How to Develop the Unparalleled Levels of Love & Compassion of the Bodhisattva (Part 3 of 3 teaching)
All sentient beings are caught in the trap of suffering in the realms of existence. Bodhicitta is a mind that wishes to free beings from suffering and bring them to the state of enlightenment. A bodhisattva is a person who has that bodhicitta mind, is a practitioner of the enlightenment thought which is the aspiration to achieve complete enlightenment as a perfect Buddha for the benefit of oneself and all other sentient beings. Love and compassion are the forces that motivated all activities of Bodhisattvas. Love is a strong wish that aspires to attain happiness for all sentient beings and compassion is the state of mind that wishes each being to be freed from all sufferings or sorrows, great compassion is the root wisdom.
We’re talking about the compassion wing, how to cultivate Bodhichitta. This outrageous attitude really, that's based upon incredible compassion and love, that is the thought never to give up, being of benefit to sentient beings, whoever is in front of you, it’s your job to help them. Never to give up long term, on working life after life perfecting all these qualities, and the final piece, the six perfections, the final stages of the Bodhisattva path. To never give up on sentient beings.
What I keep emphasising is the necessity to have done some work on yourself first. Before you can really establish and develop this outrageous levels of compassion that the Mahayana teachings of the Buddha tell us that we’re capable of. It’s not possible if you still are caught up in your own misery, it’s literally impossible to have compassion for anybody because you can’t see past your own nose. It’s fairly logical. Forget yourself, think of people you know who are really suffering mentally, they’re absolutely absorbed in themself. Suffering could be in front of them, they can’t even see it.
This is the whole point about the wisdom wing work. All the fundamental teachings of the Buddha, about karma and the mind, he’s addressing that to us, that’s the work we have to do to see our own suffering, to work on our own self, to see our own amazing potential. Then the consequence of that is two things, one - you become more content, fulfilled, and self respectful; but two - inevitably because you’re removing your own neuroses, you’re removing the barriers that ego has constructed between self and other. So the more you work on your own mind, the more content you become and the more connected to others. It’s just a logical process psychologically but we need to understand it, we need to see it.
So the starting point in these outrageous levels of love and compassion that culminate in Bodhichitta, is the cultivation of equanimity. This heartfelt recognition that the friend, enemy, and stranger are equal to each other from one point of view; they each want to be happy and each don’t want to suffer. Why do we want that? Well because love is an expression of - may you be happy. That’s the definition, the thought may you be happy. Compassion - may you not suffer. Right now we only have love and compassion for our beloveds. But if we step aside, get ourselves out of the equation, and we see these three people separately from us, we’re going to see that friend, enemy, and stranger are just projections of our own delusions. We see the universe in terms of how they fulfil our needs. We should be embarrassed how self centred it is! We’re trying to step out of that and get to see people from their own point of view. Like your mother would say - put yourself in their shoes. It’s a very powerful statement.
The brave attitude of the Bodhisattva is the sense of responsibility, what can I do to help? It’s like a mother, the mother’s sitting on the beach and her child is drowning, of course she’s going to have compassion, instantaneously there’s going to be compassion. Oh my god look at that suffering, but she’s not looking around behind her to see who’s going to save her baby, even if she can’t swim, this is the point - she knows it’s her job. That’s a Bodhisattva, they know it’s their job. That’s what we’re trying to cultivate. So it’s a very brave attitude, a very courageous attitude, a very big attitude, to think that you want to feel this sense of responsibility as if everybody in the universe is your child. That’s pretty profound!
Centrul Budist White Mahakala, Romania, 15th September 2021.
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