Читать книгу Garland of the Buddha's Past Lives (Volume 2) - Aryashura - Страница 21

Shock is expressed at his ability to speak in an articulate human voice (26.48) and the conceit is often raised that the Bodhi·sattva must be an animal only in appearance and something more superior in substance:

How can animals possess such conduct?

How can they have such wide regard for virtue?

Some design must lie behind your appearance.

You must practice asceticism in an ascetic grove!11 (33.31 [20])

Far from diminishing his purity the Bodhi·sattva’s rebirth as an animal therefore serves to accentuate his miraculous virtue still further by contrasting his conduct with normal animal nature. Furthermore, the virtue that the Bodhi·sattva displays as an animal throws into relief the immoral conduct of human beings. As the Bodhi·sattva states in ‘The Birth-Story of the Antelope’ (26.21): ‘Men’s hearts are, after all, usually ruthless and uncontrolled in their great greed.”12 It is thus men who normally act immorally in the narratives, especially by wronging or betraying the Bodhi·sattva, and who thereby display a behavior that is truly animal in quality in contrast to the Bodhi·sattva, whose animal nature is only apparent:

How castigated I feel by

his gentle yet wounding behavior!

It is I who am the animal, the ox.

Who is this creature, a sharabha but in form?

(25.27 [14])

The splendor of the Bodhi·sattva’s virtue is often paralleled by his physical beauty. Likewise the geographical lo- ________