Bodhisattva · Skt: bodhisattva; Pāli: bodhisatta

In plain terms a bodhisattva is a buddha-to-be: Franklin Edgerton’s Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary glosses the word “person destined for enlightenment, Buddha-to-be”. The first half of the word is bodhi, awakening; the second half is read two ways. The Pali Text Society’s dictionary takes it as “being”, so that a bodhisatta is a “bodhi-being”, destined for the fullest enlightenment. Bhikkhu Bodhi points out that the Pali bodhisatta could also represent Sanskrit bodhisakta, “one intent on enlightenment”, which he finds makes better sense.

The traditions stretch the word differently. In the Pali canon it points chiefly at the Buddha 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 seeking what was itself subject to birth, and Access to Insight’s glossary applies the term to him “from his first aspiration to Buddhahood until the time of his full Awakening”. That reaches back into his earlier lives. 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, no longer kept chiefly for one exceptional being. Most Theravāda practitioners aim to become arahants and only a small minority aspire to buddhahood, whereas, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s words, “all serious Mahāyānists take the bodhisattva vow, promising to become Buddhas in order to help all beings”. Anyone who arouses bodhicitta and makes that vow is a bodhisattva, and the training is set out as the six perfections, from generosity to wisdom. That difference of aim is one of the real distinctions between the traditions, and it is better named than smoothed over.

For the full guide, with the word’s meaning, the early texts, the Mahayana path and how each tradition understands it, see What is a bodhisattva?