精進波羅蜜

What this concept is really about

Vīrya-pāramitā — the fourth of the six perfections — is sometimes translated as "the perfection of energy," "diligence," or "heroic striving." The Chinese rendering 精進 is itself a composite: 精 (refined, distilled, focused) plus 進 (advance). The Sanskrit root *vīrya* carries the sense of heroism, virility, vital force — the energy that doesn't flag. Most contemporary readers, on encountering the term, fold it into a single image: "try harder." The classical sources refuse that reduction. Across the 《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》, 《大寶積經》, 《大方等大集經》, 《相續解脫地波羅蜜了義經》, 《大智度論》, and 《瑜伽師地論》, the concept is consistently carved into several distinct layers. Let's walk through them.

1. The core texture: 身心精進 — diligence of body *and* mind

The 《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》 defines it again and again with a single recurring line:

「身心精進不懈怠故，是名具足毘梨耶波羅蜜」 — "[in] body-mind diligence that does not slacken, this is what is called the fulfillment of vīrya-pāramitā".

So the point of entry is never "effort" as an abstraction, but effort showing up in two registers at once:

- 身精進 (diligence of body / the doing-register) — outward, visible: giving, keeping precepts, returning to a dangerous place to keep a Dharma teaching alive, long hours of physical presence in care work, walking back to ask the difficult question. - 心精進 (diligence of mind / the attending-register) — inward, continuous: not letting the mind drift off the vow, sustaining wholesome attention, observing the 蘊 / 界 / 處 / 緣起 / 處非處, continuing concentration even when nothing externally rewards it.

The 《大智度論》 lays out five pairs to distinguish them: "starting from bodily power vs. depending on dhyāna and prajñā"; "outer affairs diligently cultivated vs. inner concentrated focus"; "crude vs. refined"; "merit-effort (福德精進) vs. wisdom-effort (智慧精進)"; and, most strikingly, "from first resolve to attaining the patient acceptance of non-arising" (得無生忍, *anutpattika-dharma-kṣānti*) is the body-register; "from that attainment to full Buddhahood is mind-effort." The first builds the vessel; the second lights the inner lamp that never goes out.

This distinction matters most for modern readers because most of us map 精進 onto the body-register only — visibly do-more, push-harder. The 《大寶積經》 sharpens the point by adding the term 唯心精進 — "diligence that is only mind" — and describing it as 無量無邊, immeasurable and unbounded. Effort without interior continuity is just labor.

2. The three (or two) faces of effort

Different texts sort 精進 into slightly different families; the deep structure rhymes.

The 《相續解脫地波羅蜜了義經》 (Saṃprayukta-saṃvṛti-pāramitā-nītārtha-sūtra) gives a clean threefold:

- 弘誓精進 — *vow-effort*: the great vow reorients all action toward awakening for all beings; - 善方便精進 — *skillful-means-effort*: effort that adapts method to circumstance without re-calculating the vow; - 利眾生精進 — *beings-benefit-effort*: effort that culminates in the actual maturation of beings, not in held-but-unlanding good intentions.

The 《瑜伽師地論》 gives a parallel taxonomy under different names: 擐甲精進 / 攝善法精進 / 饒益有情精進 — don-armor-effort, gather-good-dharma-effort, benefit-beings-effort. The "don-armor" image is the showpiece: a bodhisattva has already pledged off thousands of eons of hell-rebirth for the liberation of one being, before the march even begins. The 攝善法 cluster is then subdivided into seven: 無動 (unmoved), 堅固 (solid), 無量 (immeasurable), 方便相應 (skillful-means-bound), 無倒 (inverted-free / directed-correctly), 恒常 (constant), 離慢 (free of arrogance). Effort is being modeled as a family of operations, not a single throughput variable.

The 《大智度論》 uses a more functional breakdown — 三相: 欲造事, 精進作, 不休息 (resolve, application, non-suspension) — and a four-phase operational cycle that recurs across early Buddhist literature:

已生惡法令斷， 未生惡法令不生， 未生善法令發生， 已生善法令增長。 *Already-arisen unwholesome dharmas — cut them off; unarisen unwholesome dharmas — prevent their arising; unarisen wholesome dharmas — let them arise; already-arisen wholesome dharmas — let them grow.*

This four-phase list is the operational core of 精進. Note its character: it is a *schedule of attention*, not a to-do list. It tells the practitioner what to do with their moment, regardless of external life — at the dinner table, on the train, in the middle of a phone call, while falling asleep.

