Not being in prison isn’t the purpose of your life.
You are in prison to develop compassion for other sentient beings.
So many sentient beings suffer for us
When we realize that being caught up in samsara is the most frightening thing, we won’t be able to stand it for even a second.
But not only that. So many sentient beings have to suffer for us, for our comfort, for our survival. So many sentient beings suffer so that we can enjoy shelter. So many sentient beings are killed so that we can have clothes. So many sentient beings have to die so that we can eat and drink. Think of just the chickens—millions and millions of chickens are killed in the world every day just for food. And so many sentient beings have to create negative karma by killing the chickens and all the other beings for our food and our clothes. So many beings get crushed and die when we drive a car. So many sentient beings suffer many hardships for us.
Therefore, you must listen, reflect, meditate on and practice the path that has been revealed by the wise, compassionate, kind, omniscient one, Guru Shakyamuni Buddha. Only by doing this can you be liberated from this samsaric prison so that other sentient beings don’t have to suffer for you, don’t have to create negative karma for you, don’t have to harm others for you. And not only that. You also have the responsibility to liberate other sentient beings as well.
The purpose of life, therefore, is to be most beneficial for sentient beings. Not being in prison isn’t the purpose of your life. You are in prison to develop compassion for other sentient beings.
Without compassion life is meaningless
Even if a person lived for many eons, if they have no compassion, if they do not help other sentient beings, their life will be empty and meaningless.
If one has a lot of power but no compassion, the power is dangerous, for oneself and for others. Without compassion, power is used by the ego, by self-cherishing.
It doesn’t matter how much education we have, if there is no good heart, no compassion, no thought to benefit others, life is empty and meaningless. All the education is used just to develop selfish ego and delusions. There is no meaning in having an education without a good heart, the thought of benefiting others.
Even if a person who is not in prison is able to travel the whole world, going wherever they want, doing whatever they want, if they don’t have a good heart, the thought to benefit others, their life has no meaning.
It doesn’t matter how much wealth a person has, life is empty if there is no compassion.
Without compassion there are only personality clashes because of anger, jealousy and the like. Without compassion we are overwhelmed by problems, like a mouse who’s caught in a trap and dies, an elephant who’s stuck in the mud and suffocates, a fly who’s caught in a spider’s web and is eaten alive or a moth who’s attracted by a candle flame and drowns in the hot wax.
Without compassion in your heart, your life is enmeshed in problems that continue until you die. Without compassion, all you have is ego, which harms numberless sentient beings, both directly and indirectly, including those in the whole world, in your country, your own parents, your partner, your children and yourself.
But with compassion you will become the source of peace and happiness, both temporary and ultimate, for numberless sentient beings, including those in the whole world, in your country, your own parents, your partner, your children and, lastly, yourself.
Experience problems with compassion
As we discussed in chapter 7, you can use the situation of being in prison—even being executed—as a means to develop compassion by exchanging yourself for others: taking upon yourself sentient beings’ sufferings and the causes of suffering and giving your own merits and happiness to them. See the meditation on giving and taking in chapter 18.
You can decide to experience prison on behalf of all the sentient beings who are in prison now and who have the karma to be in prison in the future. Think, “I am experiencing prison on behalf of all sentient beings so that they don’t have to experience it. Let them have the happiness of enlightenment and all the happiness up to enlightenment. I am experiencing prison for all numberless other sentient beings.” From time to time, every day, think like that.
If you have cancer or aids, for example, you can experience your illness with compassion, for the sake of other sentient beings, to bring them all happiness up to and including enlightenment. Thus your sickness becomes part of your path to enlightenment.
Or, if you have a bad reputation, you can experience it for sentient beings.
In this way all your problems—being in prison, failed relationships, illness, business failure, unemployment, a bad reputation—become a special, heroic practice. Before, such experiences were something that you disliked and only wanted to get rid of. But now, with your practice of compassion, they become highly desirable, special, powerful, even necessary, for the development of your mind in the path.
