This is a transcript of the original video available on YouTube: 4th Monthly Q&A Session – May 20th, 2022
DGL: “What can one do as a Western monastic who still has to work to sustain oneself, and because of that not being able to live a fully monastic life? It feels as if I’m living in between two worlds.”
JTP: This is a big problem for so many Non-Himalayan monastics because they do not live in a community. Most of them are living quite a solitary life, or are part of a Dharma organization which is mostly for lay people. Therefore they don’t feel like they’re part of modern society on the one hand, but at the same time, they’re also not part of a Buddhist monastic society either. So they’re kind of split between the two. This is a huge problem.
We have an organization called the Alliance for Non-Himalayan Nuns, which does offer funding for specific Dharma courses and short retreats, but we don’t have the resources to offer financial support for living and medical expenses for individual nuns. It should be remembered that even in Asia, unless you’re actually living in a nunnery, if you choose to stay home then mostly you’re caught up in the family and end up working like a family servant. There isn’t any particular support for nuns who are not within a monastic environment.
I think the only thing to do is to integrate the Dharma in your daily life. I mean, what else can we do? If one is not in a monastic community, of which there are so few, we need to accept that this is the way things are. We recognise that it is a difficult situation and often very lonely. We know that. But the only way to deal with it, up to now, is to see our daily life and our daily workplace as our opportunity for practice. We can bring Dharma into our daily life and everyday relationships to practise the Paramitas and loving awareness; in that way, we can bridge what we often see as a gap between a Dharma life and a worldly life, making the worldly life into a Dharma life. That’s not just for monastics, that’s for all of us.
DGL: “My mind, which is very keen on doing and achieving, is now interested in starting Ngondro practice as a way to feel I am moving towards a goal. I understand the contradiction inherent in using realisation of Buddha Nature as a goal. Is it essential? If so, what would be the way to begin?”
JTP: Personally, I feel that Ngondro practice is especially helpful if one can undertake it within a retreat environment. It’s meant to be done as a kind of package deal within a few months. It was never intended that we would do 100 prostrations a day for the rest of our life until we’ve made it to 100,000. It’s intended to be a very intense thrust forward for purification and creating auspicious karma and so forth. It’s not meant to be a burden. It’s meant to be a real zap for clearing away the obstacles for doing one’s main practice. That’s the idea behind it. But in modern times for different people, there are different circumstances under which we can take the Ngondro.
It’s not like you finish 100,000 of everything and then zap, you’re there, ready. When I lived in Lahaul, the question asked was not, “Have you done a Ngondro?” but “How many Ngondros have you done?” Most practitioners had done at least 6 to 15 Ngondros. If you said one, they said, “Oh, right, so when are you doing your next?” I’m not trying to discourage people, but I want to make sure people know that it’s not like some magic token.
I think a far better preparation for our main practice, or even for doing a Ngondro, is to start with some strong Shamatha practice. Shamatha, or calm-abiding meditation, prepares the mind for our practice, making it calm and clear. We cultivate our attention so that the mind will stay put and will not be distracted. It will not be running all over the place.
Even the commentaries on Ngondro say that you have to have a well-directed mind. If the mind is distracted, you can do a million mantras or practices, but it won’t affect the mind. The accomplishment will not come. Whereas if our mind is well-directed, settled and well-trained, then whatever practice we do will naturally have accomplishment.
So first, we must get the mind ready. The best way to get it ready in this very distracted age is to do some basic Shamatha meditation. Then, when we try to do our Ngondro, our mind will settle there, and it will be able to visualize the Refuge Tree. It will be able to be absorbed and merged with Vajrasattva Practice. That’s the point: if we can absorb and really merge the mind with the practice, then very quickly there will be accomplishment. Otherwise, it’s not going to happen. It’s not some kind of magic such that when you’ve done your Ngondro somehow everything’s going to change. It’s the mind that has to change.
As the questioner says, it’s not about seeking a goal. This is of course just the ego playing games. The whole idea of reaching somewhere is based on the ego. Somehow we’re going to accomplish something. However, just of itself, doing Ngondro doesn’t mean that we’re any closer to the goal. How are we going to tame our mind? How are we going to train and transform the mind? This is the question. I think more important than doing 100,000 belly flops with your mind all over the place would be to first to get the mind quiet, centred and one-pointed.
Many lamas are saying this now, because they see that the modern mind (not just the Western mind) is so distracted. Before, you did your Ngondro and then you did Shamatha. Now they are saying to do Shamatha first, then do Ngondro, and then do Shamatha again. Many lamas have recognised that this is not Tibet, where life was so slow and essentially devoid of mental stimulus. Half the battle was already over because the mind very easily settled. This is not true anymore for anybody, including Tibetans. The lamas are recognizing that first we need to heal the mind, to get a well-balanced, healthy mind, which is able to practise wholeheartedly.
