The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Accent

  In classical Sanskrit, each syllable received approximately the same emphasis; vowels were lengthened rather than stressed. Although today we tend to stress syllables, it should not be so emphatic as in English. Accent is placed on the next-to-last syllable when this contains a long vowel or ends with more than one consonant (not including h). Otherwise, it is placed on the last previous syllable that contains a long vowel or ends in more than one consonant. If none exists, the stress is placed on the first syllable.

  TIBETAN

  In this text, Tibetan words have been spelled to reflect pronunciation as accurately as possible. As in Sanskrit, the consonants th and ph are not pronounced as in the words thing and photo, but as in pothole and shepherd. The letters ü and ö are pronounced approximately as in the German words über and möglich, or as in the French words connu and oeuvre.

  Note that the letter e is always pronounced at the end of a word. In some cases, words ending in e have been spelled with a hyphen in order to prevent mispronunciation: shi-ne, Ri-me.

  Part One

  AWAKENING THE HEART

  1

  A Glimpse of Wakefulness

  The mahayana brings greater vision and greater action. Heroism, celebration, and excitement are all solidly a part of it. . . . You begin to like your environment and, as egoless as you may be, you begin to like yourself. The appreciation of the world outside is called compassion, and the appreciation of yourself is called maitri. Unless those two are working together, it is a dead end.

  THE GREAT VEHICLE

  The mahayana is called the great vehicle. It is also referred to as the bodhisattva path, which means the path of the awakened beings. Bodhi means “awake,” and sattva means “being”; so a bodhisattva is an “awakened being.” As the second of the three vehicles, or yanas, the mahayana is known to be a great and powerful journey.1 Why is it so powerful? Its power comes from the realization of your own potential; it comes from the realization that you are a worthy person. You have the potential to be without aggression or passion, to be a person without problems. You could be thoroughly, utterly, completely good. You could be a person with basic sanity and goodness. It is possible.

  In the word mahayana, maha means “great,” or “powerful,” and yana means “vehicle,” or “palanquin”; so mahayana means “great vehicle.” The Tibetan word for yana is thekpa, which means “that which lifts you up.” Anything that lifts you up and takes you to your destination is a yana. So a yana is a form of transportation. For instance, an elevator, a car, a train, or an airplane could be a yana. In the Buddhist sense, the term yana is used in a more subtle way to refer to the path itself or to the practitioners.

  Once you step into the mahayana, you do not have much control. It goes by itself and there is no reverse, none whatsoever. Everything goes forward. Furthermore, there are no brakes and no steering wheel, and the vehicle does not need any fuel. In fact, the road moves rather than the vehicle. We could also say that about life: life itself moves rather than you moving through life. So once you get onto the path, the path moves and you are stuck with it. There is no way of getting off or taking a break. The journey takes you over.

  THE DISCOVERY OF BODHICHITTA

  The mahayana begins with the discovery of bodhichitta, the heart or mind of awakening. Bodhi again means “awake,” and chitta means “heart,” or “mind”; so bodhichitta means “awakened heart.” In Tibetan it known as changchup kyi sem. Changchup means “awake,” kyi means “of,” and sem means “consciousness” or “cognitive mind”; so changchup kyi sem means “mind of awakening.” The question is, what are you waking from? You are waking from the three poisons: passion, aggression, and ignorance or delusion. Passion leads to possessiveness, and it is connected with the attachment to pleasure. You never want to eat at home, but you always want to go to restaurants, or you constantly want to watch television. Aggression leads you to use all your energy fighting others and becoming somewhat macho. Ignorance creates a feeling of general dullness; you begin to spend all of your time in bed. Those three principles are the problems you face, and you have to overcome them.

  However, passion, aggression, and ignorance are not regarded as deep-rooted problems; they are simply phases we go through, like any other phase. But although they are simply phases, they are obviously obstacles. The problem with such situations is that they occupy your time and space, so they prevent you from being in a state of wakefulness.

  RELATIVE AND ULTIMATE BODHICHITTA

  There are two types of bodhichitta: relative bodhichitta and ultimate or absolute bodhichitta. Relative bodhichitta is called kündzop changchup-kyi-sem in Tibetan. Kündzop means “relative,” kün means “all,” and dzop means an “effigy,” or “outfit,” and changchup-kyi-sem means the “mind of enlightenment,” or “bodhichitta”; so kündzop changchup-kyi-sem is an “effigy of bodhichitta,” or “relative bodhichitta.” Kündzop is like a scarecrow; it is an outfit that fits the world. Kündzop is a kind of facade or medium. If you are a painter, you use paint as the medium, not the meaning. You could represent things much better if there were a greater medium, but since there is not, you use what exists around you. In any communication, you use whatever medium is available, so in a sense your presentation becomes a facade or superficial.

  Relative bodhichitta is the common practice of involving yourself in the world with benevolence, fearlessness, and kindness. It is the manifestation of your friendliness and deliberate training, and it is helped a great deal by the experience of vipashyana, or awareness, which brings reminders of all kinds.

