Chapter 3. The bodhisattva path and a new ideal of practice¶

The scriptural collections in the previous chapter each teach different things, yet all promote a new ideal of practice: the bodhisattva. Mahāyāna's most concrete change lies not in a particular metaphysical claim but in its shift of the goal from "one's own liberation" to "attaining Buddhahood to save all sentient beings." This chapter examines that ideal, the structure of its path, how it resolves the tension with not-self and emptiness, and how demanding it originally was.

1. From arhat to bodhisattva: a change of ideal¶

The highest attainment in the Buddhism of the schools is the arhat: one who has eliminated all afflictions and escaped birth and death, and can realize nirvāṇa in this very life. This is the endpoint for practitioners of the path to liberation through hearing the teaching.

Mahāyāna adopts the bodhisattva in place of the arhat as its ideal. Bodhisattvas vow to attain unsurpassed, complete awakening, or Buddhahood. In pursuit of that goal, they willingly spend immeasurable lives bringing all sentient beings to liberation. The resolve to become a Buddha for the sake of beings is called "the mind of awakening" (bodhicitta).

The duration of this path and the timing of its attainments matter. According to the later, established account of the ten stages, only upon completing the sixth stage and perfecting wisdom does a bodhisattva become capable of entering an arhat's nirvāṇa. At that point, the bodhisattva declines to do so. Nonretrogression is attained from the end of the seventh stage to the eighth. What is eliminated thereafter is cognitive obstruction; the work on the causes of suffering is already finished. From the first stage to Buddhahood, two incalculable eons are still said to remain. Compared with the arhat path, which can be completed in this life, this is an immense difference in time. The difference arises from the path's own ordering, which places the cessation of suffering extremely late. It does not arise from "postponing a nirvāṇa already within reach." Those on the bodhisattva path remain subject to suffering for an immensely long period.¹

On this basis, Mahāyāna disparages the arhat as a ziliao han (自了汉), a Chinese term of contempt for "someone who seeks only personal release and disregards others." Behind it lies Mahāyāna polemic depicting those who "seek only their own release" as narrow in outlook. The Lotus's one-vehicle doctrine goes further: arhats must ultimately turn from the small to the great and take the path to Buddhahood, as discussed in the previous chapter. The inaccuracy of this slur needs to be made clear. First, the arhat path is not "selfish." Loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity are part of its practice. The Buddha taught for forty-five years after awakening, and his arhat disciples likewise remained in the world, teaching and benefiting others. Arhatship is also a fruit of liberation expressly endorsed by the Buddha. Second, "arhat" is a title shared by the Buddha himself: "worthy of offerings," one of his ten epithets, means arhat. Disparaging this attainment as inferior through the term ziliao han thus includes the Buddha in the same condemnation. Third, and most ironically, an arhat is precisely someone who has eliminated the conceit "I am" and realized not-self. Calling someone who has relinquished "I" selfish or concerned only with personal release reverses the relation between name and reality. The present book presents Mahāyāna's elevation of the bodhisattva and depreciation of the arhat, but does not endorse the judgment that "arhats are inferior," nor does it adopt ziliao han, a slur coined within Mahāyāna, especially later Chinese Buddhism.

Chinese translation offers supporting evidence. The same Sanskrit word, arhat, is handled in two ways. As one of the Buddha's ten epithets, it is translated by meaning as yinggong (应供), "worthy of offerings"; as a disciple's attainment, it is transliterated as aluohan (阿罗汉). The Chinese Āgamas do not avoid "arhat": disciples who attain the fruit are called arhats. But the Buddha's own status as arhat is hidden by the translation "worthy of offerings," making it harder for Chinese readers to see immediately that "the Buddha himself is also an arhat." More tellingly, Mahāyāna scriptures retain "worthy of offerings" when listing the ten epithets of every Buddha in the ten directions. Mahāyāna thus disparages "arhat" as a disciple's inferior attainment while honoring every Buddha as "worthy of offerings," that is, arhat. What it disparages and what it retains are the same word.²

A reversal: the Buddha's status is raised, while Gautama's is lowered¶

This rearrangement of status contains a subtler reversal. Mahāyāna raises "the Buddha" and lowers the arhat, leaving a space between them for the bodhisattva. But what is raised is the status of "Buddha." The standing of Gautama Siddhārtha as a historical person is instead lowered step by step.

