(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - When I was a bit younger, I used to listen to a lot of lectures by our teacher, Sangerakshita. And he used to do lots of lectures in series of eight, you know, eight lectures on a particular topic, which probably some of you have heard some of these series. But one of the characteristics of these series was and is that as the series progressed, his introduction got longer and longer and longer because he recapped every other lecture in the course of the next one. So I'm gonna try and avoid doing that, but I will offer some kind of recap from last week to start us off, particularly for those that perhaps missed last week or even if you didn't, perhaps to tune in again. So last week, very much offered an overview, an introduction to Mahayana Buddhism. And I suggested that one way that we could see it is to understand it in terms of a dimension of the imagination as much as it might be a set of historical Buddhist traditions. And so I'd like to continue with that idea, like you to continue to reflect on that idea, that the Mahayana Mahayana Buddhism is a dimension of the imagination. And I think that will become still clearer this evening. Besides that, I did talk about Mahayana Buddhism in its more historical sense. And I talked about it in terms of a particular system called the Triana system. Triana meaning three paths or three ways. If you remember, I characterized the first of those paths or ways as Nikaya Buddhism. And I'll say a bit more about that later. The second of those paths or ways was Mahayana Buddhism. And finally, there was Vajrayana Buddhism, which is also known as Tantric Buddhism. Once I'd done that, I then tried to characterize Mahayana Buddhism in terms of some of its distinguishing features. And I identified six distinctive features that I looked at in a little bit of detail. So first of all, I talked about Mahayana Buddhism having a distinctive literature. And in particular, I talked about some of its literature being a literature of the fantastic or transcendental science fiction was also a term that I used. I think we'll get a bit more of a flavor of that this evening because I will be reading out one or two passages. In addition to that, next week, that is the focus of the lecture, more specifically looking at Mahayana Buddhist texts. Secondly, I looked at the Mahayana's conception of the Buddha and indicated that it has a distinctive conception of who the Buddha is, if you like what the Buddha is, or indeed what the Buddha's are. Thirdly, I briefly talked about the Mahayana conception of the spiritual ideal. And that is the theme for this evening's talk, so I'll return to that in a moment. The fourth emphasis that I picked out was that Mahayana Buddhism has distinctive conceptions of the path towards awakening. I used the term soteriology, which is quite a fancy word, for talking about a path to liberation or indeed the goal of liberation. And I talked a little bit about some of the different traditions such as pure land Buddhism, which I may touch on again this evening. The fifth distinctive emphasis that I mentioned was the distinctive philosophical ideas that are found within Mahayana Buddhism. And I think I briefly talked about some of the emphasis on the priority of mind as found in Yoga Chara Buddhism. Again, I'll be returning to this theme in the fourth lecture, so we'll say more about that then. And finally, I talked about some of the distinctive practices that are found in Mahayana Buddhism. I made reference, for instance, to sutra worship, to the practice of co-ans within Zen Buddhism, and also Buddha cults, traditions devoted towards particular Buddha figures. So the theme for this evening is the Bodhisattva ideal. Briefly, Bodhisattva means awakening being. A Bodhisattva is a being that is awakening that is on the path towards awakening. And it's possible, I can't be sure of this, but it's possible that the Bodhisattva ideal is the most spectacular conception of human possibility that has ever been thought of. Certainly in my eyes it is. I remember when I first came across it, it completely blew my mind. Going back to Sanga Rajtha, our teacher once more, one of his famous lecture series was on the Bodhisattva ideal, and he gave a series of eight lectures, which you can now see in a book in edited form. And going through those lectures, listening to those lectures and taking notes was a deeply inspiring and transformative moment of my life. And I've always been inspired by the Bodhisattva ideal, and I still am. So hopefully some of that will come across as we go through. Yeah, so the Bodhisattva ideal for Mahayana Buddhism encompasses or embodies the ideal Buddhist life. The Bodhisattva is the ideal Buddhist. It embodies the ideal pattern of conduct, and in particular, an especially elevated set of ethical values. It also embodies the ideal accomplishments of the Buddhist spiritual life. So the Bodhisattva, if you like, is the Mahayana Buddhist saint, you could say. So in introducing the Bodhisattva ideal in trying to offer some kind of account of it, I'm gonna do a few things. First of all, I'm gonna take a bit of a step back into Buddhist history and try to understand or try to explore a little bit the context that is the historical and cultural context from which the idea of the Bodhisattva emerged. 