Bodhisattva

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Bodhisattva (Sanskrit: m., बोधिसत्त्व bodhisattva "enlightened being", from Bodhi "enlightenment" or "awakening" and Sattva "being") is the name given in Eastern teachings to a personality who is animated by an Archangel right into his physical body, often only into his etheric body.

„One who has absorbed the whole of earthly experience, so that he knows of every thing how it can be utilised and has thus become a creator, is called a Bodhisattva, that is, a man who has sufficiently absorbed Bodhi, the Buddhi of the earth, into himself. Then he is ripe to work out of the innermost impulses. The sages of the earth are not yet Bodhisattvas. Even for a sage there are still things in which he is not yet able to find his way. Only when one has absorbed all the knowledge of the earth in order to be able to create, is one a bodhisattva. Buddha, Zarathustra, for example, were Bodhisattvas.“ (Lit.:GA 93a, p. 54)

In Mahayana, "Eight Great Bodhisattvas" are particularly revered. According to Rudolf Steiner, there are twelve Bodhisattvas in all, each of whom has a very specific mission to fulfil in the course of earthly development. Everything they need for this flows to them as substantial wisdom from a thirteenth: the Christ.

„If we take our clairvoyant eye to help us, we see that a Bodhisattva is a human being who is constantly connected with the spiritual world and does not live entirely in the physical world. His beingness is, as it were, too great to find room in a human body; only a part reaches down into the earthly shell, the greater part remains in the higher worlds. Consequently, the Bodhisattva is always in a state of inspiration.“ (Lit.:GA 118, p. 219)

Bodhisattvas rise with their consciousness up to the Buddhi plane, i.e. up to the world of providence. The body through which a bodhisattva works on earth is called the dharmakaya (body of law). A bodhisattva is not only concerned with his own enlightenment, thereby finally entering nirvana, but with all his powers he helps other beings to free themselves from the wheel of rebirths, as is also expressed in the bodhisattva vow recited in many schools of Mahayana Buddhism:

„The number of beings is infinite; I vow to redeem them all.
Greed, hatred and ignorance arise unceasingly; I vow to overcome them.
The gates of Dharma are innumerable; I vow to pass through them all.
The path of the Buddha is incomparable; I vow to realise it.“

– The Four Great Vows

A bodhisattva's mission is accomplished when what he has to give has become completely his own human capacity. From then on, he no longer needs to embody himself in a physical body. He has become the Buddha, whose consciousness now reaches up to the Nirvana plane and whose body has been transformed into the sambhoakaya (body of completion). After death in this last earthly life, a Buddha only enters into earthly affairs in an etheric or astral form through the so-called Nirmanakaya:

„Such an etheric body, however, in which an individuality such as the Buddha is embodied, is not a closed spatial unit. It is a multiplicity of unconnected members.“ (Lit.:GA 117, p. 18)

That the nirmanakaya of a Buddha appears as a multiplicity of members is due to an intensification of that splitting of the personality which occurs on the path of initiation, through which thinking, feeling and willing appear more and more as independent entities.

In the schools of the Rosicrucians, Scythianos is regarded as the great Bodhisattva of the West:

„Hence it is in all spiritual training of the Rosicrucian that one looks up with deepest veneration to those ancient initiates who preserved the ancient wisdom of Atlantis: to the re-embodied Scythianos, in him one saw the great venerated Bodhisattva of the West; to the respective embodied reflection of the Buddha, whom one likewise venerated as one of the Bodhisattvas, and finally to Zarathas, the re-embodied Zarathustra.“ (Lit.:GA 113, p. 192)

Since individualities are named here whom Rudolf Steiner also calls masters in other places, one may well assume that the twelve masters of wisdom and of the harmony of the sensations are the same circle of initiates[1].

Bodhisattvas differ from the sages of the Earth in that they have absorbed the whole of earthly experience and thus the Buddhi of the Earth. Such Bodhisattvas were, for example, Buddha or Zarathustra:

„One who has absorbed all earthly experience, so that he knows of every thing how it can be utilised and has thus become a creator, is called a Bodhisattva, that is, a man who has sufficiently absorbed Bodhi, the Buddhi of the Earth. Then he is ripe to work out of the innermost impulses. The sages of the Earth are not yet Bodhisattvas. Even for a sage there are still things in which he is not yet able to find his way. Only when one has absorbed all the knowledge of the Earth in order to be able to create, is one a Bodhisattva. Buddha, Zarathustra, for example, were Bodhisattvas.“ (Lit.:GA 93a, p. 54)

In a lecture given in Lugano on 17 September 1911, masterhood and buddhahood are also equated and at the same time it is stated that this goal is only a higher stage of what every human being can achieve - at least in principle - through appropriate spiritual development:

„The Bodhisattva who became the Buddha was born into the royal house of Suddhodana and became the Buddha in the twenty-ninth year of his life, which means that he then no longer needed to be incarnated afterwards. When such a being, a Bodhisattva, becomes Buddha or Master, it means an inner development, only a higher one, which every human being can go through. An esoteric training of the human being is only a beginning of what leads to becoming a Buddha. It has nothing to do with what happens around people. Such people appear at certain times to bring the world forward. But these are different events from the Christ event. Christ had not come over from another human individuality, but Christ had come over from the macrocosm, while all Bodhisattvas have always been connected with the Earth.“ (Lit.:GA 130, p. 22)

See also

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
  1. ↑ cf. also the remarks by Hella Wiesberger in (Lit.:GA 264, p. 251)
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