Wanting happiness for others brings happiness for yourself
Devoting your life to achieving happiness for others is also the best way to achieve your own happiness. The more you practice compassion, the greater the peace and happiness in your heart. When you sincerely practice kindness to others, even if you don’t expect it, naturally the result is that they are kind to you, are happy with you, listen to you.
You become like the rising sun, illuminating all. In this way, you achieve happiness now, every day, every hour, every minute. By continuing to live your life like this, you go from happiness to happiness and, at the end of your life, you will have no regrets, not the slightest fear of dying, only incredible enjoyment, happiness.
Compassion can heal illness
In recent times, in Seattle, one student had cancer that had spread throughout her body. The doctors were afraid to operate; they felt that it was too risky. So she did the practice of exchanging self for others, as I mention above. See chapter 18.
When she eventually went to the hospital for a check-up, they did not find any cancer. The doctors were completely amazed. She explained what she had practiced, but they could not understand how this meditation could cure her cancer totally. This is one subject they cannot explain.
Compassion is the main cause of bodhicitta
When someone achieves bodhicitta, they become a bodhisattva. In that second they become the spiritual heir of all the buddhas: they receive the name.
So much merit, unbelievable, unbelievable merit is needed to actualize bodhicitta, the root of which is compassion. This compassion fuels the skies of benefit that derive from bodhicitta, like rocket fuel powers a spaceship or electricity generated by a power station lights up an entire city.
It is compassion that has already brought numberless sentient beings to enlightenment in the past, is bringing numberless sentient beings to enlightenment at present and will bring numberless sentient beings to enlightenment in the future. It is compassion that makes numberless buddhas do perfect, unmistaken work for numberless sentient beings until they achieve enlightenment. And it is compassion that causes all buddhas to have omniscient mind and the perfect power to benefit all sentient beings.
Bodhisattvas are the supreme object of offerings of all sentient beings: we collect inconceivable merits when we make offerings to them. We collect so much merit just by seeing them, or hearing their voice, or even when they give us something, or touch us.
Even if we harm a bodhisattva, because of their realizations they only benefit us in return. They pray for good things to happen to us. There is a saying in relation to bodhisattvas: “If you can’t make a connection with them by doing good things, then make a connection by doing harm.” This is not saying you must harm a bodhisattva, but if it does happen, it is worthwhile. In return you are guided by that bodhisattva from life to life; they only benefit you, only pray for you.
For example, when the Buddha was a bodhisattva he sacrificed his blood for five yakshas; they drank his blood. In return the bodhisattva prayed that in a future life they would be his direct disciples, receive teachings from him and, of course, that they would go forth to liberation and enlightenment. Due to that karmic connection, in the next life they became his disciples as human beings and received their first Dharma teachings from him at Deer Park in Sarnath, on the four noble truths, the first turning of the Dharma wheel.
The benefits of bodhicitta are unbelievable!
With bodhicitta you can completely dry up the ocean of samsaric suffering and its causes and achieve liberation and enlightenment because it helps you gain the wisdom directly realizing emptiness, which eradicates both gross and subtle defilements.
Bodhicitta is what allows arya bodhisattvas to abandon the sufferings of samsara, including rebirth, old age, sickness and death, by achieving the right-seeing path (the third of the five I mentioned before).
Even if you have gained the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness, the highest you can achieve without bodhicitta is liberation from suffering and its causes, nirvana. These arhats have many inconceivable qualities, but they still have the remainder of the suffering aggregates.
Bodhisattvas abandon the thought of achieving their own liberation from the ocean of samsaric suffering and its causes—delusions and karma—as one discards used toilet paper, having not an atom of interest in it. They have only aversion to gaining the happiness of nirvana for themselves alone.
