Note 121 — Chapter XI · THE BODHISATTVA.

“The Bodhisattvas do not feel, however, that they are being compelled by any external force to devote their lives to the edification and uplifting of the masses. They do not recognise any outward authority, the violation of which may react upon them in the form of a punishment. They have already passed beyond this stage of world-conception which implies a dualism; they are on the contrary moving in a much wider and higher sphere of thought. All that is done by them springs from their spontaneous will, from the free activity of the Bodhicitta, which constitutes their reason of existence; and thus there is nothing compulsory in their thoughts and movements. [To use Laotzean terminology, they are practising non-action, wu wei, and whatever may appear to the ignorant and unenlightened as a strenuous and restless life, is merely a natural overflow from the inexhaustible fount of energy called Bodhicitta, heart of intelligence].”[121]