PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Eckel: Defining a Usable Past 69carry such weight? Given the historical and textual uncertainty that surroundsso much of the early Mahåyåna, it is hard to do more than suggesta possible scenario. The change in the weight of Ωraddhå seems to berelated, however, to basic changes in the Mahåyåna approach to the paththat leads to awakening. As the ideal of the bodhisattva developed inMahåyåna literature, the goal of nirvana no longer had the same centralsignificance. The point of the bodhisattva path was not to achieve awakeningin this life but to return in the cycle of death and rebirth to bring othersto awakening. Nirvana and buddhahood were still long-term goals, but ina practical sense buddhahood was postponed far into the future. The moreimmediate goal was to cultivate the six perfections so that a bodhisattvacould function as a more powerful agent of salvation for others. With thischange in the shape of salvation came a change in the relationships that tiedpractitioners together on the path. In the earlier tradition, practice waslargely understood as a solitary discipline: nirvana could be achieved onlyfor oneself. The bodhisattva path made it possible, however, for someoneto benefit more clearly and more explicitly from a network of salvation.Bodhisattvas not only worked for the salvation of others; they could rely onthe help of other bodhisattvas and buddhas who had gone before them.Both these changes, the postponement of buddhahood and the possibilityof a network of salvation, gave new significance to the concept ofΩraddhå. Ûraddhå still functioned as the trust that got someone started onthe path, but it was more important to get started than it had been before.With the goal so far in the future, merely to be on the path became asubstitute for the goal itself; and entry into the path gave access to a vastnetwork of salvation, extending back into the distant past and carrying thebelievers forward in ways that would have been impossible for them togenerate on their own. The only thing necessary was faith—to accept thatthis network of compassion was available and trust that it would beeffective. The meaning of Ωraddhå did not change—it still signified a formof trust—but its function was transformed so radically that it becamepossible to speak, for the first time, of a Buddhist “salvation by faith.”Strangely enough, the concept of Ωraddhå does not seem to haveretained its importance in the later history of the Indian Mahåyåna. In theformal discussions of the bodhisattva path that eventually dominated theliterature of the Mahåyåna—works like Bhåvaviveka’s Flame of Reason(Tarkajvålå), Candrak∆rti’s Introduction to the Middle Way(Madhyamakåvatåra), and Ûåntideva’s Introduction to the Path of Awakening—faithyielded its primacy to the “mind of awakening” (bodhicitta). 42The hallmark of a bodhisattva was understood as the successive “generations”(utpåda) of the mind that aspired to awakening for the benefit ofothers. Bodhicitta was a more complex concept than Ωraddhå, and itscomplexity contributed to its appeal. It had a moral dimension in the sensethat it began as an aspiration (pra√idhi), like the vow (pra√idhåna) of a