Bodhicitta is one of the most talked about subjects in both Mahayana and consequently Vajrayana Buddhism and as such also one of the major differences between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism. It is also mentioned increasingly in popular Buddhist media in the West. It is possibly one of the first few ‘technical’ terms those studying Buddhism, academically or personally, will come across. Like the words Buddha, Karma and Nirvana, it is often used with no attempt at translation as understanding is often presupposed.
Despite being often used in both relative and ultimate forms, Bodhicitta is possibly one of the most difficult and important of Buddhist Doctrines to understand. According to Patrul Rinpoche it is the “quintessence” of the Buddha’s teaching.
"This arousing of Bodhicitta is the quintessence of the eighty-four thousand methods taught by the Conqueror. It is the instruction to have which is enough by itself, but to lack which renders anything else futile. It is a panacea the medicine for a hundred ills. All other Dharma paths, such as the two accumulations, the purification of defilements, meditation on deities and recitation of mantras, are simply methods to make this wish-granting gem, Bodhicitta, take birth in the mind. Without Bodhicitta, none of them can lead you to the level of perfect Buddhahood on their own. But once Bodhicitta has been aroused in you, whatever Dharma practices you do will lead to the attainment of perfect Buddhahood. Learn always to use whatever means you can to make even the slightest spark of Bodhicitta arise in you."
Historically the importance of Bodhicitta has been expressed in a variety of ways. Atisha is reported to have cried and placed his hands above his head in reverence when speaking of the teacher from whom he had received Bodhicitta teachings Patrul Rinpoche and Jamgon Kongtrul considered Bodhicitta to be the crystallisation of the Buddha’s teaching. Contemporary Buddhist teachers also place great emphasis on Bodhicitta, Gyalwa Karmapa Orgyen Trinley Dorje and His Holiness the Dalai Lama will regularly praise it and always include it in their teachings. During an empowerment at Gyuto Monastery in October 2000, Gyalwa Karmapa stopped the ritual of the empowerment and gave a spontaneous teaching on Bodhicitta; he has been known to do the same on many other occasions including the annual Kagyu Monlam.
The importance of Bodhicitta is also emphasised in some of the most popular Buddhist texts ranging from the Jataka Tales to the Bodhicaryavatara6, although the emphasis varies. Gampopa describes Bodhicitta as the wish to achieve perfect enlightenment for the welfare of others. The aim of this essay is to give a general overview of Bodhicitta and how it is approached in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, predominantly from a meditational point of view.
Relative Bodhicitta, essential compassion.
Bodhicitta can be said to be relative or ultimate. Relative Bodhicitta can be subdivided into aspiration and action Bodhicitta. Kongtrul is following from Shantideva on this point and he summarises relative Bodhicitta overall as meaning compassion. The difference between aspiration and action Bodhicitta is likened by Shantideva to the difference between a person wishing to travel and a person actually travelling, however in usual Buddhist fashion intention is of paramount importance and a critical precursor to action of any kind.
The cultivation of relative Bodhicitta is essential for fruitful Mahayana and Vajrayana practice and there are several methods. A method common to all four major lineages of Vajrayana Buddhism is to think that all beings have in past lives been ones kind and loving mother and as such we would not wish them to suffer. This is quite logical when one considers the Buddhist cosmological view of time being without beginning and sentient beings being limitless. Using this method one recalls the kindness of one’s mother in this life from pregnancy onwards, thinking how one was utterly reliant on her for survival and later development. The seemingly unconditional love with which she cared for one and the sacrifices she made for us should induce a sense of gratitude and love is generated one then expands this out to other beings, eventually without limit. According to the Nyingma master Dudjom Rinpoche:
"We should understand that the whole of space is pervaded by living beings; there is not one of them that has not been, at one time or another, our father or our mother. We should recognise that they have been out parents and feel gratitude towards them for the love and kindness they have shown us. We should also realise that all these beings, once our mothers, are sinking in the ocean of the sufferings of samsara"
At this point it is worth considering the nature of this compassion. What is it the nature of the suffering beings experience, which the aspiring Bodhisattvas are generating compassion for?
Always Suffering.
Buddhism teaches Dukkha, translated as suffering, pain or unsatisfactoriness as the first of the Four Noble Truths. In the Tibetan tradition the suffering of samsara is generally classified into three categories; the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change and the suffering of all conditioned existence. The suffering of suffering includes physical and mental pain in the form of sickness, ageing and death. The intensity of this type of suffering varies according to individual experience, but is said to be greater in the lower samsaric realms. The suffering of change is being separated from what you find pleasant and encountering that which you find unpleasant. This is a form of suffering experienced even by beings in higher realms, and one which human beings experience constantly in various forms. The third form of suffering is very subtle and known as all-pervasive suffering. It can be described as having everything, yet not being content. According to Gampopa only the spiritually mature with some degree of realisation can really understand this experientially. He likens the difference in how this suffering is experienced by an ordinary person and a spiritually mature person to the difference between feeling a hair in the palm of the hand compared to feeling it in the eye.