I would say our practice is not about attaining a goal, not about ego, but about our poor little distracted monkey mind. First, tame the monkey. Then you have a happy little monkey that’s willing to do whatever tricks you want it to do, including 100,000 belly flops.
DGL: “How can one best respond to questions posed by interested friends and family who are not practitioners of Buddhism or the Dharma when one feels entirely unqualified to answer?”
JTP: Who is qualified to answer? If we never answer just because we felt unqualified, then nobody would ever transmit the Dharma. So I think it’s best to just answer according to your own knowledge and ability. You can explain that you’re not really qualified to answer properly, but that you’ll do your best. There’s no harm in saying, “I don’t really know, but…” and then trying to explain as far as your understanding goes. In the meantime, you should be reading, studying and practicing in order to gain confidence in answering accurately. We do the best we can.
This reminds me of a story in the Pali Canon about Shariputra and Maudgalyayana, who were chief disciples of the Lord Buddha. In the beginning, they were just Brahmin students and friends. They had a pact between each other: they would go meet as many teachers as they could, and then if they met a teacher they really believed in, they’d go tell the other and they’d both go to that teacher.
Shariputra meets this monk who he thinks looks like a very dignified being. Shariputra says to the monk, “You are very glowing and radiant. Who is your teacher? Can you tell us what your teacher has told you?”
The monk said, “I’m only a very new student, so I really don’t know very much.” Shariputra replied, “It doesn’t matter, whatever you know, you tell us.”
The monk responded with the very famous phrase which the Tibetans use almost like a mantra nowadays:
Om Yeh Dharma Hetu Prabhava
Hetu Teshan Tathagato Hyawadat
Teshan Jayo Nirodha
Evam Vadi Maha Shramana Svaha
All phenomena arise from causes,
The causes are taught by the Tathagata.
The cessation of causes as well,
Is taught by the Great Seer.
It doesn’t really say much, but upon hearing it, Shariputra gained a great level of realisation.
Then Shariputra met with Maudgalyayana and they went to meet with the Buddha. What spurred him was a very short, simple expression of the Buddha’s teaching, but it was enough to motivate him to learn more.
Just because we don’t know much doesn’t mean we can’t express what we know. We can share with confidence however much we know. We don’t know much, but we do know this.
DGL: Sounds wonderful, Jetsunma-la. I guess we never know when we might inspire somebody and when somebody is ready to hear what we have to share.
JTP: Exactly that. We don’t know. Even a small thing that the Buddha taught might really click with somebody, like:
All conditioned things are impermanent.
He talked about impermanence, the difficulties of our worldly life, and how the solution is within our hearts and not necessarily external circumstances. That alone, simple as it might seem, is actually very profound. Sharing this insight might direct people to recognise that the problem is within us and can be dealt with, rather than always blaming other people and external circumstances. This could really transform their lives. You never know where it’s going to click. This doesn’t mean they become Buddhists, but they can nonetheless deepen their understanding of their life, which is good.
DGL: The rest of the questions are about the theme of today’s session, Bodhichitta, or The Mind of Enlightenment:
“What does Bodhichitta mean? I know that the translation is The Mind of Enlightenment, but what kind of mind is it?”
JTP: Bodhichitta literally means the mind, the chitta, that aspires to Enlightenment, bodhi, in order to liberate all sentient beings, however long it takes. It’s the aspiration that we are seeking Enlightenment not just for the sake of ourselves, but in order to liberate all beings. Therefore, our practice is to benefit others and not just ourselves. It’s based on a deep compassion, recognizing the universal state of samsaric dissatisfaction and suffering.
From the point of view of the Mahayana, there are three scopes of motivation for the spiritual path, which I’ll discuss now.
In the first scope, we hope practising is going to make us feel happier and better. We’re told meditation makes the mind happy, tamed and peaceful. We think that sounds really nice, so we do it. We hope that learning how to tame our mind will help us overcome our psychological suffering. In all religions, many people practise with the aspiration that the next lifetime will be better.
It’s no different in Buddhism. Many people practise in order to improve their lot in the next lifetime. They hope that if they are generous and patient, they’ll make good karma and the circumstances of being reborn will be more pleasant, without as many problems as they’ve had in this lifetime. We hope that somehow we’re going to make samsara more comfortable. Many people practise with this aspiration within samsara, not hoping to go beyond samsara. May samsara at least be a little bit easier and more pleasant. That’s the first scope.
