The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Photo 2. The bodhisattva Guanyin (above) is the embodiment of compassion in feminine form. Compassion in masculine form is represented by the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

  In the mahayana, the egoless aspect of loneliness continues in the realization of the nonexistence of your self. But you have to give up the possible excitement of watching yourself attaining enlightenment. You have to go away, to disappear. The ego part has to disappear, and the reference point does not exist. So it is kind of a sweet-and-sour promise and experience. Loneliness becomes heroism because you are fighting this particular war all by yourself. You are not relying on anybody’s help to work with sentient beings or to work with yourself. The spiritual friend is just an adviser who tells you how lonely you are, and how such an individual fight is necessary. So you do not get any personal help, and nobody is going to be a copilot on your journey. Nevertheless, there is still a quality of delight, and there is a feeling of comradeship with other people who are doing the same thing. So at the mahayana level, the loneliness begins to dissolve to a certain extent. The restriction of the loneliness dissolves, but the essence of the loneliness becomes egolessness.

  FIVE POWERS

  Once you have taken the bodhisattva vow, you develop what are known as the five powers: having a spiritual friend, being inspired to work with others, expanding virtue, intellectual study, and identifying what you have learned with your own practice. These powers are not spiritual powers; they are purely confirmations or landmarks.

  The first power is having a spiritual friend as a companion who initiates you into the bodhisattva vow. The second power is awakening from your particular family into the mahayana family and behavior patterns, and being inspired to work with others rather than on yourself alone. Working with others is more interesting and more spiritually enlightening. You may tend to work with other people because that is also a way to develop yourself, but that is not particularly important.

  The third power is that virtue begins to expand. When there is no reference to your own achievement as being important, you begin to extend your possibilities of attaining enlightenment.

  The fourth power is intellectual study. You learn the mechanics and functioning of the bodhisattva path and study how people in the past achieved the goal and awakened so that you can do it in the same way. The fifth power is that you are able to identify whatever you have learned with your own practice. You are able to relate your learning with your own situation.

  BINDING YOURSELF TO THE TEACHINGS

  When you take a vow, you are binding yourself together with the teachings. You already have a vague idea of the teachings, and now you would like to tighten the whole thing up to make sure that it is actually being practiced and worked on. The term dompa, or “binding,” applies to all vows: the refuge vow, the bodhisattva vow, as well as the vows of tantrayana. In the dompa of the bodhisattva vow, the discipline is living up to your aspiration to work for others. You would like to work with sentient beings and relate with the rest of the world, to offer your service and have your particular effort be put toward other people’s benefit.

  You realize that the attainment of enlightenment can only take place for the benefit of others rather than yourself. If you are doing it for yourself, you could become an egomaniac. You might like to be an important person in history, or you might want to be something less significant than that, but still you would like to build yourself up, to create a monument to yourself. But in this case, none of those possibilities are available, because you are not attaining enlightenment for yourself. However, in order to work with others, you need more training. If you want to become a good chauffeur, you first have to learn how to be a good driver.

  On a crude level, when you take the bodhisattva vow, you make certain promises and take on certain disciplines because of your surroundings. You commit yourself, not for yourself, but for others’ sake. On a more refined level, having done such a thing, there is an immense input into your memory. You realize what you have done, and you realize that you are stuck with that particular process and style of thinking for the rest of this life, as well as the lives to come. You cannot actually shake it off by saying that it was a rehearsal—it becomes a part of your basic existence.

  However, simply taking the bodhisattva vow does not make you a bodhisattva. Bodhisattvahood is a spiritual level. After you have taken the bodhisattva vow and gone through a training process, you may then finally begin to tread on the mahayana path and become a bodhisattva.

  1. More information on the paramitas can be found in part 6, “Bodhisattva Activity.”

  17

  Joining Profundity and Vastness

  If you develop depth, at the same time you are developing benevolence. Because of that warmth, you don’t have to defend yourself anymore. When you realize that you don’t have to defend yourself, you realize there is no defender, either, so a big dissolving process takes place. That seems to be the basic idea of compassion. So compassion is not just being loving and emotionally kind; it is actually compassion that cuts through.

  WHEN YOU take the bodhisattva vow, you are not intensely mimicking the Buddha or the bodhisattvas, nor do you feel particularly belittled by trying to follow their example. You are not reduced to a helpless little person who just wants to be saved. You simply take on the twofold attitude of a bodhisattva: profundity and vastness. We inherited the vastness tradition from the great master Asanga and the profundity tradition from the logician Nagarjuna,1 but as far as the path is concerned, they happen together.

  PROFUNDITY

  Profundity refers to the realization of twofold egolessness. With twofold egolessness, the belief in individuals and the belief in dharmas are both seen to be irrelevant. Prajna cuts through this and that altogether, both “I” and “am.” You are cutting completely. It is like a double-edged sword that cuts the experience as well as the experiencer. When you begin to see through the ego of “I,” the experience itself is cut at the same time. So with a single stroke of the sword, the ego of “I” and the experiencer of the egolessness of “I” are both cut. Then you also cut through the ego of “am” and the experiencer of the egolessness of “am.” In that way, you cut through everything completely.

