The History of Buddhist Thought c24.34

c24.34

1. The first stage is Pramuditā, “joyous.” Here the bodhisattva, who has formerly done good deeds and caused the roots of goodness to grow, produces the thought of enlightenment. He thus passes beyond the stage of the common man and enters the family of the Tathāgatas. He becomes joyful and cheerful, remembering the Buddhas and bodhisattvas and their achievements. As he has no thought or love of self, he is free from the five fears of not making a livelihood, of disgrace, of death, of an evil destiny, or timidity in assemblies. He has great compassion, and makes ten great vows: (1) in all realms and in all ways to perform great worship to Buddhas, (2) to preserve the teaching of all the Buddhas wherever and whenever it shall appear, (3) to see the rising of Buddhas in all fields from the time when they leave the Tushita heaven down to their final Nirvāṇa, (4) to vow the thought of enlightenment for attaining all the Perfections and all the stages, (5) to ripen all beings in every form of birth and in all planes of the universe, and set them in omniscience, (6) to perceive all the differences that exist in all universes, (7) to purify all Buddha-fields and delight beings according to their dispositions, (8) to bring about one disposition in all bodhisattvas, to attain to each birth in his own body, to prevent interruption in the practice of a bodhisattva's career and attain the inconceivable Mahāyāna, (9) to practise the bodhisattva's career which is set going without turning back, to get a body like Bhaishajyarāja ¹ or like a wishing gem, (10) to be enlightened with the highest perfect enlightenment in all worlds, to show forth the whole career of a Buddha from his state as a child and an ordinary man to his final nirvāṇa.