First, Buddhas in the ten directions. In the Mahāyāna cosmos, immeasurable, countless Buddhas exist throughout the ten directions and three times, each with a Buddha land. Gautama thus changes from "the Buddha" to one among innumerable Buddhas, diluting his uniqueness.

Second, the three bodies and the "emanation body." The later three-body doctrine, developed within Yogācāra, distinguishes the dharma body, enjoyment body, and emanation body. Within this framework, the historical Gautama is often classified as an "emanation body," a manifestation appearing in response to this world's needs. What is truly ultimate is the formless dharma body or an enjoyment-body Buddha in another Pure Land, such as Amitābha. This demotes the person who awakened under the bodhi tree and passed into extinction at Kuśinagara to a temporary body of manifestation. (The three-body doctrine is a later systematization, mentioned here in advance and discussed in detail in Essay 6.)

Third, the contrast between defiled and pure lands. Mahāyāna calls Gautama's world "Sahā," the realm of endurance, the evil world of five defilements. Compared with Amitābha's Sukhāvatī, it is a "defiled land." Seeking rebirth in a Pure Land implies that practice here is difficult and this place is worse than the other. Gautama's field of teaching becomes the inferior "defiled land" that must be endured.

Several subtleties need clarification to avoid making this account too absolute. First, "defiled" need not mean that the land itself is impure. In one scene in the Vimalakīrti, someone objects to this land's impurity; the Buddha presses his foot to the ground, and Sahā immediately appears pure and splendid. The point is that defilement lies in beings' impure vision, not in the land. The distinction between a defiled and a pure land is partly epistemological, depending on whether the viewer is defiled or pure, rather than on fixed superior or inferior characteristics of lands. Second, the lowering of Gautama as a historical person and the raising of the "Buddha of the distant past" are two sides of one action. The Lotus says that historical extinction was merely an expedient manifestation, behind which stands a "Śākya" who attained Buddhahood long ago. The further the historical Gautama recedes, the more the cosmic, eternal "Śākyamuni" moves to the foreground.

In the present book's judgment, Mahāyāna elevates "becoming a Buddha" into a cosmic principle through the dharmakāya, Buddhas in the ten directions, and pure lands. At the same time, it pushes aside the historical Gautama whom 1.4 took such pains to recover. The Buddhas in the ten directions strip away his uniqueness, while the emanation body reduces him to a manifestation. He is also placed in a defiled land. At the center of worship stands an elevated, cosmic "Buddha," no longer the practitioner who walked the path and took himself as an island.

2. The structure of the bodhisattva path: resolve, vows, six perfections, and ten stages¶

Bodhisattva practice is laid out as an immensely long path with several broad components.

The Chinese source image gives the two vows as “seek Buddhahood above” and “teach sentient beings below.” It names the two provisions as “provisions of merit” and “provisions of wisdom.” The parenthesis under the former reads “merit and wisdom” (福慧), while that under the latter reads “wisdom” (慧). The path also marks the first, second, and tenth stages. “Liberate all sentient beings” appears under Buddhahood; the discussion distinguishes the long progression through the ten stages from the claim that a bodhisattva must liberate all beings before entering nirvāṇa.

The entrance is arousing the resolve for awakening, followed by making vows, such as the four great vows or Amitābha's original vows discussed in the previous chapter. The main body of practice consists of the perfections (pāramitā, rendered in Chinese as "crossings," in the sense of reaching the other shore), traditionally six:

The six perfections were later expanded to ten by adding skillful means, vow, power, and knowledge.³ Wisdom, the insight into emptiness, directs the other perfections. Without it, the first five are merely worldly good deeds; with it, giving and discipline become "perfections." Mahāyāna thereby redefines the bodhisattva's good conduct through emptiness, continuing the previous chapter's argument.

