The succession of twelve great teacher-beings who circle the cosmic Christ and bring spiritual guidance to humanity, each one rising to become a Buddha when his mission is done.
The Bodhisattvas in Anthroposophy are the succession of twelve great teacher-beings who surround the cosmic Christ and carry spiritual nourishment down to humanity from age to age. In The Christ Impulse and the Development of Ego-Consciousness (GA 116, 1910), Rudolf Steiner describes each Bodhisattva as an individuality more advanced than ordinary humanity, working on the human inner life until, at the close of his mission, he rises a stage higher and becomes a Buddha. Twelve such beings form a circle of stars around Christ as their thirteenth, the Sun in their midst. Gautama, who became Buddha in the sixth century before Christ, was one of these. The line is not finished: a further Bodhisattva, the future Maitreya, is still to come.
In Steiner's Own Words
We have now ascended to the sphere of the Bodhisattvas, and entered a circle of twelve stars; in their midst is the Sun, illuminating, warming them; from this Sun they draw that source of life which they afterwards have to carry down to earth. How is the image of what takes place above, represented on earth? It is projected into the earth in such wise that we may render it in the following words: Christ, Who once lived on the earth, brought to this earth evolution an impulse for which the Bodhisattvas had to prepare humanity and they then had to develop further what He gave to the earth-evolution.
What it Means Today
The word bodhisattva belongs first to Buddhism, where it names a being who has vowed to reach enlightenment for the sake of all sentient life. In the Mahayana schools that spread north into Tibet, China, and Japan, the Bodhisattva ideal became the heart of the path: one delays final liberation to return, age after age, as helper and teacher. Steiner read that ancient picture in a precise way. He saw the Bodhisattvas as a real office held in succession, a line of twelve individualities who teach humanity from the Buddhi-plane and who graduate to Buddhahood once their work is complete. Gautama, the historical Buddha of the sixth century before Christ, was the one who reached that stage by giving the world the teaching of compassion and the eightfold path.
The point where Steiner's reading and the living Mahayana tradition meet most closely is Maitreya. Buddhist devotion since at least the Gandharan sculptors of the second century has awaited Maitreya, the Buddha-to-come who will renew the teaching when it has faded. Steiner placed that same expectation inside his Christology: the next Bodhisattva, the future Maitreya, prepares humanity to understand the Christ-impulse, and the whole succession completes itself only when the twelfth has finished. So the term carries a double reading. For a practitioner in the Tibetan Gelug lineage it names the compassion-vow recited daily; for the reader of GA 116 it names the cosmic teaching-college around Christ. Holding both at once is how Anthroposophy approaches the comparative study of religion, not collapsing the two but letting each illuminate the other.
Where to Read More
- The Christ Impulse and the Development of Ego-Consciousness, GA 116
- Find at SteinerBooks
- The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind by Rudolf Steiner: Bodhisattvas, Christ, and Cosmic Evolution
- Green Tara: The Tibetan Bodhisattva of Compassion and Swift Aid
- Anapanasati: The Buddha's Mindfulness of Breathing Practice