The second scope comes from recognising that whether we’re up or whether we’re down, we’re all in a prison house of samsara, and you never know where you’re going to end up. Just because you’re a good person in this lifetime, maybe there’s some very negative karma from another lifetime that will appear next life. So even though you’ve been very good in this lifetime, you might still have problems in your next life.
Basically, whether we’re in the penthouse suite or the dungeons, we are all in prison. Also, we don’t know whether we’re going to go up or whether we’re going to go down. It’s very insecure. Therefore, the aspiration of the second scope is to get out of the prison house of samsara — to attain Nirvana. In the present day, most of the practitioners in the Theravada school have this motivation. They aspire to attain Nirvana by dropping the grasping at an ego, going beyond the self to selflessness, thus becoming liberated.
The third scope is the Mahayana aspiration called the Bodhichitta. We could imagine samsara like a burning house. We might have the following internal dialogue:
I’ve escaped, but my family are still in the burning house. My dog is still yelping away in the burning house. Can I just walk away? Or should I use the fact that I’ve gotten out the burning house to go back in and help pull people out?
Or we could imagine that we’re all sinking in a vast swamp, and then by making great efforts, we get onto dry land. Could we then turn around and see all our family, friends and loved ones and say the following?
Well, sorry folks, I didn’t realise you’re all drowning in the swamp, but I got out. If you really make a lot of effort, you can get out too. Let me be your example. Sorry about that. In the meantime, bye.
Could we say that and just walk off? We couldn’t do that. We would use the good fortune of being on dry land as a way to help them get there too. Since all sentient beings have been related to us in past lives as close family, that means we have the obligation to try to pull all beings onto dry land. The only reason to be on dry land is that we are then able to pull others out too. Once this third aspiration of Bodhichitta has arisen in our mindstream, we start on the path of a Bodhisattva.
DGL: Sounds like a massive undertaking, Jetsunma-la.
JTP: It’s enormous, but that’s why you take it, because it’s just so mind-blowing to the ego that wants to be comfortable and safe. To make that vow to come back endlessly until samsara ends is an incredible explosion in our own sense of self.
DGL: Since you mentioned being on dry land in order to be able to help others, I’m going to jump to the following question:
“Why do we aspire to become enlightened in order to be able to benefit others? Can’t we start benefiting people now?”
Using those two analogies you just gave, is it possible to help others while we’re still in the swamp or the burning house?
JTP: Of course, we start right now by trying to benefit others as best we can. While we are unenlightened, it’s very difficult to totally enlighten others, but we can set them on the path, and we can share with them what we have.
With every prayer, every practice we do, we remind ourselves that we’re doing this on behalf of all the other beings in the world who don’t know how to do this practice. When we say our mantras, we remind ourselves we are doing this for all beings, because most beings don’t know how to do these practices.
This is why we are doing it — for their sake, not just for our own sake. That shifts the whole emphasis and importance of the practice. We start right now with what we’ve got and what we can do; that’s how we’re going to gain Enlightenment, by taking all beings with us.
For example, talking about the Ngondro, when we do prostrations, we visualize all beings, including animals, insects, birds and fish — all beings — likewise doing prostrations along with us. We imagine this huge plateau in which we are prostrating to the Refuge Tree and all beings (our parents, loved ones, friends and our enemies in front) are prostrating along with us at the same time. We are like their substitute.
It’s like the United Nations, with representatives of all the different nations. The whole nation doesn’t go to the UN. They send a representative who speaks on behalf of their people. When we’re practicing, we are the representative for all the sentient beings who aren’t present at this particular occasion. We are acting on their behalf.
All the merit that has been accumulated through the practice is dedicated and given to all sentient beings for their Enlightenment and well-being. So right from the start, we take all beings with us.
Since we are not enlightened, still trapped in the prison house, we travel towards the goal accompanied by our sense of interconnection with all beings. Normally, because of our ignorant, dualistic mind, we see ourselves separate. But on the ultimate level, we are all very deeply interconnected. Our consciousness is deeply connected with all living beings. Remembering that we are practicing on behalf of all living beings helps us recognise and remember our interconnection.
In order to wake up, we need both great compassion and great wisdom; we need the two of them together, like the wings of the bird. By always including sentient beings in our practice, we are cultivating both the compassion side, reminding ourselves that all beings want to be happy and liberated, and at the same time, the wisdom side of recognising that we are very intimately interconnected.
So yes, you start right now. Do what you can to benefit beings, and at the same time, benefit yourself by benefiting beings. I think that’s common sense, it seems to me.
DGL: “I’ve heard that Great Compassion is a prerequisite for Bodhichitta, and ultimately for Enlightenment. Could you please explain what Great Compassion means, and why it is so important to develop it?”