'Cause I think if we do that, it will help us to understand why it speaks in the way that it does. Secondly, I want to briefly describe the Bodhisattva goal, the goal of the Bodhisattva, but also the path towards that goal. And that will mean in particular, looking at a pattern of training called the Six Perfections or the Ten Perfections, in some cases, and the Ten Stages to Awakening. The image that I've thrown up for you, the title of it is Bodhisattvas of the Ten Stages. So these figures, this painting of these figures exemplifies the most elevated spiritual condition, you could say, these represent the highest states of being in consciousness, these Bodhisattva figures. Yeah, but the other thing that I want to do as well is to explore a little bit about how the idea of the Bodhisattva evolved from being perhaps something that we might practice as ordinary individuals and that we might aspire to and become. Towards the idea that it was something, the Bodhisattva idea was something that is accomplished by transcendent beings, even visionary beings, beings which we can somehow enter into communion with or communication with and even receive blessing, support and help from. So I'll come onto that issue or that area towards the end of the talk. Okay, so to start with the context and background to the Bodhisattva ideal, it emerged within a very particular religious context. This again was in the Indian Buddhist context and what I was referring to last week as Nikaya Buddhism emerged from this context. I think I spoke a little bit last week about how life was like for the early Buddhist or if I didn't, I'll say a little bit more now. But in its earliest forms, the followers of the Buddha were renunciates, which means to say they renounced the family and household life and they went forth into often a homeless wandering life, living very simply, walking from place to place depending on village people for their food and their sustenance. And this is all described in some of the early Buddhist texts and one can even get quite a vivid impression of the life that they lived, even picture it in your mind's eye. Well, when we start to talk about the Mahayana life, it's very, very different. The Bodhisattva life is not a life of wandering from place to place or at least it's not portrayed as a life of wandering from place to place and begging for food. It's a life of transporting oneself across world systems in an instant of time. It's a life of replicating one's body a billion times and appearing at the same time in a billion universes and teaching the Dharma to all of the beings in those universes in all of the languages that you can imagine at the same time and so on. At least this is how it's talked about and I think as we go through, we might start to see that there's something of a discrepancy between perhaps this cosmic vision of the Bodhisattva and any kind of practical application or any kind of practical path for a human being to follow this Bodhisattva ideal. Okay, so in early Buddhism, the life was understood in terms of being a somewhat imperfect and at times even painful process of being born, growing old, dying and then being born again. And this process or this cosmic vision is called Samsara. So the idea is that all beings fare on from life to life. Sometimes if they live a better life, they might be reborn in a slightly happier realm, but if they act badly, they're reborn in a painful realm, even a very painful realm. So for the early Buddhist, this Samsara that they existed within was seen as limiting and even painful and as something to be transcended or perhaps you could say even escaped from. And this is very much what the Buddhist message was in the early text, it was a message of liberation from suffering and the way that that was done or the way that that was described was in terms of a path called the Arahant path. Arahant means a worthy one. So that was the ideal in early Buddhism to become a worthy one. And what was the worthy one? Well, the worthy one was the one who had laid down the burden, the one who had done what had to be done, the one who had brought light into the darkness. These are kind of some of the metaphors that he used, the one who had turned upright, what had been knocked over. This was the Arahant. But perhaps in more kind of technical terms, they had overcome all of their inner poisons, they'd overcome all of their ill will, for instance, they'd overcome all of their selfishness, they'd overcome all of their ignorance. And so they're characterized by a state of understanding, a state of love you could say or even compassion perhaps. And a state of knowledge as well. Yeah, just check that I've got that right. Sorry, I made a mistake there. The third thing that are characterized by is a state of non-attachment, you could say, or a state of generosity in more positive terms. So that's how they're characterized. And very much it's seen as an ideal or an accomplishment that can be achieved within the present lifetime. So in theory, someone could become a follower of the Buddha, maybe practice for some period of time, sometimes even a relatively short period of time, but perhaps 10 years or more. And they could accomplish this state of awakening called Arahant Ship. And this is very much what the aspiration was in early Buddhism. And one was seen as going through, or rather the goal towards, or the goal towards the Arahant Ship was structured in terms of four stages. The first and most decisive stage was understood, always described as a stream entry. And at this stage, one realises or achieves a decisive insight into the nature of reality, a decisive insight into nature impermanence maybe. To the point where there's no turning back. And it's said that within seven lifetimes, seven times of being born and reborn, the stream entrant will ultimately accomplish Arahant Ship. So it's a very important moment in the Buddhist life to accomplish this point of stream entry. But there's a further stage. The second stage is what's called the stage of the once returner. So somebody accomplishes this level of understanding. We'll only return to our world, that is the world of human beings. Once more, just once more. And then that will be the last time, and then they will go on and become fully awakened afterwards. Not necessarily in that life, but perhaps in a future life, but in a higher realm. The third stage was called or is called the non-returner. And that's somebody who, their insight and their understanding and their wisdom is so far developed that they won't return again to this world. So when they die, they'll go into some higher world from which they will fully accomplish their awakening. So these are the three intermediate stages, culminating in Arahant Ship, which is where one completely realises the