Conventional bodhicitta serves many specific functions. When the mind are dedicated to benefiting others and fully focused on sentient beings, it produces one especially profound effect: it suppresses self-grasping (ātmagrāha). The suppression of self-grasping naturally gives rise to happiness, because the root of all suffering is precisely self-grasping.
Those whose minds lack clarity cannot understand this. They believe that happiness can only be achieved when both self-grasping and attachment to "mine" are fulfilled. Such a view is truly misguided. Because sentient beings fail to understand this truth, their mistakes deserve our forgiveness. They simply seek happiness, yet because they lack sufficient wisdom, their action provide the very opposite result.. Therefore, we should not harbor hatred toward any sentient being.
Because conventional bodhicitta focuses on all sentient beings, it also greatly expands the capacity of the mind. Such expansion plays an immense role in accumulating merits (puṇyasaṃbhāra) and the purifying obscurations. Rapidly accumulating merits and purifying obscurations swiftly elevates our level of realization, allowing us to progress more quickly on the path toward full Buddhahood.
When trapped in centereness, such a narrow mindsetbreeds loneliness, pain, and narrow mindedness.. Everyone else seems unlikable and full of flaws, leaving only oneself as “good person”. Take a simple example: people who enjoy interacting with others tend to become more perceptive because their experience is broad and varied. By contrast, those who remain confined within their own small circle inevitably limit the breadth of their thinking.
Although ultimately, all phenomena are empty by nature, realizing the emptiness of a single phenomenon allows one to realize the emptiness of all. Yet the key lies in first realizing the emptiness of that single phenomenon.. To do so requires vast stores of merit and the removal of karmic obscurations. This is precisely where bodhicitta plays its indispensable role. It enables us to accumulate merit swiftly and purify karmic obscurations with remarkable speed.
As it is said, "Like the conscience fire at the end of an aeon, bodhicitta incinerates the gravest negative karma in a single instant." By suppressing self-grasping, bodhicitta prevents the karmic obscurations born of self-grasping and attachment to "mine" from manifesting. For this reason, it is able to eradicate even the heaviest negative karma immediately.
Consider the beings in the Reviving Hell. Amid blazing flames they continually slaughter one another, only to be cut down and pierced again by the hell guardians. Restored to life instantlhy by karmic force, they die and are reborn a thousand times in a split second.
What they fail to realize is that all of this suffering originates from the hatred within their own minds. Karmic seeds ripen, giving rise to intensely painful external circumstances. The mind then reacts with hatred toward those painful experiences, and that hatred plants yet more karmic seeds. Thus the cycle repeats endlessly, leaving the beings of hell unable even to escape through death.
Yet if the seed of bodhicitta were present, the moment it manifested they would immediately emerge from hell. This is why it is said that bodhicitta "can incinerates even the gravest negative karma in a single instant."
Although we cannot directly witness the sufferings of hell, similar patterns can readily be observed in ordinary life. When you strongly dislike someone, their mere appearance brings discomfort, instantly spoiling an othervise joyful occasion.Such hatred is inherently painful.
When engulfed by resentment, aversion, and rejection, the mind suffers deeply. Yet if, at that very moment, a gentle, expansive bodhicitta arises, those aflictive states vanish in an instant, taking the distress with them. Once we learn to embrace even those we regard as enemies, a great deal of our suffering naturally dissolves..
— Excerpted and compiled from Genuine Bodhicitta and Conceptual Bodhicitta
This article is a preliminary translation draft and has not yet been reviewed or proofread by the speaker.
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