Understanding suffering is essential to the development of compassion and Bodhicitta, however simply doing so on an intellectual and abstract level is not sufficient, we have to actually realise it through personal experience, rather than simply accepting it because someone we respect, or want to been seen as respecting says it is thus.
"Compassion must start with seeing our own suffering. If it does not, then seeing the suffering of others will be merely conceptual. It will merely be a matter of having learned about suffering from a book or philosophy. We may intellectually know about the different types of suffering and so forth, but without inward reflection, our understanding will always be a theoretical knowledge that is directed towards the outside. Starting from our own experience of suffering becomes most important for the practice of open and genuine compassion" - Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
Once a practitioner has developed, or experienced, a certain level of compassion, he will then take the Bodhisattva vow and practice the six Bodhisattva perfections. Shantideva and Gampopa both present them in the following order: generosity, morality, patience, diligence, meditation and wisdom.
A fundamental concept in Buddhism is the doctrine of no self. It logically follows that seeking liberation purely for oneself is not going to lead to anything other than frustration. Analytical meditation and investigation leads to a greater confidence in there being no self and makes it easier to consider the happiness and welfare of others more readily.
Training the Mind.
There are several techniques for further developing compassion through meditation practice; one of the most popular is mind training (Tib. blo-sbyong). This system was brought to Tibet by Atisha (980-1054 CE) and is currently in use by all four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism and is taught relatively openly. This form of mind training can be done through ‘formal’ sitting or in everyday situations. When doing the sitting meditation, the practitioner imagines that they are breathing in all the suffering, negative qualities and negative future experiences of others whilst breathing out all their own happiness and future experiences of happiness, their own positive qualities. In the everyday practice the idea is for the practitioner to mentally take on any negativity she encounters. For example if the practitioner is sick they should imagine the sickness purifying the negativities of others and willingly accept more. In this sense the practice also helps in the development of mindfulness as the practitioner has to constantly look at their own mental experiences and thoughts.
In chapter eight of the Bodhicaryavatara, Shantideva details a practice whereby one mentally exchanges place with others as a way to develop compassion and equanimity. This is done by imagining how a person one is interacting with is experiencing the situation, for example are they jealous of what the practitioner has in terms of personal qualities or material possessions. The practitioner is then able to identify with the suffering of others in quite an intimate way.
When it comes to Vajrayana practice, Bodhicitta is crucial as Vajrayana is very much Mahayana Buddhism and the practices would not work correctly without it. Refuge and Bodhicitta constitute the first section of the four special foundations, followed by Vajrasattva meditation, Mandala offering and Guru Yoga. These four special foundations form the major part of what is known as the preliminary practices (Tib. sngon 'gro) which are practices, with minor differences in all four main lineages of Tibetan Vajrayana. Bodhicitta is however included in all of the practices following it. Jamgon Kongtrul and Patrul Rinpoche both present the preliminaries in the order described here as it is the traditional way of doing so, however due to the nature of the Vajrayana teacher – student relationship, the order in which the practices are done may vary.
All deity practice liturgies start with taking refuge and generating Bodhicitta and depending on factors such as the elaborateness of the practice, time available to the practitioner and tradition there may also be various aspiration prayers of Bodhicitta included in the liturgical text. Bodhicitta is often covered in the generation stage (Tib. bskyed rim) by visualising light rays emanating from the deity removing the suffering of sentient beings throughout samsaric existence. In the practice instruction text, The Continuous Rain of Benefit to Beings, the 15th Gyalwa Karmapa Khakhyab Dorje describes this light like “the rays of the moon”. At this point it is worth pointing out that the exact details of this, varies between different deities, the lineage of transmission of that particular practice and how experienced the individual doing the practice is. Most teachers will emphasise this by giving more or less elaborate instructions on any given deity practice depending on the audience. A contemporary illustration of this point is Bokar Rinpoche’s book of instructions on the common meditation on Avaloketishvara, Chenrezig, Lord of Love, which gives several different instructions for this practice suitable for different levels of experience.
At the end of the meditation one comes to the completion stage (Tib. rdzogs rim). This is where the practitioner dissolves the visualisation and rests in the natural state of mind free from conceptual and dualistic thought, experiencing things as they are. Khakhyab Dorje describes it as follows:
"Rest evenly for as long as possible in the luminous emptiness free of any conception about the three spheres11 the clings to self and other, the deity and the mantra. Let go of all references towards fabricated attributes such as existence and nonexistence, “it is” and “it is not,” and emptiness and non-emptiness. Free of viewer and viewed, not differentiating appearance, sound, and awareness from emptiness, rest for as long as possible in the mind of the Noble One, the natural face of great all-pervading dharmadhatu"
Regarding how long one rests in this state, it depends on the experience of the practitioner and the context in which the practice is being done. If it is part of a group practice in retreat or a monastery it is not likely to be very long at all as the liturgy will carry one being chanted almost immediately. If however the practice is being done alone it might be longer, although when I presumptiously asked Gyalwa Karmapa Orgyen Trinley Dorje about this he told me it was “very difficult” and as such not something that is specified to an exact time. When I asked Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche I was given a similar answer.
