MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Transcending our Humanity
The ultimate aim of Buddhist doctrine and method is to enable man to transcend his humanity, not to wallow in it. For sufficient unto his own egotistical self and ignorant of his innate Buddha-nature, man remains a trivial and pitiful thing, of little more significance in the universal flux than the earthworm, which at least usefully turns over the soil. But once human nature sets out on its spiritual quest for its inherent Buddhahood, which is the only profundity in our ephemerality, it becomes noble, even sublime.
One of the principal teachings of the Mahayana is the central place that it assigns to mankind. The one and only advantage of the human state is its centrality, from which alone is it possible for any being to rise to the higher states of Consciousness. Birth in human form, it is stressed, is extremely difficult to obtain, and if this rarest of opportunities is lost, incalculable periods of duration (or other modes of what in this plane of existence is called time) may have to elapse before another such incarnation presents itself. Hence the urgent need to reach at least the Unretrogressive State during this lifetime. So Buddhism of necessity employs anthropomorphic symbolism, because it was addressed by Shakyamuni to men; and since the human state is the one in which we find ourselves at present, we can hardly set out on our quest from any other.