  Ultimate bodhichitta is called töndam changchup-kyi-sem. Dam means “ultimate,” and tön means “meaning”; so töndam means “ultimate purpose,” “ultimate meaning,” or “ultimate goal.” Changchup-kyi-sem, again, means “bodhichitta”; so töndam changchup-kyi-sem means “ultimate bodhichitta,” or “absolute bodhichitta.” This type of bodhichitta is based on an enlarged sense of egolessness. It is based on emptiness, or the shunyata experience. In basic egolessness, you have a sense of nonexistence, but it is still a conceptualized notion of nonexistence. You still have a nonexistent but changing world around you. But with ultimate bodhichitta there is no world outside, no world separate from yourself. From the point of view of ego, there is a total nonexistence of personality. That ultimate understanding of egolessness comes from your vipashyana experience becoming more outrageous. You are more willing to be brave, heroic, and crazy.

  True bodhichitta combines spaciousness, sympathy, and intelligence; or shunyata, compassion (karuna), and knowledge (prajna).2 In order to be exposed to intelligence, or prajna, you have to understand that it is not worth struggling, that you have to give up ego fixation. In order to be exposed to sympathy, or compassion, you have to give up territoriality, possessiveness, and aggression. And in order to relate with spaciousness, or emptiness, you have to realize that there is no point trying to use metaphysical analogies or the language of nonreference point as another reference point; you just need to relate with yourself.

  Bodhichitta is fundamental to the teachings of the Buddha. It is the basis of being awake and open. Without bodhichitta we cannot survive, we cannot function. In the mahayana we are acknowledging that such a quality exists in us. It is not particularly mystical, or something that we have not experienced before. We are not impotent, but we are capable of expressing our affection to ourselves and to others. Bodhichitta is what we want to plant in our mind and in our existence. It is the foundation of the mahayana.

  A TASTE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

  With bodhichitta, the heart or chitta comes first, and bodhi comes later: the heart awakens. So we begin by developing a particular kind of heart, one that is not connected with personal longevity, personal entertainment, or egotism. First we develop heart, and then we develop what heart is all about, or enlightened heart. Enlightened heart is expansive and awake. It is not territorial, and it does not demand that we gather our own flock of egotistic companio
ns. When we look into that quality of basic wakefulness beyond our own territoriality, we find ourselves having a taste of enlightenment for the very first time.

  In the hinayana, we may have had a glimpse of gentleness, goodness, and precision, but we never had a taste of the mind clicking in and awakening on the spot, as it should. That has not yet happened. But in the mahayana, it is actually happening. That is why it is very important for us to join mindfulness and awareness, or shamatha and vipashyana.

  In shamatha-vipashyana, the process of training takes place in your heart. It is not an athletic approach. You are training yourself so that you can be awakened from drowsiness, deep sleep, and the samsaric world. But you are awake already, which is why it is possible to notice that you have fallen asleep—and you can tune yourself in to this awakened state of being by the practice of rousing bodhichitta. Shamatha brings maitri, a simple and kind attitude toward yourself, and vipashyana brings karuna, a compassionate attitude toward others. So joining shamatha and vipashyana brings about the realization of bodhichitta. When concentration and awareness are working together, for a fraction of a second you may have a taste of what enlightenment might be.

  Such a glimpse is highly possible, even by suggestion. You might find yourself with no discursive thoughts. When you discover that your unwholesome discursive thoughts have been pacified and subjugated, there might be a gap. A pure gap of the absolute, ideal state of mind might occur to you. This is not hypothetical, but real. When discursive thoughts are liberated, you may try to cover up that gap, disguising it as absentmindedness. But you may be unable to cover it up, which is lucky, for you are having an actual glimpse of bodhichitta. For everyone, without exception, such a glimpse is always possible. And at some point, you realize that it is more than a glimpse, more than a possibility. You realize that bodhichitta is not a theory or a metaphysical concept, but a reality. It is more than rain clouds gathering in the sky—it is the actual rain.

  APPRECIATION AND HUMOR

  One of the basic principles of mahayana is learning to include others in your world. That process begins with the realization of complete bodhichitta. You do not have to attend to or cultivate the awakened state of being as something new in your system. You realize that you already possess that awakened state of freshness. Anything that you can appreciate and enjoy in your life, such as seeing a beautiful flower, experiencing exquisite situations, or hearing beautiful language, teachings, or music, comes out of that awakened state.

  One problem we have had for a long time is that we do not appreciate ourselves fully. We don’t appreciate that we are capable of seeing, hearing, and experiencing. We think that if we buy something expensive, it will do the trick. But when we do buy something, we get tired of it very soon, and in a lot of cases it leads to disappointment. We may have managed to acquire everything we can think of to experience the world at its best, but we still cannot experience things completely and fully.

  The notion of bodhichitta is that we have the faculties to experience the world at its best. We can see things beautifully, we can hear things beautifully, we can experience things beautifully. The only requirement is that we let go of all our struggling and searching, all of our shopping, so to speak. When we do so, we might be left feeling as if we have given something up. But as we relax further, more and more, we realize that our appreciation is growing. It becomes a natural experience to have an appreciation of the beauty of things as they are.

