This accursed force of karma is not the same in all beings, it admits of all possible degrees of strength, and causes some to suffer more intensely than others. But there is no human heart or soul that is absolutely free from the shackle of karma and ignorance, because this very existence of a phenomenal world is a product of ignorance, though this fact does not prove that this life is evil. The only heart that transcends the influence of karma and ignorance and is all-purity, all-love, and all-intelligence, is the Dharmakâya or the absolute Bodhi itself. The life of a Bodhisattva and indeed the end of our religious aspiration is to unfold, realise, and identify ourselves with the love and intelligence of that ideal and yet real Dharmakâya. The awakening of the Bodhicitta (or intelligence-heart) marks the first step towards the highest good of human life. This awakening must pass through several stages of religious discipline before it attains perfection. These stages are generally estimated by the Mahâyânists at ten. They appear, however, to our modern sceptical minds to be of no significant consequence, nor can we detect any very practical and well-defined distinction between successive stages. We fail to understand what religious necessity impelled the Hindu Buddhists to establish such apparently unimportant {313} stages one after another in our religious life. We can see, however, that the first awakening of the Bodhicitta does not transform us all at once to Buddhahood; we have yet to overcome with strenuous efforts the baneful influence of karma and ignorance which asserts itself too readily in our practical life. But the marking of stages as in the gradation of the Daçabhûmî in our spiritual progress seems to be altogether too artificial. Nevertheless I here take pains as an historical survey to enumerate the ten stages and to give some features supposed to be most characteristic of each Bhûmî (stage) as expounded in the _Avatamsaka Sutra_. Probably they will help us to understand what moral conceptions and what religious aspirations were working in the establishment of the doctrine of Daçabhûmî, for it elaborately describes what was considered by the Mahâyânists to be the essential constituents of Bodhisattvahood, and also shows what spiritual routine a Buddhist was expected to pursue. The ten stages are: (1) Pramuditâ, (2) Vimalâ, (3) Prabhâkarî, (4) Arcismatî, (5) Sudurjayâ, (6) Abhimukhî, (7) Dûrangamâ, (8) Acalâ, (9) Sâdhumatî, (10) Dharmameghâ. (1) _The Pramuditâ._