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Big love,

Nick Ribush
Director

This Month's Teaching: The Importance of bodhicitta

The bodhisattva vows were requested when I was at Chenrezig Institute two years ago, but I was unable to give them at that time. Now you have asked again and I'm very fortunate to be able to give them, and you people are also very fortunate in having come to the conclusion that you would like to take them.  These vows can be taken in either of two ways: one is the wishing way, where you think that you would like to actualize bodhicitta as much as possible, understanding that this is the best way to live; and the other way is by taking the vows—the eighteen root vows and the forty-six branch vows—in a serious way. I am sure that you understand this, I am not going to go into the details.

The thing is, from the Buddhist point of view, that it is very important for us to have the enlightenment attitude. It is an important thing. The reason is, I think I can say, that without some kind of attitude or thought with which to transform the actions of our daily life, life seems to be a disaster. If you are living in a couple relationship, or even if you are just a single person, you still have to relate with human beings. Even if you go into the Himalaya mountains, you still have to relate with sentient beings, human beings. There is no place that you can go where you don't have to relate with human beings, so it is very important to have this attitude, because all actions, both good and bad, depend on it. You know—I'm not going to tell you that, you know already. So in order to transform our lives, to live in the best way, we desperately need to have constantly such as the divine quality enlightenment attitude, bodhicitta.

Otherwise, you can see in the West, that people dedicate their entire lives or most of their lives totally to sense pleasure, sense pleasure. Can you imagine? It is obvious why human beings in the West are easily depressed and kill themselves—it is because their purpose, goal or destination of life is so narrow. So narrow. “If this man or lady cannot give me satisfaction, there is nothing worthwhile in this earth.” Can you imagine that? This is the life, this is the life. It is a completely cold, narrow mind. They particularly mention, “If this lady, this man does not give me satisfaction, then I'm not worthwhile.” It just isn't true. There are so many millions of ladies and millions of gentlemen too, but such a neurotic attitude, such a wrong view, so fanatical, such a self-cherishing thought, not seeing beyond the limitation. You can see, life is so empty, so empty.

So you see, the West is unbelievable. They try so hard to make themselves happy by putting material possessions into different perspectives. “Maybe if I put it this way, something interesting; maybe I put this way, something interesting; maybe I put this way, something interesting; maybe I put this way, something interesting; maybe if I put this way, something interesting.” [Lama turns his body in all different directions.] All those things are not true—can you imagine? This way, this way, and this way—what difference? I mean, of course relatively there is some difference, but that doesn't make you satisfied, does it? Yet they try so much, unbelievable.

It is very good to see the reality of Western life, or the Western way of living life, to check up historically. If you do you will really get a bit of a hard shock, I tell you. It is not happy; Western life is definitely not a happy life, I can say. I'm sorry. Even though you think your life is happy, it’s not true. I'm not saying that I have investigated each individual and discovered that each is unhappy; I am not saying like this, but I am just looking at it sort of generally. It is a very difficult life. And also, people in Western samsara have some kind of instinctive attitude. I don't know, perhaps I can say instinctive—there is no checking, no observation, they just do things, just spinning, just doing things instinctively, instinctively, spinning themselves. This makes me so afraid. No observation, no checking what's going on. That's dangerous.

I can see when Western people start to meditate, when they begin to observe their attitude, then they can see, “What has been happening to me?” At some point they really become crazy. Why? Because before they were just going round and round like this, then suddenly [Lama circles his finger round and round in the air and suddenly brings it up to his eyes indicating that people first circle around until they suddenly see themselves for the first time] so the nervous system is shocked. So, instead of becoming better by meditation they get worse. But it is much better to question for a minute, rest in this way, than just spinning around; you do not become worse.

So it is good to learn how to change the instinctive behavior in order to transform the Western life. It is the instinctive attitude that leads to certain actions. Any movements of the body and speech result from attitudes of the mind, and in order to transform that, you need quite a lot of effort, observation, and penetration on the motivation.

This teaching was given by Lama Yeshe when he was bestowing bodhisattva vows at Chenrezig Institute, Australia, on September 14, 1979. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. To continue reading this teaching visit our website here.