Bodhicitta is the door to the Mahayana path to enlightenment and the root of the limitless qualities of a buddha’s holy body, speech and mind. Bodhicitta allows bodhisattvas to complete the accumulation of the two types of merit, transcendental wisdom and virtue; and is the cause of their achieving the two holy bodies, rupakaya (the holy body of form) and dharmakaya (the holy body of mind), which is the ultimate goal. The sole purpose of achieving these two holy bodies is to be able to do perfect work for all sentient beings.
Even though there are numberless sentient beings and it can take a bodhisattva three countless great eons to complete the accumulations that enable them to bring every single one to enlightenment, what gives them the determination to do so is bodhicitta. No matter how many eons it takes to get even one sentient being to generate a single virtuous thought, the bodhisattvas will try to make it happen without being discouraged. In the Ornament for the Mahayana Sutras, Maitreya (the future buddha) said,
In order to ripen even one virtuous thought [in the mind of a sentient being], the bodhisattva, the Victorious Ones’ heir, whose mind is stabilized in supreme perseverance for highly ripening sentient beings, does not get discouraged, even if it takes thousands of ten million eons.
The courageous bodhisattvas are able to bear all the hardships of working for sentient beings, no matter how great they are, even if it costs them their life. Since bodhisattvas see how beneficial it is to bear hardship in order to work for others, they are not only able to bear it but they experience limitless joy as well. For bodhisattvas, even dying as a result of working for others is like drinking nectar, or like the delight of a swan when plunging into a cool pond on a hot day.
Your life belongs to others
You ask what the best practice is for you. What all the numberless buddhas found when they checked for sentient beings was that bodhicitta is the best practice. My answer to your question is the same. I cannot answer differently from what all the buddhas have said in the past when they checked what was most beneficial.
The practice and realization of bodhicitta is the most important thing in life because it fulfills not only your own wishes for happiness but also those of all other sentient beings—each and every one.
With bodhicitta, you achieve all the happiness of this life, the happiness of all the coming future lives, the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara and, finally, you attain full enlightenment. Then there is no limit to your ability to benefit all sentient beings.
Think of all the human beings in just one country, the many millions—you are able to cause happiness up to enlightenment for every one of them. You are able to cause all this happiness for all the human beings in this world and all the human beings in other universes. For numberless human beings you are able to cause all this happiness.
Imagine all the various types of animals and insects there are. The ants, for example, as I mentioned before: in one spot, under one stone, in one ants’ nest, there are so many ants, countless thousands of ants. Then in one field, or on one mountain, in one country, in all the countries of this world—we can’t imagine how many there are. You are able to cause all happiness up to enlightenment for them.
Imagine all the numberless sentient beings you can see only through a microscope. Your bodhicitta is able to cause all happiness up to enlightenment for all these sentient beings.
From you, from your bodhicitta, the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, gods and demi-gods can receive all levels of happiness up to enlightenment. Isn’t that incredible?
You can’t imagine what your bodhicitta can do! What else is there in life to enjoy? It doesn’t matter whether you are in prison or at home. Wherever you are, by practicing bodhicitta you have the best life, the happiest life, the most meaningful life. It doesn’t matter where you are, your mind can practice this.
Getting out of prison is not the purpose of your life
Remember: getting out of prison is not the purpose of your life. Being rich is not the purpose of life. Being healthy is not the purpose of life. Having a long life is not the purpose of life. These things are not the meaning of life. The purpose of life is to be beneficial for others, useful for sentient beings. If you are able to make your life beneficial for sentient beings, to bring them happiness, then your purpose in life will be achieved.
Our life belongs to sentient beings. Therefore I advise you to live your life with a bodhicitta motivation, so that everything you do, as much as possible, is to free sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and for them to achieve enlightenment.
To accomplish this you need to achieve full enlightenment, therefore do everything—study, practice, meditate, eat, walk, sleep, sit—with this motivation.
remember
- So many sentient beings suffer just so that we can exist.
- Without compassion life is meaningless.
- Experience problems with compassion.
- Wanting happiness for others brings happiness for ourselves.
- Compassion can heal illness.
- Bodhicitta comes from compassion.
- Your life belongs to sentient beings.