goal within the present lifetime. So in the way that I've been talking about it, I'm hoping that you've got quite a clear sense that there's this idea that one's in a world that the aim is to get away from it, to actually grow beyond it and not come back again, not to be reborn. This is very much how the goal is spoken about in early Buddhism. And that may or may not seem attractive to you. Yeah, just before moving on, I think I'd just like to emphasise as well that this goal, this ideal, was primarily principally followed by menastic people. And that's monks and nuns, although often it's monks. But yeah, people who have renounced ordinary life, full-time religious professionals, we could say. This is very much an ideal that they pursued. And the role of everybody else, who are known as the lay people, their role, is to support that process. And they might do that by giving offerings of different kinds, particularly food, maybe clothing, maybe sponsoring the building of a temple or a monastery, sponsoring some important image, and so on. That would be their role. So you had clearly a two-tier community, a community of lay people whose involvement was relatively of a lower order of intensity, and a realm of religious professionals whose role in principle was to pursue and accomplish the Arahant ideal. And the important thing is that from the lay people's point of view, being in communion with people who have elevated spiritual awareness, was seen as very, very beneficial. It was seen as bringing what's called merit, which is a kind of spiritual benefit that spiritually realized people confer upon those who come into contact with them. So this is a sort of rough and ready model of the vision and practice of early Buddhism or what I was referring to last week as Nikaya Buddhism. I don't know about you, but I find the idea that I would completely overcome all greed, hatred and delusion, a really attractive possibility. And to be honest, it seems incredibly lofty. It seems like a long way away from where I'm at right at the moment. So to me, the Arahant ideal seems a really kind of ambitious and really kind of grand spiritual goal that I feel quite a long way away from. But it seems that at least some Buddhist started to think, well, actually, no, there's further than this or there's further to go. One could actually conceive of something that was even more, that was even greater than the Arahant ideal. And they took their direction in this from the example of the Buddha himself. So one of the things that's distinctive about the Buddha as opposed to his followers is that the Buddha accomplished his awakening without himself having someone to teach it to him. And in Buddhist terms, he then revived what's called the Dharma. He revived Buddhist teachings for this universe, which he then, you know, spread to many beings and so on. And now we have a Buddhist tradition that's been in existence for two and a half thousand years. So this is something that's very unique and special about the Buddha, that he became awakened, he realized his awakening unsupported without help. And then those that realized their awakening after him depended upon his understanding and his teachings to do that. So this is slightly speculative, but I suggest that somebody started to think, well, wouldn't it be better? Wouldn't it be greater somehow to be like the Buddha and to actually realize awakening without help by oneself and not only that, but perhaps introduce it into a world where it doesn't currently exist. And this starts to take us into a new direction and a different conception of what the Buddhist life might be. And here we're beginning to touch upon what the Bodhisattva ideal is about. So for these new Buddhists, I'll call them new Buddhists, but they were probably really old Buddhists who had perhaps some slightly different ideas. They started to think, or at least they started to say in their writings, that there was something a bit limited and limiting about the Arahan ideal. And what they picked up on in particular, or one of the things that they picked up on, is this idea that one would see it as one's goal to escape from the world and somehow to go away and go into some, maybe some sublime spiritual state, but basically move away from the world of suffering. In their text, they start to characterize that goal to somehow, somewhat selfish and even somewhat inward looking, and perhaps lacking in a compassionate awareness or a deeply compassionate awareness for those beings that are left behind. So they started to present a way of seeing things whereby the ideal wouldn't be, wasn't simply to escape from the world of suffering, but rather the ideal is to continue, even willingly, to return into the world of suffering again and again and again, to help other beings to become liberated, perhaps over and over again, even indefinitely, and perhaps ultimately to help any beings, all beings everywhere to become awakened. And so this is the beginnings of what we can call the Bodhisattva ideal. It's not the case that the idea of the Bodhisattva was created or invented by Mahayana Buddhists. It's actually found in the early Buddhist texts and the Buddha himself is referred to as a Bodhisattva, but in the early Buddhist texts, there are only a relatively small number of beings who are considered great enough or spiritually capable of fulfilling what is presented as an extremely difficult, even more difficult spiritual path. So in the early Buddhist texts, the Bodhisattva ideal is seen as the province of a very small number of extremely elevated beings like the Buddha. For everybody else, the Arahant path is judged as the appropriate one to follow. Over time, and I'm running ahead a little bit here, I'll come back to this, but over time, as the Bodhisattva ideal became more and more characteristic of the approach of Mahayana Buddhism, it started to see the Bodhisattva ideal as the ideal for everybody, the ideal which everyone should pursue, not just as a small elite, not just a special elite, but everybody. But even then, even within the early