Tell the wish to go from setting out on the journey
Notice whether your bodhicitta is still a wish (aspiring) or has become a way of acting (engaging), and let one grow into the other.
Warum es wirkt
Śāntideva says bodhicitta has two aspects, the mind aspiring to awaken and the mind that acts on it. He compares the difference to the one between wishing to go somewhere and actually setting out (Bodhicaryāvatāra 1.15–16), and says aspiration brings great results while a continuous stream of merit comes only from the enacted form. Patrul Rinpoche uses the same image. Naming the two lets a person see where their intention actually is: a sincere wish is real and worth valuing, and it is also not yet a commitment to change how one lives. The distinction gives the next step a shape rather than leaving it as a vague ideal.
So gehst du vor
- Sit quietly and ask yourself what you are hoping your practice is for, and answer honestly in a sentence.
- If that answer includes the welfare of others, notice it as aspiring bodhicitta: a wish to go.
- Then ask what, today, would count as setting out: one concrete action that serves someone beyond yourself.
- Do that one action with the aspiration in mind, and afterwards notice whether it felt like part of the same intention.
- Over weeks, keep both in view: renew the wish each morning, and keep a running sense of what acting on it has meant.
Evidenz
The two-part division is Śāntideva’s, in Bodhicaryāvatāra 1.15–16, and Patrul Rinpoche’s Essential Instruction on Refuge and Bodhicitta repeats it with the same image of wishing to go and making the journey. No study tests the distinction. The nearest research finds that short-term compassion training increased altruistic giving to a stranger in a laboratory game (Weng and colleagues, 2013), which suggests a trained intention can show up in behaviour. That study trained compassion, not bodhicitta. (anecdotal)
The texts present enacted bodhicitta as including formal bodhisattva precepts, which are traditionally taken through a vow ceremony. This exercise borrows the distinction for reflection and is not that commitment.
Quellen
- Śāntideva. Bodhicaryāvatāra (Introduction to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life), Chapter 1: The Benefits of Bodhicitta, trans. Adam Pearcey (2007). Lotsawa House.
- Patrul Rinpoche. An Essential Instruction on Refuge and Bodhicitta, trans. Adam Pearcey (2004). Lotsawa House.
- Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E., Caldwell, J. Z. K., Olson, M. C., Rogers, G. M., & Davidson, R. J. (2013). Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1171–1180.
Häufiger Fehler
Treating the aspiration as worthless until it is perfectly enacted, or treating the warm feeling of aspiring as if it already were the journey. Śāntideva values both and keeps them distinct.
Übe das mit IX Coach
Weitere Übungen für Bodhicitta: The Awakening Mind and How It Is Cultivated
- Hold relative and ultimate bodhicitta together
Pair the heartfelt wish to benefit beings with the recognition that nothing, including that wish, is as solid as it seems.
- Recognise beings as your mother, remember their kindness, wish to repay it
Lay the first three links of the sevenfold instruction: see others as having once cared for you, recall that care, and let the wish to repay it arise.
- Carry love and compassion into the superior intention
Complete the sevenfold chain: from love and compassion, take personal responsibility for others’ welfare, and from that the wish to awaken arises.
- Equalise yourself and others
See plainly that everyone, like you, wants happiness and does not want suffering, so there is no principled reason to put yourself first.
- Exchange yourself and others through envy, rivalry and pride
Imaginatively take another person’s position and look back at yourself from there, until self-cherishing loosens its grip.
- Recite the refuge and bodhicitta aspiration
Begin practice, and your day, by voicing the aspiration in a short traditional verse, so the intention is renewed rather than assumed.
- Dedicate whatever good came of it
Close each session, or each day, by turning whatever was good in it toward the awakening and welfare of all beings.
- Work with “who am I to aspire to this?”
When the aspiration feels absurdly too big for someone like you, treat that feeling itself as part of the practice rather than a verdict.
Verwandte Konzepte
- Tonglen: Die tibetische Praxis des Nehmens und Sendens
Sich dem Leid mit dem Atem zuwenden – die radikale Mitgefühlspraxis des tibetischen Buddhismus
- Lojong: Tibetisches Geistestraining
Die 59 Slogans und ihre praktische Anwendung auf alltägliche Widrigkeit und Mitgefühl
- Metta Bhavana: Die Praxis der liebenden Güte
Systematische Kultivierung von Wohlwollen gegenüber sich selbst, anderen und allen Wesen
- Karuṇā: Compassion Meditation in the Theravāda Tradition
The second divine abiding, practised the way the Theravāda commentaries lay it out