3. The vow without end: 勇進無盡

The 《大寶積經》 is the text that wants to recalibrate the bodhisattva's sense of cost:

縱皮肉骨血乃至髓腦枯壞，在未得如來智慧以前，堅固精進終無懈廢。 *Even if one's skin, flesh, bones, blood, marrow, and brain were to dry and perish — until the thus-come-one's wisdom is attained, solid diligence never slackens.*

The 《大方等大集經》 repeats this image and names it 勇進無盡. With the usual caveat that images are not instructions for self-destruction: this is not a metaphor of masochism. It is a reframing of cost. Once the bodhisattva has measured effort against the duration of all suffering beings — and found the bargain asymmetric in the beings' favor — "extreme effort" stops sounding extreme. The vow does the heavy lifting that willpower alone cannot.

This is exactly why 《大智度論》 insists on a hard distinction:

為佛道之精進方名波羅蜜。世間人及聲聞辟支佛，無大慈大悲、棄捨眾生、不求十力四無所畏十八不共法故，其精進不名波羅蜜。 *Only effort aimed at the Buddha-way is called pāramitā. Worldlings and the two vehicles, lacking great compassion, abandoning sentient beings, not aspiring to the ten powers (十力), four fearlessnesses (四無所畏), or the eighteen exclusive dharmas (十八不共法), their diligence is not called pāramitā.*

And a memorable aside in the same text: among the 十八不共法, only desire-to-act (欲) and diligence (精進) are *always* being cultivated — "like a fire: as long as it is not extinguished, it never cools" 譬如火相若不滅，終不冷. Even after full Buddhahood, the bodhisattva-as-Buddha does not sit down while any being remains unenlightened.

4. The empty underside: 無所得 (the ungraspability of effort)

If 精進 were a thing one could possess, sustain, and point to on a dashboard, it would still be a worldly striving. So the 《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》 repeatedly insists on the underside:

懈怠精進不可得故。 *Because laziness itself, and effort itself, are ungraspable.*

以無所得故，方得波羅蜜之名。 *Only because of ungraspability does it bear the name pāramitā.*

於無相、無作、無得諸法中，用身心精進，能具足毘梨耶波羅蜜。 *Within signless, deedless, ungraspable dharmas, by way of body-mind diligence, the pāramitā can be fulfilled.*

The 《大智度論》 compacts it to a single breath: "Although [the bodhisattva] knows all effort is empty, dreamlike, illusory, and in the equal nature of dharmas nothing should be sought — yet constantly accomplishes non-retrogression; *this* is called the bodhisattva's true diligence".

This is the most counter-intuitive feature for modern ears. Diligence is real; we are told; but the *essence* of bodhisattva effort is non-grasping. Grasped effort is effort tied to a personal outcome (progress, identity, leverage, future payoff). Bodhisattva-effort acts without the action hardening into "mine / my path." It still costs everything; it leaves no fingerprints.

5. 迴向薩婆若 — dedication as the inner turn

Every actual instance of bodhisattva-effort, the texts say, is "dedicated to 薩婆若 (sarvajñā, all-knowing wisdom) — *that* is the fulfillment of vīrya-pāramitā". Dedication (迴向, *parīṇāma*) here is not a verbal stamp at the end of practice; it is the inner orientation that re-shapes every slice of practice. The 《勝鬘師子吼一乘大方便方廣經》 (Śrīmālādevī-siṃha-nāda-sūtra) places the perfection inside the larger frame of *receiving and protecting the dharma* (攝受正法): "the beings he has matured establish themselves in the dharma — *this* is called vīrya-pāramitā". The perfection's completion criterion is external to the practitioner.

6. Diligence woven through the other five pāramitās

The 《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》 is unusually disciplined about this point. A bodhisattva:

- practicing 尸羅 (śīla, ethical restraint): "diligently cultivates without rest — *that* is 毘梨耶"; - practicing 羼提 (kṣānti, patience): "with the all-knowing-mind, body-mind diligence never rests — *that* is 毘梨耶"; - practicing 禪那 (dhyāna, absorption): "never cloys of dhyāna, never grasps, always seeks increase, from one dhyāna to the next — *that* is 毘梨耶"; - practicing 般若 (prajñā, insight): "views dharmas as ultimately empty, and out of great compassion engages wholesome dharmas — *that* is 毘梨耶".