JTP: Great Compassion means unconditional compassion. In other words, it’s a compassion that reaches out to embrace all sentient beings without any exception. Living beings refers not just to human beings, but animals, birds, beings that live in the waters, insects, and maybe even microbes… all sentient beings, seen and unseen, including all of the many realms of beings that we cannot visually see with our eyes. All beings.
We all have Buddha Nature (even insects), but are mostly caught in our dualistic consciousness. How sad. We all have this incredible innate wisdom and compassion within us, but we don’t recognise it. So we suffer and we cause suffering to others. I mean, that’s incredibly sad. Therefore, may all beings be free from suffering and gain Enlightenment. That’s the aspiration.
Great Compassion doesn’t extend only to people I like and know. We don’t exclude people who do bad things. It’s compassion for all beings. People do bad things because of their ignorance, and they create terrible karma for themselves. How sad, when their potential is total omniscience and loving kindness. Why are they trapped? Why are they all trapped? When we open the prison doors, it’s to allow all the prisoners to escape, including the guards. “Everybody, get out of there, as soon as you can.”
This Great Compassion is an unconditional compassion. It’s not “I have compassion for everybody except that one.” It includes everybody — all beings — without a single exception anywhere, including Mara, who represents the satanic force opposing Enlightenment in Buddhism. Even Mara will be liberated in the end. All beings will be liberated.
That’s the difference between an ordinary, conditional compassion, which is mostly sorry about somebody’s suffering in this particular part of samsara, and Great Compassion. The latter is vast and open, beyond time and space. You’ve got whole galaxies to liberate. It goes on and on.
DGL: Well, again, it’s enormous, but what a beautiful aspiration. What a beautiful mind to cultivate.
JTP: It is a mind-blowing aspiration because it’s beyond thought. Our logical thought cannot encompass it. There’s a famous verse in the Bodhisattvacharyavatara (A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life) by Shantideva which says:
As long as space remains,
As long as sentient beings remain
Until then may I too remain
To dispel the miseries of the world.
When His Holiness the Dalai Lama quotes that aspiration he often just bursts into tears because it’s so incredible: for as long as space endures and living beings remain, so I will remain to help them, to be there for them and to liberate them. It’s so beyond time and space. I’m not here just to benefit myself or to be liberated or any of that. I’m just here solely in order to gain the skilful means — the wisdom and the compassion — to benefit every single being, as far as I can, in all time and all space.
It’s mind-blowing. It’s literally a very mind-blowing aspiration. Whether you can do it or not is not the question. The crux of it is the aspiration to go beyond the conceptual thinking mind, which says: No, no, no, you can’t do that. The inner mind, the true nature, says: It’s already done, we just don’t realise it yet.
DGL: I heard one lama say that of all the intentions in the world, Bodhichitta is the aspiration which connects us most with reality and with how things really are.
JTP: Yes. On a relative level and also on an ultimate level. There’s Relative Bodhichitta, and there’s also Ultimate Bodhichitta.
DGL: “What makes someone a Bodhisattva? Is taking the Bodhisattva Vow enough?”
JTP: Taking the Bodhisattva Vow is very important because it plants the seed of Bodhichitta. Without the seed, you can keep watering, but you’re not going to get any plant because you’ve not planted the seed. So first, you need to plant the seed, which is taking the Bodhisattva Vow. Then we need to water it, and protect the sapling little bodhi tree that’s growing in our heart. We have to take care of it, protect it, water it, fertilize it and so forth so that it will continue to grow and grow. In the meantime, we are what you could call incipient Bodhisattvas. We’re aspiring to continue on the Bodhisattva Path until all beings are established in Buddhahood.
Every day we recite the Three Jewels (I go for refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha), and then the aspiration to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings through Generosity and the other Paramitas. You take refuge and repeat the Bodhisattva Vow that you are doing this practice for the sake of gaining enough spiritual maturity to be of genuine benefit to liberate others:
In all our lifetimes, from now until all beings are liberated, I will take the Mahayana path. In all my future lifetimes, may I meet again and again with the Buddhadharma and the Bodhisattva Path. May I have both faith and the opportunity for practice and gaining realisation.
We make these aspirations now so that we can die in the confidence that we will meet again with the Bodhisattva Path.
Some of our little nuns come when they’re three or four years old. They must have made very strong aspirations in past lifetimes because as soon as it was possible, they ended up in a nunnery where they are being taught and trained. From the very beginning, they’re in a place where they practise and learn about the Bodhisattva Path.
Somebody once told a little nun who had recently arrived, “Oh, isn’t it nice that you’re in this nunnery because now you can pray for your mummy and daddy.”
