In Buddhism, change is emphasized first to unsettled people who think that they can achieve
 permanence by hanging on to life.
 And it seems that the preacher is wagging his finger at them and saying, you know like
 the Scotch preacher one day saying to Sunday congregation, preaching on the text, "Vanity
 of vanities, all is vanity."
 And what about the rich food you put into your mouths?
 It is vanity.
 And the fine arraignment you put on your box?
 It is vanity.
 And all your playing around, going to golf instead of coming to the kirk or the Sabbath?
 It is vanity.
 And you'll be spending all your life devoted to vanity, and the last day will come the
 day of your death, and because you've devoted your life to vanity, you'll go down to the
 burning, fiery, brimstone pits of hell.
 And there you'll look up and say unto the Lord, "Oh Lord, I didn't know it.
 Oh Lord, I would not have devoted my life to vanity if I'd known it.
 Oh Lord."
 And the Lord, he'll look down, and he'll say unto you out of his infinite mercy, "Well,
 you know it now."
 So all the preachers together, you see, don't think of this thing.
 So then, as a result of that, and now I'm going to speak in strictly Buddhist terms,
 the follower of the way of Buddha seeks deliverance from attachment to the world of change.
 He seeks nirvana, the state beyond change, which the Buddha called the unborn, the unoriginated,
 the uncreated, and the unformed.
 But then you see, what he finds out is that in seeking a state beyond change, seeking
 nirvana as something away from samsara, which is the name for the wheel, he is still seeking
 something permanent.
 And so there are, as Buddhism went on, they thought about this a great deal.
 And this very point was the point of division between the two great schools of Buddhism,
 which in the South were Theravada, the doctrine of the Thera, the elders, sometimes known
 disrespectfully as the Hinayana.
 Yana means a vehicle, a conveyance, a diligence, or a ferry boat.
 This is a yana, and I live on a ferry boat because that's my job.
 Then there is the other school of Buddhism called the Mahayana.
 Maha means great, hina, little, the great vehicle and the little vehicle.
 Now what is this?
 The Mahayanas say your little vehicle just gets a few people who are very, very tough
 ascetics and takes them across the other shore to nirvana.
 But the great vehicle shows people that nirvana is not different
 from ordinary life.
 So that when you have reached nirvana, if you think, "Now I have attained it.
 Now I have succeeded.
 Now I have caught the secret of the universe, and I am at peace," you have only a false
 peace.
 You have become a stone Buddha.
 You have a new illusion of the changeless.
 So it is said that such a person is a pratyeka Buddha.
 That means private Buddha.
 I've got it all for myself.
 And in contrast with this kind of pratyeka Buddha who gains nirvana and stays there,
 the Mahayanas use the word bodhisattva.
 Sattva means essential principle, bodhi, awakening.
 A person whose essential being is awakened.
 The word used to mean junior Buddha, someone on the way to becoming a Buddha.
 But in the course of time, it came to mean someone who had attained Buddhahood, who had
 reached nirvana, but who returns into everyday life to deliver all other beings.
 This is the popular idea of a bodhisattva, a savior.
 And so in the popular Buddhism of Tibet and China and Japan, people worship the bodhisattvas,
 the great bodhisattvas, as saviors.
 Say the hermaphroditic Quan Yin.
 People love Quan Yin because she, he/she, she/he could be a Buddha, but has come back
 into the world to save all beings.
 The Japanese call he/she Qanon, and they have in Kyoto an image of Qanon with 1,000 arms
 radiating like a great aureole, all around this great golden figure.
 And these 1,000 arms are 1,000 different ways of rescuing beings from ignorance.
 Qanon is a funny thing.
 I remember one night when I suddenly realized that Qanon was incarnate in the whole city
 of Kyoto, that this whole city was Qanon.
 That the police department, the taxi drivers, the fire department, the mayor and corporation,
 the shopkeepers, insofar as this whole city was a collaborate effort to sustain human
 life, however bumbling, however inefficient, however corrupt, it was still a manifestation
 of Qanon with its 1,000 arms, all working independently, and yet one.
 So they revere those bodhisattvas as the saviors who've come back into the world to deliver
 all beings.
 But there is a more esoteric interpretation of this.
 The bodhisattva returns into the world.
 That means he has discovered that you don't have to go anywhere to find nirvana.
 Nirvana is where you are, provided you don't object to it.
 Good.


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