Mahayana Buddhist tradition, it wasn't initially presented and described as something which everybody should follow. Following the early Buddhist tradition, it was seen as the role of the spiritually super fit, if you like, the 1% who had extreme spiritual gifts, gifts, and who were able to pursue what was a much more demanding path. So the Bodhisattva ideal was for them, and everybody else should follow the Arahant path. But this changed over time. And over time, the Arahant path, if you like, was devalued or downgraded within Mahayana Buddhism. And in some texts, it almost becomes a false goal, so discredited has it become. But there's a lot of polemical work in that almost vilifying or demonizing of the Arahant ideal. And I think it's worth remembering that in itself, it is a very profound and sublime ideal, despite or notwithstanding what Mahayana Buddhism might have to say about it. Okay, so in terms of moving forward, in terms of trying to characterise the Bodhisattva ideal, I'd like to consider the question, what kind of person is a Bodhisattva? What is a Bodhisattva actually like? And I'd like to read you a little passage that describes that, actually. This passage comes from a text called the Vimalakirti nideshya, or the Vimalakirti sutra. And Vimalakirti is the main character in this text. He is a Bodhisattva, and this is how he is described. His wealth was inexhaustible for the purpose of sustaining the poor and the helpless. He observed a pure morality in order to protect the immoral. He maintained tolerance and self-control in order to reconcile beings who were angry, cruel, violent and brutal. He blazed with energy in order to inspire people who were lazy. He maintained concentration, mindfulness and meditation in order to sustain the mentally troubled. He attained decisive wisdom in order to sustain the foolish. He wore the white clothes of the layman, yet lived impeccably like a religious devotee. He lived at home, but remained aloof from the realm of desire, the realm of pure matter and the immaterial realm. He had a son, a wife and female attendance, yet always maintained continents. He appeared to be surrounded by servants, yet lived in solitude. He appeared to be adorned with ornaments, yet always was endowed with the auspicious signs and marks. He seemed to eat and drink, yet always took nourishment from the taste of meditation. He made his appearance at the fields of sports and in the casinos, but his aim was always to mature those people who were attached to games and gambling. He visited the fashionable heterodox teachers, yet always kept unswerving loyalty to the Buddha. He understood the mundane and transcendental sciences and esoteric practices, yet always took pleasure in the delights of the Dharma. He mixed in all crowds, yet was respected as foremost of all. So that's just a brief section that actually describes Vimalakirti. So he comes across as a pretty spectacular person, in a phrase that my teacher came up with. He is all things to all men and women. He's able to appear in whatever guys is the best guys in order to help other beings to communicate with beings. So maybe you've got a sense from that description that he seems a bit unreal, or perhaps a bit super real or hyper real, doesn't really seem like an ordinary person at all, or like someone who one might meet. So he appears in the guise of an ordinary person, but actually there's something extra ordinary about him. There's maybe even something transcendent about him. And this is very much how the Bodhisattva is presented and described in Mahayana texts, even where they appear as a relatively normal being, in their essence, in their depths, there's something extraordinary, something transcendent. And this becomes still more emphasized when we go on to examine what I call cosmic Bodhisattvas, which I'll return to a little bit later. Okay, so we could say, or I would say, that Vimalakirti is the epitome of the Mahayana ideal. He epitomizes the Bodhisattva ideal. He is all of the qualities of the Bodhisattva rolled up into one. So I just want to go on and maybe characterize some of those qualities just in a little bit more detail, just pick out one or two of them. So most notably in Mahayana texts, the Bodhisattva is characterized by their compassion, their compassion for all beings. And their compassion for beings is so intense, so acute, that despite the suffering that they might experience by being born again and again in a world of suffering, they're willing to undertake this, they're willing to do this in order to benefit other beings. That's how great their compassion is. So they're willing to be reborn not only in this world, but in many worlds, in any world, in order to benefit beings. That is how compassionate they are. So they don't want to simply gain awakening for themselves, they don't want simply release from their own suffering. They somehow, they and themselves will continue to suffer until all beings have been relieved from all sufferings. So essentially, the Bodhisattva is committed to an infinite process of awakening, a one which has no discernible ends, because according to Buddhist cosmology, there's an infinite number of universes and an infinite number of beings. So to awaken all of those beings will take, we could say, an infinite amount of time. But the Bodhisattva is willing to do that, willing to embark on that process, and commit themselves to that process of cosmic awakening. So the Bodhisattva lives out his or her life or understands his or her spiritual perspective, sorry, spiritual path, not just in the context of one life, not just in the context of this life, and not just in the context of themselves. They understand their spiritual path in the context of all beings and in the context of all time, and in the context of all universes. In short, in a cosmic context. They understand what they're doing in terms of its cosmic significance, its cosmic resonance. And I think the way that I've described it in terms of this cosmic context, well, for me at least, it starts to become just a little bit