MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Mahayana
Buddhism was the first of the three Traditions with a world-wide missionary vocation and at the peak of its development spread its spiritual influence and cultural pattern, without fraud or sword, over a greater number of people than either of its later rivals, Christianity and Islam. The Mahayana has been rightly called the Great Tradition, and its supreme strength derived from the doctrine of the Bodhisattva, which Heinrich Zimmer described as without doubt the most sublime spiritual and ethical ideal ever upheld for the emulation of mankind. In Christianity there can be one Saviour only; in Islam, one Prophet above all others; in Hinduism, the Trimurti, or Three Faces of the Divinity, especially Shiva and Vishnu, incarnate during a cycle as Avatars.
But in Mahayana Buddhism, every being possesses the innate capacity to develop into a Bodhisattva who, on reaching the threshold of Buddhahood, hears the cries of suffering that arise from this and other worlds, and voluntarily renounces the bliss of Nirvana in order to return and help not only human but all sentient beings to achieve Liberation before accepting it for himself. This noblest of doctrines is unique to the Mahayana and taught by it alone.
As Edward Conze remarks: 'Buddhists desire to multiply saviours, not restrict them' to one. So it is able to assign Christ, for example, to his correct place in the spiritual hierarchy by recognizing him as a Bodhisattva descended in the West. The Bodhisattva's Vow expressly forbids those who make it to seek Enlightenment for themselves alone, because individual karma is so inextricably entangled with the collective karma of the whole human race and ultimately with all other beings in the universe.