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.
Why it works
In Patrul Rinpoche’s step-by-step guide to the Bodhicaryāvatāra, the first bodhicitta meditation is the equality of self and other. The reason is that “we are the same as others in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering.” He then walks through Śāntideva’s arguments (8.97–99). We protect our future self from pain even though it does not hurt us now. The hand removes a thorn from the foot though the pain is not its own. So the line drawn around “mine” is narrower than the way we already behave. Undercutting that boundary takes away the justification for self-preference while leaving care intact.
How to do it
- Recall a recent moment of your own happiness, and wish from the heart: may all beings find such happiness and its causes.
- Recall a recent moment of your own suffering, and wish: may I and all beings be free from suffering and its causes.
- Bring to mind one specific person and reflect: they want happiness exactly as much as I do, and dread pain exactly as much.
- Consider Śāntideva’s question in your own words: why do I protect my future self, whom I cannot feel now, but not this person?
- Let any felt sense of equality settle, without forcing yourself to feel more than you do.
Evidence
The meditation and its quoted verses (Bodhicaryāvatāra 8.90, 8.97–99) come from Patrul Rinpoche’s Brightly Shining Sun, which places equalising before exchanging. Patrul’s Essential Instruction lists equalising and exchanging among the precepts of aspiring bodhicitta. Koopmann-Holm and colleagues randomised 74 people to compassion meditation, mindfulness meditation, an active control class or no class for eight weeks, then asked them to write to a convicted murderer. Only the compassion group wrote more optimistic letters, and there were no significant differences in empathy, sympathy or forgiveness. That is a narrow but real signal about compassion toward someone hard to relate to. The study tested compassion meditation in general, not equalising. (anecdotal)
Patrul himself notes that his way of presenting equalising and exchanging resembles Sakya Paṇḍita’s and differs slightly from most commentaries. Different lineages order and frame these steps differently.
Sources
- Patrul Rinpoche. The Brightly Shining Sun: A Step-by-Step Guide to Meditating on the Bodhicaryāvatāra, trans. Adam Pearcey (2004; revised 2007 and 2019). Lotsawa House.
- Patrul Rinpoche. An Essential Instruction on Refuge and Bodhicitta, trans. Adam Pearcey (2004). Lotsawa House.
- Koopmann-Holm, B., Sze, J., Jinpa, T., & Tsai, J. L. (2020). Compassion meditation increases optimism towards a transgressor. Cognition and Emotion, 34(5), 1028–1035.
Common mistake
Turning equality into self-erasure, as if your own happiness no longer counts. The reasoning is that you and others count the same, which still includes you.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Bodhicitta: The Awakening Mind and How It Is Cultivated
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Related concepts
- Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending
Moving toward suffering on the breath — Tibetan Buddhism’s radical compassion practice
- Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
The 59 slogans and their practical application to everyday adversity and compassion
- Metta Bhavana: The Practice of Loving-Kindness
Systematic cultivation of goodwill toward self, others, and all beings
- Karuṇā: Compassion Meditation in the Theravāda Tradition
The second divine abiding, practised the way the Theravāda commentaries lay it out
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