22. THE MIND OF GREAT CAPACITY

FROM ONE POINT of view, personal liberation without freeing others is selfish and unfair, because all sentient beings also have the natural right and desire to be free of suffering. Therefore, it is important for practitioners to engage in the practice of the stages of the path of the highest scope, starting with the generation of bodhicitta. Bodhicitta, the altruistic aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, is the factor that determines whether or not one is a Mahayanist. Therefore, bodhicitta is the sole gateway to the Mahayana path. The moment the faculty of bodhicitta becomes degenerated, one is no longer a bodhisattva. Once one has cultivated bodhicitta, all the meritorious actions that are supported by and complemented with this altruism—even the slightest form of positive action—become causes for the achievement of omniscience.

Omniscience is a wisdom that is able to perceive directly all phenomena, both the ultimate and the conventional natures, simultaneously. It is a state where all the potentials of one’s wisdom are developed fully and where there is also a total freedom from all the obstructions to knowledge. It can be achieved only by purifying all the faults of one’s mind, and only by complementing the practice of wisdom with the practices of method: bodhicitta, compassion, and so forth.

Without this factor of method, bodhicitta, even though one might have great wisdom—the wisdom realizing emptiness such as that of the sravakas and pratyekabuddhas—one will not be able to achieve the omniscient state. It is said that the direct realization of emptiness by the bodhisattvas on the first level, which corresponds to the third of the five paths, the path of seeing, is able to surpass the realization of even the arhats.

When engaging in the meditation of generating bodhicitta, if you visualize your root guru in the aspect of and inseparable from Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, your practice will gain great inspiration. Doing this will enable you to receive powerful inspirations to overcome all manifestations of self-cherishing thoughts within yourself. Therefore, as the preliminary to your meditation on bodhicitta, visualize your root guru as Avalokiteshvara and make fervent requests to him that you may be able to root out the self-centered attitudes from your mind.

In order to cultivate a genuine bodhicitta, you have to depend upon the proper methods and the instructions outlining these. There are two major systems of instructions, one the seven-point cause and effect method, the other the equalizing and exchanging oneself with others. These methods are equally efficacious in enabling a person to generate bodhicitta, but the latter is more profound and is also more effective. From one point of view, the latter method is designed for beings of higher faculty. So the different methods will suit the various mental dispositions of the different practitioners; some might find one more effective than the other. The tradition is that these methods are combined and practiced together.