r is it wholly unknown to Sinhalese Buddhism.[11]
After thus deliberately rejecting all personal success and selfish
aims, the neophyte makes a vow (pranidhana) to acquire enlightenment
for the good of all beings and not to swerve from the rules of life
and faith requisite for this end. He is then a "son of Buddha," a
phrase which is merely a natural metaphor for saying that he is one of
the household of faith[12] but still paves the way to later ideas
which make the celestial Bodhisattva an emanation or spiritual son of
a celestial Buddha.

Asanga gives[13] a more technical and scholastic description of the
ten _bhumis_ or stages which mark the Bodhisattva's progress towards
complete enlightenment and culminate in a phase bearing the remarkable
but ancient name of Dharmamegha known also to the Yoga philosophy. The
other stages are called: _mudita_ (joyful): _vimala_ (immaculate):
_prabhakari_ (light giving): _arcismati_ (radiant): _durjaya_ (hard to
gain): _abhimukhi_ (facing, because it faces both transmigration and
Nirvana): _duramgama_ (far-going): _acala_ (immovable): _sadhumati_
(good minded).

The incarnate Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of Tibet are a travesty of the
Mahayana which on Indian soil adhered to the sound doctrine that
saints are known by their achievements as men and cannot be selected
among infant prodigies.[14] It was the general though not universal
opinion that one who had entered on the career of a Bodhisattva could
not fall so low as to be reborn in any state of punishment, but the
spirit of humility and self-effacement which has always marked the
Buddhist ideal tended to represent his triumph as incalculably
distant. Meanwhile, although in the whirl of births he was on the
upward grade, he yet had his ups and downs and there is no evidence
that Indian or Far Eastern Buddhists arrogated to themselves special
claims and powers on the ground that they were well advanced in the
career of Buddhahood. The vow to suppress self and follow the light
not only in this life but in all future births contains an element of
faith or fantasy, but has any religion formed a nobler or even
equivalent picture of the soul's destiny or built a better staircase
from the world of men to the immeasurable spheres of the superhuman?

One aspect of the story of Sakyamuni and his antecedent births thus
led to the idea that all may become Buddhas. An equally natural
development in another direction created celestial and supe