A person who has not aroused bodhicitta tends to be extremely narrow-minded. Cross someone like this at your peril—once you do, they may hold a grudge against you indefinitely. From that moment on, no matter what you do, it will seem wrong in their eyes.
Take a look at yourself—does this sound familiar? Has someone offended you and made you unhappy, so that just seeing them makes you uncomfortable, and whatever they say seems wrong? Normally, we'd hardly ever slander the Dharma. But what if one day this very person says something perfectly in accord with the Buddhadharma, and just because you can't stand them, you insist they're wrong—then you have truly broken a precept. I am not joking—this can genuinely happen. Slandering the Dharma is an extremely grave offense; it can even deprive one of the opportunity to be reborn in the Pure Land.
I hope everyone will take bodhicitta seriously and make every effort to cultivate it. Before engaging in any action, examine your own mind. This won't hurt you, because ultimately there is no inherently existent “self” to be harmed. Bodhicitta can only fill your mind with beauty and joy, making every Dharma practice much easier to cultivate.
In the past, when practicing the generation stage and the completion stage, no matter how we visualized our surroundings as the Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain or as the Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss—with its ground of gold and railings of jade—we failed to generate the corresponding experience. In fact, you do not need to exhaust yourself with visualization. Simply cultivate bodhicitta wholeheartedly. Once bodhicitta arises, very soon you will naturally feel as though your surroundings are a celestial realm and everyone around you is a heavenly being. You'll feel incredibly at ease—beyond words.
When something so wonderful is available, why not practice it? How silly! We always hope that others will generate bodhicitta while we ourselves do not, thinking this is the easiest way out. In the end, however, we only make ourselves suffer.
Once, a fellow practitioner called me to complain about his suffering. I told him point-blank, “Didn't you say you wanted to become a bodhisattva of the first bhūmi? Then what is there to complain about? You deserve it.” Whenever we suffer solely for our own sake, we are acting contrary to bodhicitta. After all, you yourself vowed to dedicate everything to sentient beings and to the Buddhas. Now that you are going against your own vow, shouldn’t you give yourself a wake-up call?
From this perspective, we should not get caught up in our own problems. Whatever happens, remind yourself: “My body, words, and mind—everything I have—have already been offered to the Three Jewels and dedicated to the enlightenment of all sentient beings. Apart from practicing the Dharma, I have no other claims or privileges. I should feel ashamed of my self-centered worries and suffering.” Reflect in this way every day and hold yourself to this standard. It may seem rather demanding at first, but in the end it will bring you profound happiness.
At this point, you may wonder whether feeling happy through such training is somehow abnormal, or whether this is merely a form of self-deception. In one sense, it is indeed “self-deception”—because there is no inherently existent self to deceive in the first place. The purpose of this training is to dismantle the deeply ingrained habit of self-clinging. Once this habitual attachment begins to dissolve, genuine happiness naturally arises. At that point, it becomes almost impossible not to be joyful. This is precisely why the first bhūmi is called the Stage of Great Joy.
—Excerpted and adapted 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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