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We shall probably not be transgressing the limits of Gotama's thought if we add that those who are not arhats are bound to approach the question with misconception and it is a necessary part of an Arhat's training to get rid of the idea "I am ." The state of a Saint after death cannot be legitimately described in language which suggests that it is a fuller and deeper mode of life . Yet it is clear that nearly all who dispute about it wish to make out that it is a state they could somehow regard with active satisfaction.
The Corean text is clearer than the Chinese as to those who composed the Council, the Arhats and orthodox monks. The leader among them was a Yasas, or Yasada, or Yedsaputtra, who had been a disciple of Ananda, and must therefore have been a very old man. Four yojanas on from this place to the east brought the travellers to the confluence of the five rivers.
Moreover, you are told that you will "sport with the Arhats who have conquered birth and death." Arhats are alluded to in the plural, and not as One Being. To be sure there may be a final state of absorption of consciousness far beyond this state of being which is described as Nirvana.
Hsüan Chuang describes it as well as a stupa erected to commemorate Sâkyamuni's prediction that Maitreya would be his successor. On attaining Buddhahood he will become lord of a terrestrial paradise and hold three assemblies under a dragon flower tree, at which all who have been good Buddhists in previous births will become Arhats.
If the people living thereabouts have a sore on their heads, they plaster on it some of the earth from this, and feel immediately easier. On this mountain, now as of old, there are Arhats abiding.
The men of the present day, being of small size, and going up step by step, manage to get to the top; but in a former age they did so at one step. Because of this, the monastery is called Paravata, that being the Indian name for a pigeon. There are always Arhats residing in it. The country about is a tract of uncultivated hillocks, without inhabitants.
But they did little or nothing to improve men's moral and spiritual condition, and the same is true of a multitude of arhats, devas, and other supernatural beings that go to make up a numerous pantheon. *Lloyd's Developments of Japanese Buddhism, "Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan," Vol. XXII; and Shinran and His Work, by the same author.
By diligent attention in the use of means, practising wisdom, all these Arhats obtained Nirvâna; those now able so to do, or hereafter able, shall attain Nirvâna in the same way.
About Him were the exalted Bodhisattwas, the mighty Disciples, great Arhats all, and all the countless Angelhood. And these rose high into the infinite until they could be seen but as a point of fire against the moon. With this golden multitude beyond all numbering was He.
North of the vihara two or three le there was the Smasanam, which name means in Chinese "the field of graves into which the dead are thrown." Going on still to the west for five or six le, on the north of the hill, in the shade, they found the cavern called Srataparna, the place where, after the nirvana of Buddha, 500 Arhats collected the Sutras.
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