- Buddha-Nature
- Compassion
- Defining Bodhicitta
- Emptiness
- Equalizing & Exchanging Self and Others
- Equanimity
- History of Bodhicitta Teachings
- How to Develop Bodhicitta
- Interdependent Origination
- Lineage of the Profound View
- Lineage of the Vast Conduct
- Mahāyāna
- Mind Training
- Non-Self
- Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect
- The Bodhisattva Ideal
- The Bodhisattva Path
- The Bodhisattva Vow
- The Bodhisattva's Goal
- The Four Immeasurables
- The Six Perfections
- The Three Higher Trainings
- The Two Accumulations
- The Two Truths
- Tonglen: The Practice of Sending and Receiving
- Types of Bodhicitta
The cultivation of bodhicitta revolutionizes how we relate to ourselves and others. Discover two practical lineages that offer step-by-step methods for developing extraordinary compassion and wisdom. These teachings reveal powerful techniques for overcoming self-centeredness and awakening genuine care for all beings.
Methods to Develop Bodhicitta
Bodhicitta is divided into the two main divisions of relative bodhicitta and ultimate bodhicitta. Relative bodhicitta is the mind that wishes to attain buddhahood in order to be of maximum benefit in helping all other beings to attain that enlightened state. Ultimate bodhicitta refers to the direct and nondualistic realization of emptiness, the ultimate nature of all phenomena. Here, we are concerned with developing the mind wishing to attain enlightenment, and therefore with relative bodhicitta. For more on the differences between relative and ultimate bodhicitta and the divisions or types of bodhicitta, click here.
This mind is the ultimate extension of compassion and altruism, yet this mind of enlightenment does not just occur randomly or spontaneously. It does not come about without specific causes. It arises in the mind of a practitioner as a result of a process of cultivating a series of increasingly positive and altruistic states of mind. If these causes are not put in place, there will be no possibility of the desired result of the precious mind of bodhicitta to arise.
There are many methods to develop bodhicitta, and within these many methods there are two main lineages or ways of practice which help us to generate this incredible mind. The main obstacle for generating bodhicitta is that we must reduce our self-centred attitudes and instead learn to cultivate mental states that deeply cherish others. The two main methods that help us to overcome these self-centered states are:
- 1. The Vast Conduct tradition (often referred to as the Vast Praxis tradition) of the seven-point instructions of cause and effect, coming down from the Buddha through Maitreya, to Asaṅga and on to Atiśa
- 2. The Profound View tradition of equalizing and exchanging self and others, coming down from the Buddha to Mañjuśrī, through Nāgārjuna, and then on to Śāntideva and Atiśa
Whichever of these methods we use in order to cultivate bodhicitta, it must be grounded in the compassion that feels the suffering of all beings, and the equanimity that sees them as all equal in their wish for happiness and their desire to avoid suffering. Understanding the terrible condition that they face, trapped in an endlessly repetitive cycle of samsaric existence, our self-centeredness starts to weaken. We awaken not only to our own plight, but to the fate of the entire sentient world.
Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect
The seven-point cause and effect instruction method of developing bodhicitta was introduced to Tibet by Atiśa and was later adopted by the Kadampa masters.[1]
The first six instructions in this tradition are the sequence of causes that are required for generating bodhicitta, and the seventh instruction is the result itself, the actual mind of bodhicitta.
The six causes are:
- 1. recognizing all beings as having been our mothers
- 2. remembering the kindness of all those mothers
- 3. wishing to repay these mother beings' kindness
- 4. affectionate love for all these mother beings
- 5. great compassion wishing that all beings be free from all forms of suffering
- 6. superior altruistic intent/exceptional resolve that takes responsibility for doing something about the plight of beings trapped in samsara
The seventh instruction is the result itself that we are aiming for:
- 7. the mind of enlightenment—that is, bodhicitta
By contemplating each of these instructions and developing the realizations associated with them, step by step we put each cause in place so that, eventually, we can give rise to our goal, the resultant mind of enlightenment.
Equanimity
As well as needing to cultivate these six major causes, most traditions also impress upon us the need to build these causes on a solid foundation of equanimity toward all beings. This ground of equality allows us to see everyone that we encounter without any discrimination or partiality, whether we feel close to them or distant from them.
A common practice to bring about this feeling of equality in relation to all beings is to work with our reactions to people that we label as friends, enemies, or strangers. We notice our reactions to people that we put into these different boxes, and then we challenge those assumptions using logic and reason. For instance, if we consider someone to be our enemy, we challenge the fixed nature of this perspective by noting that there have been many people in the past that we have felt antagonistic toward or even fought with. Yet, in a moment, these relationships can change with the smallest of conditions, and our loathed enemy can become a close friend and ally.
Equalizing and Exchanging of Self and Others
It is often said by great contemporary masters, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, that the method of equalizing and exchanging self and others is more in accord with the modern scientific world. Whereas the seven-point instruction requires us to prove and accept the existence of past and future lives and the continuity of consciousness between those lives, this second practice prepares the ground of equanimity through contemplations such as all beings being equal in wishing to have happiness and wishing to avoid suffering.
The major steps of practice in this lineage are:
- 1. Equalizing oneself and others
- 2. Understanding the disadvantages of cherishing oneself
- 3. Understanding the advantages of cherishing others
- 4. Exchanging oneself with others
- 5. Taking and giving (commonly called tonglen in Tibetan)
Having equalized the feeling of the value of self and others, we then contemplate the disadvantages of cherishing oneself as well as the logical absurdity of holding ourselves to be more important. We also contemplate the tremendous advantages to both ourselves and others of cherishing them more than ourselves.
It is only with a foundation of absolute equality that we are then able to practice the exchange of self and others. We must put ourselves in the position in our lives that we usually reserve for others, that of far less importance and focus. And we must relate to others in the way that we had previously reserved only for ourselves, that being a position of primary importance and attention. In reality, we cannot become the other person, nor can the other person become us. But we can completely swap around our ways of relating to self and other so that eventually there will only be a focus on other beings.
Notes
- ↑ Elio Guarisco and Ingrid McLeod (Kalu Rinpoché Translation Group), trans. and ed., The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Five: Buddhist Ethics, by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Tayé (Boulder, CO: Snow Lion Publications, 2003), 172.
