The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhism

H.D. Roth was SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at London University.

The notion of the Bodhisattva is one of the characteristic doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism. The Mahayana or “Great Vehicle,” one of the two major extant streams of Buddhism, originated in India and is now practiced in Tibet, China, Japan, and the West. The Bodhisattva is the spiritual ideal of the Mahayana, a being who has awakened to the true nature of the universe but who declines the release from the endless cycle of rebirth that this awakening imparts to return to the world to work for the deliverance of all suffering creatures. Throughout the history of Mahayana Buddhism the Bodhisattva has been a powerful ideal of altruism, morality, and wisdom.

Until the publication of the current volume, Har Dayal’s The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature (Kegan Paul, 1932; repr. Motilal, 1975) had been the sole major study in a Western language of this important topic. The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhism is a collection of eleven papers by a distinguished international group of Buddhist scholars originally presented at the Calgary Buddhism Conference in 1978. The papers deal with the Bodhisattva doctrine not only in India, as Dayal’s book did, but in Tibet, China, and Japan as well. As a group the papers exhibit a wide range of approaches to a variety of problems associated with this doctrine, as can be seen from the following selected summaries: “The Evolution of the Concept of the Bodhisattva,” by A.L. Basham (Australian National), traces the origin and early development of this concept in India using information gathered from texts, sculptures, and stone inscriptions. “Influence of the Bodhisattva Doctrine on Tibetan Political History,” by Turrell Wylie (Washington), is an historical study of the origin of the institution of the Dalai Lama, the political and spiritual ruler of Tibet. “Bodhisattva — The Ethical Phase in Evolution,” by Herbert Guenther (Saskatoon), is a philological and philosophical study of the meaning and significance of the Tibetan words used to translate this term from Sanskrit. “The Bodhisattva Idea in Chinese Literature: Typology and Significance,” by Yunhua Jan (McMaster), organizes the Chinese works on this doctrine (primarily translations) into three major categories and looks at the impact of the Bodhisattva ideal on the Chinese masses. “Japan’s New Religions (1945-65): Secularization or Spiritualization,” by Minoru Kiyota (Wisconsin), places the new Buddhist sects in the context of the postwar spiritual disillusionment of the Japanese people and of the Buddhist tradition in Japan which is grounded in the Bodhisattva ideal.

In addition to the above, the book includes introductory essays by P. Slater (Ottawa) and editor Kawamura (Calgary), and papers by G. Nagao (Kyoto), L. Dargyay (Vienna), L. Lancaster (Berkeley), H. Inagaki (London), and Kawamura.

Scholarly works of this genre tend to lack cohesiveness and focus because of the varying methodologies, interests, and idiosyncratic styles of the authors. This work is no exception. However this variety can also be seen as a strength in that the book does present a representative sample of the best contemporary scholarship on Mahayana Buddhism. It is recommended for specialists and to all others who have a basic conceptual grounding in Buddhism.