  The main obstacle to bodhichitta is aggression. Aggression may come from too much learning, too much success in life. You might be a fantastic calligrapher, you might be a fantastic driver, or you might be highly skilled in changing flat tires, for that matter. You might have your skill worked out, everything is fine, and you know what you are doing. The aggression is not in having such skills, but in your attitude of self-confirmation. But all those confirmations go down the drain at this point.

  Bodhisattva heroism is an entirely different type of heroism. It has nothing to do with how highly sophisticated you are. Even if you are sophisticated, you still are not making yourself into a potential bodhisattva. What is the obstacle? The obstacle is aggression. Aggression is precisely what made Buddha’s cousin Devadatta unfit to be his student. Devadatta was too proud, and according to the story, he finally fell down into a crack in the earth.3 Bodhichitta is absolute nonaggression, the epitome of nonaggression. It is peace without reward, and openness without feedback. You are simply open. The quality of gentleness and peace in the bodhisattva’s approach is absolutely devastating.

  Compassion or warmth actually possesses a lot of humor. Prajna also possesses a lot of subtle jokes, such as that the world is curving in and it is just about to get to square one—and square one is looking at itself as well, which is not the end of the world. The reason bodhisattvas can actually work so hard to relate with reality is because of that quality of delightfulness and humor. There is a willingness to be an adolescent rather than a grown-up. A sense of humor runs through all three yanas completely. It does not happen much in the first yana, but in the second and third yanas, you are definitely willing to be an adolescent rather than a completely hard-core, business-deal type of person. You are willing to be childlike.

  Bodhichitta is not much of a fanfare, but at the same time, it may be a spiritual atomic bomb. In order to become real Buddhists, it is necessary to give up the past. You could say that the past has been good and successful, but that particular past needs some kind of cleaning. Why don’t you put your past into a steam bath or a washing machine? Your past could be cleaned up, and come out as good as the present. That is what you do with your clothes: your clothes are worn in the past, you put them in the washing machine, and they come out clean in the present, so they are wearable in the future. That’s a great idea.

  Bodhichitta has to be discovered and realized, and the way to do so is by appreciating both the phenomenal world and yourself. In the mahayana, there is an emphasis on working with what you have rather than what you will be. You become more and more softened, rather than being a hard-core meditator or a hard-core scholar. Hard-core practitioners believe that what they think is right, and they are not open to any information or experience other than their own. That tendency toward dogmatism, no matter how small it may be, is an obstacle to developing bodhichitta.

  The mahayana brings greater vision and greater action. Heroism, celebration, and excitement are all solidly a part of it. You begin to like the world around you. You are aware of the activities and phenomena happening during your meditation and postmeditation experience, and you develop an appreciation for the phenomenal world. You begin to like your environment and, as egoless as you may be, you begin to like yourself. The appreciation of the world outside is called compassion, and the appreciation of yourself is called maitri. Unless those two are working together, it is a dead end.

  DEVELOPING FEARLESSNESS

  The greater vision of the mahayana brings tremendous exertion and patience. You are not particularly afraid of the pain of samsara, or tired of being in samsara. You are not planning to run away from it, but you are willing to sacrifice yourself. You are willing to develop yourself and stay in samsara for the sake of others as long as you are needed. Therefore, you are fearless in developing your own strength and asceticism, or hard work. That kind of patience and exertion is a mark of waking up.

  On the whole, the approach of mahayana is one of not taking time off or looking for relief. You are not looking for a way to take a break, or to comfort yourself by running away from the challenge. You just stay put; you are on the spot. You stay with the pain or the discomfort, and you continue to carry on with exertion and the vision and joyousness of wakefulness.

  The starting point is that you do not regard your life as boring, nor do you try to escape from your life by any means whatsoever. You do not run after entertainment or substitutions of any kind. You are honest and direct, and you face the facts of life, not only for your own sake, but for the sake
of others. You would never let anybody down, or let go of anybody in order to seek pleasure for your own sake. That is what is known as being a fearless bodhisattva warrior.

  As a bodhisattva warrior, you are fearless because you hold to certain principles. You may be terrified of getting stuck in samsara forever, but at this point you have to be willing to stay there. Fearlessness means that you are willing to get stuck, which is marvelous. And strangely, if you are willing to get stuck, you never do get stuck. That is the logic. But to begin with, you have to recognize your own cowardice. You do not have to condemn yourself for being cowardly, but when you see how cowardly you are and how fears come up in your mind, you will begin to realize that fear is your working basis. So you stay with it, and you keep working with it.

  OPENING TO MESSAGES

  The point is simply that you just keep going. Once you keep going, there will be messages coming to you from the universe about how far you are or are not going. You don’t need to talk to your teacher, particularly; the universe is always very good at giving you messages. Even the weather can give you messages. As long as you are open, you find reference points everywhere. Once you are willing to open yourself up, to work hard and do something, you will get feedback. You may get very bad feedback or very excellent feedback. If you do not react either badly or excitedly to that feedback, but just keep going, you are beginning to get somewhere.