..续本文上一页with beings in many other realms of existence, as well as with people from many different walks of life. This skill singles him out as "the teacher of devas and humans."

　　Thus we can see the respects in which the Buddha and disciple arahants share certain qualities in common, above all their liberation from all defilements and from all bonds connecting them to the round of rebirths. And we also see how the Buddha is distinguished from his disciples, namely: (1) by the priority of his attainment, (2) by his function as teacher and guide, and (3) by his acquisition of certain qualities and modes of knowledge that enable him to function as teacher and guide. He also has a physical body endowed with thirty-two excellent characteristics and with other marks of physical beauty. These inspire confidence in those who rely on beauty of form.

　　V. The bodhisattva problem

　　I said above that each extreme attitude — "Nikāya purism" and "Mahāyāna elitism" — neglects facts that are discomforting to their respective points of view. "Mahāyāna elitism" neglects the fact that in his historical manifestation, so far as we can ascertain through the early records of his teachings, the Buddha did not teach the bodhisattva path, which emerges only in documents that start to appear at least a century after his passing. What the Buddha consistently taught, according to the early records, is the attainment of nirvāṇa by reaching arahantship. The problem besetting "Nikāya purism" is the figure of the Buddha himself; for in the Buddha we meet a person who, while an arahant, did not attain arahantship as the disciple of a Buddha but as a Buddha. In the Nikāyas themselves, he is depicted not merely as the first of the arahants, but as one member of a class of beings — the Tathāgatas — who possess unique characteristics that set them apart from all other beings including their arahant disciples. The Nikāyas, moreover, regard the Tathāgatas as supreme in the entire order of sentient beings: "To whatever extent, monks, there are beings, whether footless or with two feet, four feet, or many feet, whether having form or formless, whether percipient or nonpercipient, or neither percipient nor nonpercipient, the Tathāgata, the Arahant, the Perfectly Enlightened One is declared the best among them" (AN 4:34).

　　Now since the Buddha is distinguished from his liberated disciples in the ways sketched above, it seems almost self-evident that in his past lives he must have followed a preparatory course sufficient to issue in such an exalted state, namely, the course of a bodhisattva. This conclusion is, in fact, a point of agreement common to all Buddhist schools, both those derived from Early Buddhism and those belonging to the Mahāyāna; it also seems to me to be a conclusion required by reflection. According to all Buddhist traditions, to attain the supreme enlightenment of a Buddha requires the forming of a deliberate resolution and the fulfillment of the spiritual perfections, the pāramis or pāramitās; and it is a bodhisattva who consummates the practice of these perfections. However, the Nikāyas and Āgamas, the most ancient texts, are strangely silent about this very issue.[2] In the Nikāyas, the Buddha does refer to himself as a bodhisatta in the period prior to his enlightenment: in his immediately preceding life, when he dwelled in the Tusita heaven, and during the period of his final life, as Gotama of the Sakyan clan, before his enlightenment.[3] But he says nothing to suggest that he had been consciously following a deliberate course of conduct aimed at the attainment of Buddhahood. Moreover, soon after his enlightenment, when the Buddha considered whether or not to teach the Dhamma, he says that he first inclined to "dwell at ease" (appossukkatāya cit…

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