Two accumulations. The bodhisattva path takes three great incalculable eons because its structure requires practitioners to accumulate two things simultaneously over this long period. The accumulation of merit (puṇya-saṃbhāra) grows through giving, discipline, patience, energy, and concentration, corresponding to the splendor of the Buddha's "form body," the enjoyment body. The accumulation of wisdom (jñāna-saṃbhāra) grows through practicing prajñā and corresponds to the Buddha's "dharma body." The latter is formless; here the term means "having truth as one's body." Both accumulations must be perfected to attain Buddhahood as "the honored one complete in both merit and wisdom." Bodhisattvas therefore perform immense quantities of good deeds while practicing contemplation of emptiness. Accumulation in one direction cannot replace accumulation in the other. This is the present book's own judgment, based on the Yogācāra correspondence between two bodies and two accumulations, not a claim made by the cited Har Dayal volume. That volume instead says that the fruits of the perfections ultimately abolish the distinction between merit and wisdom.³

Four means of drawing beings together. Alongside the six perfections are four concrete forms of altruistic bodhisattva practice, the four means of drawing beings together (catuḥ-saṃgraha-vastu): giving, the same term as in the six perfections, through material goods and the Dharma; kindly speech (priyavāditva), teaching what is good as circumstances allow; beneficial action (arthakṛtya), helping beings through actual deeds; and shared activity (samānārthatā), sharing beings' circumstances in order to guide them. Through these practices, bodhisattvas enter beings' lives without condescending to them. They live among them and guide them according to circumstances. In later Chinese Buddhism, the four became a practical program for lay bodhisattva conduct.

Dedication: transferring merit and the problem for karma theory¶

Another philosophically intriguing component of the bodhisattva path is dedication (pariṇāmanā, the transfer of merit). Bodhisattvas do not claim any of the merit they accumulate as their own. They "dedicate" or transfer it to all beings so that all may share its benefits, ultimately directing it toward unsurpassed awakening. This sounds straightforward, yet it stands in tension with the principle that karma is individual: if karma consists in individual results of individual actions, how can merit be transferred to others? Early Buddhism takes a fairly conservative position here. The individual character of karma is fundamental, and no one can experience its results in another's place.

Buddhist traditions have offered responses to this tension, which deserve separate examination.

The first response appears in the Theravāda tradition. It too practices pariṇāmanā, usually rendered as "dedication" or "rejoicing in merit," but interprets the mechanism differently. Recipients must rejoice (anumodanā) to "receive" the merit. This is explained as their generating new karma themselves, rather than as a direct transfer of merit. Its purpose is also usually limited to benefiting particular recipients, such as deceased relatives, rather than the Mahāyāna aim of saving all beings (see Essay 9 on Theravāda). This response is consistent with karma theory, but at the cost of leaving "transfer" in name only. What actually works is the recipient's own mental act; the donor's merit has not moved.

The second response reinterprets the ownership of karma through Mahāyāna emptiness. On the Prajñāpāramitā and Madhyamaka analysis, karma and merit both lack intrinsic nature, and the "I" in "my merit" is itself a linguistic designation. Since there is no substantial owner, the "exclusive ownership" of merit is merely a conventional arrangement; dedication simply establishes different beneficiaries at the conventional level. The difficulty is the symmetry of the cost. If emptiness can loosen the exclusive ownership of merit, it can equally loosen the individual character of karmic results. Yet that individual character is fundamental to Buddhist ethics: one experiences the results of one's own deeds, and no one else can experience them in one's place. Using emptiness to justify dedication requires an explanation of why the same reasoning would not undermine moral responsibility. Mahāyāna treatises often praise dedication, but direct treatment of this symmetry problem is uncommon.

