PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Nattier: Indian Roots of Pure Land Buddhism 197The Bodhicaryåvatara (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 69.Cf. Nattier, A Few Good Men, pp. 144–145.12. It is important to emphasize that this does not mean that bodhisattvaspurposely postponed their own awakening. On the contrary, there arecountless passages in Buddhist scriptures that refer to the desirability ofattaining buddhahood as quickly as possible. Rather, the issue here is thatthe bodhisattva path simply takes more time to complete than does thepath to arhatship—rather like the difference between the time required tofulfill the requirements for a M.A. vs. a Ph.D. degree. A person who haschosen to pursue a Ph.D. will have to remain in school (i.e., in saµsåra)much longer than the candidate for a M.A. degree, but this does not meanthat she has chosen to “postpone” her graduation. For further discussionof this issue see Nattier, A Few Goood Men, pp. 142–143.13. The idea seems to have been that, because the teachings of all buddhasare identical, a bodhisattva must learn all of the teachings (i.e., all of the“eighty-four thousand scriptures”) preached by Ûåkyamuni Buddha beforehe will be qualified to become a teacher (i.e., a buddha) himself.14. See Nattier, A Few Good Men, pp. 24–26, and Jan Nattier, “TheMeanings of the Maitreya Myth: A Typological Analysis,” in Maitreya, theFuture Buddha, Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre, eds. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1988).15. The pioneering discussion of the importance of visionary experience inearly Mahåyåna by Stephen Beyer, “Notes on the Vision Quest in EarlyMahåyåna” in Prajñåparamitå and Related Systems: Studies in Honor ofEdward Conze, Lewis Lancaster and Luis O. Gómez, eds. (Berkeley:Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series, 1977), should now be read in light of theperceptive comments by Egil Fronsdal, “The Dawn of the BodhisattvaPath: Studies in a Religious Ideal of Ancient Indian Buddhists with aParticular Emphasis on the Earliest Extant Perfection of Wisdom Sutra,”Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University (1998), pp. 133–147.16. Two of the earliest scriptures to present this scenario are thePratyutpanna-buddhasaµmukha-avasthita-samådhi S¥tra (Taishø, vol.13, no. 418, translated into Chinese by Lokak≈ema in the late secondcentury CE) and a short sutra corresponding to part of the later AvataµsakaS¥tra, translated into Chinese by Lokak≈ema in the late second century CE(Taishø, vol. 10, no. 280, 282, and 283) and by Zhi Qian in the early to midthirdcentury (Taishø, vol. 10, no. 281). On the former see Paul Harrison,trans., The Samådhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present(Tokyo: The International Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1990); on the latter,see Jan Nattier, “The Proto-History of the Avataµsaka-s¥tra: The Pusabenye jing and the Dousha jing” Annual Report of the InternationalResearch Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University for the