She said, “Oh no. In this nunnery, we pray for all sentient beings.”
If you’ve already got that in your heart at six or seven, that’s the result of previous aspirations in past lives. So start aspiring, planting seeds and watering very carefully.
DGL: It sounds really good, Jetsunma-la. For all of us, planting seeds is definitely the beginning. Going back to the question, do bodhisattvas have any particular signs? Do they glow in the dark? Can we recognise one when we see a Bodhisattva? Is there any way to know that somebody is a Bodhisattva or not?
JTP: No, not really. If we find someone selflessly doing wonderful work for the benefit of others, we might say, “Oh, they must be a Bodhisattva.” Of course you don’t have to be a Buddhist to be a Bodhisattva. You don’t even have to be religious to be a Bodhisattva on one level.
But the difference between just being a very kind, compassionate person and being a genuine Bodhisattva is that the latter has the aspiration to attain Enlightenment to benefit all beings, not just to be kind. We’re cultivating not just compassion, but also wisdom. A genuine Bodhisattva is someone who not only has a very good, kind heart, but also some innate qualities of insight and understanding. It’s not just about being kind.
This is why the thousand-armed Chenrezig (also known as Kuan Yin in Chinese or Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit), The Bodhisattva of Compassion, has an eye in each of his thousand hands, which are reaching out to help. He doesn’t just have compassion — he also has the wisdom and understanding of how to use that compassion to benefit others. The two have to go together.
A Bodhisattva has a spiritual aspiration towards Enlightenment, not just to be very kind and help people on a mundane plane.
DGL: “I would like to do good, but future lives seem remote and if the Wheel of Life is true, I imagine I won’t get a favourable rebirth, so taking on the Bodhisattva Vow seems too big and hard to accept. What would you suggest?”
JTP: We start right now. We use this lifetime skilfully to benefit not only ourselves, but also others. If we’ve cultivated the aspiration to meet the Dharma and renew the Bodhisattva Vow towards Enlightenment for the sake of all beings, then whether or not there are future lives or no future lives, you’ve set the GPS, right? That’s the point.
Your GPS is set to Enlightenment for the sake of all beings, but in the meantime, you’re looking at the scenery around you. You’re not just thinking of the distant goal. Right now, you’re thinking about the road just ahead and taking in the scenery on either side. Right now, you’re trying to perfect this lifetime. Then, with the Bodhisattva Vow, then future lives will take care of themselves.
If there’s a Wheel of Life, there’s no reason you will not get a favourable rebirth. Why would you get a bad rebirth unless you’ve been really evil and delighting in that evil? Even though we’re immersed in ignorance, the average person doing the best that they can in this lifetime can hope that they will have a favourable rebirth. We can at least hope that we’ll be a human being, and that as a human being we will also encounter, have faith in and be able to practise the Dharma path.
But that will only come about if we take care of this lifetime now. We can’t deal with what’s going to happen next, but we can deal with what’s happening right now. So we set our aspiration for Enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings — that’s the GPS — and then we are dealing with the road just ahead of us and what’s passing in this moment. We keep our attention in the here and now. If we do that, then eventually we will reach our destination, however many lifetimes that may take. Future lifetimes are not in our hands unless we take care of the present moment. That we can do. We can deal with the present moment and allow the future to unfold as it will.
DGL: Thank you, Jetsunma-la, that sounds very practical and relevant to now.
“Why is Bodhichitta not talked about in the Pali Canon? I’ve read many discourses of the Buddha, but there seems to be no mention of this term.”
JTP: The ideal of aspiring for Buddhahood rather than merely as an Arhat attaining Nirvana does appear in the Pali Canon. This was the Buddha Shakyamuni’s original intention as a Bodhisattva. He’s called a Bodhisattva until he becomes a Buddha. But it was considered too difficult, so therefore the aspiration for Personal Liberation was emphasized. It might have been later that the Mahayana emphasized compassion along with wisdom. Then the analogy of rescuing people from burning houses or drowning in swamps came about.
The motivation — why we are practicing — is the main divergent point between the schools. That’s it. Otherwise, we all do Shamatha, we all do Vipashyana, and the monks and nuns all keep their vows. There’s not that much difference in the basic practices. The big difference is why we are doing those practices. That is where they diverge.
The aspiration to travel the path not just for the sake of one’s own Liberation, but to be of ultimate benefit to all beings, is such an enormous vow. But it sets our motivation away from what could end up being a rather self-cherishing view.
At first we might think: This prison house of samsara is horrible, I want to get out.