The third response explains dedication through practice and institutions. Whatever its mechanism, dedication served a real function in Mahāyāna social history. Making merit for the dead and dedicating it to donors were among the most important religious exchanges between monasteries and lay communities. This explains why dedication was indispensable, but explains a function rather than defending its consistency with karma theory.

In the present book's judgment, dedication is an ambitious Mahāyāna expansion of ethical resources. It gives every bodhisattva's good conduct an unrestricted range of beneficiaries and provides an everyday practice for "the nonduality of benefiting oneself and others." At the level of karma theory, however, no system has supplied a generally accepted resolution of the tension between transferable merit and individually experienced karmic results. It remains an unresolved philosophical problem.

The course of practice is arranged as ten stages, from Joyful and Stainless through to Dharma Cloud (see the previous chapter on the Ten Stages Sūtra within the Avataṃsaka). The path operates on a cosmic scale. Full Buddhahood requires three great incalculable eons and immeasurable rounds of birth and death.

3. Compassion and wisdom: saving all beings when no beings can be saved¶

The foundation in the four immeasurables. Bodhisattva compassion has meditative and emotional foundations; it is not an abstract vow. Early Buddhism already practiced the four immeasurables, also called the four divine abodes (brahmavihāra): loving-kindness (maitrī), wishing all beings happiness; compassion (karuṇā), wishing them freedom from suffering; sympathetic joy (muditā), rejoicing in others' happiness; and equanimity (upekṣā), impartiality without selfishness or biased attachment. All four extend to every sentient being, and the Āgamas already give explicit instructions for their meditative cultivation. Mahāyāna incorporates them into the framework of bodhisattva practice and particularly emphasizes compassion (karuṇā), advancing it into great compassion (mahākaruṇā). Great compassion operates on a different scale, directed toward immeasurable beings. It does not contract according to whether they reciprocate or can be liberated.⁴

The four immeasurables provide the basis for cultivating Mahāyāna compassion, but Mahāyāna also makes a crucial advance in their interpretation. They are practiced in the light of Prajñāpāramitā "nonattainment," without attachment to "I am being compassionate" or "beings are receiving my compassion." This is the principle Mahāyāna calls "the emptiness of the three spheres": giver, recipient, and gift are all empty. That principle also raises the four immeasurables from meditation alone to perfection, the fulfillment of reaching the other shore.

The bodhisattva path contains an apparently fatal contradiction. On one side stand not-self and emptiness: beings and self are both empty, as discussed in the previous chapter. On the other stands the aim of "saving all beings." If there are no beings, who is saved, and who saves them?

Mahāyāna does not evade the contradiction; it makes it central to its teaching. The Diamond Sūtra gives the most direct answer. The bodhisattva leads immeasurable, boundless beings to nirvāṇa, yet "no being at all has been led to Nirvana." If a bodhisattva still harbors "the notion of self, person, sentient being, or living individual," that person is no true bodhisattva. True great compassion saves beings precisely without grasping any "being" as truly existent: saving without saving, compassion without attachment. In the present book's judgment, this is the substantive meaning of Mahāyāna's "joint practice of compassion and wisdom." Great compassion (karuṇā) gives action its direction; prajñā, the wisdom of emptiness, keeps action from falling back into new forms of grasping. Only under this unattached wisdom can the bodhisattva's "skillful means" (upāya, discussed in the previous chapter) avoid becoming another disguise for self-grasping.

Placed side by side, these two statements actually speak on different levels. "Leading immeasurable beings to nirvāṇa" is a conventional statement (saṃvṛti): sentient beings exist, and the bodhisattva liberates them on that level. "No being at all has been led to Nirvana" is an ultimate statement (paramārtha): dharmas lack intrinsic nature, and no truly existent being can attain a truly existent nirvāṇa. The Diamond Sūtra superimposes the two levels as a paradox without explicitly distinguishing them. This is a feature of its rhetoric and one reason different interpretive systems can each take from it what they need. Systematically clarifying these levels and establishing them as the "two truths," conventional truth (saṃvṛti-satya) and ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya), was the work of later Madhyamaka, to be developed in Essay 5.

