“All the Buddhas, erecting high the torch of wisdom through the darkness of ignorance and keeping awake an excellent heart, submitted themselves to penance and mortification, and finally emancipated themselves from the bondage of the triple world. Following their steps, we, too, could emancipate ourselves. “All the Buddhas, the noblest type of mankind, successfully crossed the great ocean of birth and death and of passions and sins; why, then, we, being creatures of intelligence, could also cross the sea of transmigration. “All the Buddhas manifesting great spiritual power sacrificed the possessions, body, and life, for the attainment of omniscience (_sarvajñâ_); and we, too, could follow their noble examples.” (2) _The faults of the material existence._ “This our bodily existence consisting of the five skandhas and the four mahats (elements) is a perpetuator of innumerable {305} evil deeds; and therefore it should be cast aside. This our bodily existence constantly secretes from its nine orifices filths and impurities which are truly loathsome; and therefore it should be cast aside. This our bodily existence, harboring within itself anger, avarice, and infatuation, and other innumerable evil passions, consumes a good heart; and therefore it should be destroyed. This our bodily existence is like a bubble, like a spatter, and is decaying every minute. It is an undesirable possession and should be abandoned. This our bodily existence engulfed in ignorance is creating evil karma all the time, which throws us into the whirlpool of transmigration through the six gatis.” (3) _The miserable conditions of sentient beings which arouse the sympathy of the Bodhisattvas._ “All sentient beings are under the bondage of ignorance. Spell-bound by folly and infatuation, they are suffering the severest pain. Not believing in the law of karma, they are accumulating evils; going astray from the path of righteousness, they are following false doctrines; sinking deeper in the whirlpool of passions, they are being drowned in the four waters of sin. “They are being tortured with all sorts of pain. They are needlessly haunted by the fear of birth and death and old age, and do not seek the path of emancipation. Mortified with grief, anxiety, tribulation, they do not refrain from committing further foul deeds. Clinging to their beloved ones and being always afraid of separation, they do not understand that there {306} is no individual reality, that individual existences are not worth clinging to. Trying to shun enmity, hatred, pain, they cherish more hatred.”........