Bodhisattva · Skt: bodhisattva; Pāli: bodhisatta

The word means a being bound for awakening, and the traditions stretch it differently. In the Pali canon it points chiefly at the Buddha-to-be before his awakening. In the Ariyapariyesana Sutta (MN 26) he recalls the time “when I was an unawakened bodhisatta, being subject myself to birth”, still searching for what he had not yet found, and Access to Insight’s glossary keeps that narrow sense: it is “the term used to describe the Buddha before he actually become Buddha”. It reaches back into his earlier lives too. The Jataka collection of the Khuddaka Nikaya gathers “547 tales that recount some of the Buddha’s former lives during his long journey as a Bodhisatta aspiring to Awakening”, which is why the Jataka tales read as the slow forming of a character rather than the story of a single life.

In Mahayana the word opens out into the central religious ideal, and it is no longer reserved for one exceptional being. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy draws the contrast plainly: “most Theravāda practitioners aspire to become Saints (Skt. Arhat)”, while “all serious Mahāyānists take the bodhisattva vow, promising to become Buddhas in order to help all beings”. Anyone who makes that vow out of compassion for others is a bodhisattva, and the training is set out as the six perfections: “Generosity (dāna), Moral discipline (śīla), Patient endurance (kṣānti), Perseverance (vīrya), Meditative stability (dhyāna), Wisdom (prajñā)”. See the six perfections. That difference of aim is one of the real distinctions between the traditions, and it is better named than smoothed over.