Ultimate Bodhicitta
This ‘natural state’ can also be called Ultimate Bodhicitta, or seeing things they way they actually are, even if it is a very momentary experience. Jamgon Kongtrul describes it as “essentially insight” which is what Enlightenment is often described as, simply seeing the way things actually are.
The way things are, is a key concept in Buddhism, and from the point of view of the Tibetan tradition it can generally be summed up as Shunyata (Tib. stong pa nyid), which is generally translated to emptiness. Emptiness in the context of Buddhist philosophy does not mean a nihilistic absence of anything, rather a lack of inherent independent existence of phenomena. Whilst the Heart Sutra and other Prajnaparamita literature states that form is emptiness and emptiness is form, it is important to note that form is still form and emptiness is still emptiness. So whilst the world may not exist the way most people experience it on the ultimate level, it is still very real on a relative level. One can say that relative truth is how conceptual and dualistic intelligence interprets the world, whereas ultimate reality, and consequently ultimate Bodhicitta, is interpreted as such by non-dualistic intelligence, although being non-dualistic there is no interpreter, process of interpretation or object of interpretation. The Buddha nature of all sentient beings as espoused in the Tathgatagarbha literature, such as Asanga’s The Changeless Nature not only relies on the doctrine of emptiness in order to become a logical possibility, but is inseparable from it.
According to the Tathgatagarbha doctrine Buddhahood is not something that comes from outside, it is in fact the true nature of all sentient beings trapped in the suffering of samsara. From the 3rd Gyalwa Karmapa Rangjung Dorje’s Aspiration of Mahamudra:
"The nature of all beings is at all times Buddha, but since they do not understand this they wander in endless samsara. May overwhelming compassion be born in me, towards those beings in such endless infinite suffering."
Here Rangjung Dorje is not talking about compassion such as one might have for someone experiencing physical or emotional pain or even the all pervasive suffering, rather it is compassion born out of the tragedy that the suffering is totally needless as the object of compassion does not have suffering as it’s true nature, rather the failure to recognise itself is the cause of its own suffering. The tragic irony of this situation is what causes this compassion overwhelming or unbearable. Once this compassion is stably present and there is a realization of emptiness it can be said to be a high level of realisation and one is firmly on the path to full realization.
As an aside it is worth pointing out that, in spite of what is often posted on the internet, Mahamudra (Tib. phyag rgya chen po) and Dzogchen (Tib. rdzogs pa chen po) are the same and somewhat synonymous with Buddhahood. Their approaches however are different and there are also different approaches within each of them, for example in Mahamudra there are sutra, tantra and so called essence approaches, the goal and result however is the same Rangjung Dorje points this out in his Aspiration for Mahamudra, particularly around verse 19. During a conversation with Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche I asked him about the relationship between Mahamudra and Bodhicitta, his response was that they were ‘inseparable’. Similarly according to the Eight Situpa, Nyinchay Situ Rinpoche, compassion in the context of Mahamudra is non referential.
Conclusion.
Given the richness and diversity of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition it can sometimes seem like there is a lack of unity. However when it comes to the teachings and practices relating to Bodhicitta, there is consensus that to practice it is to be prized above all else, even tantric samaya, although it is so deeply woven into the practice of tantra than to think of the two as separate seems unthinkable in the context Vajrayana has, and is, being practiced in the Tibetan tradition. In most cases, damaging Bodhicitta would be seen as damaging samaya too. According to the previous Khunu Rinpoche:
"To give up supreme Bodhicitta in one’s heart is the heaviest amongst the downfalls. If the life power peters out, all the other sense powers stop functioning."
Given the sincere high regard given to Bodhicitta by the previous masters of Vajrayana in the Tibetan tradition, a few of whom have been referenced here, and the regard with which ever contemporary teacher of Vajrayana I have met or received teachings from, I can come to no conclusion other that Bodhicitta is the pinnacle of this particular Buddhist meditational tradition.
Perless Bodhicitta, lifeblood of the entire doctrine of the Buddhas of the three times, May is infuse the practice of all meditators and beings in general to the point where dualism and even conceiving of "I" is impossible.
Most of the above is from an essay I wrote in an academic context so there is unlikely to be anything of interest to practitioners of Dharma. Due to the way blogger works, I left out the footnotes, which were pretty poor, and the bibliography.
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