How do we know attaining complete liberation from dukkha is possible?

[Gabriel_L]

@Adutiya

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.

Bodhisattva-Bodhisakta

It seems reasonable to me, in fact I regard it as likely. The compound bodhisatta is uncomfortable: “awakening-being”. What does that even mean? In the EBTs, bodhisatta is almost always used of the period of striving between leaving home and awakening, and there, “one intent on awakening” has a perfect sense. Regardless of how you construe the terms, the sense of the term must be something like that in the EBTs, so I translate, for example: Pubbeva me, bhikkhave, sambodhā anabhisambuddhassa …