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126 Buddhist Philosophy [CH. us the reason why one school was called Hlnayana whereas the other, which he professed, was called Mahayana. He says that, considered from the point of view of the ultimate goal of religion, the instructions, attempts, realization, and time, the Hlnayana occupies a lower and smaller place than the other called Maha (great) Yana, and hence it is branded as Hlna (small, or low). This brings us to one of the fundamental points of distinction between Hlnayana and Mahayana. The ultimate good of an adherent of the Hlnayana is to attain his own nirvalfa or salva- tion, whereas the ultimate goal of those who professed the Maha- yana creed was not to seek their own salvation but to seek the salvation of all beings. So the Hlnayana goal was lower, and in consequence of that the instructions that its followers received, the attempts they undertook, and the results they achieved were narrower than that of the Mahayana adherents. A Hlnayana man had only a short business in attaining his own salvation, and this could be done in three lives, whereas a Mahayana adherent was prepared to work for infinite time in helping all beings to attain salvation. So the Hlnayana adherents required only a short period of work and may from that point of view also be called hZ1la, or lower. This point, though important from the point of view of the difference in the creed of the two schools, is not so from the point of view of philosophy. But there is another trait of the Maha- yanists which distinguishes them from the Hlnayanists from the philosophical point of view. The Mahayanists believed that all things were of a non-essential and indefinable character and void at bottom, whereas the Hlnayanists only believed in the impermanence of all things, but did not proceed further than that. It is sometimes erroneously thought that Nagarjuna first preached the doctrine of Siinyavada (essencelessness or voidness of all appearance), but in reality almost all the Mahayana siitras either definitely preach this doctrine or allude to it. Thus if we take some of those siitras which were in all probability earlier than N agarjuna, we find that the doctrine which N agarjuna expounded Brahmayana (career of becoming a Brahmii), Tathiigatayana (career of a Tathagata). In one place Lmikiivattlra says that ordinarily distinctiun is made between the three careers ami one career and no career, hut these distinctions are only for the ignorant (Lmikiivahira, p. 68).