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‘It begins with the Buddha – the human, historical Buddha.<\/strong> He is staying in Prince Jeta\u2019s Grove, in An\u0101thapi\u1e47\u1e0dada\u2019s Park, and with him are one thousand two hundred and fifty monks, all of them Arhats, that is, they are all enlightened. Some are mentioned by name, for instance Mah\u0101maudgaly\u0101yana, K\u0101\u015byapa, Revata, the Buddha\u2019s half-brother Nanda, his cousin and closest disciple \u0100nanda, and his son R\u0101hula. Also present are an unspecified number of Bodhisattvas, including the Youthful Prince of the Dharma, Ma\u00f1ju\u015br\u012b, and Ajita, also known as Maitreya, the Friendly One. Finally, many hundreds of thousands of devas – gods – including Indra and Brahm\u0101 Sah\u0101\u1e43patin, are also present.<\/p>\n ‘This is a fairly standard way for a Mah\u0101y\u0101na sutra to begin, with its mixture of history and myth. Historically the Buddha often did stay at An\u0101thapi\u1e47\u1e0dada\u2019s Park, and the named monks were in fact his disciples. However, the Bodhisattvas mentioned are mythical figures and with these we begin to move from history to myth – from early Buddhism to the Mah\u0101y\u0101na. And then there are the gods. The authors of Mah\u0101y\u0101na sutras liked to surround the Buddha with tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of beings, humans and non-human. They liked to place the Buddha in a cosmic arena. He might be teaching one of his disciples, just as he does in the older, Pali suttas, but thousands of beings will be looking on and listening in. It\u2019s as if the authors were saying that although the Buddha was human, and that he could therefore only teach a few people at a time, in another sense – in a deeper kind of reality – his teaching was a cosmic event that affected not only those to whom he was speaking directly. When the Buddha spoke the universe changed.’<\/p>\n