How to Be a
Bodhisattva
THICH NHAT HANH, CHÖGYAM
TRUNGPA RINPOCHE, JUDY
LIEF, BELL
HOOKS,CHRISTINA FELDMAN AND THE
KARMAPA| SEPTEMBER 30, 2016 Lion's
Roar
It
may seem like an unattainable ideal, but you can start right now as
a bodhisattva-in-training. All you need is the aspiration to put
others first and some inspiration from helpful guides like the
Buddhist teachers found here. “How to Be a Bodhisattva” is also the
cover theme of the Fall
2016 issue ofBuddhadharma: The
Practitioner’s Quarterly. We
hope you’ll check that out too; the world needs more
bodhisattvas!
Everyone Is Your
Guest
Chögyam
Trungpa Rinpoche on your life as a future bodhisattva
Many
Mahayana scriptures speak of inviting all sentient beings as our
guests. When we invite a guest, we have a sense of the importance
of that relationship. Guests are usually fed specially cooked food
and receive extra hospitality. The life of a bodhisattva is
relating
with all sentient
beings as guests. The bodhisattva invites everyone as a guest,
constantly offering a feast.
Inviting
all sentient beings as our guests is the starting point of applying
compassion in the Mahayana. By viewing sentient beings as guests,
the bodhisattva has a constant sense of the impermanence of the
relationship, because eventually all guests leave. So we view the
time with our guests as precious. There is a sense of the
preciousness and the impermanence of the relationship. Our guest
may be our husband, our wife, or our child—everybody is the guest
of everybody, constantly. On a day to day level, all relationships
for a bodhisattva are based on relating with guests.
Just as
fish cannot live without water, compassion cannot develop without
egolessness.
Compassion
is a combination of maitri, or
loving-kindness, and generosity. It is a journey outward, a journey
of communication. On one level, compassion is feeling friendly
toward ourselves. On another level it is experiencing a sense of
richness, that we can expand the warmth we feel toward ourselves to
other sentient beings.
It is said
in the scriptures that just as fish cannot live without water,
compassion cannot develop without egolessness and without the
experience of emptiness, or shunyata. It
may seem that this view of compassion is somewhat abstract, but in
fact it is the heart of the practice of meditation in
action.
The
presence of compassion is experienced as a sudden glimpse, a sense
of clarity and warmth simultaneously. According to the scriptures,
that glimpse, if you analyze it, takes one-sixtieth of a second. It
is so fast and so sharp. The sharpness is the intelligence of the
compassion. Compassion also means being open and communicative. It
contains warmth.
So, first
there is maitri, trusting in the
heart.
Second,
there is a gap in which you experience the openness
oftathagatagarbha, or buddhanature.
Third,
there is a sense of communication—having already woken up at that
level, there is a sense of freedom to expand and to relate with
your actions, whatever you are doing. That seems to be how to
develop compassion.
5 Baby
Steps to Kindness
The path of
compassion, says Judy Lief, starts with stepping out of your usual
storyline. Here are five ways to do it.
It is
amazing how often we think we are out in the world interacting with
and helping others, when actually we are simply acting out our
preconceived internal storyline. Our vision is clouded and we can
only take in what feeds into our plot line.
One way to
soften this pattern is by exploring some basic steps that can lead
us in the direction of kindness. Instead of trying to will
ourselves to be kind—presto!—we can create an atmosphere congenial
to the development of loving-kindness.
Here are
five small steps to kindness you can practice. You can explore
these steps singularly or in combination. The idea is that if you
create the right atmosphere, compassion naturally arises. It is
already present, just waiting for your invitation.
Settle Down
There has
to be a here to be
a there, and a connection between the
two. So the first step is to slow down and let your mind settle
enough that you are able to drop from the heights of conceptuality
back into your body, a simple form in space. Can you really feel
present, in your body as it is, right where you are?
Be
in the Moment
Now that
you are more solidly somewhere, you can let yourself be
more clearly sometime. When your thoughts drift from the
past or the future, from memories and regrets to plans and dreams,
you can gently bring yourself back to the present
moment.
Drop Escape Routes
Stay put in
this particular place and time, just the way it is.
Pay
Attention to Space
Notice the
quality of space within you and around you. Pay attention to the
boundaries of your physical body and the space in front, behind,
and on each side of you. Also pay attention to the mental–emotional
space that accommodates the comings and goings of sensations,
thoughts, moods, and emotional upheavals. Whatever arises on an
outer or inner level, notice the space in which both you and your
perception rest.
Share the Space
Explore
what it is like to share this space with whoever is there with you.
Notice the power of accommodation, acceptance, and nonjudging. When
you sense the arising of territoriality and fear, accommodate that
too in greater spaciousness.
You Deserve
Compassion Too
Compassion
makes no distinction between self and other, says Christina
Feldman. Care for your own suffering in the same way you care for
others’.
Some
people, carrying long histories of a lack of self-worth or denial,
find it difficult to extend compassion toward themselves. Aware of
the vast suffering in the world, they may feel it is self-indulgent
to care for their own aching body, broken heart, or confused mind.
Yet this too is suffering, and genuine compassion makes no
distinction between self and other.
The
path of compassion is cultivated one step and one moment at a
time.
The Buddha
once said that you could search the whole world and not find anyone
more deserving of your love and compassion than yourself. Yet too
many people find themselves directing levels of harshness, demand,
and judgment inward that they would never dream of directing toward
another person, knowing the harm that would be incurred. They are
willing to do to themselves what they would not do to
others.
