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.
Why it works
Patrul Rinpoche defines relative bodhicitta as the mind intent on awakening for others’ sake, and ultimate bodhicitta as the wisdom that directly realises emptiness. He adds that relative bodhicitta itself needs two aspects, compassion focused on beings and wisdom directed toward awakening. Trulshik Rinpoche’s short instruction pairs them the same way: recognise all beings as your mother for the relative, and see all phenomena as dreamlike for the absolute. Holding the two together is meant to keep care from hardening into grim duty or attachment to results, and to keep insight into emptiness from cooling into indifference.
How to do it
- Begin by forming the relative aspiration in your own words: that your practice and your life be for the awakening and welfare of all beings.
- Rest a few minutes in that wish until it is felt rather than recited.
- Then turn to the ultimate side as your tradition teaches it, for instance by noticing that the one wishing, the beings wished for and the wish itself appear vividly yet cannot be found as fixed things.
- Rest briefly in that open recognition without trying to produce anything.
- Before ending, return to the beings you began with, so the openness comes back to rest in care.
Evidence
The definitions are Patrul Rinpoche’s, in An Essential Instruction on Refuge and Bodhicitta. Trulshik Rinpoche’s Advice for Tenzin Jamchen gives the paired instruction in a few lines. Khenpo Shenga’s Three Noble Principles shows the same pairing as the shape of a session: arousing bodhicitta at the start, resting without reference points in the middle, and returning to love and compassion between sessions. This is contemplative tradition. No research isolates it. (anecdotal)
Patrul says ultimate bodhicitta arises only through the power of meditating on the path. A brief exercise like this one is at most a pointer toward it, and the emptiness side is usually studied with a teacher.
Sources
- Patrul Rinpoche. An Essential Instruction on Refuge and Bodhicitta, trans. Adam Pearcey (2004). Lotsawa House.
- Trulshik Rinpoche. Advice for Tenzin Jamchen (a short instruction on relative and absolute bodhicitta), trans. Adam Pearcey (2018). Lotsawa House.
- Khenpo Shenpen Nangwa (Khenpo Shenga). The Three Noble Principles, trans. Adam Pearcey (2007). Lotsawa House.
Common mistake
Using emptiness as a reason to stop caring (“beings aren’t really there, so it doesn’t matter”), which every source here treats as missing the point. The opposite mistake is never letting the wish loosen, so that it becomes a heavy weight one carries alone.
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.
- 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.
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
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: cite or embed this practice · more practices graded Practitioner experience