(For podcast, click here) (For the ITunes version, click here)
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought we could talk about love. Not the lusty love that makes us a little crazy and do silly things, and not the deep love between two people who value each other above everyone else, but rather the loving-kindness that is innately within each one of us, the limitless loving-kindness that we can radiate out to every other person on the planet. In Mahayana Buddhism, this idea of sending loving-kindness to all beings is part of the practice of being a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is translated as enlightened (bodhi) existence (sattva) or a person wishing to relieve the suffering of others and wishing to help others become enlightened.
As part of the second step on the Eightfold Path, Wise Intention, we vow to not focus solely on our own awakening, but we vow to help all others become awakened as well. One of the Bodhisattva vows is:
Sentient beings are numberless—I vow to liberate them.
Delusions are inexhaustible—I vow to transcend them.
Dharma Teachings are boundless—I vow to master them.
The Buddha’s enlightened way is unsurpassable—I vow to embody it.
(translation from Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das)
The idea of wishing to help the entire world awaken—that probably seems a bit daunting! On the internet, there is a clock that keeps track of approximately how many people there are in the world in any given hour. As of about 6 pm last night, there were 6,993,879,604. That is a lot of people who might be suffering. We’ve got our work cut out for us. There is a wonderful quote by Mother Theresa with some good advice:
"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you."
Bodhicitta is another word you often read or hear about in Buddhist writings. It is translated as awakened heart. It’s interesting that in the original Pali, the word, Citta, means heart-mind, in that it was thought that the heart and mind functioned together. Centuries later, recent research now shows that there are actually neural networks in the heart as well. So, we might more accurately think of Bodhicitta as awakened heart-mind. One who has bodhicitta as the primary motivation for all of his or her activities is called a bodhisattva.
Beginning students commonly ask how they can honestly vow to save all beings. It sounds like missionary arrogance. Hui-neng [the Sixth Zen Patriarch] offers a response: "You are saving them in your own mind." It is bodhichitta that you are cultivating—your own aspiration for wisdom and compassion, and your determination to practice it in the world as best you can. - Robert Aitken Roshi, "The Bodhisattva Vows"
The Buddha encouraged us to never go out and evangelize. Instead, he said if you embody the teachings, others will be naturally curious about what has caused this transformation in your life, only when they ask, then and only then, should you share with them this practice. From the very beginning, even his five friends who were ascetics with him, they had to beg him to teach them about this wonderful practice that had changed him so dramatically.
In Awakening the Buddha Within, Lama Surya Das describes bodhicitta as the purified and fully developed heart-mind. Practicing bodhicitta means cultivating all one’s innate enlightened qualities and following the path of awakening. Having an open heart-mind is teaching us how to be open and seeing the innate goodness in ourselves and all others.
Buddhism is a practice designed to relief suffering, so by its very nature, we want to relieve not only our own suffering but the suffering of others, ALL sentient beings, not just the ones we like. Whoa! "You mean I have to desire to relieve the suffering of people that annoy me or hurt me or anger me? Can’t there possible be some exceptions to this practice?" In Buddhism, there are no exceptions. We work towards relieving our own suffering and the suffering of all others, even the ones that annoy us or don’t seem to deserve it, or who have hurt us in some way. It’s easy to be loving and kind to the people we like. It is the sending loving-kindness to these difficult ones when we really earn our Buddhist stripes.
How we think about ourselves and others is critical to how we talk and act. Our thoughts are shaping and defining our actions and words. Lama Surya Das encourages us to infuse Truth and Love into everything we do. We strive to combine Wisdom and Compassion in our thoughts, our speech and our actions.
He says:
If it looks like wisdom, but is unkind rather than loving, then it is not wisdom. If it feels like love, but it’s not wise, then it is not love.
There is a tender part of our heart that doesn’t want to feel vulnerable. Maybe you’ve been hurt before and the pain was so awful, that you’ve sworn off being that open to anyone ever again. Now, I’m encouraging you to try, even just little, even if it’s just a small crack, to open up your innately good and kind heart. You may still be hurt again, but it might be easier to stay standing with an open heart with these practices of compassion and wisdom.
We can begin in the simplest of ways. Something as simple as silently wishing each and every person that you come in contact with, “may you be happy.” Then, we can look for ways to reach out in earnest and help others who are having a difficult time. Several of us go to feed the hungry at St. Paul
We close with the Bodhicitta dedication, wishing that whatever benefit is derived from us meditating, that the benefit be for the happiness of all beings.
May the pure, brilliant sun of bodhicitta
Dawn in each and every heart and mind
Dispelling the darkness of suffering and confusion
Unstoppably—until all are illumined and awakened.
From Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das
1 comment:
Thank you for this helpful teaching.
Post a Comment