The Way of the Bodhisattva

In the eyes of his fellow Indian scholars, Shantideva seemed lazy and uninterested in his studies and was greatly resented. So they invited the young “slacker” to give a prestigious talk—an honor reserved for only the most realized Buddhist masters—hoping to humiliate him and force him to leave the school. Instead, he delivered the timeless jewel known today as The Way of the Bodhisattva. Paradoxically, the key to true liberation, he taught, is in taming the mind.

Like a wild elephant, the distracted mind causes emotions to escalate. But if the mind is trained to be steady and open, no matter what comes at you, you will remain solid in the immediacy of your experience.

The general subject that is explored is bodhichitta and the awakening and nurturing of bodhichitta, which is said to have these four qualities [maitri, compassion, joy and equanimity]. Or by awakening these four qualities or nurturing these four qualities, we're simultaneously contacting and encouraging and expanding what's called bodhichitta.

Bodhichitta is essentially a quality of warmth, an experience of our connection with all beings and with all things. It's said traditionally that it's expressed as a wish or an aspiration, initially expressed as a strong longing or wish that nobody suffer, and that we could in some way in the course of our lifetime, as much as possible, help to alleviate suffering in the world.

We're actually saying something that is in accord with the potential of a human being to expand our capacity for opening and caring limitlessly. It starts out with our love for an individual or our compassion for an individual. And it can expand to include more and more individuals, until finally there is a stage that people have reached throughout history, generations and generations of people, have reached the full capacity of connecting with love and compassion which is limitless. Which is to say, it almost doesn't even have a reference point. It's just connecting with this free-flowing warmth-connected energy, flee-flowing, dynamic, alive, connected energy. It's connecting with the truth of our being.