..续本文上一页red itself to be the sole custodian of Buddha”s teachings and their interpretation. Through the innovation of sunyata, both as the ontological and transcendent nature of reality, the Mahayana followers declared all categories, and hence their interpretations, as dualistic, thus null and void. By positing a simple faith in the thought of enlightenment and diligent practice, they sought to make the Buddha”s enlightenment experience available to any and all, laypersons and monastics alike.

　　This passage then is a declaration that suffering, origination of suffering, and the stopping of suffering by following a certain path are empty categories; at the same time, it is an affirmation that in the pure experience of sunyata, there are no dualities or distinctions between suffering and its stopping, between suffering and the so-called path to liberation. The sutra declares, almost ruthlessly, that there is no cognition or attainment with nothing to attain. Hinayana tradition had seen in the person of the arhant an embodiment of great spiritual attainment, and he was a model to be emulated. Historically, however, soon after the death of the Buddha, a controversy emerged over the status of the arhant and at the Second Council (held about a hundred years after the death of the Buddha); one of the key issues debated at the Council was whether or not it was possible for an arhant to relapse. The consensus, controversial though it was, was that an arhant can indeed relapse. Subsequent Mahayana literature built upon this limited capacity of the arhant and extended its belief system to include the transience of all categories of existence, including suffering, its cessation, and any attainment to come out of such cessation.

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　　"The Bodhisattva depends on Prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exists. Far apart from any perverted view, one dwells in Nirvana."

　　The bodhisattva is steadfast in his/her trust in the wisdom of sunyata and finds in it a sense of completion; he or she is completely at peace with it and with himself. This is his (her) support, and he knows there is nothing lacking in it. Whatever the limitations of his or her conditioned mind may be, he or she has a perfect understanding of, and trust in, the truth of sunyata. No perverted or deluded views are going to cloud his or her vision. In traditional Buddhism, there are "four perverted views" from which liberation is sought:

　　1) a view that anything existent can be permanent

　　even if it is compounded;

　　2) a view that satisfaction may be found in the world

　　of compounded entities;

　　3) a view that there is a permanent self or soul; and

　　4) a view that things are desirable and therefore worth

　　striving for and clinging to.

　　An investment in any of these "perverted" views is likely to produce fear and confusion. Fear and confusion, by their very nature, seek other things to cling to, and each clinging brings about its own particular perverted view to further cloud the vision. Rooted firmly in the wisdom of sunyata, the bodhisattva has no such hindrance. S/he does not mistake the unreal for the real, the conditioned for the unconditioned, the relative for the absolute, etc.

　　For a contemporary reader of the sutra, the words, "no fears exist" may be the most significant insight contained in the sutra. Our century has been characterized by existential angst and its concomitant despair and hopelessness. The late twentieth century culture finds itself driven by the basic fuel of fear even while the inpidual is really yearning for love. Our conditioning has become such that we fear fear and we fear love. Any resolution of the inpidual human condition has to perforce deal with the basic fear of duality, fear of the "other," fear of the world w…

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