daunting. It just seems rather a tall order to accomplish the awakening of all beings in all universes for all time. I mean, I struggle to get out of bed in the morning, sometimes, never mind saving all sentient beings. And I think this is a very real issue, the fact that it would appear that on one level, the Bodhisattva ideal is just incredibly cosmic, and maybe so cosmic as to seem remote, as to almost become irrelevant. Because, well, how could any of us, with our mundane lies, with our kind of day-to-day concerns, with our bills to pay and jobs to go to, how could we commit ourselves to saving all sentient beings for all time? It seems, in a sense, a little bit ridiculous, maybe. And I think that maybe this starts to raise a serious question about how this vision, how this ideal should be understood, whether it really should be understood as something that, in concrete terms, in practical terms, we would actually fulfill. Or whether, rather, it's more a mythic context, we could say, a visionary universe within which we understand our day-to-day lives. So day-to-day, we may be going about our ordinary lies, we may be going to the shops, taking the car to get service, and so on. We may be supervising somebody's dissertation, which is something I did a few weeks ago. And we may think this is all very, very mundane. And in some sense, it is. So what the Mahayana brings to that apparently mundane conduct is a larger universe of meaning, is a broader context of significance and understanding. So even while the things that we do on a local level, on a day-to-day level, may be very small and very insignificant, they reverberate across the entire cosmos. So if you could imagine, maybe, everything that you do, if you imagine that everything that you did was amplified, let's just say, a thousand times. So every time you shouted at somebody, that was amplified a thousand times. Or every time you open the door for somebody to go through rather than pushing through yourself, that was amplified a thousand times. This is kind of how the Mahayana vision works. It gets us to understand the quality of our actions by placing them in a broader context, a more universal context, by amplifying their apparent consequences. So we might often think, well, what's the point of doing our small, tiny little bit of good, because there's so much going on that's not so good, it won't really make any difference, nobody will notice. And in the short term, and maybe in our immediate circle, that may be true. But in Mahayana terms, this little seed we've sown is maybe growing in different universes across the whole cosmos. And maybe a being who hasn't been born yet, maybe a being that's gonna be born in 10,000 lifetimes will be influenced or be informed by that one little bit of goodness that we acted out. So this is kind of how the Mahayana vision works. We've got our more or less ordinary lives, but that life is understood within a visionary or mythic context, the context of the Bodhisattva ideal. So I want to move forward a little bit more now and talk about some of the distinctive moments, some of the distinctive points of the Bodhisattva life or the Bodhisattva career. And the most important thing or the most significant moment in the life of someone who aspires to be a Bodhisattva who wants to accomplish the Bodhisattva ideal is described as is known as the arising of the Bodhi Chitta. The Bodhi Chitta is the will to awakening, it's the urge towards awakening. So we might be living a very, very humdrum self-referential life and we come across the Bodhisattva ideal. We hear about the fact that there's this ideal whereby you can live not just for yourself, but actually to try and help all sentient beings. And we think, yeah, that's fantastic. I really want to do that. In fact, I am gonna do that. So in Mahayana Buddhist terms, this is the arising of the Bodhi Chitta, which brings about a transformation in the life of the individual. No longer are they simply a humdrum work-a-day person. They are in fact a cosmic being. You could almost say a cosmic being incarnated in a human body. They represent or they exemplify something of a higher order, something transcendent, which shines through them and that one can feel by being in relation to them. I'm not gonna embarrass him by mentioning his name, but I remember going to a talk on a retreat or it's actually a Buddhist convention that I went on and as a senior colleague of mine gave this talk, I had never met this guy before and he actually did and still does. Most of his work out in India, this man. And he'd been living, I think, out in India at that time for about 20 years, doing various things. And he got up and gave this talk. I think it was only about a 20-minute talk or something like that. And I have to say, in a way, he wasn't a great speaker. He didn't really have anything that was all that original or he didn't seem to have a particularly elevated understanding of say Buddhist philosophy or anything of that kind. He spoke quite simply and quite directly. But I remember listening to this man and I honestly felt this is the voice of the Bodhisattva. I can feel the Bodhisattva through this person. So I'm not saying, I'm not saying that this colleague is a cosmic Bodhisattva, but perhaps what I'm saying is that through him, I sensed something of that flavor or something of that flavor was expressed, was revealed through him, something of the transcendent was communicated through him, at least to me. That's how I experienced it. Just to go back to the Bodhi Chitta once more, there's a very famous and celebrated text that describes the path and the life of the Bodhisattva, which is called the Bodhi Chariavatara, a guide to the path to awakening or a guide to the Bodhisattva's way of life. I'm sure some of you have read that or at least come across it. In there, Shanti Teva describes the Bodhi Chitta in the following terms. He says the Bodhi Chitta is the seed of pure happiness in the world and the remedy for the suffering of the world. So it's the most precious thing, the most, in elsewhere, I