THE SEVEN PORTALS
Here once more we perceive the ignorance of the Author
with reference to all matters of mystic terminology, an
ignorance which would have been amusing indeed had she
lived ten years later. A Bodhisattva is simply a being
which has culminated in a Buddha. If you or I became
Buddhas to-morrow, then all our previous incarnations were
Bodhisattvas, and therefore, as there shall not be a single
grain of dust which shall not attain to Buddhahood, every
existing thing is ina way a Bodhisattva. But of course in
practice the term is confined to these special incarnations of
the only Buddha of whom we have any such record. It is,
therefore, ridiculous to place Srotapatti as a Soul of inferior
grade to Bodhisattva. Buddha did not become a Srotapatti
until seven incarnations before he attained to Buddhahood.
The last part of the verse and the long note (of which we
quote the gist) are nonsense. To describe a complete
Buddha as “an ideal breath; Consciousness merged in the
Universal Consciousness, or Soul devoid of every attribute,”
is not Buddhism at all, and is quite incompatible with
Buddhism.
98. Now bend thy head and listen well, O Bodhisattva—
Compassion speaks and saith: “Can there be bliss when
all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear
the whole world cry?”
Now thou hast heard that which was said.
Again we descend to the anti-climax of a somewhat
mawkish sentimentality. Again we find the mistake of
duality, of that opposition between self and others which,
momentarily destroyed even in the most elementary periods
of Samadhi, is completely wiped out by progress through
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