CHAPTER IV BUDDHA, THE UNIVERSAL SPIRIT

1. The Ancient Buddhist Pantheon.

The ancient Buddhist pantheon was full of deities or Buddhas, 3,000¹ in number, or rather countless, and also of Bodhisattvas no less than Buddhas. Nowadays, however, in every church of Mahayanism one Buddha or another together with some Bodhisattvas reigns supreme as the sole object of worship, while other supernatural beings sink in oblivion. These Enlightened Beings, regardless of their positions in the pantheon, were generally regarded as persons who in their past lives cultivated virtues, underwent austerities, and various sorts of penance, and at length attained to a complete Enlightenment, by virtue of which they secured not only peace and eternal bliss, but acquired divers supernatural powers, such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, all-knowledge, and what not. Therefore, it is natural that some Mahayanists² came to believe that, if they should go through the same course of discipline and study, they could attain to the same Enlightenment and Bliss, or the same Buddhahood, while other Mahayanists³ came to believe in the doctrine that the believer is saved

and led up to the eternal state of bliss, without undergoing these hard disciplines, by the power of a Buddha known as having boundless mercy and fathomless wisdom whom he invokes.