The bodhisattva is Mahayana's reframing of the goal itself. Where earlier Buddhism aims at the arhat who ends their own suffering, the bodhisattva postpones final release until all beings are free — an explicitly impossible vow taken deliberately, because the taking of it reorients everything downstream. The path is mapped in ten stages and six perfections, and the great bodhisattvas (Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri, Tara, Kshitigarbha) function devotionally as beings you can call on, which is how the abstraction became a living pantheon.