The Bodhisattva Ideal, and a Disagreement with the Elders

Bodhicitta is inseparable from a polemic, and the atlas presents both sides. The Mahayana defined itself partly by contrast: it set the bodhisattva, who out of compassion postpones final rest until all beings can be brought across, against the figure it ascribed to the "lesser vehicle", the arhat, portrayed as seeking only personal liberation. On this framing the bodhisattva's universal resolve is a higher aspiration than the arhat's escape.

The Theravada tradition does not accept the framing. In its understanding the arhat is one who has fully realised the Buddha's awakening and is moved by compassion, not selfishness; the bodhisatta path exists in Theravada too, but as the rare and extraordinarily long vocation of one who will become a future Buddha, not as the norm expected of everyone. The atlas records the contrast as a difference of ideal rather than a defect on either side. As to method, later Indian and Tibetan traditions systematised the generation of bodhicitta, through the "seven-fold cause and effect" that cultivates the sense of all beings as one's own kin, and through Atisha's teaching of "exchanging self and other," the mind-training (lojong) that reverses the instinct to prefer oneself.