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Bodhicitta
Wisdom and Compassion as a Way of Life
Buddhism offers a practical path to inner transformation, often described as a science of the mind or an art of training one's heart and developing awareness. Since happiness and suffering arise primarily within our minds, genuine well-being comes through understanding and transforming how we think, feel, and relate to the world. At the core of this transformation lie two essential qualities: wisdom, the ability to see clearly through confusion, and compassion, the heartfelt wish to relieve the suffering of all beings without exception. When these two unite, they give rise to bodhicitta, the awakening heart—a deep commitment to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of everyone. This vision of wisdom and compassion as a way of life forms the foundation of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, whose practitioners, known as bodhisattvas, dedicate themselves to liberating all beings from suffering. The great Indian master Śāntideva, whose writings form the heart of this website, captured this spirit simply, arguing that we should work to clear away the suffering of others for no other reason than that it is suffering, and suffering is something we all share equally.
Bodhicitta ("bodhichitta"), often translated as "the awakening heart" or "the mind of awakening," is the wish to attain full enlightenment for the benefit of all living beings. It combines two essential elements: a deep compassion that cannot bear the suffering of others, and the wisdom to recognize that true and lasting happiness is only found in buddhahood. Bodhicitta is not simply a passing feeling of kindness—it is a profound commitment to help all beings, without exception, reach the highest state of freedom and peace. In practice, it is first cultivated as an aspiration through prayers and heartfelt resolve, then brought to life through training in generosity, ethical conduct, patience, joyful effort, meditation, and wisdom. Considered the most precious of all intentions, bodhicitta transforms every action into a path that leads to awakening.
Why Bodhicitta?
In the Buddhist understanding, the root cause of suffering lies in self-centeredness—the habit of clinging to a fixed sense of "I" and "mine" that separates us from others. This attachment gives rise to craving for what benefits us and aversion toward what does not, fueling a cycle of actions and reactions that perpetuate pain and dissatisfaction. Yet this self-centered perspective does not reflect our true nature. Buddhism teaches that at our core, we are naturally open, aware, and compassionate. Love and kindness are innate qualities found in all living beings, and every being possesses buddha-nature—a natural capacity for empathy, wisdom, and awakening. Furthermore, no one exists in isolation; we are deeply interconnected, and our happiness is bound up with the happiness of others. For these reasons, Buddhist masters praise bodhicitta as the source of genuine and lasting fulfillment. As Śāntideva writes, all the joy in the world comes from wishing happiness for others, while all the misery comes from wanting pleasure only for oneself.
The Role of Bodhicitta
Bodhicitta is the entry point to the Mahāyāna path and the defining quality that makes a person a bodhisattva—a heroic being committed to liberating all beings from suffering. Just as taking refuge in the Buddha, his teachings, and the spiritual community makes one a Buddhist, generating bodhicitta distinguishes a follower of the Mahāyāna. Yet bodhicitta is not merely a starting point; it spans the entire journey to awakening and its fulfillment. It is the ground on which the path rests, the vessel that carries one across the sea of suffering, and the fruit of full enlightenment itself. Buddhist masters compare bodhicitta to an elixir that transforms ordinary existence, a fire that burns away negativity, and a radiant sun that illuminates the mind. The great Tibetan teacher Patrul Rinpoche expressed this simply, observing that the presence of bodhicitta alone is sufficient for reaching buddhahood, while its absence leaves one fundamentally handicapped on the path.
The Practice of Bodhicitta
The study and practice of bodhicitta is central to the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which offers a rich wealth of meditation instructions, inspirational stories, and practical rituals for cultivating the awakening heart. The practice typically begins with taking the bodhisattva vow, which Śāntideva describes as having two aspects: aspiring bodhicitta, the heartfelt wish to reach enlightenment for all beings, and engaged bodhicitta, the active commitment to walk the path. After taking the vow, practitioners protect and strengthen bodhicitta through various methods—meditation on loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity; the practice of the six perfections; and contemplations such as exchanging oneself for others, known as tonglen. Alongside these, the practice of ultimate bodhicitta involves realizing the true nature of mind and reality through analytical and resting meditation. More detailed guidance on these practices can be found in the Practice section of this website.
Practice
The Bodhicitta Prayer
Key Concepts
What is the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition?
