Would that sort of inquisitive curiosity be what falls under the base of psychic power of vīmaṃsā as found in SN51.2 ?
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Thanks for that link @Gabriel_L . 
A bit further along SN51.20 it goes into more detail, with practice being neither too lax nor too tense
And about how desire is used to give up desire
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I’ve always found fascinating the idea of the young bodhisatta looking for a goal that was not attained by anyone else, as far as he was concerned.
Why to start such odyssey in the first place?
Was he following just an intuition of such possibility?
Or did the samana traditions talked about the possibility of Nibbana in their doctrines?
Do the suttas tell us something about this?
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Buddha
As I strove to subdue myself
beside the broad Nerañjarā,
absorbed unflinchingly to gain
the surcease of bondage here,
Namucī came and spoke to me
with words all garbed in pity thus:Māra
O you are thin and you are pale,
and you are in death’s presence too:a thousand parts are pledged to death
but life still holds one part of you.
Live, sir! Life’s the better way;
you may gain merit if you live,come live the life of purity, pour
libations on the holy fires
and thus a world of merit gain.
What can you do by struggling now?The path of struggling too is rough,
and difficult and hard to bear.Narrator
Now Māra, as he spoke these lines
drew near until he stood close by.The Blessed One replied to him
as he stood thus:Buddha
O Evil One,
O Cousin of the Negligent,
you have come here for your own ends.Now, merit I need not at all.
Let Māra talk of merit then,
to those that stand in need of it.For I have faith and energy,
and I have understanding, too.
So while I thus subdue myself,
why do you speak to me of life?There is this wind that blows, can dry
even the rivers’ running streams;
so while I thus subdue myself,
why should it not dry up my blood?And, as the blood dries up, then bile
and phlegm run dry, the wasting flesh
becalms the mind: I shall have more
of mindfulness and wisdom too,
I shall have greater concentration.For living thus I come to know
the limits to which feeling goes.
My mind looks not to sense-desires:
Now see a being’s purity.Your squadron’s first is Sense-desires
your second’s Sexual Discontent,
Hunger and Thirst compose the third,
and Craving is the fourth in rank,the fifth is Sloth and Accidy,
while Fear is called the sixth in line,
Sceptical doubt is seventh, the eighth
is Sliminess, Hardheartedness;Gain with Honour, Praise besides,
and ill-won Notoriety,
Self-praise and Denigrating others—These are your squadrons, Namucī,
the Black One’s fighting troops.
None but the brave will conquer them
to gain bliss by the victory.As though I’m weaving muñja -grass,
proclaiming no retreat: shame upon life
defeated here—better to die in battle now
than choose to live on in defeat.Ascetics and brahmins there are found
that have surrendered here, and they
are seen no more: they do not know
the paths the pilgrim travels by.So, seeing Māra’s squadrons now
arrayed all round, with elephants,
I sally forth to fight, that I
may not be driven from my post.Your serried squadrons, which the world
with all its gods cannot defeat,
Now I’ll break with wisdom sharp,
as with a stone a raw clay pot.With all mind’s thoughts within the range,
with well-established mindfulness,
I’ll travel on from state to state
many disciples leading out.They, both diligent and resolute
carry on my Sāsana ,
and though you like it not, they’ll go
to where they do not grieve.
Snp3.2
I have always wondered about the nature of Faith in a Bodhisatta. It must have been Faith that it can be done.
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Traditionally, Buddhists assume that the final life of a bodhisattva is the culmination of eons of similar practice, so it’s almost second nature at that point to reach the spiritual crisis depicted in the story of Gautama’s early life. Yes, you could call it intuition, but Buddhists also believed in karma-weaved fate, so that even when his father tries to sequester Gautama, he gets out and encounters the old, the sick, the dead, and the ascetic, which triggers the noble search.
It seems that the ascetic traditions that Gautama studied under had ideas such as liberation being the elimination of all one’s bad karma through self-mortification and also enlightenment as transcendental meditative states like the four formless samadhis. What he added, the real innovation to me, is right view and right livelihood, as well as a more nuanced understanding of what the goal really is (or should be). The ascetics seem to have been a disparate group of philosophers, meditators, and self-mortifiers for the most part.
It’s hard to find the whole narrative about Gautama’s early career in the Pali suttas; the traditional episodes are scattered here and there. The later legends that collected them together seem to have first been added to the Vinaya texts, then later in literary works like the Buddhacarita, Lalitavistara, and the like.
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I was under the impression that the Bodhisattva ideal was a later concept and Gautama first encountering the old, the sick, the dead and the ascetic was also a later tale.
