Mahayana Buddhists went so far as to call the arhant a “private Buddha” (pratyeka-buddha), implying that such people do not share the fruits of their attainment, deserting a suffering humanity to bask in nirvana. The Mahayana ideal was called bodhisattva, literally “one whose nature is enlightenment.” In early Buddhism, as in the present-day Theravada tradition, the word bodhisattva referred solely to that being who, before becoming the Buddha, had vowed to become a Buddha over many lives in the distant past, and who finally attained nirvana in his life as Prince Siddhartha. To the later
...more