Diligence is not only one of six items on a checklist — it is woven through each of the other five. The 《大方等大集經》 even gives a memorable everyday example: "When insulted, thinking, *this is laziness, not cultivating wholesome dharmas; I will diligently cultivate wholesome dharmas and abandon resentment* — in that moment 毘梨耶-pāramitā is fulfilled". Effort and patience, given a clear vow-aim, become a single operation.

7. Protecting the dharma as the stress test

The 《大寶積經》 chooses a specific situation to display *real* 精進 — when the dharma is collapsing:

面對恐嚇殺害「不起怖畏，反而轉加精進」；於正法衰滅、魔事障礙之際，覺察疾病、諍訟、擾亂、睡眠、懶惰等障，不隨其轉，奮發受持弘宣。 *Facing threats of violence, one does not give way to fear but rather becomes more diligent; in an era of dharma-decline and demonic obstruction, one registers illness, quarrels, disturbance, sleep, and laziness as obstacles, is not turned by them, and resolutely takes up, upholds, and proclaims the teaching.*

Real 精進 does not evaporate under threat. It increases. (This is also the text where the famous image of the trichiliocosm filled with flames belongs — see point 3.)

8. Position in the sequence, and 般若 as guide

In the classical order, 毘梨耶 sits between 羼提 (patience) and 禪那 (absorption): from patience, effort; from effort, absorption; from absorption, liberating insight. Without the foundation of *endurance* (羼提), effort becomes brittle; without the foundation of *equipoise* (禪那), effort remains scattered. The 《大智度論》 phrases it memorably with two images: digging a well through hard earth — at first nothing, then wet clay, then water. The first three pāramitās are the firm ground; effort is what digs through the wet clay; insight (般若) is the first sight of the source. The image demystifies the path: it isn't a leap from sand to spring; it is sequential irrigation.

And within the six, 般若 (prajñā, insight) is the indispensable guide. The texts make a strict claim: without 般若, the other five perfections are "like a blind person without a guide — they cannot enter the road". Effort without insight into *what* to be-for goes in circles; insight without effort stays at the level of view.

It is also worth noting the relationship to the five spiritual faculties (五根) and powers (五力). The 《大智度論》 explicitly identifies 精進 as the *faculty* (精進根) and 精進力 (the power; the same force grown strong). The bodhisattva's 精進 is the perfected form of what, in the earlier Buddhist path, already appears as one of the five.

9. 福分 / 智分 — merit-domain vs. wisdom-domain

The 《瑜伽師地論》 introduces one more useful framework: the *same* diligence operates in two registers:

- 福分 (merit-domain effort) — sustains giving, ethical conduct, the four immeasurables; it accrues happiness for self and others. - 智分 (wisdom-domain effort) — sustains study (聞所成慧), contemplation (思所成慧), and meditation-cultivation (修所成慧); the analytical work on the 蘊界處 (aggregates, elements, sense-bases), 緣起 (conditioned co-arising), and 處非處 (grounds for valid inference); the patient observation of how phenomena arise.

The same hour of study may be split between both; the same hour of care may also be. The classical point is that "practice" should be tracked in both registers, or it will slowly drift toward ease.

The same text lists ten purities of vīrya-pāramitā — 安處, 純熟, 策發, 方便, 不虛時住, 不艱辛住, 出離, 攝受助伴, 速疾神通, 無盡性 — which read like a curriculum: *settle, ripen, spark, apply means, dwell at the right time, dwell without strain, disengage, take companions, gain swift cognition, take on an inexhaustible nature.*

This is unusually helpful for contemporary readers. Effort, in this picture, is cultivated over time; what looks like "raw willpower" is actually a tree whose roots need years to grow. Maturity matters more than intensity.

Life investigation: walking the concept through a real week

Below, eight contemporary scenes, mapped to the classical definitions. I'll point out, alongside each, where most modern readers *mis-map* the concept.

