When I was about six years old I received the essential
bodhichitta teaching from an old woman sitting in the sun. I was walking by her
house one day feeling lonely, unloved and mad, kicking anything I could find.
Laughing, she said to me, “Little girl, don’t you go letting life harden your
heart.”
Right there, I received this pith
instruction: we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we
become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make
us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
If we were to ask the Buddha, “What
is bodhichitta?” he might tell us that this word is easier to understand than
to translate. He might encourage us to seek out ways to find its meaning in our
own lives. He might tantalize us by adding that it is only bodhichitta that
heals, that bodhichitta is capable of transforming the hardest of hearts and
the most prejudiced and fearful minds.
Chitta means
“mind” and also “heart” or “attitude.” Bodhi means “awake,”
“enlightened,” or “completely open.” Sometimes the completely open heart and
mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender
as an open wound. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love. Even the
cruelest people have this soft spot. Even the most vicious animals love their
offspring. As Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche put it, “Everybody loves something, even if it’s only tortillas.”
Bodhichitta is also equated, in part, with compassion—our
ability to feel the pain that we share with others. Without realizing it we
continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up
protective walls made of opinions, prejudices and strategies, barriers that are
built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are further fortified by
emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy and envy,
arrogance and pride. But fortunately for us, the soft spot—our innate ability
to love and to care about things—is like a crack in these walls we erect. It’s
a natural opening in the barriers we create when we’re afraid. With practice we
can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable
moment—love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy—to awaken
bodhichitta.
An analogy for bodhichitta is the
rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety
and panic; sometimes to anger, resentment and blame. But under the hardness of
that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. This is our link with
all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great
compassion. It can humble us when we’re arrogant and soften us when we are
unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our
indifference. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted
fully can be shared with all.
The Buddha said that we are never
separated from enlightenment. Even at the times we feel most stuck, we are
never alienated from the awakened state. This is a revolutionary assertion.
Even ordinary people like us with hang-ups and confusion have this mind of
enlightenment called bodhichitta. The openness and warmth of bodhichitta is in
fact our true nature and condition. Even when our neurosis feels far more basic
than our wisdom, even when we’re feeling most confused and hopeless,
bodhichitta—like the open sky—is always here, undiminished by the clouds that
temporarily cover it.
Given that we are so familiar with
the clouds, of course, we may find the Buddha’s teaching hard to believe. Yet
the truth is that in the midst of our suffering, in the hardest of times, we
can contact this noble heart of bodhichitta. It is always available, in pain as
well as in joy.
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