The Tantric Distinction by Jeffrey Hopkins

Author:Jeffrey Hopkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781614291817
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

10. ENHANCEMENT OF WISDOM

The Lesser Vehicle tenet systems (the Great Exposition and Sūtra Schools) teach that in every age there is only one being who can successfully practice the bodhisattva path and attain buddhahood. In our age that person was Shākyamuni, and the next such special being will be Maitreya, much later. That is why, the Lesser Vehicle tenet systems say, Buddha did not teach people to follow his own path but taught paths suited to their own capacities, namely, the hearer and solitary realizer practices. Nevertheless, Buddha did relate stories about his own path and previous births as a bodhisattva, and followers of Lesser Vehicle tenet systems accept these literally. Therefore, they definitely do assert the existence of a bodhisattva path, but they do not look on it as something to adopt in their own practice.

Followers of the Lesser Vehicle tenet systems—the Great Exposition School and the Sūtra School—recognize that by practicing the paths of the Lesser Vehicle they will not achieve the type of physical body and mental clairvoyance that Buddha attained, but they hold that their thorough abandonment of afflictive obstructions will be the same as his. Beyond this, they say that they will in fact be fully equal to Buddha when they die, because, since all enlightened beings no longer need to take rebirth, they all disappear at death—foe destroyers and buddhas both. According to followers of Great Vehicle schools of tenets, this latter tenet is particularly inappropriate, for it indicates that the whole process of appearance is severed and that after the parinirvāṇa, or death, a buddha no longer has the ability to appear in the world. The reason for this Lesser Vehicle assertion is their conviction that cleansing the mind of afflictive emotions necessarily involves the eventual destruction of the mind at death. There is no possibility of pure appearance, for they see appearance as impelled by afflictive emotions.

How then do they explain the part of foe destroyers’ lives subsequent to attainment of nirvāṇa? Foe destroyers do not disappear as soon as they become enlightened. Their life continues on the impetus of the contaminated action that caused them to take that particular rebirth. Until this is exhausted, they will not die. For even though their mind is purified such that no afflictive emotion can arise again, the force of the former afflictive emotions that impelled this last life still remains. However, their experience of the world after liberation is completely different from ours. It is like becoming aware that one is dreaming, but the dream continues. After the confusion of becoming involved with the beautiful or ugly dream appearances, frantically trying to find the classroom where the astronomy test is being given, for example, you understand that it is a dream and, though the images remain, you are no longer drawn into them. Similarly, a foe destroyer has no subjective need for, or attached involvement with, worldly appearances, but the force that set them up remains active.

NIRVĀṆA WITH AND WITHOUT REMAINDER

According to the Lesser Vehicle tenet systems, a nirvāṇa without remainder occurs when foe destroyers die.

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