Читать книгу Garland of the Buddha's Past Lives (Volume 2) - Aryashura - Страница 18

equally true of ‘The Birth-Story of Vishvan·tara,’ in which the significance of Madri’s virtue is based primarily on her devotion to her husband (the Bodhi·sattva). While other characters play an important role in the Bodhi·sattva’s lives, the Bodhi·sattva’s paramount status is thus always maintained.

This emphasis on devotion picks up on a central theme that was highlighted in the first volume and that is equally important to the present book. Often described as a source of refuge and protection, the Bodhi·sattva’s role as a savior is constantly accentuated:7

You come to us as Comfort incarnate

as we sink into this mouth of death! (30.22 [10])

Portrayed as offering freedom from fear (“Have no fear! Have no fear!” 26.10), the Bodhi·sattva in various stories saves people from death, suffering and the disastrous consequences of holding immoral views, all of which serve to foreshadow his ultimate attainment of Buddhahood and the end to suffering that will be brought about by this salvific goal. In “The Birth-Story of the Elephant’ (30), the Bodhi·sattva explicitly connects the merit derived from his act of self-sacrifice with his quest to attain Buddhahood. Not only that, in a startling comparison between the corporeal and the soteriological, the body that the Bodhi·sattva sacrifices to save a group of starving people is implicitly compared with the Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma that will save the world:8

Instead, if I possess any merit from desiring

to rescue these people floundering in the desert,