But with Bodhichitta, we shift to the following perspective: Well, this prison house of samsara is really awful, not just for me, but for everybody. If I could find a way out, then I could help everybody else to get out too — so that’s what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to find a way out and then get everybody else out.
DGL: It sounds to me, Jetsunma-la, that the whole thing is very internal. For example, just to make it obvious, one could be a Mahayana practitioner by reciting the prayers, attending the rituals, doing the pujas, but internally, if one is thinking only of my own Liberation, then that’s not really the Mahayana aspiration. On the other hand, you could have a Theravada monk in a Theravada country that aspires for Full Enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Even though externally it looks one way, internally the aspiration is greater.
JTP: Exactly that. You can be practicing the highest Anuttarayoga Tantra, but if it’s for the sake of cultivating only yourself and you’ve forgotten to take all sentient beings with you, then it’s more like a Theravada practice.
By the way, Theravada is just one of the many schools set out by the Buddha. The reason why it has existed to the present day so immaculately is because the Emperor Ashoka sent his son and his daughter to Sri Lanka, and they established Buddhism of the Theravada school there. Then, when Buddhism died out in India, the Theravada school was the only one of the 18 schools that survived, apart from those which had been sent to China (which subsequently went to Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and then, of course, to Tibet).
So the fact that the Theravada school has been so well preserved is because of historical factors. But there were many schools; there were 18 basic subsects. Theravada was just one, but that is the one which has continued to exist because it was sent to Sri Lanka, and then from Sri Lanka to Burma, Thailand and elsewhere.
But indeed, it’s like you say — it’s not the practice or the appearance that counts — it’s the inner motivation.
DGL: “The Dhammapada says, ‘No one purifies another, never neglect your work for another’s, however great his need.’ As a lay practitioner, I find it very hard to find the balance between generosity and self-practice. Do we ultimately help others just to help ourselves?”
JTP: Of course, by helping others, we do help ourselves. Although it’s not the primary motivation, nonetheless, we help ourselves by cultivating a good heart that rejoices in the happiness of others. This creates good karma, which is not a bad thing. It’s perfectly right. When we give happiness to others, we feel happy. There’s nothing wrong with feeling happy because we’ve made others happy. We need good karma to clear obstacles on the path and create auspicious circumstances for the practise of Dharma.
It’s like breathing in and breathing out, right? You breathe in to benefit yourself, you breathe out to benefit others. That makes a very balanced practice. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. As Shantideva says:
“All the happiness there is in this world comes from thinking about others, and all the suffering comes from preoccupation with yourself.”
It’s true. If we are kind and nice and try to benefit others, we ourselves benefit. That’s perfectly how it should be.
But we should not only benefit others and completely deprive ourselves. Some people are out of balance between their compassion and their wisdom; they have too much feeling for others and guilt about being nice to themselves, which they think of as self-cherishing mind. But it’s actually only common sense. If we are kind to ourselves, we can also be kind to others. There needs to be a balance — not only thinking of ourselves, but also not only thinking of others.
We are also sentient beings, and we have to take care of all sentient beings. It didn’t say all sentient beings except me. All sentient beings, right? We are a sentient being which we need to take care of. But along with caring for ourselves, we can also extend that caring, compassion and love towards all beings. Then we feel good, and they feel good, and everybody’s happy.
DGL: Thank you very much, Jetsunma-la.
“Can you talk about the two methods for developing Bodhichitta, and how to know which one is more suitable for me? How can I put them into practice in a formal meditation setting? Could you also please talk about Ultimate and Relative Bodhichitta as well?”
JTP: We’ll start with Relative Bodhichitta — the aspiration to attain Awakening for the sake of all beings. Here, we are making a separation between ourselves and all sentient beings. So it’s relative. It’s dealing with a conditional mind, which is ego-based, and the idea that I am going to save all beings. It’s a very lovely aspiration, but it’s very relative. It’s very conditional.
Ultimate Bodhicitta means the Nature of the Mind, which like the sky, has no boundaries and no separation. On an ultimate level, we all realise that we already have what it is that we are aiming for. We just haven’t recognised it yet. This is our problem. We all have the Buddha Nature within us, but we don’t realise it. When we realise it, then we are at one with the ultimate non-dual nature of primordial consciousness, and that is that.
We have to start from where we are, which is on the relative plane. We have not realised emptiness and we have not realised the luminous quality of our own mind and the mind of all beings, and how interconnected our consciousness is. Through walking on the relative path, it will open out into Full Enlightenment. When we are fully awakened, we will realise all beings are awakened. But at the moment, we seem like we’re all very much immersed in ignorance. What to do?
