Beings who reach enlightenment and hold back from final liberation in order to work for the release of everyone else. The vow is what Mahayana Buddhism set against the earlier ideal of the arhat, who attains liberation and enters it. Avalokiteshvara stands here, received in China as Guanyin and in Japan as Kannon, so that one being crosses gender as it crosses traditions.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingA category internal to Buddhism, and it means different things within it. In Mahayana a bodhisattva is a being who has vowed to attain buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings and defers final liberation out of compassion; in the mainstream schools the word names the Buddha in the lives before his awakening. 2 Learn More
The Bodhisattvas
This group holds bodhisattvas, in Mahayana Buddhism, beings who have vowed to attain full enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings and who postpone their own final liberation out of compassion. They are central objects of Mahayana devotion.
The browser will find the bodhisattva figures the atlas classes here as characters of sacred narrative. Several great bodhisattvas are also venerated as celestial figures and appear among the Buddhist deities elsewhere in the atlas.
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2014on the arhat and the goal of the pathView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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