Bodhisattva

What It Is

A bodhisattva (from Sanskrit bodhi, “awakening”, + sattva, “being” — literally “awakening-being”) is, in Buddhism, one who treads the path toward the state of a Buddha. In Mahayana (“Great Vehicle”) Buddhism, the term acquires its most famous meaning: the bodhisattva is the being who, having matured to the point of being able to enter nirvana and end the cycle of rebirths, voluntarily postpones their own final liberation out of compassion, vowing to remain in the world of suffering until all beings are free.

The name appears in several spellings — bodhisattva, bodisatva, bodhisatva, bodhisattwa — all transliterations of the same term; the difference is only one of writing, not of meaning.

The Vow and Bodhicitta

What defines the bodhisattva is not a power but an intention: bodhicitta, the “mind of awakening” — the aspiration to attain enlightenment not for oneself, but for the good of all. From this aspiration springs the bodhisattva vow, whose classic formulation says, in essence:

“Numberless as beings are, I vow to liberate them all.”

It is a deliberate inversion of the goal of individual liberation: instead of escaping the world, the bodhisattva chooses to return to it, incarnation after incarnation, like one who refuses to step through the door while anyone is left behind.

The Six Perfections

The bodhisattva’s path is cultivated through the six pāramitās (“perfections”):

1. Dāna — generosity
2. Śīla — ethical conduct
3. Kṣānti — patience
4. Vīrya — energy, diligence
5. Dhyāna — meditative concentration
6. Prajñā — the wisdom that sees emptiness

The last, prajñā, is what distinguishes the bodhisattva’s compassion from mere sentimentality: they help while seeing the true nature of things, without clinging to them.

The Great Bodhisattvas

The tradition reveres model figures, understood both as historical beings and as principles:

• Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin in China, Chenrezig in Tibet) — compassion.
• Mañjuśrī — wisdom, depicted with the sword that cuts through ignorance.
• Kṣitigarbha (Jizō) — the one who descends into the hells to rescue the damned.
• Maitreya — the bodhisattva who will be the next Buddha of our age.

In “The Voice of the Silence”

Helena Blavatsky devoted the third fragment of The Voice of the Silence (1889) — “The Seven Portals” — precisely to the bodhisattva’s choice. She contrasts two paths:

• The Dharmakaya robe, of the Pratyeka Buddha, who is liberated for himself alone;
• And the Nirmanakaya robe, of the bodhisattva of compassion, who renounces Nirvana in order to remain helping the world.

The line she immortalized sums up the ideal:

“Let thy Soul lend its ear to every cry of pain, like as the lotus bares its heart to drink the morning sun. Let not the fierce Sun dry one tear of pain before thyself hast wiped it from the sufferer’s eye.”

For Blavatsky, the bodhisattva is living proof that the highest wisdom and the most total compassion are one and the same — a theme Theosophy adopted as one of its axes.

In-Game Perspective

The figure of the bodhisattva — the awakened being who could leave and chooses to stay — echoes directly in the logic of the Mensageiros do Vento and in Aurora’s alliance with Ereshkigal: to act in the wounded world rather than transcend it. It is the same gesture that, in other traditions across the Wiki, appears under other names.

See Also

• What It Means to Be a Buddha
• Lanu
• Theosophy
• Akashic Records