Equalizing and Exchanging Self with Others (Serkong 1983)
From Bodhicitta
< ArticlesArticles/Equalizing and Exchanging Self with Others (Serkong 1983)
| 🤓 Admin Zone 🛠️ hidden to non-admins | |
Equalizing and Exchanging Self with Others
Digital Publication
Please note that many items in our library are simply pages that represent a detailed library catalog entry and citation of someone else's work, presentation, or performance. Read our General Disclaimer for more information.
Description
Two months before he passed away, Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche dictated this teaching to Dr. Berzin, had him write it down word for word and told him to preserve it as his most important teaching. It explains in detail the meditations for overcoming the greatest source of our unhappiness and problems – our self-cherishing attitude – and developing, instead, an attitude of sincerely cherishing others, the source of all happiness.
Citation
Serkong, Tsenzhab. "Equalizing and Exchanging Self with Others." Study Buddhism by Berzin Archives, 1983. https://studybuddhism.com/en/tibetan-buddhism/path-to-enlightenment/love-compassion/equalizing-and-exchanging-self-with-others.
There are two traditions for how to develop bodhichitta, a heart fully dedicated to others and to attaining enlightenment in order to benefit them as much as is possible – the seven-part cause and effect tradition and the tradition of equalizing and exchanging our attitudes toward self and others. Each has a separate or distinct way of developing equanimity beforehand as a preliminary. Although each has the same name, "equanimity,” the type of equanimity developed is different.
- 1. The equanimity that comes before recognizing everyone as having been our mothers in the seven-part cause and effect meditation involves visualizing a friend, an enemy, and a stranger and is the equanimity with which we stop having feelings of attachment and repulsion. One of its names, in fact, is "the mere equanimity with which we stop having attachment and repulsion toward friends, enemies, and strangers.” The word mere here implies that a second method exists that entails something further.
- Another name for this first type of equanimity is "the mere equanimity that is the way of developing equanimity in common with the shravakas and the pratyekabuddhas.” Shravakas (listeners) and pratyekabuddhas (self-evolvers) are two types of practitioners of the Hinayana (Modest Vehicle) of the Buddha’s teachings. Here, mere implies that with this type of equanimity, we do not have and are not involved with a dedicated heart of bodhichitta.
- 2. The equanimity that we develop as a preliminary for equalizing and exchanging our attitudes toward self and others is not merely the above type of equanimity. It is the equanimity with which we have no feelings of close or far in the thoughts or actions involved in our benefiting and helping all limited beings and eliminating their problems. This is the especially distinguished, uncommon Mahayana (Vast Vehicle) way of developing equanimity.
Read more here.
Notes
Interconnections