Scene 1 — Monday morning, the inbox opens

The mental posture of 精進 here is 身精進: prompt, attentive, present. The mis-mapping: *equating reply-speed with diligence*. The four-phase operation already lives inside this moment — already-arisen unwholesome states cut off (the resentment that surfaced on Sunday), unarisen unwholesome states prevented (passive-aggressive delay), the wholesome attention allowed to arise (a clear, kind response), the already-arisen wholesome attention grown (one more thoughtful message at the end of the day). The diligence is the *inner schedule*, not the typing speed.

Scene 2 — Long commute, scrolling a feed

Modern attention environments are the rehearsal ground for 弘誓 and 善方便 精進 in their most compressed form. The vow-effort holds steady: *I am here as an ongoing practice, not a scrolling contest.* The skillful-means-effort does the moving: phone in another room, the extra lap on the platform, choosing the recorded teaching over the feed.

The mis-mapping here is the deepest. People mistake being moved by an algorithm for being moved by practice. The classical line — "懈怠精進不可得故" — is precisely the corrective: the *stirred* state and the *still* state are both surfaces of the same screen. The exercise isn't to choose between them; it is to refuse anchoring self-worth in either. The 唯心精進 register is what keeps the directional aim steady when the feed is designed to overdraw it.

Scene 3 — A project that won't move for weeks

This is where the 攝善法 / 善方便 cluster lives. Three of the seven sub-types from the 《瑜伽師地論》 are salient here: 無動 (do not let setbacks reorient the aim); 堅固 (keep the path even when evidence for it is thin); 離慢 (do not mistake slow pace for no progress).

Mis-mapping: equating visible progress with real effort. Reframing, healing, and slow restoration work often show their worth precisely by looking unimpressive. The classical image of 穿井得濕泥 — *digging the well until wet clay appears* — is meant precisely for this scene. For a long time, nothing. Then moisture. Then, much later, water. Continued digging after the wet clay *is* the vīrya.

Scene 4 — A near-miss in a relationship with a young person

Here the 利眾生 / 饒益有情 register is operative. The Śrīmālā Sūtra's wording is unusually direct:

應以精進成熟者，於彼眾生不起懈心，生大欲心第一精進，乃至若四威儀，將護彼意而成熟之；彼所成熟眾生建立正法，是名毘梨耶波羅蜜。 *For those who are to be matured by diligence, [the bodhisattva] does not give rise to a slack heart, gives rise to a great desire-mind and a "first-diligence"; in the four postures [walking, standing, sitting, lying] guarding their minds in order to mature them — the beings he has matured establish themselves in the dharma; this is called vīrya-pāramitā.*

The mis-mapping here is *confusing control with diligence* (whether they listen, what they eat, whether they sleep enough). Real effort in this register often looks more like persistence in *unprotected presence* — long, unsummarized, unimpressive — than in vigilant instruction.

Scene 5 — Mid-career, burnout

This is where contemporary culture most distorts 精進. Three mis-mappings converge here:

1. Confusing burnout with insufficient 精進. Burnout is often the exhaustion of misdirected effort — fuel burnt on what didn't matter, or on what contradicted an unacknowledged vow. 2. Confusing rest with abandonment. The 《大方等大集經》's distinction between 始發精進 (initial-effort) and 終成精進 (terminal-effort) is genuinely useful here: initial-effort *cultivates* wholesome dharmas; terminal-effort *discriminates the absence of self-nature* in every dharma. They are different operations. Trying to do terminal-effort while still initial-stage wears one out. 3. Confusing outward productivity with the 大誓 (great vow). The vow is *not* "work very hard all the time." It is the long-arc orientation. Once orientation is settled, intense effort and deliberate rest are both expressions of it. The 《大智度論》's five marks — 於事必能, 起發無難, 志意堅強, 心無疲惓, 所作究竟 ("able to complete; easy to initiate; firm in intent; never fatigued in mind; brought to conclusion") — describe the *operation*, not the *throughput*. A week-end that reclaims the through-line of intention is part of the perfection, not a holiday from it.

A working translation: replace "am I doing enough?" with "where is this slice of diligence flowing? Is it one of the four-phase operations? Does it run through me toward 迴向, or is it landing in self-congratulation?"

Scene 6 — Waiting for a diagnosis or a decision that won't come

Here 心精進 carries the load; 身精進 protects rather than drives. The 《大寶積經》 "唯心精進" image is precisely for this: continuous interior holding of the aim while the world provides no traction.

