The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature c7.2

c7.2

A bodhisattva’s career is said to commence with the “production of the Thought of *bodhi*” (*bodhi-citt-otpāda*). He thinks of becoming a Buddha for the welfare and liberation of all creatures, makes certain great vows, and his future greatness is predicted by a living Buddha. These three events mark the conversion of an ordinary person into a bodhisattva. But the later Buddhist philosophers have also introduced a kind of novitiate, which must be gone through before an ordinary person can arrive at the stage of the *citt-otpāda*. We find that the several factors of this period of preliminary preparation were gradually devised and elaborated. The *Da. Bhū.* does not speak of any such conditions; it mentions the *citt-otpāda* as the first step in a bodhisattva’s career.¹ It represents the earliest tradition with regard to this question. But the authors of the *M.S. Al.* and the *Bo. Bhū.*, who belong to the fourth century A.D., add the conception of *gotra* (“family”, “predisposition”), which must precede the *citt-otpāda*.² In the chapters on the *vihāras* and the *bhūmis* in the *Bo. Bhū.*, *adhimukti* (Aspiration) is also put forward for the first time as an element in the novitiate.³ These chapters are certainly later in date than the other parts of the treatise, as the first chapter discusses only *gotra* and the second chapter deals with the *citt-otpāda* without mentioning *adhimukti* at all. The *M. Vy.* shows the theories of *gotra* and *adhimukti* in their completely developed form.⁴ The works of Çāntideva (seventh century) exhibit the latest phase of this tendency towards the increased elaboration of the factors and conditions appertaining to the preliminary period. He does not attach great importance to *gotra* or *adhimukti*, but lays much stress on faith, worship, prayer, confession of sins and other practices of piety and devotion as the necessary antecedents that should lead up to the *citt-otpāda*.⁵ The *Dh. S.* mentions only such practices, and it ignores *gotra* and *adhimukti* altogether.⁶ Thus three subsidiary problems must be discussed before we can take up the crucial question of the *citt-otpāda*, with the Vow and the Prediction that follow it.