section_path: Worldview/Bodhisattva levels
section_name: Bodhisattva levels
paragraph_text: Bodhisattva levels
  
  Various Mahāyāna Buddhist scriptures associate the beginning of the bodhisattva practice with what is called the "path of accumulation" or equipment (saṃbhāra-mārga), which is the first path of the classic five paths schema.
  
  The Daśabhūmika Sūtra as well as other texts also outline a series of bodhisattva levels or spiritual stages (bhūmis) on the path to Buddhahood. The various texts disagree on the number of stages however, the Daśabhūmika giving ten for example (and mapping each one to the ten paramitas), the Bodhisattvabhūmi giving seven and thirteen and the Avatamsaka outlining 40 stages.
  
  In later Mahāyāna scholasticism, such as in the work of Kamalashila and Atiśa, the five paths and ten bhūmi systems are merged and this is the progressive path model that is used in Tibetan Buddhism. According to Paul Williams, in these systems, the first bhūmi is reached once one attains "direct, nonconceptual and nondual insight into emptiness in meditative absorption", which is associated with the path of seeing (darśana -mārga). At this point, a bodhisattva is considered an ārya (a noble being).