Mahāyāna refers to the most popular form of Buddhism that exists today. The term Mahāyāna literally means "great vehicle," and the Mahāyāna tradition teaches that this vehicle has the power to carry us on our journey all the way to the fully enlightened state of buddhahood. Mahāyāna teaches that all beings have the potential to achieve this state. This tradition espouses the altruistic path of the bodhisattva—an individual on the path to becoming a buddha—and is grounded in the deepest possible compassion for all. Practitioners of the Mahāyāna relinquish their own personal liberation from samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death, and instead aim to become an omniscient buddha. This is not done for selfish purposes but in order to most effectively help all other beings to then attain that state themselves.
What are the different kinds of bodhicitta?
In the classical Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, bodhicitta is divided into two main types—conventional and ultimate bodhicitta. Conventional (or relative) bodhicitta is the altruistic wish to attain the fully enlightened state of buddhahood in order to lead others to that state of highest happiness. Ultimate bodhicitta is the pure immersion in the direct realization of the subtlest level of reality.
What is a bodhisattva?
A bodhisattva is a person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In traditional Asian stories, bodhisattvas are often more like superheroes who work for the good of all rather than regular everyday people, but the Buddhist teachings say we will all become bodhisattvas eventually. The bodhisattva ideal is a retelling of the ultimate hero story from one of individual accomplishment to one in which the ideal hero seeks ultimate glory (complete enlightenment) for the sake of others. These intrepid heroes are beings who make their way of life about wisdom and compassion for the sake of others.
What kind of path does the bodhisattva follow to enlightenment?
The bodhisattva follows a path that will lead them to the fully enlightened state of an omniscient buddha. The path to that ultimate state is one which relies on the two mutually supportive wings of wisdom and compassion. Engaging in practices such as the six perfections—generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditative absorption, and wisdom—the bodhisattva ascends through a series of five paths, traversing ten bodhisattva "grounds" along the way, before reaching the ultimate goal of complete enlightenment.
What is compassion and how does it relate to developing bodhicitta?
We ordinarily think of compassion as having a warm heart toward those who are suffering. It is thus often equated with pity. But compassion, known as karuṇā in the Sanskrit language, is the wish for other beings to be free from suffering. The ability to expand the scope and depth of our compassion so that it includes all living beings and encompasses even the subtlest forms of suffering is a vital prerequisite for developing bodhicitta.
What are the six perfections of the bodhisattva path?
The six perfections are the primary practices that a bodhisattva engages in along the stages of the path to enlightenment. The six perfections are the practices of generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditative absorption, and wisdom. Click below to find out more about how to cultivate each of these perfections and their primary role in following the path to enlightenment.
What is the relationship of the two truths to bodhicitta?
The two truths are two different aspects of reality related to phenomena. The conventional truth is often called the "truth for a concealer" because it literally conceals from our sight the ultimate truth, which is the deepest level of reality of all phenomena. Relative truth is the superficial aspect of appearance, the reality that we experience through our thoughts and perceptions.
In contrast, the ultimate truth is the subtlest level of reality of phenomena, the way things are at their deepest level of existence. The ultimate truth is often described in the Madhyamaka school as referring to emptiness—the absence of the intrinsic existence of all phenomena.
Conventional bodhicitta is related to the conventional side of reality, and ultimate bodhicitta is the direct understanding of the ultimate reality of phenomena. Click below to find out more about bodhicitta and its relationship to the two truths.
How do we train the mind to cherish others more fully?
The genre of Tibetan spiritual literature known simply as "mind training," or lojong in Tibetan, is a tradition that offers pragmatic and down-to-earth advice for cultivating altruistic thoughts and emotions such as compassion, love, forbearance, and perseverance. Central to this discipline are diverse practices for combating our habitual self-centeredness and afflictive emotions and teachings on transforming adversities into favorable opportunities to practice the path. Mind training holds a pivotal role in the development of bodhicitta.
How do we develop bodhicitta in our own minds?
Bodhicitta is the vast mind that wishes to develop ourselves to our fullest potential and eventually attain the omniscient state of a buddha, all without any selfish concern. It is done purely for the sake of all other beings. Since this goal seems so far from where we are now, how do we start to develop the foundations of this practice? What are the primary causes that will give rise to the result of bodhicitta in our own minds, and what methods can we use to make that become a reality? Click below to find out more about the methods to develop bodhicitta.
What are the four immeasurable thoughts?
The four immeasurable thoughts are foundational practices found throughout all the Buddhist traditions. They play a crucial role in developing warm-heartedness and altruistic feelings toward others and are intimately linked to cultivating bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. These four are the immeasurable thoughts of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Through regular development of these thoughts in our mind, we can expand our circle of love and compassion so that, eventually, we will be able to include in it every living being, from those that are close to us to those we now consider our enemies.