  In this dualistic, manipulative world, you cannot clear up one side of a situation all by itself. If you have a problem, that problem has to be solved by something else. Whatever you do is a twofold situation, even drinking a cup of tea. It is like a diplomatic game in which you are both the initiator and what is being initiated. There is always some kind of split taking place, a very subtle schizophrenia. For instance, when a thought occurs—“There is a pigeon flying”—there is the experience of the pigeon flying, and at the same time there is the experience of somebody experiencing that pigeon flying. The sense of “I” occurs in the first instant, when something is first beginning to evolve, and along with that, there is also the sense of something occurring in your situation. That occurrence and the somebody watching that occurrence are equally fake. So in talking about “am” and “I,” “that” and “this,” we use the analogy of the sword of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom. The sword of Manjushri has two blade edges—with one stroke it cuts both the thinker and the thought.

  Cutting through ego is not regarded as a process of destroying an enemy. You cannot cut through ego with the blow of a sword, as if you were killing somebody. That approach would be like ordinary suicide or hara-kiri. One of the criticisms of egolessness is that it means having to give yourself up altogether, to kill both “I” and “am,” and organize the ideal seppuku. But the idea of the destruction of ego does not have to do with killing anything. The two levels of egohood, “I” and “am,” consist of tremendous hunger and thirst, immense wretchedness, and a terribly deprived feeling. When you say, “I am,” you feel hungry, thirsty, deprived, and lonely. That wretchedness actually embodies itself when you say, “I am.” That very term, that very concept, is filled with fundamental p
overty. “I am” is the expression of being personally disturbed. The proclamation of “I am” is so painful, and the only thing that will cheer you up is the verb that follows that proclamation: “I am . . . drinking,” “I am . . . happy-ing,” “I am . . . this-and-that-ing.”

  VASTNESS

  As your bodhisattva practice begins to evolve, you realize that ego pain can be overcome and destroyed. The source of the destruction is compassion, a benevolent approach to yourself. When you recite the Heart Sutra,2 you chant that there is “no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, and no mind.” But that actually means, “I love my eyes, I love my ears, I love my nose, I love my tongue, I love my body, and I love my mind. I feel sympathetic to all of that.” When you develop that kind of sympathetic attitude, all that ego-pain actually begins to dissolve.

  GREAT COMPASSION

  By transcending fixation on the phenomenal world and seeing the world as insubstantial, you develop an appreciation of emptiness. From the appreciation of emptiness, compassion or karuna develops: you develop great compassion, or mahakaruna. Mahakaruna has four aspects: mahakaruna itself, luminosity, skillfulness, and peace. At this point, you may not have reached the level where you experience these things, but you can aspire to that level.

  Mahakaruna

  The first aspect of mahakaruna is mahakaruna itself, or nying-je chenpo in Tibetan. Nying-je is “compassion,” and chenpo means “great,” so nying-je chenpo means “great compassion.” Mahakaruna, or great compassion, is also big vision. You begin to see that the phenomenal world is an expression of shunyata, so it is no longer problematic. It is marked with emptiness; therefore, there is a quality of freedom. That freedom is absent of aggression and struggle, with no possibility of resentment toward yourself, others, or the situation. Great compassion is a source of great genuineness in the practitioner. Usually we want to cheat, to deceive and twist things for our own sake. We distrust something or other, and feel that the situation is not quite right, so we begin to cheat or become evasive. We try to ease out of any pressure, which is another form of deception. We are not willing to face facts, and we are trying to avoid something. But in the case of great compassion, there is no attempt to avoid anything because everything is clear. Everything is completely seen through.

  Luminosity

  The second aspect of mahakaruna is luminosity, or öselwa in Tibetan. Ösel means “luminous” and wa is “-ness,” so öselwa means “luminosity.” Luminosity means “brilliance,” or “brightness.” At heart, it is an eternally rejoicing, joyful, and delightful situation. Although there might be occasional attacks of neurosis, as a practitioner of great compassion you do not give in to them. You no longer have any obstacles in the way of being completely true. You are like a person with good balance: you might skid on a surface, but you do not fall down.

  Skillfulness

  The third aspect of great compassion is known as true skillfulness, or thapla khepa in Tibetan. Thap means “method” or “means,” and la means “in”; khepa means “skilled,” so thapla khepa means “skilled in means.” Because you have no fear of yourself, of the other, or of the situation, you are completely in touch with what is happening. You are no longer bewildered by consequences or by the situation as it is, but you feel that everything is under control and you have nothing to worry about. You act very skillfully, but not in terms of scheming or strategizing. Because you have developed clarity in your perspective, you do not have doubts and you are not unreasonable. You realize that the best way to be skillful is to be reasonable. When you are fully reasonable, actually reasonable—and to a certain extent, painfully reasonable—you begin to experience the genuineness of situations and act accordingly, in a way appropriate to the situation.

