Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s7.12

c24.s7.12

After a long period of preliminary effort² the Bodhisattva attains a stage at which with utter sincerity and full appreciation he can repeat definitely the vow with which he started on his course, and thus he enters on the first of the ten stages into which an elaborate and unsatisfactory scholasticism³ divides the progress of the Bodhisattva, inventing distinctions without substantial difference. There is now no possibility of failure, no chance of an inferior birth, his passions are consumed in the fire of his charity, he enjoys a series of glorious births, universal monarch, the god Brahmā, king of the highest heavens, where he propagates the reign of justice. From the seventh stage his knowledge and his meditative power accord with his merits; thereafter he figures as a prince in the heaven of some Buddha, descending in magic incarnations to earth to accomplish his work of conversion. In the tenth stage, the cloud of the law (dharma-meghā) he attains the position of Lord of the Law, he becomes a Buddha, and creates a body endowed with all the magic signs to play the part on earth of Çakyamuni and countless other Buddhas.