The Ten Perfections
In the early centuries after the Buddha’s passing away, as Buddhism became a popular religion, the idea was formalized that there were three paths to awakening to choose from: the path to awakening as a disciple of a Buddha (s›vaka); the path to awakening as a private Buddha (pacceka-buddha), i.e., one who attained awakening on his own but was not able to teach the path of practice to others; and the path to awakening as a Rightly Self-awakened Buddha (samm› sambuddha). Each path was defined as consisting of perfections (p›ramı) of character, but there was a question as to what those perfections were and how the paths differed from one another. The Therav›dins, for instance, specified ten perfections, and organized their J›taka collection so that it culminated in ten tales, each illustrating one of the perfections. The Sarv›stiv›dins, on the other hand, specified six perfections, and organized their J›taka collection accordingly.
Download the entire teaching here: http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/StudyGuides/TheTenPerfections.pdf
