{"id":587,"date":"2008-05-14T06:43:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T06:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2008\/05\/arhat-or-bodhisattva\/"},"modified":"2008-05-14T06:43:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-14T06:43:00","slug":"arhat-or-bodhisattva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2008\/05\/arhat-or-bodhisattva.html","title":{"rendered":"Arhat or Bodhisattva?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>The current issue of Buddhadharma <\/span>includes an excellent article by Ajahn Amaro (\u201chow we can transcend the debate of the true ideal of Buddhist<\/a> practice\u201d). I found it quite refreshing. One of the points he makes is that there are internal contradictions between the teaching and the ideal practitioner in both the Original Teaching (the arhat intent on individual liberation) and in the Mahayana (the bodhisattva intent on universal liberation). In all of the Pali Canon, no one asks the Buddha about being a bodhisattva or about bodhisattva training. A big lacuna! And in the Mahayana, after his enlightenment the Buddha is first inclined not to teach. What happened to the compassion of the bodhisattva that the Buddha reportedly cultivated through the eons?<\/p>\n

In the small text for the picture above (probably too small to read), the Buddha is encouraging his disciplines inclined to individual liberation to go in all directions to teach. Those aspiring to or having realized arhatship are here encouraged to help free beings from suffering.<\/p>\n

The categories are collapsing!<\/p>\n

Ajahn Amaro skillfully ties the arhat\/bodhisattva conflict in Buddhism<\/a> to our proclivity for clinging to identity, manifested in the contemporary world as tribalism and nationalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe middle way,\u201d he writes in attempting to go beyond the arhat\/bodhisattva dualism, \u201cis appreciated as a finely felt sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ideals are useful, in my view, in that they give us something to be inspired by and grounds for disappointment. Especially, ideals give us something (the ideals themselves) to be free from.<\/p>\n

How about for you?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current issue of Buddhadharma includes an excellent article by Ajahn Amaro (\u201chow we can transcend the debate of the true ideal of Buddhist practice\u201d). I found it quite refreshing. 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