So now I’ll explain these two traditional methods of arousing Relative Bodhicitta. One is The Seven-Point Cause and Effect Method, which was originated with Maitreya and taught by Atisha. The other method is called Equalizing and Exchanging Self and Others, which was originally inspired by Manjushri and then taught by Shantideva.
The Seven-Point Cause and Effect Method is based on our sense of infinite gratitude towards our mother. In modern days, especially in the West, many people put all their blame for their problems on their mothers. Poor mother. So it doesn’t really work because they’re still working out the tangle of their feelings about their mother. But traditionally, the practice is based on the appreciation that our mother gave us birth.
We have a human life because of our mother. She could have chosen to abort us, but she didn’t. She took us, held us in her womb for nine months, and then went through the extremely hazardous process of giving birth. When we were small babies, completely helpless and totally relying on our mother, she was there for us. We relied on her milk, her care and her love. She cleaned us, looked after us and soothed us. Therefore, that gratitude is something which we can never really repay.
Then, while holding in our heart the great love of our mothers, we recognise that all beings, at some point or other, played the role of being our mother. We’ve had countless lifetimes, and therefore all beings have been our mother. Even if it was a codfish who gives birth to thousands and thousands of babies all in one time, nonetheless, those little baby codfish only came about because the mother gave birth to them. In whatever form the mother took, she was the cause of us having a birth.
Therefore, we have to remember that all these beings who we don’t know, at some point, were the most intimate person in our lives. We’ve just forgotten, that’s all. Then we can think of our mother — we can think of her kindness, how she took care of us, how she brought us up and so forth. So we want to say thank you. We want to repay their kindness. We want to give them something back, something compared with the incredible gift that they gave us of a birth.
We reflect on how kind our mother has been to us all this time, and we connect with great love towards “the mother.” From that place in our heart, we think about how our mother is suffering right now. We think of how difficult life is for her. Even if she wasn’t nice to us, we think about how it’s because she herself has lots of problems, outer and inner. So then we feel immense compassion, thinking: Poor mother, if only she could be free from suffering and filled with happiness and well-being.
Then we reflect on how right now, we cannot help our mother, or all these sentient beings who were once our mothers. We can’t do much to help them at this moment because we ourselves are still immersed in ignorance. But we resolve that in future lifetimes, we will walk on this path of a Bodhisattva. We will gain more wisdom and more compassion. Ultimately, we definitely will liberate them all from the prison house of samsara.
We sit down, go through each point, reflect on each one, and try to really feel in our heart our interconnection with all sentient beings through so many lifetimes. I mean, even if we saw ourselves in our last life, we wouldn’t recognise ourselves. Or in a future life. We’d say to ourselves, “Who’s that?” We might be a different gender, or maybe not even human. We don’t know. We wouldn’t recognise ourselves. We think we are who we look like now, but our body is very transient, like a guest house that we stay in for a few days and then leave. What to speak of our mothers, who we just don’t recognise anymore. But at some point, our most intimate connection in life was with them.
That’s how you sit and think about it. You can also read about it and contemplate it.
For those who have some issues or obstacles with their mother (which is not uncommon particularly for Westerners) then you can try to practice the method of Equalizing and Exchanging Self and Others. For the actual practice, you conjure up (in other words visualize) another person and imagine yourself as them — what they’re going through, what they’re feeling, their whole attitude to life, their problems, and their difficulties.
You can do this for people who you are close with, mere strangers or even people who you find difficult. You can try to imagine how they feel about you and why they feel that way. So in that way, you just exchange roles. Sometimes that’s easier than The Seven-Point Cause and Effect Method.
The practice of Equalizing and Exchanging Self and Others reminds us that everybody acts because of causes and conditions. We don’t know what has brought about the causes and conditions that make them act in the way they’re acting right now. We don’t know how we would feel about ourselves if we were them.
DGL: I’m trying to connect the dots here, Jetsunma-la. Will these two methods of arousing Bodhichitta cultivate only the Relative Bodhichitta, or are they also connected with the development of wisdom and the realisation of Ultimate Bodhichitta?
JTP: I think these practices are mainly dealing with the Relative Bodhichitta, because we are still dealing with personalities. We’re still dealing with people.
Ultimate Bodhichitta goes beyond the ego. The whole point of Ultimate Bodhichitta is that it’s beyond the dualism of self and other. It recognises the deep interconnection between all of us, which we normally don’t: There’s me, there’s you. There’s him, there’s her. But ultimately, it’s not like that.
DGL: Another pair that comes up is Aspiring and Engaged Bodhichitta, could you talk about them? Within the context of Engaged Bodhichitta, could you also talk about the paramitas, so that we have an overview of what it means to actually engage in the Bodhisattva deeds?