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As a model of practice, it was definitely later in history. As an explanation of how Buddhas arise in the world, that may well go back to the Buddha. It seems like for a long time, bodhisattvas were confined to stories about past Buddhas, especially Gautama, before the Mahayanists turned it into a practice. At that point, people literally were stepping into the lead role of Buddhist legends.
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What @cdpatton says; also, when stories are told about the previous lives of the Buddha before he was born as Gotama, he is often referred to as “the Bodhisattva”. 
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Hi there former tyrant 
I know that feeling. For a couple of years, I’ve been doing daily walks and hated it for the most 
You know, this proud sack of garbage want’s to stay fit for the ladies, what a nice lunatic. Almost dead, but still not done with doing the roll, at least in his deluded head 
Then one, not so sunny day doing my thing, there came an uninvited thought: Where are we going, and why do we lean forward? I said: We are out walking meditation, and it’s more than 12 kilometers left of this noble routine, so shut up and walk! Thought: This poor old skeleton is really suffering, and where will it end? Maybe one day this will end up in toppling over, switching from walking on those poor pedals below and over to using our hands for walking, or maybe that’s the point. I mean, it’s not such a long time since we were trodding along on our hands and feet, maybe that’s a solution for this glory of walking, and so on … 
Well, I started grumbling or doing noble contemplating 
over this nonsense, and suddenly I remembered a word from a dear teacher, going like: Make every step a step towards your self
And another: Don’t look to the future for something exceptional to happen that doesn’t happen right now
And those two thoughts stuck for a while, and suddenly it was clear. I am out walking, and my home is 15 kilometers a distance from here. But my home is just a house, and not my real home, because my real home is in my heart, and my heart is here, not there. In fact, it was never there, and I haven’t been to any places that are there. It has always been here, right here. When I started out I was here, and when I arrived, I arrived here. That mountain top is not there, its here, because it is experienced here, and all I know is experienced here and now.
Anyway, this has made walking much simpler, and now it’s not actually walking, it’s living, I guess.
I like to round up this friendly rant with another dear friend, - she makes a nice walk herself.
Be well dear friend Viveka
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Hopefully someone who is more knowledgeable about this can chime in, but when the Buddha refers to himself biographically as an “anabhisambuddho bodhisatto’va” (‘only an unenlightened Bodhisatta’ e.g. MN 26) he means something different than the later Sanskrit “bodhisattva”.
See Collins A Pali Grammar pp. 11-12 for this interesting situation. He suggests the Sanskrit term ‘bodhisattva’ is bodhisatta “reSanskritized”, and offers "intent on enlightenment"or “capable of enlightenment” as translations of the original Pali term.
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Indeed.
I understand that venerable @sujato’s translations reflect that understanding as well, that the term means someone working towards awakening.
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Because asymptotic contentment suffices.
… 
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“Intent on enlightenment” isn’t much different than the basic classical Mahayana definition of the word in texts like Kumarajiva’s Commentary on the Prajñā Sutra. There are more fanciful readings using creative etymologies, but that’s par for the course with Buddhist commentaries, I think. It’s like all the definitions of Bhagavan or Arhat. There’s the one or two basic readings, and then there’s the “having fun with words” readings.
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Indeed, I think this sense is fairly well established in the Sutta context.
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Thank you very much for the info.
I would have thought the project of a bodhisatta (complete remainderless Nibbana, the same as an arahant) to be different from a bodhisattva- a type of ‘holding back’ from the ultimate goal ?
But perhaps I have things mixed up here.
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I always go back to the Canki Sutta (MN 95) as the most comprehensive answer to the kind of question the OP posed. In it, the Buddha teaches the correct way to approach truth and knowledge.
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History gets in the way. Mahayanists practicing as bodhisattvas today are putting nirvana off for some distant future time, but the theory started with the Buddha describing himself and maybe how past Buddhas come about. So, the idea went from “a buddha-to-be” prior to enlightenment to a theory of the dependent origination of buddhas to people practicing as bodhisattvas here-and-now. Oh, and then there are the deity bodhisattvas like Manjusri, etc. So, yeah, four different basic meanings. Easy to get mixed up!
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Thank you for this very helpful explanation. It is indeed a very complicated situation, and one that seems to make answering the original question very difficult. Multiple liberation strategies can be inadvertently placed into one category, with different priorities regarding dukkha, and the urgency of dukkha in relationship to one’s self versus others.
I’ve understood that the EBT term boddhisattva meant one was working towards awakening and the bodhisattva ideal was the “culmination of eons of practice” as put forth in later traditions. Is that correct?
Yes. A strong hypothesis is that the original term was bodhisakta.
It was wrongly “sanskriticised” into bodhisattva when early Buddhist literature was converted from Pali-like Prakrit originals.
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