Framing the Question 15
caryavatara; but it did not take any great academic sophistica-
tion on my part to be able to see the vast moral beauty in the
very idea of such a figure. And yet I knew I was not a Buddhist,
and had no imminent anticipation of becoming one; and so,
being naturally competitive, I also found the idea slightly trou-
bling. It made me anxious that Christians were in danger of
being outdone in the "love and mercy" department by other
creeds. Hence, as I say, I was perhaps already prepared to see
the Macarius legend in a somewhat off-kilter manner. It would
have been very hard for me to accept the thought that the "in-
finite love" and "omnipotent benevolence" of the Christian
God would ultimately prove immeasurably less generous or
effectual than the "great compassion" and "expedient means"
of the numberless, indefatigably merciful bodhisattvas popu-
lating the Mahayana religious imagination. And it would have
been positively chilling to me to think that Christ's harrowing
of hades was, by comparison to the unremitting campaign of
universal rescue conducted by the saviors of Buddhism, little
more than a limited reconnaissance and relief mission.
I may, in retrospect, have been at that period very near
to concluding that Christianity was too morally confused and
distasteful a religion to be accorded any real credence. It was
perhaps solely out of my loyalty to my father's very deep faith
that I did not abandon the whole enterprise some time in my
late teens. And then, over the next few years, especially as I
pursued my undergraduate studies in world religions, things
became a bit easier; and much of my anxiety was alleviated as I
came better to know the larger and more diverse Christian tra-
dition of reflection on the destiny of souls. At least, it became
possible for me to believe that there were streams within the
tradition that seemed to make real moral sense of the notion of
hell. From an early age (I cannot quite recall which), I had been