If all the mothers who loved me since beginningless time are suffering,
What is the use of my own happiness?
So, with the aim of liberating limitless sentient beings,
To set my mind on enlightenment is the practice of a bodhisattva.
A bodhisattva benefits all beings equally, without discriminating between enemies and friends. Giving food, clothes, and the like to others can only bring them temporary and limited relief; it does not help them at the moment they die, nor after their death. But if you can establish all beings in the Dharma, you will help them in a way that is both immediately beneficial and beneficial for their future lives. Practicing the Dharma enables them to free themselves from samsara (cycle of birth & death) and achieve enlightenment – so that is the way to truly repay your parents’ kindness. Any other way is not enough.
Do not hoard for your own benefit all your learning, possessions, and whatever else you may have accomplish. Instead, dedicate everything to all beings, and make the wish that they may be able to listen, reflect, and meditate on the Dharma. Simply to express such a prayer is highly beneficial. Anything done with pure intention, even the wish to relieve beings from their headaches, has great merit. So the merit is all the more if you pray to free all beings from samsara. Since the number of beings is infinite, the merit of such a prayer is infinite, too.
Whether you are practicing the generation or perfection phase, Mahamudra, or Ati Yoga, as long as your practice is permeated with Bodhicitta, it is naturally a Mahayana practice. But without the Bodhicitta, your practice can only stagnate.
To have a thorough understand of absolute wisdom is very difficult for ordinary people. That is why it is necessary to progress stage by stage along the path. To advance in the right direction, your practice should always observe what are called the three supreme points:
- Start with an attitude based on the Bodhicitta, in other words with the wish to undertake the practice to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings.
- While you are engaged in the main part of whatever practice you are doing, be free of concepts and distractions,
- And at the end, conclude the practice with a dedication
Practicing like this will turn even the modest practice of some small positive action into a cause for enlightenment, and the dedication will protect the merit you have gained through that practice from being destroyed as a result of your anger and other negative emotions.
- Staring with the wish to benefit others is a perfect preparation for any practice you are about to undertake, and a skillful way to ensure that your practice will reach fruition and not be swept away by a torrent of unfavourable circumstances and obstacles.
- For the main part of the practice, being concentrated and free of concepts and distractions has several levels to it. Basically, it means being free of all forms of attachment – and especially of pride. No matter how learned, disciplined, or generous you might be, as long as you feel conceited and proud about such things and at the same time contemptuous of other people, nothing positive can come out of your practice. The twofold accumulation of merit and wisdom is indeed the way to Buddhahood, but if it is adulterated with clinging, arrogance, and condescension, it cannot bear fruit. More particularly, being free of attachments and concepts also means being free of any clinging to whatever practice you may be doing as having some intrinsic reality. Consider the example of making offerings to the Bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas appear in the form of spiritual friends for those who have faith, or as blessings, sacred scriptures, or magical illusions, devoid of any intrinsic existence. So indeed is everything else in the phenomenal world, so that not only the object of your offerings but also the offerings you are making are all illusory. Any result of the offering is also an illusion – which does not mean that there is no result, but rather that the result is not solid, concrete entity. What sense does it make to be full of attachment and pride regarding the results of your illusory actions? When a Bodhisattva performs a beneficial action, He is totally free from clinging to the concepts of a subject who acts, an object who benefits from the action, and the action itself. That total absence of clinging makes the merit infinite.
- Dedicate all the merit and positive actions you have done or will do throughout the past, present, and future, so that all beings, especially your enemies, may achieve enlightenment. Try to dedicate the merit in the same way that the great Bodhisattvas do. Any merit they dedicate within the infinite expanse of their wisdom is inexhaustible. Dedication is like putting a drop of water in the ocean. The ocean is so vast that a drop once dissolved into it can never dry up. Not a single prayer vanishes. Dedicating the merit of every positive action you do with a pure mind will continuously bear positive fruit until you attain enlightenment. As The King of Aspirations for Excellent Conduct says:
Until all beings are free from negative emotion,
May my prayers never come to exhaustion.
The attitude of a bodhisattva must be extremely vast, constantly keeping in mind the infinity of beings and the wish to establish them all in Buddhahood. If your mind is vast, the power of your prayers is unlimited too. If your mind is narrow and rigid, your accumulation of merit and the purification of your obscurations will also be very limited.
Do not let yourself be discouraged by such thoughts as that it is not worth dedicating what you see as your miserable accumulation of merit because it could hardly benefit anyone; or by the idea that for you helping others is just talk since since you will never really be able to benefit them. If you keep your mind open and vast, the effectiveness of your bodhicitta will increase, and so too will the benefit and merit of all your words and deeds.
In your daily life and practice you must keep developing the excellent mind of enlightenment. You will find inspiration in the quintessential, profound prayers of the bodhisattvas found in the oceanlike collection of Mahayana scriptures, such as:
May the Bodhicitta, precious and sublime,
Arise where it has not yet come to be;
And where it has arisen may it never fail
But grow and flourish ever more and more.
[In Tibetan]:
Jang Chub Sem Chog Rinpoche
Ma Kye Pa Nam Kye Gyur Chig
Kye Pa Nyam Pa Me Par Yang
Gong Ne Gong Du Pel War Shog
May all beings find happiness;
May all the lower realms be emptied forever;
May all the Bodhisattvas’ prayers
Be perfectly accomplished.
Wherever the sky ends,
There ends the number of beings.
Wherever beings’ destinies and emotions end,
Only there end my prayers.
The three supreme points include the whole practice and attitude of the Mahayana. That is why Mahayana teachers expound them over and over again. But just hearing them explained is not enough. You must assimilate and integrate them into your being. Day after day, check whether you are really acting in accord with them. If not, feel regret, and try to correct yourself. Do not allow your mind to become distracted and merely follow its inclinations.
If you become aware that you have succeeded to some extent in blending your mind with the Dharma, dedicate the merit to all beings, and aspire to do so more and more. If you constantly check your defects, eradicate those you already have, and prevent new ones from taking root; and at the same time try constantly to increase your positive qualities by allowing new ones to arise, and increasing those you already have, you will gradually progress along the five paths and levels that lead to Buddhahood: the path of accumulating, the path of joining, the path of seeing, the path of meditation, and the path beyond learning.
Just as yourself wish to be happy, so, too, you should wish the same for others. Just as you yourself wish to be free from suffering, so, too, you should wish the same for all beings.
“May all beings be happy, free from suffering, and the causes of suffering.
May they reach perfect happiness, remain in it, and live in equanimity.
May they maintain love for all others without discrimination.”
This wish is called the Bodhicitta. The Bodhicitta has such tremendous power that the moment it arises, you enter the noble family of Bodhisattvas, you are immune to negative forces, and when they manifest, they have no way to cause harm or to create obstacles. The Bodhicitta will grow effortlessly if you have this pure attitude of mind. A good mind has a natural, intrinsic power to benefit others. Whatever merit arises from this vast attitude, instead of feeling that you own it, dedicate it to all beings, as infinite as space is vast. Stay free from any grasping at the reality of subject, object, and action, and the day will come when your body and speech become the servants of your mind and everything you do and say will spontaneously benefit others.
If the Bodhicitta has not yet arisen in you, pray that it will arise. And if it has arisen, pray that it will increase. If the merit from arousing Bodhicitta were to take physical form, not even the whole of space would be vast enough to contain it.
