Bodhichitta

(1) As a Triumphant Ones’ offspring, having firmly gained hold of bodhichitta like this, I’ll strive never to transgress its training, without ever wavering. (2) For something undertaken all of a sudden or something I didn’t examine well, even if I’ve given a promise about...

Love Love is the attitude with which you wish everyone to be happy is what is called love. We all wish to be happy, but most people do not really know the way to become happy and therefore they get themselves in difficult situations, uncontrollably recurring situations, which...

Taking the Vows for Involved Bodhichitta, Engaged Bodhichitta  (19) Except through the vows that are the very nature of engaged bodhichitta, your pure aspiration will never come to increase. Therefore, with the wish to progress toward aspired full enlightenment, take them...

Review We have been discussing yesterday how we develop relative bodhichitta – sometimes that’s called conventional bodhichitta. We make a differentiation between relative and deepest truth: In the Gelug tradition, when we speak about deepest truth, we’re only speaking about...

Introduction In outlining this third of the six preparatory practices, the texts say first you do prostration, then you sit down, then you clear the mind by focusing on the breath, and only then do you reaffirm your motivation of refuge (safe direction) and bodhichitta....

Review This morning is the fourth session of our discussion of the seven-part cause and effect meditation method for developing the bodhichitta aim. We have discussed the ground floor level, or step number zero, of this process, which is to develop equanimity. This...

Verses 12 through 16 Dealing with Harms We want to attain Buddhahood so that we can benefit all sentient beings. It’s quite a heavy thing to digest. We are reading through Gyalse Togme Zangpo’s text, called 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas. We’ve reached verse 12, and although we...

Review Let us set the proper motivation for listening to these teachings, namely a heart of bodhichitta, dedicated to helping others and to achieving enlightenment in order to be able to do so. These teachings have been presented in terms of the three levels of motivation. On...

Review In our discussion of the seven-part cause and effect meditation for generating bodhichitta, we have gone through the sequence up until the final stage, the result of what we’ve been building up. We spoke of the basis, which is equanimity, free of attachment,...

The Determination to Be Free, the First of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path   In Buddhism, we speak of three principal aspects of the path: the determination to be free, usually translated as “renunciation,” a vast enlightening aim of bodhichitta, and a profound,...