JTP: I think that’s an important point. In the West especially, when people say Buddhism, people think of meditation. Sometimes they get a shock when they come to Asia and discover that very few people actually meditate, including monks. Even in the foundational sutras, including in The Four Noble Truths, the truth of the path had to do with conduct and speech, as well as to do with the mind. Mindfulness and meditation was only a part of that path. The Buddha included Right Speech, Right Action and even Right Livelihood as part of The Noble Eightfold Path.
Later these were developed in both the Pali Canon and Mahayana sutras as the Paramitas — actions which if conjoined with wisdom are direct causes of Awakening. The crowning Paramita is Wisdom which recognises that, on an ultimate level, there’s no ego involved in any of this. We act from this non-dualistic mind and engage in the other Paramitas like Generosity, Ethical Conduct and Patience. We practise not getting upset and angry when people and circumstances seem adverse to my wishes, for example. Again, Meditation is only one step on that journey.
All these qualities are needed: Generosity, Ethical Conduct, Patience in the face of adverse circumstances and so forth. All these are very, very essential on the path to Enlightenment. It’s not just sitting and meditating. We have to bring the Dharma into our daily life and make our daily life our Dharma practice.
Everything which comes, whether it’s pleasing or unpleasing, is fodder for the flame of Enlightenment which is going to burn in our hearts. We need to fold everything which happens to us into our Dharma practice, for the sake of benefiting all beings. Through these intentions and practices, we create the causes and conditions for Awakening in ourselves and others, throughout time and space.
JTP: Thank you, Jetsunma-la, that’s a beautiful description. I think you’ve covered all the pairs related to Bodhichitta with these answers, so thank you so much.
DGL: “One of my main obstacles regarding Bodhichitta is trying to imagine all sentient beings. It seems too huge, unfathomable and abstract. How can we cultivate this sense of closeness towards all sentient beings if we can’t really grasp what all sentient beings means?”
JTP: Sentient beings simply means all beings who have consciousness. All living beings. That means everybody. It’s not just human beings; it’s all living beings that we meet. Animals, birds, fish, insects, anything. We all have consciousness. I think it’s very fascinating that nowadays even neuroscientists are recognising that all these beings, however disparate their outer form may be, all share the same consciousness. That is what a sentient being means.
The cultivation of Bodhichitta is intended to blow our minds. That’s the whole point — to expand our hearts beyond the usual confines of people and animals that we know and care for in this very lifetime. It expands our heart and mind because it is unfathomable and beyond thought. That’s it, right?
It’s not like I’m going to love these people, and the others, well, they don’t count. I will liberate all human beings, but animals and fish and birds don’t count. It’s not that. “I liberate everyone but not mosquitoes.” It’s not that. All beings have Buddha Nature. All beings have consciousness. That’s the point.
We are leaving behind our comfort zones and making aspirations for inconceivable lifetimes to come. We’re setting our GPS into unfathomable ages to come in unfathomable times. Who knows? I think that we should remember that verse again:
For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world.
— Shantideva
We cultivate that aspiration which is beyond thought. That is the point.
We start from where we are right now, cultivating kindness in daily life. We try to implement the Paramitas like Generosity and Patience towards all whom we meet. In this lifetime, we do the best we can. That’s all. We aspire to continue on the Bodhisattva Path for as long as it takes, which means forever.
Right now, we do what we can with what we’ve got. We leave the future to take care of itself. We make our aspiration as pure as we can make it for this lifetime. It’s not going to be perfect because we’re not perfect. And it’s relative because the Bodhisattva Vow itself is relative, but it leads to something which is genuinely beyond thought. It takes us beyond our little ego’s scope of what feels comfortable because we’re going beyond the ego. That’s the whole point.
DGL: Thank you so much, Jetsunma-la. Given the topic of this Q&A, could please explain to us what the following dedication for Bodhichitta means? Then we can dedicate the merit of this session, any positive potential we created, with this aspiration prayer.
JTP: Yes. This is taken from the Bodhisattvacharyavatara (A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life) of Shantideva. It’s a dedication which probably every single Tibetan knows by heart. It’s a very simple aspiration prayer from his section on arousing The Mind of Enlightenment, or Bodhichitta:
May the supreme jewel of Bodhichitta
That has not arisen, arise and grow
May that which has arisen not diminish
But increase more and more.
Basically, it’s saying may this thought of Bodhichitta arise in all hearts where it has never arisen up to now. May it not be contaminated by our self-cherishing mind, but instead may it flourish and increase enduringly throughout all ages and all times.
This is a very succinct but very beautiful aspiration to use, especially as a dedication at the end of a practice.
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May All Beings Benefit
Sarva Mangalam