Mis-mapping: performing diligence with the body (organizing, project-managing the situation, reassuring others) and skipping the interior continuity. In many waiting-room seasons of life, the deeper practice is the unwitnessed one. The bodhisattva vow is what keeps the season inside a horizon at all.

Scene 7 — Activism, climate grief, long-horizon work

Here the classical trichiliocosm-on-fire image functions as a *calibrating device*, not as an instruction for self-sacrifice. *Solid diligence does not slacken until the tathāgata's wisdom is attained* sits the practitioner in front of a feature of reality: the goal is far enough away that no individual episode will visibly move it; the work is real, but its visible result is structurally deferred.

The three-fold structure — 弘誓, 善方便, 利眾生 — is essential here: stay anchored to the vow; keep choosing skillful means suited to current real conditions; keep actual beings in front of you, not abstractions. The mis-mapping is collapsing all three into 善方便 — only the means, only the tactics — and losing the vow-and-being register over the long run. Endurance in this register is mostly about *which dimension of effort is being asked of you today*, and answering that accurately.

Scene 8 — Long-term caregiving (an aging parent, a sick partner, a small child at night)

The 《大寶積經》's "四威儀, 將護彼意而成熟之" — *in the four postures, guarding their minds in order to mature them* — is the classical description closest to long-term caregiving. 精進 here is mostly low-volume, low-output, hidden. It does not produce hero-moments. It is *attended-to, sustained, ungrudging.* The mis-mapping: confusing "doing visible acts of care" with *being-with* in a way that actually matures the being in front of you. Often the deeper diligence is the one nobody clocks.

The 《相續解脫地波羅蜜了義經》's 七清淨 maps cleanly to this scene: 平等精進 (equal — not over-attending to one being at the expense of another), 不以精進自舉下人 (not raising oneself above another through one's effort), 專著 (single-pointed), 精進 (sustained), 堪能 (capable), 堅固 (solid), 不捨 (unrelinquishing).

Across all eight scenes, the same observation repeats: in modern attention-shaped lives, the *deeper* part of 精進 is the least visible one. Sustained interior aim, often unobservable even to the practitioner, is doing most of the work.

Why contemporaries need this concept

A few threads, hedged as analogies rather than equivalences.

1. The attention economy systematically redirects long-arc, vow-anchored effort into short-loop reactions. Infinite scroll, micro-task gamification, streaks, ranking — these structures train the effort-system into endless small-resolution activity. (Caveat: neuroscientific findings on attention and reward are suggestive, not definitive. They sit well with the classical analysis; they should not be treated as proof.) The four-phase operation (cut / prevent / allow / grow) is exactly the kind of regulatory framework a habitual-attention environment needs. Without it, effort dissipates into motion.

2. Meaning requires scale. Contemporary "motivation culture" tends to push small, bounded, outcome-tracked goals (habit streaks, OKRs, weekly wins). These work for bounded tasks. For unbounded ones — grief, regeneration, learning, care, structural change, deep friendships — small wins are not the right unit. The bodhisattva vow gives 精進 a unit long enough that ordinary small wins cannot displace it.

3. Many modern people run chronically on the surface layer of 精進 (the body-register) and exhaust it. They are not necessarily lacking energy; they are lacking the kind of energy that 唯心精進 describes — interior continuity anchored in vow, supported by 般若 as guide. When the body-register is exhausted and there is no interior reserve, even a person with great innate capacity can collapse into cynicism. The classical analysis says: bind the vow, bind the insight, then the body's effort has somewhere to land.

4. The contemporary preference for "soft," "restorative," "non-striving" practices can itself become an inversion. The 《大智度論》 explicitly refuses "diligence" that has no direction toward 佛道 and benefit of beings. By the same logic, an aesthetic of pure ease, while useful as antidotal rest, is not the substitute for vow-anchored diligence. The classical sources warn against both: against grind, *and* against indolence in the name of letting go.

5. Effort, properly cultivated, is grown in community. The 《瑜伽師地論》's purity 攝受助伴 (*taking on companions*) is not incidental. Willpower literature treats effort as a mental faculty; the classical structure treats effort as a relational cultivation. In eras of withdrawal — when kinships, religious communities, and neighborhoods have thinned — this is a non-trivial diagnostic.

