The Ten Bhūmis

The word bhūmi can mean “ground,” “level,” “stage,” and so on, but as the term ten bhūmis has become familiar to a Buddhist readership, the Sanskrit term has been retained rather than privileging one of the English translations.

The sūtras of the pre-Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions had already described distinct stages of spiritual development, primarily those of stream entrant, once-returner, non-returner, and arhat. A stream entrant will attain nirvāṇa within seven (or fourteen) lifetimes. A once-returner will only be reborn in the desire realm once more. A non-returner will be reborn in the Śuddhāvāsa paradises in the form realm and attain nirvāṇa there. Finally, the arhat will enter nirvāṇa upon death. Moreover, there are the progressive stages of the four dhyānas, which, although often referred to, are not considered to lead on their own to liberation from saṃsāra. Additionally, there are the five paths of accumulation, juncture, insight, meditation, and the stage of no-more-training, which, as we will see below, were adapted by the Mahāyāna tradition.

The Perfection of Wisdom sūtras presented two alternative descriptions of the stages of spiritual development: seven bhūmis and thirteen vihāras, which are correlated in subsequent commentarial works including the Bodhisattva­bhūmi.⁷ A Multitude of Buddhas, however, teaches ten bhūmis as in the chapter translated here, and ten vihāras in the twentieth chapter, The Ten Abodes of Bodhisattvas.⁸

The Mahāyāna commentarial tradition adapted and developed the earlier teaching of the five paths mentioned above, and these became as widely established as the teaching of the ten bhūmis. The five paths have been correlated with the ten bhūmis: the first two precede the first bhūmi, and the third is equivalent to the first bhūmi, the fourth to the other nine bhūmis, and the fifth to buddhahood.