Dear dharma friends,
There’s a way right now that we might be moving through the world and getting heavier and heavier. Each day brings fresh headlines, fresh outrage, fresh heartbreak. Perhaps it’s getting harder to get out of bed. Maybe we feel like we’re collapsing under the weight of so much sorrow and suffering. Things in America, and as they affect the rest of the world, are scary, turbulent, chaotic. It would be senseless to deny this.
I have thoughts about how to get through the day. That’s all the dharma is, by the way: how to get through this day and the next. Not in a small, material way, but by answering the large questions, like what are we doing here, and what is this life for?
Accept samsara
Most of us are going through life trying to establish safety by imposing control over samsara. We feel outrage over this washing machine life. We think that if we could dominate samsara, we’d be happy.
This idea is understandable but it is a delusion. Samsara is very good at its job, which is to push/pull us in the current of change. Samsara is wanting what we aren’t getting; getting what we don’t want; and having things change even as we try to hold onto them.
A lot of suffering comes from people trying to impose stasis on change. It’s actually not possible. Most people will work harder and harder, thinking that dominating better will bring safety/happiness/peacefulness and freedom. This only gets us deeper into delusion. You can probably think of some current examples of this desperate spiral. These actions stem from ignorance, which is why Tibetan Buddhists consider ignorance to be the root poison of samsara.
Instead of fighting it, we want to accept samsara. In the morning, from bed, we might say, “Hey samsara, good morning! I suspect you’re going to do a good job today.”
One of the Buddha’s major realizations was this changeful flavor of samsara. If we could accept change, then we wouldn’t be trying to stand on permanent ground. We would dance in the whirlwind.
Samsara is transformed by bodhicitta
So how do we get through our days without collapsing in grief? By inverting the structure of the heart.
It’s like we could trudge uphill through mud and rain over eons and eons. That is a path. Or we could sit on a rock, open our heart, and boom! we’re at the top of the mountain. Opening our heart to everyone is vowing to be spiritually liberated to serve everyone. This is the shortcut of the spiritual journey. In Buddhism, the key to liberation is called bodhicitta, the awakened mind.
“Bodhi” means awakening. Because the Buddha sat under a bodhi tree and was enlightened, it is the tree’s name that we give to awakening. There is wisdom in every part of that entomology.
“Citta” is consciousness. Awakened consciousness— the awakened mind, which in Thai and Tibetan refers to the heart.
The world that feels chaotic, threatening, and out of control right now is the same one that is sublime, perfect, transcendent. The change comes from the orientation of our heart. When our heart is moved not for our own optimization but for everyone’s well-being, the circumstances that weighed us down before energize us. They charge us right up.
Bodhicitta is divine purpose. It looks like Senator Cory Booker standing for 25 hours to deliver a love song to America. It looks like every woman who is turning into a mother, tearing herself open to bring new life.
Having bodhicitta doesn’t mean life doesn’t hurt. Samsara hurts. And, we are animated by forces larger than us. What we are doing is worth the sacrifice. When we have turned our hearts open, when we live each day in the fire of bodhicitta, we have too much to do to angst and stew.
Bodhicitta is innate
The awakened heart is within us. A grown-up recently asked my son if he wants to make lots of money when he grows up, and my son answered no, because then other people would have less money. The grown-up reported, “You’re raising a good socialist.” I hope I’m raising a good Buddhist! That was also my kid’s big heart on display, the same big heart we all have.
We spend so much time toughening up, and I do worry that my son’s heart might not survive the world, but the answer, from a Buddhist perspective, to all our suffering, is to let that limpid and tender heart show.
We all have the potential for bodhicitta. There is a bud in all of our hearts. In some respects, we aren’t in charge of when the bud will bloom. But certainly, right now, the circumstances are acute in the world. If, a few years ago we could roll to brunch and chill, forgetting that so many people in the world are struggling, that seems hard now, if not impossible.
This could be a good thing. The circumstances are forcing us to awaken our dormant potential.
This might be the very moment our hearts have been waiting for, the spring of springs.
Awakened heart is rocket fuel
The traditional texts aren’t exaggerating when they say that bodhicitta is a shortcut. It provides the rocket-fuel we need to escape samsaric orbit. In the beginning, when we first discover the spaciousness and sometimes-bliss of meditation, we might vow to be the best meditator in the world. We will be the most staunch sitter, with the best posture, whom the teacher loves most!
Eventually, that enthusiasm wears off. We go back to our life and our comforts. No ordinary commitment to the cushion survives samsara.
It is bodhicitta that gives us enough fuel to keep going. Only the most transcendent commitment can get us through. If you are here for the suffering of the world, you look around, and boy do you see it. Then you have to sit. You go back to your cushion again and again, with the same meditation instruction, and the same human foibles of your teacher, because you see the need for transformation. You feel the suffering of the world so deeply that you must act.
Holding genuine bodhicitta effaces a lot of the ego. It doesn’t matter if you missed a certain lama’s empowerment, or if you didn’t sit in the front and center of every retreat, if you are here for all people. You might even want other people to get a good view!
So you see, bodhicitta is the secret ingredient to liberation.
How to bodhicitta
It has to be genuine. To some extent, we aren’t in charge of when our heart opens. We will all get there eventually, eons over eons. But we might want to pray that we get there right now. In this life.
Here is the bodhicitta prayer to recite, if it feels good to you:
May the precious and sublime awakened mind Arise where it has not arisen And where it has arisen May it never decay But grow, ever more and more
Bodhicitta can feel scary as you approach it. That might be ego shouting at you, trying to shake you out of your march to liberation.
This could sound like: what are you crazy? You, awaken? Sunisa must not be hearing your crazy mind in meditation. You suck! You’re a loser! Remember that time you did… to ….? No one who did that can awaken. Sunisa doesn’t mean that you can awaken.
Here are some methods to cut through the ego worry:
You might bow and say, look, I’m going to try this bodhicitta just for an hour! Or just for 5 minutes! Then we can see how we did.
You might breathe into that fear. See if you can relax into it.
You could laugh. Laughter is good for the ego. It deflates without condemning.
You might say: Wow, that is a great argument. I see you putting so much effort into making sure I don’t make this commitment. Are you worried? Want to tell me?
And then you make that earth-touching gesture that the Buddha did right before his Enlightenment, calling the earth to witness the eons of good deeds culminating in the very moment he tipped into awakening.
You could say, today is a good day to awaken.
Today is the perfect day to have an ego-shattering commitment to serve the world.
Bodhicitta is easier than it seems because it is already within us. We let it open. We let it express.
We don’t “do” anything— like trying to swim then noticing, if you can calm down, that you already know how to float.
Trust in your big heart.
It wants to bloom.
Love,
Sunisa
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Aw. You’re very welcome 💗
Just what I needed today. This was heart-filling, thank you!!!!!!