The Mahâyânists wanted to go even beyond the attainment of Arhatship, however exalted its spirituality may be. They wanted to make every humble soul {289} a being like Çâkyamuni, they wanted lavishly to distribute the bliss of enlightenment; they wanted to remove all the barriers that were supposed to lie between Buddhahood and the common humanity. But how could they do this when the iron hands of karma held tight the fate of each individual! How was it possible for him to identify his being with the ideal of mankind? Perhaps this serious problem could not very well be solved by Buddhists, when their memory of the majestic personality of Çâkyamuni was still vivid before their mental eyes. It was probably no easy task for them to overcome the feeling of awe and reverence which was so deeply engraved in their hearts, and to raise themselves to such a height as reached by their Master, even ideally. This was certainly an act of sacrilege. But, as time advances, the personal recollection of the Master would naturally wane and would not play so much influence as their own religious consciousness which is ever fresh and active. Generally speaking, all great historical characters that command the reverence and awe of posterity do so only when their words or acts or both unravel the deepest secrets of the human heart. And this feeling of awe and reverence and even of worship is not due so much to the great characters themselves as to the worshiper’s own religious consciousness. History passes, but the heart persists. An individual called Çâkyamuni may be forgotten in the course of time, but the sacred chord in the inmost heart struck by him reverberates through eternity. So with the Mahâyâna Buddhists, {290} the religious sentiment at last asserted itself in spite of the personal recollection and reverential feeling for the Master. And perhaps in the following way was the reasoning then advanced by them relative to the great problem of Buddhahood. _We are all Bodhisattvas._ As Çâkyamuni was a Bodhisattva in his former lives destined to become a Buddha, so we are all Bodhisattvas and even Buddhas in a certain sense, when we understand that all sentient beings, the Buddha not excepted, are one in the Dharmakâya. The Dharmakâya manifests in us as Bodhi which is the essence of Buddhas as well as of Bodhisattvas. This Bodhi can suffer no change whatever in quantity even when the Bodhisattva attains finally to the highest human perfection as Çâkyamuni Buddha. In this spirit, therefore, the Buddha exclaimed when he obtained enlightenment, “It is marvelous indeed that all beings animate and inanimate universally partake of the nature of Tathâgatahood.” The only difference between a Buddha and the ignorant masses is that the latter do not make manifest in them the glory of Bodhi.