Way of Enlightenment, Way of Salvation

Abstract

The story of Sudhana’s pilgrimage to the truth, although one of the most important in all the Buddhist canon, is a dif3cult one to assimilate spiritually outside the precincts of Buddhist belief. Unlike the story of Prince Siddhartha’s journey to awakening, which has proved inspiring to people of all faiths, Sudhana’s journey to the truth does not seem to be structured by the sorts of mythical pattern that allow it entrance into spiritualities other than the explicitly Buddhist. Despite the literary devices needed to advance the story of a voyage of faith to supreme wisdom, there is far more to learn from the account about the otherness of Buddhism than about sentiments and aspirations common to all religious pilgrims. It appears to be crafted so deliberately as a didactic text for believers that the uncertain wanderings of the mind and heart that belong to the human pursuit of truth is all but edged out of the picture by the certitudes of faith. Indeed, at 3rst glance it does not even seem to be a document of 3dens quaerens intellectum, but only of scholastic instruction to one whose faith never wavers in the least.