The Texts
The Buddha taught the practices of non-harming, loving-kindness, and compassion as foundations of an ethical and spiritual life. With the rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism, these practices evolved into a culture of selfless altruism epitomized by bodhicitta. The numerous Mahāyāna sūtras that spread from around 200 BCE are the primary textual sources for the study and practice of bodhicitta. From around 150 CE, we also see the systematic summarization and interpretation of long and diverse sūtras by figures such as Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Maitreya, Asaṅga, and many other masters. Nāgārjuna's Commentary on Bodhicitta, Āryadeva's Four Hundred Verses on Yogic Practices of the Bodhisattva, Maitreya's Ornament for Clear Realization, and Asaṅga's Stages of a Bodhisattva remain to this day very important sources for bodhicitta.
Numerous other texts by Indian authors discuss bodhicitta, but it was The Way of the Bodhisattva by the poet-philosopher Śāntideva in the eighth century that became the most influential text on bodhicitta. Complemented by his other work The Compendium of Training, Śāntideva's masterpiece gives a clear and evocative account of the practice of bodhicitta and the six perfections. Many more texts on bodhicitta appeared in India after this, including The Stages of Meditation by Kamalaśīla and The Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment by Atiśa Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna. These two masters visited Tibet, and their texts were written at the request of Tibetan kings in the eighth and eleventh centuries, respectively.
The massive translation of Buddhist texts from Indian languages into Tibetan from the eighth to the thirteenth century opened an unprecedented chapter in bodhicitta teachings. In addition to the translations of Indian texts and hundreds of Tibetan commentaries on them, we also see the rise of new Tibetan compositions on the theory and practice of bodhicitta. Some outstanding Tibetan works containing teachings on bodhicitta are The Seven Points of Mind Training by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje, The Thirty Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva by Gyalse Tokme Zangpo, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa, The Three Principal Aspects of the Path by Tsongkhapa, The Words of My Perfect Teacher by Patrul Rinpoche, and The Jewel Lamp: A Praise of Bodhicitta by Khunu Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen. This last text was written in 1959. To this day, Buddhist scholars and practitioners continue to study the core texts on bodhicitta as well as compose new ones.
The History
The Buddhist tradition believes that the Buddha first generated bodhicitta, or thought of enlightenment, as a person named Sumedha in the presence of Buddha Dīpaṃkara, countless eons ago. However, the term bodhicitta appears for the first time around 200 BCE in a book called the Mahāvastu, and the actual teachings on bodhicitta spread only with the emergence of Mahāyāna sūtras from around 100 CE. Since then, the concept of bodhicitta evolved to become the most central topic of Mahāyāna Buddhism.
In Tibet, the theory and practice of bodhicitta rapidly developed from the eleventh century onward into a complex and structured subject of study and meditation through hundreds of original Tibetan compositions as well as commentaries on Indian texts. The Nyingma and Kadam traditions were the early advocates, but all Tibetan Buddhist traditions, including Kagyu and Sakya, zealously took up bodhicitta as a crucial subject of study and practice. The Tibetan masters through the ages developed various techniques and methods of cultivating bodhicitta, and such an enterprise continues to this day.
The Traditions
The Mahāyāna tradition began as an expansion of mainstream early Buddhism. Ethically, the Mahāyāna movement took the precept of non-harming to the active application of compassion and altruism. Philosophically, it took the concept of non-self to the sophisticated theory of emptiness and freedom from all conceptual elaborations. It expanded the traditional Buddhist cosmology, pantheon of divinities, range of practices, and meditation techniques. These expansive teachings are presented in the numerous Mahāyāna sūtras.
In the first half of the first millennium, Mahāyāna thinkers synthesized the teachings in the Mahāyāna sūtras, giving rise to two main Mahāyāna schools of thought. The two traditions of bodhicitta theory and practice originate in these two main Mahāyāna schools. The first one, started by Nāgārjuna and promoted by his followers and associated with the Middle Way school, came to be later known as the Profound View tradition. The second one, initiated by Maitreya, Asaṅga, and their followers, many of whom were affiliated with the Yogācāra or Cittamātra school, came to be known as the Vast Conduct tradition.
After the bodhicitta teachings were transmitted to Tibet, many traditions of bodhicitta study and practice began to appear. While some carried on a more scholastic approach, others focused on the practice of generating and cultivating bodhicitta. Among those who focused on this latter, meditative approach, we see the rise of a great number of techniques and methods which are today preserved and promoted by the four main Tibetan Buddhist traditions: Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Geluk.
The Way of the Bodhisattva
The Compendium of Training