think he describes it as the elixir of life. It's the essence of life itself, it's what brings about life, it's what gives life. So this is how precious the Bodhi Chitta is seen within the context of Mahayana Buddhism. And one way that my teacher, Sandarachas, spoken about the Bodhi Chitta, is it were as though it's something that possesses the individual, as though one is taken over by this transcendent vision, this transcendent urge that wants to help all beings. It's greater than the ordinary self and guides the conduct of the ordinary self. This is the Bodhi Chitta. So the important thing is then to try to stimulate this, to try to bring this about, to try to give rise to the Bodhi Chitta. This is seen as supremely important in terms of the Mahayana Buddhist path. So how is this done? Well, there are a number of different ways that the Bodhi Chitta can arise, but the one that I'd like to talk about briefly is called, and I'm sorry that I'm not writing these terms up, but you can get some notes afterwards and these words will be written on the notes. It's through what's called the Anutra Puja. So Puja means devotion and Anutra means unsurpassed or supreme, something of that sort. So the Anutra Puja is the supreme worship. So what is that? Well, it can be a number of different things, but one of the ways that this is done is through a particular ritual. And within our, sorry if I'm talking about things that you're already familiar with, but I'm sure not everybody is. Within the context of our Buddhist tradition, we practice a particular ritual called the sevenfold Puja, the sevenfold worship. And this is a particular form of the Anutra Puja, the supreme worship. And actually our Puja itself is closely based on the text the Bodhi Chariya Bhattara that I mentioned a moment ago. But the key to the supreme worship, well, one could say, well, what is it that one is worshiping here? And I suppose ultimately one is worshiping, one could say the awakening mind, which is to say the Bodhi Chitta. One is reverenting that as being, as I mentioned a moment ago, the elixir of life, the most precious thing that one could possibly come into contact with. And so in the context of this ritual, one aims to, I would say, rehearse the stages of the Bodhi Satva life in the hope that through rehearsing those stages, one will give rise oneself to the Bodhi Chitta. So one won't just be doing it as a ritual, one will be doing it for real, or one could even say to the extent that one is doing the ritual, one is doing it for real. The ritual is not something that's separate from the arising, the cultivation of the Bodhi Chitta, the two things are the same. And so the ritual, the sevenfold Puja takes us through a series of moods, a series of stages that are geared towards stimulating the Bodhi Chitta, and they culminate in the next thing that I want to come on to, which is what happens after we have cultivated the Bodhi Chitta. Does anybody know what happens then? What happens when you cultivated the Bodhi Chitta? Does anybody know what happens? Okay, yeah, you take a vow or you make a vow or you give expression to a vow. And this is also seen as an extremely important kind of moment or extremely important ritual feature of the Bodhi Satva life. So once the Bodhi Chitta is arisen, or even as the Bodhi Chitta arises, the Bodhi Satva is so inspired and so committed to the process of universal awakening that he gives expression to a vow, which takes some kind of public form. There's many different forms of these vowels, and if you read a number of different Mahayana texts, you'll come across different ones, but my personal favorite or my personal favorites is a particular set of vowels that are found in a text called the Sukhavati Sutra. And in this text, depending on how you count it, there are 47 or 48 vowels, they're not just one, 47 or 48. And in fact, usually the Bodhi Satva vow is more than one, there might be 10 or 12 or four different lists. I think you'll be relieved to hear that I'm not gonna read out or 48. I'll just read out one. And this is known as the 18th vow, and this is a very, very famous vow that's found in a text called the Sukhavati Sutra. So a Bodhi Satva in that text, who's called Dharmarkara, he makes this vow. And it's a little bit technical, so try and stay with it, and then I'll perhaps explain it afterwards. Blessed one, may I not awaken to unsurpassable, perfect, full awakening if, after I attain awakening, those living beings in other world's fears who conceive the aspiration to attain unsurpassable, perfect, full awakening hear my name and remember me with serene trust will not be met by me at the moment of death. If I should not stand before them then, surrounded and honored by a retinue of monks so that they can meet death without anxiety. So it actually takes quite a complex grammatical form, which you may not have followed. But in brief, what the Bodhi Satva is saying is that basically, unless after I've gained awakening, all beings who call on my name will be reborn in a perfect world that I've created, unless that happens, then I'm not gonna gain awakening. That's how committed I am to this process. I don't want awakening unless, when it happens, all beings who call upon me can also become awakened. And those that know a little bit more about these things, the being that made these vows, at least in this text, went on to become Amitabha Buddha or Amida Buddha, who's the figure on the shrine before us, who we spoke a little about last week. So the fact that this Bodhi Satva Dhammakra went on to become a Buddha, he fulfilled his Bodhi Satva vow, the fact that that happened according to somebody, just means that, if we call upon his name, we will be reborn in an ideal world what's called a pure land or a Buddha field, which is perfect for awakening when we die, or even before, depending on your point of view. And that way of thinking led onto a particular pattern of practice, a particular pattern of Buddhist practice, which is known as pure land Buddhism. I'm not going to develop that more just at the