The precise date of composition of the Diamond Sūtra (Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) is uncertain; it had been translated into Chinese by the early fifth century. Its precise textual relationship with Nāgārjuna is difficult to establish.⁵ The uncertainty also concerns its relationship with other Prajñāpāramitā sūtras. Schopen notes that some Japanese scholars proposed dates earlier than Conze's late dating. Comparing parallel passages and expressions of book worship, he argues that some formulations in the Diamond Sūtra may precede the corresponding textual forms in the Eight Thousand Lines. The Diamond Sūtra therefore cannot simply be assumed to abbreviate the Eight Thousand Lines, nor can the date of the entire scripture be determined from this local comparison.⁶

Many scholars incline to the view that the early Prajñāpāramitā tradition, represented by the Eight Thousand Lines, supplied Nāgārjuna with the intuition of emptiness. His Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, around the turn of the second and third centuries, forged that intuition into systematic logical argument. The Prajñāpāramitā sūtras provide the conclusion; Madhyamaka provides the argument. The Diamond Sūtra's formula "X is not X, therefore it is called X" echoes the internal logic of Madhyamaka's framework of two truths. One example reads, "What the Tathāgata calls the adornment of Buddha lands is not adornment; therefore it is called adornment." In the Diamond Sūtra, however, it remains an assertion, not yet subjected to the formal demonstration found in Madhyamaka.⁷

Later Yogācāra further distilled this into "nonabiding nirvāṇa" (apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa). Bodhisattvas neither sink into saṃsāra like ordinary beings nor remain in the stillness of nirvāṇa like practitioners of the path to liberation. Through compassion and wisdom, they abide at neither extreme and remain in the world for beings. This concept is a later refinement, mentioned here in advance.

The philosophical problem of "compassion without self." The contradiction raises a further question. If there are no real beings, since all dharmas are empty and lack intrinsic nature, what arouses compassion? In theory, would someone who has truly and completely seen that "all beings are empty" still have a motive for great compassion? Madhyamaka and Yogācāra both took this central question seriously within their traditions, though they answered it differently. Madhyamaka, especially Candrakīrti, responds through the two truths. Beings still exist conventionally, and compassion still has objects. Ultimate emptiness does not cancel conventional practice. Yogācāra moves toward "great compassion grounded in a shared nature." Awakened people and sentient beings in some sense share a common basis, such as the structure of perfuming in ālaya-vijñāna. The loosening of the boundary between self and other gives great compassion a deeper basis. Each solution has its costs. Essays 5 and 6, on Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, will examine them in detail. The question is identified here as a tension in the philosophy of the bodhisattva path that has never been fully resolved.

4. How demanding it originally was: early elite asceticism and later popularization¶

Today, "bodhisattva" can easily suggest a vow open to everyone, almost a kindly disposition. The present book's historical approach requires correcting that impression. The early bodhisattva path was far from so easy.

Nattier's account, cited in Chapter 1 (4.1) when discussing Mahāyāna origins, provides the basis for this argument. The early bodhisattva path was exceptionally demanding. The Inquiry of Ugra depicts a heroic vocation pursued by a small elite, mostly ordained ascetics, who vowed to reenter birth and death for immeasurable eons and sacrifice their bodies to save beings. It was no easy, popular expedient.⁸ The scripture requires dwelling in the wilderness (araṇya), far from villages, and cutting off worldly social contact. Its other requirements include strict observance of discipline and not living with people outside one's ordination lineage. This bodhisattva is a more ascetic and isolated practitioner, not a good person enthusiastic about public service. In early layers of the Eight Thousand Lines, bodhisattva practice likewise centers on prolonged meditation on "nonattainment" in remote mountains or away from settlements, with very few necessities. The figure is less a servant of beings than a solitary awakened one tempering himself over endless eons.

