When Vimalakirti was asked why he did not feel well, he made the following reply, which is full of religious significance: “From ignorance there arises desire and that is the cause of my illness. As all sentient beings are ill, so am I ill. When all sentient beings are healed of their illness, I shall be healed of my illness, too. Why? The Bodhisattva suffers birth and death because of sentient beings. As there is birth and death, so there is illness. When sentient beings are delivered from illness, the Bodhisattvas will suffer no more illness. When an only son in a good family is sick, the parents feel sick too: when he is recovered they are well again. So it is with the Bodhisattva. He loves all sentient beings as his own children. When they are sick, he is sick too. When they are recovered, he is well again. Do you wish to know whence this [sympathetic] illness is? The illness of the Bodhisattva comes from his all-embracing love (_mahâkarunâ_).” This gospel of universal love is the consummation of all religious emotions whatever their origin. Without this, there is no religion--that is, no religion that is animated with life and spirit. For it is in the fact {367} and nature of things that we are not moved by mere contemplation or mere philosophising. Every religion may have its own way of intellectually interpreting this fact, but the practical result remains the same everywhere, viz. that it cannot survive without the animating energy of love. Whatever sound and fine reasoning there may be in the doctrine of the Çrâvaka and the Pratyekabuddha, the force that is destined to conquer the world and to deliver us from misery is not intellection, but the will, i.e. the pûrvapranidhâna of the Dharmakâya. _Conclusion._ We now conclude. What is most evident from what we have seen above is that the Mahâyâna Nirvâna is not the annihilation of life but its enlightenment, that it is not the nullification of human passions and aspirations but their purification and ennoblement. This world of eternal transmigration is not a place which should be shunned as the playground of evils, but should be regarded as the place of ever-present opportunities given to us for the purpose of unfolding all our spiritual possibilities and powers for the sake of the universal welfare. There is no need for us to shrink, like the snail into his cozy shelter, before the duties and burdens of life. The Bodhisattva, on the contrary, finds Nirvâna in a concatenation of births and deaths and boldly faces the problem of evil and solves it by purifying the Bodhi from subjective ignorance. {368} His rule of conduct is: “Sabba pâpassa akaranam, Kusalassa upasampada, Sacitta pariyodapanam; Etam buddhânu sâsanam.”[156] His aspirations are solemnly expressed in this, which we hear daily recited in the Mahâyâna Buddhist temples and monasteries and seminaries: