from the ever accumulating anxieties, errors, and stress of the human condition.<\/p>\n

As a final note, however, it\u2019s important to say that the Vimalakirti Sutra adds spectacle, humor, and drama to edifying doctrine.\u00a0 The primary climax of the work is a stunning pause known as the thunderous silence of Vimalakirti, his non-response to a flood of abstruse observations by 31 members of the vast multitude of beings, cosmic and human, housed miraculously in his little room.\u00a0 It is a powerful reminder that the most profound truths are beyond words.\u00a0 Silence here is eloquent.<\/p>\n

But wait there\u2019s more.\u00a0 Immediately following this Shakespearian moment, Sariputra, a very well-know early disciple of the Shakyamuni Buddha, provides wonderful comic relief when he thinks to himself, \u201cit\u2019s almost noon, what are all these Bodhisattvas going to eat?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 His mind is on lunch.\u00a0 This is not the first time he fails to grasp the profundity of what is happening around him with great comic results.\u00a0 There are other wonderful moments like this throughout the work that explain the great popularity that accompanies the fame of the Vimalakirti Sutra\u2019s edifying lessons.<\/p>\n

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n

Richard Mercer has been a Visiting Instructor of English and Core (especially Edgar Allan Poe and Samuel Beckett) at the University of Richmond. He has studied Buddhism since the early 1990s. Only recently has he realized that the Bodhisattva ideal is a wonderful and practicable model to follow.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Richard Mercer Throughout the long course of Buddhist thought and practice, two role models have dominated the landscape\u2014the Arhat and the Bodhisattva.\u00a0 For the early Buddhists, the consummation of a human lifetime derived from a withdrawn, often monastic, existence marked by poverty, chastity, and obedience.\u00a0\u00a0 The successful monk or nun who realized nirvana became … Continue reading The Bodhisattva: Buddhism’s Hero of Wisdom and Compassion<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1177],"tags":[27541],"class_list":["post-4089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-heroes","tag-bodhisattva-hero"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phawtM-13X","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}