A. The enlightened, or he who has the perfect wisdom.
107. Q. You have said that there were other Buddhas before this one?
A. Yes; our belief is that, under the operation of eternal causation, a Buddha takes birth at intervals, when mankind have become plunged into misery through ignorance, and need the wisdom which it is the function of a Buddha to teach. (See also Q. 11.)
108. Q. How is a Buddha developed?
A. A person, hearing and seeing one of the Buddhas on earth, becomes seized with the determination so to live that at some future time, when he shall become fitted for it, he also will be a Buddha for the guiding of mankind out of the cycle of rebirth.
109. Q. How does he proceed?
A. Throughout that birth and every succeeding one, he strives to subdue his passions, to gain wisdom by experience, and to develop his higher faculties. He thus grows by degrees wiser, nobler in character, and stronger in virtue, until, finally, after numberless re-births he reaches the state when he can become Perfected, Enlightened, All-wise, the ideal Teacher of the human race.
110. Q. While this gradual development is going on throughout all these births, by what name do we call him?
A. Bōdhisat, or Bōdhisattva. Thus the Prince Siddhartha Gautama was a Bōdhisattva up to the moment when, under the blessed Bōdhi tree at Gayā, he became Buddha.
111. Q. Have we any account of his various rebirths as a Bodhisattva?