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The difference that divides these two. (1.16)<ref>See Helena Blankleder and Wulstan Fletcher (Padmakara Translation Group), trans., ''The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhicharyāvatāra'', by Śāntideva, rev. ed. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2006), 33.</ref> | The difference that divides these two. (1.16)<ref>See Helena Blankleder and Wulstan Fletcher (Padmakara Translation Group), trans., ''The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhicharyāvatāra'', by Śāntideva, rev. ed. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2006), 33.</ref> | ||
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One must first have the thought to take all sentient beings to the state of the Buddha just as one must first have the thought to go to Bodh Gaya before one starts the journey. Having generated the strong motivation to take all sentient beings to buddhahood, one must then engage in the actual paths and practices which lead them to the goal. The bodhisattva road consists of a long and arduous practice of the six perfections: giving, discipline, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. These six topics cover the entire range of practices a person must take up as a bodhisattva to reach buddhahood. They also include the practice of both relative bodhicitta, or the moral mental resolve to take all sentient beings to the state of full awakening, and ultimate bodhicitta, which is the deep understanding and experience of the ultimate nature of all things. | |||
<h3>Generating Bodhicitta: The Bodhisattva Vow</h3> | |||
A beginner on the Mahāyāna path cultivates the thought of awakening by repeatedly wishing to take all sentient beings as vast as space to the unsurpassed, complete and perfect state of the Buddha. To formally confirm such desire and express it as a commitment, a beginner undertakes the confirmation of the thought of awakening through a ritual of oath-taking. The first step in the procedure of such a ritual, and in fact in the general Buddhist process of self-transformation, is the reflection on the wonderful physical and psychological conditions one possesses as an able human being. | |||
<h4>Physical Support</h4> | |||
The meditation or reflection on the rarity and preciousness of humanhood is the first topic of meditation in almost all Tibetan Buddhist traditions when one starts a practice or meditation program. One must reflect from different perspectives how humanhood, with its unique freedoms and advantages, is hard to find, and how it is a precious opportunity to seek enlightenment. Combining the rational mind and the emotional heart, it is a powerful state to seek the end of suffering and the state of ultimate happiness. | |||
Buddhist texts present the following hypothetical analogy to illustrate this rarity. Suppose a blind turtle lives at the bottom of an ocean and comes to the surface only once every hundred years, and yet its neck which is constantly being swayed by the waves of the ocean. Human birth, it is argued, is rarer than the turtle getting stuck to the yoke. Using such examples and many other methods, one is made to see the preciousness of human birth.<ref>(link to meditation on the precious human body, refer book, audio, etc.)</ref> | |||
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