moment. Yeah, so that's the Bodhi Satva vow. I don't think I'll read out any other forms of that just for the moment. Yeah, so someone who's made this vow, or even it may happen before they make the vow actually, it may be another way of stimulating or generating the Bodhi Chitta, the urge to awakening. They practice a particular path, and this path is known as the six perfections. Yeah, well, the six transcending virtues they're sometimes described as. So these are six themes that the Bodhi Satva follows in order to become even more spiritually awakened. I'm not going to go into detail about these six perfections, but I'll list them briefly, and then I thought I might just talk a little bit about just one of them. So the six perfections are starting off with generosity. That's the first of the six perfections. This is the first thing that a Bodhi Satva does in their life. Secondly, they practice ethics. They live an upright life. They follow the Buddhist ethical precepts scrupulously. Thirdly, they practice patience, or forbearance, or restraint. And I'm going to come back to that in a moment. Fourthly, they practice energy. They cultivate energy, and an image that has always struck me, which is said to characterize the life of the Bodhi Satva, is that their life of saving beings and moving from world system to world system is like the life of an elephant that is a bit hot in the midday sun and plunges from cool pool to cool pool over and over again. That's what their life is like. So they've got this energy, but it's not work to them. It's actually a delight because it's what they want to do. They want to share their awakening, and their understanding with all beings. So they have, they cultivate energy. Fifthly, meditation. The Bodhi Satva fulfills and pursues many, many kinds of meditation. And in fact, I think I'm going to read out a passage a little bit later that may characterize something of the Bodhi Satva's meditative state of mind. And finally, they cultivate wisdom. This is the six perfections. So I said that I'd just perhaps step back and talk about one of them. And I just thought I'd say a little bit about forbearance or patience. In fact, rather than say a little bit, I thought I would read just a couple of verses from the Bodhi Chari Avatara just to give you a flavor. So this is Shanti Deva, who was the author of the Bodhi Chari Avatara, talking about forbearance or patience. There is no evil equal to hatred and no spiritual practice equal to forbearance. Therefore, one should develop forbearance by various means with great effort. One's mind finds no peace, neither enjoys pleasure or delight, nor goes to sleep, nor feels secure while the dart of hatred is stuck in the heart. Those whom one honors with wealth and respect, and also one's dependence, even they long to destroy the master who is disfigured by hatred. Even friends shrink from him. He gives, but is not honored. In short, there is no sense in which someone prone to anger is well off. The person who realises that hatred is an enemy since it creates such sufferings as these and who persistently strikes it down is happy in this world and the next. So that's what Shanti Deva has to say about the value and the importance of forbearance and the relative sufferings that are consequent upon hatred and anger. Yeah, I mean, just in passing, it's worth noting that there's an additional list of perfections known as the Ten Perfections. I'm not gonna go into those in detail just at the moment, but what I am gonna touch on is another particular way of conceiving of the Bodhisattva's life, which is in terms of it traversing 10 stages or in technical terms, they're known as boomies. So the Bodhisattva passes through progressively each of these 10 stages or boomies. I think I mentioned at the beginning that the image that I have on screen represents Bodhisattvas who are accomplishing those 10 stages. Again, I'm not gonna cover all of those 10 stages in detail. Instead, I thought I'd just look at one of them for you, but just before I do that, the boomies don't so much describe actual states that we're likely to develop, but that we're likely to pass through. They more represent idealized spiritual states. They're kind of archetypal, you could say, spiritual states. So I don't necessarily think that their conditions that we, as we are, are going to enter. They're more like idealizations of what we could achieve. So I'm just gonna read a little passage 'cause I particularly like this one. And as well, this will give you some kind of idea about what the meditative state of mind or what the spiritual powers of the Bodhisattva are like. So this is to describe the ninth boomy. So it's almost complete awakening, but actually not quite there yet. So this is a very sublime, very elevated condition, and this is how it's described. Even if the beings of a billion worlds were to come up all at the same moment and ask questions, each of them asking questions with countless nuances, each one asking a different question. The enlightening beings, that's the Bodhisattvas, would take in every tone and nuance, and with a single utterance, would satisfy all those beings' minds. Even if the beings of untold worlds all came up in the same moment and asked questions, each with innumerable nuances, each different, the enlightening beings would take them all on instantly and edify them all with a single utterance. Pervading untold worlds, they expound the teaching according to beings' dispositions, faculties, and inclinations. Sitting in discourse on the teaching, receiving the empowerment of the Buddhas, they simultaneously face all beings doing the work of Buddhahood. So that's the ninth boomy. I think I presented a vision of a spiritual path that, to my mind at least, seems very out of reach, even very beyond reach, maybe beyond something that even I personally feel that I could ever fulfill. And yet, seemingly this goal or this path was presented as the goal for all Buddhas to pursue. But I think that it would appear that I perhaps wasn't the only one who found this a bit too