Hi jcsuperstar,jcsuperstar wrote:from what i've gathered, the perfections were perfected over many many life times as a bottisatta, these stories are laid out in the jataka tales
the buddha chose to take a billion life times to do this, but since he did it theres no need for us to, though i guess you could if you wanted to. the difference i see here in mahayana and theravada is the mahayana take these vows as if they have some sort of control over their lives simple by vowing, i think think now of when i was a mahayana buddhist, i couldnt keep my marraige together how was i expected to keep an untold number of future lives together...
Another way to understand this is that these vows are related to motivation for practice in the here and now.
Kindly,
Drolma