  Peace

  The fourth aspect of great compassion is peace, or shiwa in Tibetan. In the state of great compassion, you experience a natural state of peacefulness. This has nothing to do with euphoric pleasure as the absence of hassles. In this case, peace is a quality of vast space. Wherever you go, you cover vast space. Even though your schedule might be interrupted by occasional upheavals, you are not perturbed and you do not give in to them. You have never given in. Therefore, there is a quality of conquering and an experience of peace, of being at ease.

  JOINING DEPTH AND BENEVOLENCE

  According to the mahayana, egolessness can happen only if you have a sympathetic, compassionate attitude to your own ego. Only then does it dissolve. That is the boundary between profundity and vastness, between the experience of egolessness, or shunyata, and the practice of compassion. It is impossible to understand the profundity of the destruction of the twofold ego without understanding the vast discipline of compassionate bodhisattva activity. So vastness and profundity work together.

  Overcoming twofold ego can only be done by means of sympathy and softness. It requires a compassionate and even emotional attitude. With such sympathy, you are willing to be cut by the prajna sword. You are willing to take the bodhisattva vow, which says, “I don’t believe in myself, and I don’t believe in others. Nevertheless, I would like to save all sentient beings before I attain my own enlightenment.” The moment you take the bodhisattva vow, you are deciding to commit yourself to practicing bodhisattva activities, and at the same time you are committing yourself to realizing and experiencing the nonexistence of ego. So the traditions of vastness and profundity work together simultaneously.

  Profundity and vastness are the ground of both mahayana vision and action. If you develop depth, you are developing benevolence at the same time. Because of that warmth, you don’t have to defend yourself anymore. When you realize that you don’t have to defend yourself, you realize there is no defender either, so a big dissolving process takes place. That seems to be the basic idea of compassion. So compassion is not just being loving and emotionally kind; it is actually compassion that cuts through.

  Your attitude toward your own existence is based on aggression, so when you have a loving attitude toward yourself, your aggression dissolves. Therefore, you don’t exist. Your attitude toward others is also an expression of aggression, so when you have a loving attitude toward others, they don’t exist either. Based on compassion, a mutual dissolving or opening-up process takes place. And when you open up, you don’t have to have an opener. From the Buddhist perspective, dwelling on any experience could be regarded as the activity of aggression. This applies even if you are trying to maintain a quality of peace, or shanti. When you do not have to maintain anything at all because everything is okay, there is no confusion. That is the epitome of twofold egolessness: there is both the profundity of twofold egolessness and the vastness of compassionate bodhisattva activity.

  1. Asanga (ca. 300–370 CE) was an exponent of the yogachara school of Buddhist philosophy. Nagarjuna (ca. 150–250 CE) was an Indian philosopher and logician who founded the madhyamaka, or Middle Way, school. For more on Nagarjuna, see chapter 20, “Emptiness and the Middle Way.”

  2. The Heart Sutra, or the Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge, is a beloved teaching on wisdom and emptiness recited in many schools of Buddhism. See appendix 3, “The Heart Sutra.”

  Part Five

  EMPTINESS AND COMPASSION

  18

  Emptiness

  Shunyata is not anti-life; life is infested with shunyata-type experiences. Shunyata is the basic reason that life can happen, because shunyata represents nothingness. If there is nothingness, then there is everything.

  IN ORDER to understand the practice of the bodhisattva path, we need to discuss the various experiences of shunyata, or emptiness. Shunyata is one of the key points in studying mahayana. Shunya means “not,” “nothing,” or “empty,” ta makes it a noun; so shunyata means “emptiness.” The Tibetan word for shunyata is tongpanyi. Tongpa means “empty,” and nyi is “itself,” or “-ness”; so tongpanyi means “emptiness” as well.

  What is shunyata empty of? It is empty of holding back, empty of maintaining oneself. But empti
ness is not merely negation, because the bodhisattva path is a positive state of existence with a lot of creativity. However, if you do not give up on the idea of “me” and “mine,” you could be in a difficult situation. “Me” and “mine” is a fantasy concept, in the same way that “There is a flying saucer in the sky” is a fantasy concept. There actually isn’t any such thing.

  Shunyata is not anti-life; life is infested with shunyata-type experiences. Shunyata is the basic reason that life can happen, because shunyata represents nothingness. If there is nothingness, then there is everything. So shunyata is the instigator of life, fundamentally and ecologically. Because of shunyata, you can do your practice and other things as well. But before you go about your business, you should take some time for yourself. You need to keep referring back to the hinayana practices of shamatha and vipashyana, which continue to be extremely important. At the same time, you should be aware that in the mahayana you are transcending the mental-gymnastics aspect of the hinayana path. The mahayana brings a different perspective: it brings together awareness, compassion, and nonreference point.