The path of
compassion is altruistic but not idealistic. Walking this path we
are not asked to lay down our life, find a solution for all of the
struggles in this world, or immediately rescue all beings. The path
of compassion is cultivated one step and one moment at a time. Each
of those steps lessens mountains of sorrow in the world.
The
Buddha’s Love
Thich Nhat
Hanh describes how love for one person becomes love for
all.
Question: More than anything else, we
want to love and be loved. Why do we find it so difficult to
love?
Thich Nhat Hanh: Love is the capacity to take
care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating
that kind of energy toward yourself, it is very difficult to take
care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it’s clear that
to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love
is a practice. Love is truly a practice.
Why
don’t we love ourselves?
We may have
a habit within ourselves of looking for happiness elsewhere than in
the here and the now. We may lack the capacity to realize that
happiness is possible in the here and now, that we already have
enough conditions to be happy right now. To go home to the present
moment, to take care of oneself, to get in touch with the wonders
of life that are really available—that is already love. Love is to
be kind to yourself, to be compassionate to yourself, to generate
images of joy, and to look at everyone with eyes of equanimity and
nondiscrimination.
When
people love each other, the distinction, the limits, the frontier
between them begins to dissolve, and they become one with the
person they love.
As you
progress on the path of insight into non-self, the happiness
brought to you by love will increase. When people love each other,
the distinction, the limits, the frontier between them begins to
dissolve, and they become one with the person they love. There’s no
longer any jealousy or anger, because if they are angry at the
other person, they are angry at themselves. That is why non-self is
not a theory, a doctrine, or an ideology, but a realization that
can bring about a lot of happiness.
You
have written about a woman you loved deeply a long time ago. At
this point in your life, do you regret not being with
her?
That love
has never been lost. It has continued to grow. To love someone, if
it is true love, is a very wonderful opportunity for you to love
everyone. In the insight of non-self, you see that the object of
your love is always there and the love continues to grow. Nothing
is lost and you don’t regret anything, because if you have true
love in you, then you and your true love are going in the same
direction, and each day you are able to embrace, more and
more.
So to love
one person is a great opportunity for you to love many more. That
nourishes you, that nourishes the other person, and finally your
love will have no limit. That is the Buddha’s love.
Unbearable
Compassion
For our
compassion to be effective, says Ogyen Trinley
Dorje, the 17th Karmapa, it must be as
unbearable as the world’s suffering is.
Our
compassion must have a broad focus, including not only ourselves
and those close to us but all sentient beings. All beings want to
be happy and free of suffering, yet most sentient beings experience
only suffering and cannot obtain happiness. Just as we have a
desire to clear away the suffering in our own experience and to
enjoy happiness, we come to see through meditating on compassion
that all other beings have this desire as well.
When we
practice, we must bring our meditation on compassion to the deepest
level possible. We must reflect on the intense suffering of
sentient beings in all six realms of samsara. Reflecting on our
connection to these beings, we must engender a compassion that
cannot bear their suffering any longer.
To make
our compassion strong, we need the path.
This great,
unbearable compassion is extremely important. Without it, we might
feel a compassionate sensation in our minds from time to time, but
this will not bring forth the full power of compassion. But when we
witness with unbearable compassion the suffering of sentient
beings, we immediately seek out ways to free them from that
suffering. We are unfazed by complications and doubts; our actions
for the benefit of others are effortless and free from
doubt.
To make our
compassion strong, we need the path. We already have compassion,
wisdom, and many other positive qualities, yet our mental
afflictions are stronger than these most of the time. It is as if
the afflictions have locked all of our positive qualities away in a
box.
One day,
when we open that box and all of our good qualities spring forth,
we will not have to go looking for our compassion. We will discover
that compassion is present in our minds spontaneously, and a wealth
of excellent qualities will become available to us.
Toward a
Culture of Love
Love is the
ultimate transgression, bell hooks argues. Its transformative power
can shatter the status quo.
To work for
peace and justice we begin with the individual practice of love,
because it is there that we can experience firsthand love’s
transformative power. Attending to the damaging impact of abuse in
many of our childhoods helps us cultivate the mind of love. Abuse
is always about lovelessness, and if we grow into our adult years
without knowing how to love, how then can we create social
movements that will end domination, exploitation, and
oppression?
To begin
the practice of love we must slow down and be still enough to bear
witness in the present moment. If we accept that love is a
combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility,
respect, and trust, we can then be guided by this understanding. We
can use these skillful means as a map in our daily life to
determine right action.
To be
transformed by the practice of love is to be born again, to
experience spiritual renewal.
When we
cultivate the mind of love, we are, as Sharon Salzberg says,
“cultivating the good,” and that means “recovering the incandescent
power of love that is present as a potential in all of us” and
using “the tools of spiritual practice to sustain our real,
moment-to-moment experience of that vision.”
To be
transformed by the practice of love is to be born again, to
experience spiritual renewal. What I witness daily is the longing
for that renewal and the fear that our lives will be changed
utterly if we choose love. That fear paralyzes. It leaves us stuck
in the place of suffering.
When we
commit to love in our daily life, habits are shattered. Because we
no longer are playing by the safe rules of the status quo, love
moves us to a new ground of being. We are necessarily working to
end domination. This movement is what most people fear. If we are
to galvanize the collective longing for spiritual well-being that
is found in the practice of love, we must be more willing to
identify the forms that longing will take in daily life.
Folks need
to know the ways we change and are changed when we love. It is only
by bearing concrete witness to love’s transformative power in our
daily lives that we can assure those who are fearful that
commitment to love will be redemptive, a way to experience
salvation.