much, a bit too beyond them. Because over time, what started to happen is rather than the Bodhisattva ideal being seen as something that perhaps we as individuals might accomplish, it was, it began to be seen as something that had been accomplished by some other cosmic beings who themselves, because they were so amazing and compassionate, were themselves reaching out to us and are themselves reaching out to us to help us become awakened. And so here we move from the idea of the Bodhisattva being, perhaps an earthly being, an earthly person to the Bodhisattva being, a transcendent being, a spiritual being who might appear before us, maybe in a visionary state and who might bring about some kind of blessing, maybe might give us some kind of teaching, maybe even might help us in some quite mundane ways, like help us to get pregnant, if that's something, that we are seeking or release us from a job that we don't enjoy, something of this sort, some kind of more worldly benefit. So, just to kind of move towards the end of the talk, I'm just briefly going to introduce you to a couple of these cosmic figures, and we might have some more talk about them during the question and answers. So, it'll just take me a moment to find my first image. Okay, I hope you can see that figure okay. The figure that we're looking at is called, well, many different things, but in Sanskrit, this figure is called Avalokiteshvara, and that name means something like the Lord who looks down, and that's understood to be looking down with compassion. The particular image that I'm showing here is actually a Chinese painting, and in China, this figure is known as Guanyin, or Guanyin, and in Japan, this figure is known as Kanon. But Avalokiteshvara, Guanyin, is known as the Bodhisattva of compassion. He and sometimes she is seen as the embodiment of compassion. And in the particular image that I'm showing you here, Guanyin is actually leading a being to a higher universe. You can see the higher universe in the top left corner of the picture, and that is a pure land or a Buddha land, and this is where the figure in the bottom right corner, the smaller figure, the pilgrim, we could say, is being guided by Avalokiteshvara to this higher realm. So, this is the role that Avalokiteshvara fulfills. He or she reaches out to beings to help them into a higher state of being a spiritual dimension. But actually, the cult of Avalokiteshvara, or the cult of Guanyin, actually originates in a text called the Lotus Sutra. And in there, this figure is seen as being capable of many different things, and that's perhaps one of the reasons why so many people are attracted to become devoted to Avalokiteshvara. In the translation that I have here, the figure is called He Who Observes the Sounds of the Worlds. That's how the name is translated. And amongst other things, Avalokiteshvara can perform some of the following. If a man who is about to be murdered calls upon the name of the Bodhisattva, He Who Observes the Sounds of the World, then the knives and staves, born by the other fellow, shall be broken in pieces, and the man shall gain deliverance. Even if there is a man where the guilty or guiltless, whose body is fettered with stocks, pillery or chains, if he calls upon the name of the Bodhisattva, He Who Observes the Sounds of the World, they shall all be severed and broken, and he shall straightway gain deliverance. If in a thousand million world of lands full of malicious bandits, there is a merchant chief whose men are carrying precious gems over a road by steep drop. If there is among them one man who makes this proclamation, good men do not let terror take possession of you, you all must single-mindedly call upon the name of the Bodhisattva, He Who Observes the Sounds of the World. And if the multitude of merchants hearing this speak these words in union, then by the mere calling upon his name, they shall forthwith gain deliverance. There's just a few examples. So in the Lotus Sutra, Avalokiteshvara is seen as capable of delivering all beings from worldly difficulties, but also delivering all beings from any spiritual difficulties too, ultimately delivering all beings to the pure land or in more intellectual terms, delivering beings into the state of awakening, liberating all beings, he's capable of this. So Avalokiteshvara Kwanyan is an extremely important and significant figure in Mahayana Buddhism in East Asia, particularly China, Japan, Korea, to some extent, and also Taiwan, a very important figure. I feel like I've talked for quite a long time, and I was going to introduce one or two other figures, but I don't think I'm going to do that just now. So I'll just summarize perhaps a little bit what I've said so far. So what I've been trying to communicate in this evening's talk is that Mahayana Buddhism presents a renewed and expanded vision of what it means to be a Buddhist. No longer is one simply an earthly being who lives out one's days aspiring for some kind of release or escape from a world of suffering. Even while one may walk the earth as an ordinary being, at the same time, one is a visionary being, living out a cosmic ideal, an ideal that is concerned with liberating all beings from suffering. So even while one's day-to-day conduct appears to have limited impact, in the larger scheme of things, it ties into the most sublime vision of universal awakening that one might imagine. So to put it another way, the Bodhisattva lives his or her life in a universal context, a context that sees his or her conduct as significant, not just for themselves, but for all beings. They're not just living for themselves, but they're living in order to benefit all beings. And in the process of accomplishing his or her path towards awakening, he traverses a series of or he cultivates a series of six virtues, six perfections, and traverses a series of ten cosmic stages, ten boomies, which culminate in ultimate and complete awakening. I think I'll leave it there. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING] We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]
