View of Practice

Buddhist practice is always based on view, meditation, and action. I want to talk about Bodhicitta teachings within this context.

According to the Mahayana perspective, the view is the understanding of the nature of reality through suffering. Meditation is like our tonglen practice or the daily spiritual practices we do, that are based on love and compassion. Then we have action. What is the significance of Bodhicitta practice in action?

Bodhicitta in action is going to bring up all of our limitations in an experiential way. From this direct experience, we can acquire true actualization of Bodhicitta mind, not as a temporary spiritual experience, but one that takes place deep in our hearts, one that we can feel in our bones.

Maybe we are in a place where there is much suffering. Our compassion will not be lost when we have true realization in our hearts. To do that, we have to go beyond our fear and hope, which arises from resistance to reality. To be a living Bodhisattva in this lifetime, we need to defeat or conquer fear and hope. We should be encouraging ourselves to go into that cosmic landfill and bring up all of our limitations to the surface. Then we will have a chance to study them. We can study them and then go beyond them when we see their true nature. This is the Bodhisattva’s path.

There is a beautiful prayer in the Bodhisattva’s teachings. It says, “May I encounter all unwanted circumstances.” This is a revolutionary prayer, because we usually pray to not have misfortune. Christians are not the only ones who grovel in this way. Buddhists do too. When I was in the Jowo Rinpoche temple in Lhasa, I overheard all kinds of prayers—for many yaks, success, and longevity.

But this Bodhisattva prayer is a very different prayer, a reversal prayer. We are asking God, or Buddha, or Avalokiteshvara to send us things we don’t want. Of course, we don’t need any unwanted circumstances. All we have to do is face reality. Reality shatters our mind completely, pushes our buttons, and brings up all the limitations of hope, fear, doubt, and laziness. Then we can go beyond them, because they are seen to be as insubstantial as the clouds passing in the sky.

Like when I tell the Acharya Asanga story: because he was willing to sacrifice his ego, Asanga licked the maggots out of the dog’s wound and had a direct experience of the Buddha Maitreya.

By truly seeing someone’s suffering, in his case the dog that was suffering with a horrible wound, and the maggots that were eating its flesh, he was able to completely experience love and compassion. Similarly, sometimes all we need to do is face unwanted circumstances in order to completely wake up to reality. When we do this, compassion and love arises in us spontaneously. This is the courageous Bodhisattva action.

For instance, when we hate somebody there is a part of ourselves that does not perceive the pain and suffering of that person. We are perceiving the person mechanically, in a material way. This is the ultimate blindness, when we do not perceive fundamental components of other beings, when we do not see their own enlightened potential and thus mistake appearances for actual reality.

Let’s say you don’t like somebody. There is a part of us that has rejected that person because we have perceived that person as a mechanical entity. This means we do not perceive them as having thoughts and feelings and deeply ingrained tendencies, the same as ourselves. We see that person as separate and different, not recognizing the fear and existential pain manifesting in them because we have not addressed these elements within our own being.

But when we recognize those components—fear, pain, suffering, the rich emotional vitality of life—love and compassion arise naturally, without intention. Bodhicitta mind springs forth from oneself without any effort.

When we don’t recognize those fertile qualities of beings that contain the awakened potential, we may try to have more love and compassion, but these vain efforts only turn our hearts into rock. Our mind becomes more untamed because it continues to rely on fabrications about how we think others should be, because we persist through unchecked notions about ourselves, about how we think we should be.

But the Bodhisattva’s way of developing love and compassion is to visit the cosmic landfill, which means going beyond our habitual inclinations that perceive everything as separate, and digging into the rich soil of our minds to discover our naked awakened state.

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Transformation

The essential method of Mahayana Buddhism is transformation: the Bodhisattva transforms what is negative into positive, what is bad luck into good luck, the unfavorable into favorable. Transforming all negativity into positive conditions is called gyurwa—transformation. What does this mean?

The Bodhisattva takes every situation as a chance to see one’s limitations and go beyond them, to discover the ultimate enlightenment in oneself by bringing out one’s innate love and compassion. Every situation, every chance encounter, every heartbreak, every thought is a precious opportunity to awaken completely if we have the courage to remain beholden to the open heart, Bodhicitta mind.

This is the Bodhisattva’s view, as well as meditation and action. When we practice this path we have to transform our fundamental attitude towards life, towards what happiness actually is, towards suffering, towards what our values are. We have to let go of our old karmic belief systems that are based on not understanding who we are. Those persistent views are our habitual tendencies.

Life itself is not samsara. Samsara can never be found as an outer circumstance. It is not in the elements, nor is it in the past, present, or future. Samsara, suffering, is in our own mind, based on fundamental ignorance about reality.

We have to see the falsehood of those belief systems that we have held in our minds. By awakening to the false, we awaken to who we are and what reality is.

In this awakened state we begin to see that there is no suffering, no negativity, no circumstance that can cause hope and fear within. Our struggle is the creation of our own mind, our own resistance to reality. We are not running away from any circumstances whatsoever—not running away from what we are facing right now, or what we will have to face tomorrow morning.

We are simply opening our heart and flowing with life’s natural direction without fighting the flow. When there is no resistance, there is a sense that everything is a blessing, whatever happens. Whether there is good fortune or bad fortune, a Bodhisattva perceives everything as a spiritual lesson in how to be content. Thus a Bodhisattva exudes, without effort, an inexhaustible generosity, love, and compassion toward all beings. Everything is Buddha’s voice, a living teaching, thus there is a sense of reverence that treats every circumstance as some kind of sacred phenomena, a sacred entity.

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