[18]
The seed is found in the doctrine which already forms part of the system
of the Little Vehicle, when it tells of the personal Buddhas and the
Buddhas elect, or future Buddhas. In the Jataka stories, or Birth tales,
"the Buddha elect" is the title given to each of the beings, man, angel,
or animal, who is held to be a Bodhisattva, or the future Buddha in one
of his former births. The title Bodhisattva[19] is the name given to a
being whose Karma will produce other beings in a continually ascending
scale of goodness until it becomes vested in a Buddha. Or, in the more
common use of the word, a Bodhisattva (Japanese bosatsu) is a being
whose essence has become intelligence, and who will have to pass through
human existence once more only before entering Nirvana.
In Southern Buddhist temples, the pure white image of Maitreya is
sometimes found beside the idol representing Gautama or the historical
Buddha. While in Southern Buddhism the idea of this possibility of
development seems to have been little seized upon and followed up, in
Northern Buddhism as early as 400 A.D. the worship of two Buddhas elect
named Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or personified Wisdom and Power, had
already become general. Manjusri,[20] the Great Being or "Prince Royal,"
is the personification of wisdom, and especially of the mystic religious
insight which has produced the Great Vehicle or canon of Northern
Buddhism; or, as a Japanese author says, the third collection of the
Tripitaka was that made by Manjusri and Maitreya.
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