Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Nāgārjuna – 131
109 ff.). Still it is sufficiently strange that after all the teaching of
active compassion the poet comes to the conclusion: (ix. 152 f.) [109 ]
“Since all being is so vacuous and null, what can, what shall be,
acquired? Who can be honoured, who can be reproached? How can
there be joy and sorrow, the loved and the hateful, avarice and nonavarice?
Wherever you search for them you find them not.”
Reaction
It seems to be the curse of Indian mentality that whenever it soars
too high it lands itself in absurdity. Thus the legends of sacrifice
often turn into ludicrous tales and so does the whole fabric of the
philosophy of Mahāyāna end in – Nothing. On the other hand, with
some justification we can look upon as a later accretion the tenth
chapter which with its invocations to Vajrapāṇi and Mañjuśrī and its
panegyric of acts show a spirit totally counter to that of the other
chapters. Already Tāranātha reports that there was some suspicion
regarding the genuineness of this chapter. (La Vallée-Poussin,
Bodhicaryāvatāra tr. p. 143 f.).