(7) As Mahâyânism insists on the purification of the inner life, its teaching applies not to things outward, its principles are not of the ascetic and exclusive kind. The Mahâyânists do not shun to commingle themselves with the “dust of worldliness”; they aim at the realisation of the Bodhi; they are not afraid of being thrown into the whirlpool of metempsychosis; they endeavor to impart spiritual benefits to all sentient beings without regard to their attitude, whether hostile or friendly, towards themselves; having immovable faith in the Mahâyâna, they never become contaminated by vanity and worldly pleasures with which they may constantly be in touch; they have a clear insight into the doctrine of non-âtman; being free from all spiritual faults, they live in perfect accord with the laws of Suchness and discharge their duties without the {72} least conceit or self-assertion: in a word, their inner life is a realisation of the Dharmakâya. (8) The intellectual superiority of the Bodhisattva is shown by his possession of knowledge of non-particularisation (_anânârtha_).[34] This knowledge, philosophically considered, is the knowledge of the absolute, or the knowledge of the universal. The Bodhisattva’s mind is free from the dualism of samsâra (birth-and-death) and nirvâna, of positivism and negativism, of being and non-being, of object and subject, of ego and non-ego. His knowledge, in short, transcends the limits of final realities, soaring high to the realm of the absolute and the abode of non-particularity. (9) In consequence of this intellectual elevation, the Bodhisattva perceives the working of birth and death in nirvâna, and nirvâna in the transmigration of birth and death. He sees the “ever-changing many” in the “never-changing one,” and the “never-changing {73} one” in the “ever-changing many.” His inward life is in accord at once with the laws of transitory phenomena and with those of transcendental Suchness. According to the former, he does not recoil as ascetics do when he comes in contact with the world of the senses; he is not afraid of suffering the ills that the flesh is heir to; but, according to the latter, he never clings to things evanescent, his inmost consciousness forever dwells in the serenity of eternal Suchness.