A final observation: this concept's depth is precisely what protects it from being *a productivity hack*. A practitioner who has internalized even half of its structure is unlikely to mistake motion for progress, single-tasking for spiritual practice, or vigor for vīrya.

Common misreadings and what to clear up

1. 「精進」 = hustle / grind / "push harder." No. Hustle is effort attached to personal gain (recognition, income, status). Bodhisattva-effort is *direction-bound* (迴向薩婆若) and fundamentally 無所得 — ungrasping. The body-effort of hustle can be a subset of 身精進 only if it remains 迴向-bound; otherwise it is mundane action.

2. 「精進」 = being busy. No. The 《大寶積經》's 唯心精進 is "immeasurable, boundless"; the 《瑜伽師地論》's ten purities include both 不虛時住 (without wasteful occupation) and 不艱辛住 (without strain). A schedule that is busy but does not refresh itself is not even on this list.

3. 「精進」 = enthusiasm / motivation. No. Motivation is mood-bound; it waxes and wanes. 精進 is vow-bound; it has structure across moods. The 始發 / 終成 distinction is precisely about keeping cultivation across long arcs where motivation fails.

4. 「精進」 = willpower / self-discipline. Related, but partial. Willpower is one mental faculty; 《大智度論》 does place 精進 within the 精進根 and 精進力. But bodhisattva-effort, the texts insist, also requires the vow, the dharma-companion community (攝受助伴), and 般若 as guide. Willpower alone is famously brittle; vow-bound effort is structurally different.

5. 「精進」 = self-flagellation. No. The 《大智度論》's five marks explicitly include 心無疲惓 — *mind un-fatigued* —. The 《大方等大集經》's three 清淨 (莊嚴 / 覺 / 分別) include freedom from strain. Endurance is part of it; masochism is not.

6. 「精進」 = positive thinking / affirmations. No. Where affirmation frameworks refuse to name "evil is here, right now," the four-phase operation insists on it: already-arisen unwholesome dharmas — cut them off. This is a regulatory and operational framework, not a positivity strategy.

7. 「精進」 = productivity / output. No, and this matters most for modern practitioners. The 《大智度論》 says clearly: "only effort toward Buddhahood is called pāramitā". Effort toward any local project, however successful, is not the bodhisattva perfection unless it remains 迴向-bound. And a stint of effort whose visible output is zero can still be 精進波羅蜜 if its direction is properly oriented.

8. Conflated with 忍 (kṣānti, patience). Sequential and distinct: patience is what lets the next difficult encounter land without residue; effort is what builds the next step after that landing. People sometimes practice patience as if it were effort — sitting with difficulty but never building. Or they practice effort prematurely — piling up effort atop a mind that has not yet absorbed the difficulty cleanly.

9. Forgetting that 般若 (prajñā, insight) is the guide. Without 般若, 精進 has no way to distinguish effort-toward-skilful-means from effort-toward-iteration-of-the-same-pattern. The 《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》's "blind without guide" image is the diagnosis of how vigor so often collapses into reinforcement of habit.

10. Reading 精進 as a self-project. The 《相續解脫地波羅蜜了義經》's 利眾生精進 and the Śrīmālā Sūtra's "those matured establish themselves in the dharma" criterion establish an *external* completion criterion. A great deal of contemporary effort is well-built but *self-improving*; it does not, by itself, constitute 精進波羅蜜. The work has to land on a being being matured.

A single takeaway. The Bodhisattva's 精進波羅蜜 is *direction expressed as effort over time.* The 大悲 gives the direction; the vow makes it committable; 般若 keeps it from circling; the four-phase cycle gives it regular shape; the 無所得 keeps it from crystallizing into self-image; the 利眾生 criterion keeps it from collapsing into a self-project. To practice it today, the simplest move is to take any slice of effort and ask: *where is this heading, by what vow is it sustained, by what insight is it guided, in whose maturing does it land, and how does it stay empty enough to flow?*

The texts assume such questions can be sustained over very long arcs. Contemporary lives are not arranged that way. But — and this is perhaps the most useful thing about the concept — 精進波羅蜜 does not require a long arc to begin. It only asks that the present slice of effort be placed inside the arc at all. Even the smallest honest slice, placed under vow and insight, is part of the bodhisattva's practice. That is why the classical sources can be so uncompromising about its aim and so lenient about its present scale.