From heroic asceticism to a universal promise: how the change occurred. Popularization depended on two shifts in discourse. The first was the legitimation of the lay bodhisattva path. Vimalakīrti, a layman of surpassing wisdom, provides a literary precedent. In the Lotus, the dragon girl becomes a Buddha on the spot, breaking the restrictions that "female bodies" and "lay status" preclude Buddhahood. These precedents gradually opened the possibility that "I too can follow this path" to wider groups. The second and more fundamental shift was the emergence of tathāgatagarbha and Buddha-nature discourse. Once it is claimed that "all beings possess tathāgatagarbha" and "everyone inherently has Buddha-nature," the bodhisattva path ceases to be a heroic vow and becomes a return to what was there all along. Buddhahood is no longer only an endpoint three great incalculable eons away. It is also something anyone can "take up directly" here and now. This fundamental change becomes a complete doctrinal system only with tathāgatagarbha, discussed in Essay 7, but its beginnings already appeared as the Mahāyāna scriptural collections developed. In the present book's judgment, the bodhisattva ideal evolved from "the arduous great vow of a few" to "a universal promise of Buddhahood." This was a real historical development; the later popular version must not be read back into the early period.

Alongside this development, a group of "celestial bodhisattvas" became objects of devotion: Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, Samantabhadra, Kṣitigarbha, and Maitreya. Associated with compassion, wisdom, practice, and vows, they became centers of popular worship and petition. "Bodhisattva" thus acquired two faces: the difficult path that practitioners themselves must follow, and the compassionate sage whom beings look up to and petition for salvation. Their coexistence under one word became a principal form of Mahāyāna's spread among ordinary people, and the source of the concept's extreme simplification in everyday usage. The latter face flourished especially in East Asia (see the chapters on Chinese Buddhism).

Another common impression needs correction: the bodhisattva path is not exclusive to Mahāyāna. Theravāda has its own conception of the "bodhisatta," but the word has layers that must first be distinguished. Its most common use in the sutta collection appears in an autobiographical formula: "before my awakening, while I was still a bodhisatta." Here it refers to Gautama before awakening in this very life. Strictly speaking, it denotes an earlier phase, not a previous birth. Practice across successive lives has a different source. Discourses such as the Potter Discourse identify someone from the past as "that was I." The Buddhavaṃsa and Apadāna add Dīpaṃkara Buddha's prediction and a system of perfections, completing the image of a bodhisatta practicing over many successive lives.⁹ This is the level recognized in Theravāda: someone may vow and practice through many births to become a future Buddha, such as Maitreya. The ten perfections (dasa pāramī) also receive systematic treatment in Pāli literature (see the Cariyāpiṭaka). The difference is that Theravāda reserves this route for very few, limits it to becoming a future Buddha, and keeps arhatship as the aim for most practitioners. It does not encourage ordinary practitioners to take the bodhisatta vow. Essay 9 will develop the specific features of the Theravāda bodhisatta path.

5. The bodhisattva ideal: its place and unresolved questions¶

The bodhisattva path is at the center of Mahāyāna religious life. It turns Buddhism's orientation from individual escape to the great vow of saving all beings, securing that vow through the wisdom of emptiness so it does not fall back into new grasping. Compassion and wisdom operate together. Its disparagement of the arhat is rhetoric used to define its own position, which the present book presents without endorsing. Its development from early elite asceticism to a later universal promise must likewise be understood in distinct stages.

The next chapter examines where Mahāyāna continues the schools' traditions and where it establishes new positions. The book then turns to the two great undertakings that made Mahāyāna a systematic philosophy: Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka in Essay 5, inheriting Prajñāpāramitā emptiness, and Yogācāra consciousness-only thought in Essay 6, inheriting the Avataṃsaka strand of "the three realms as mind only."

References¶