Curated Resources: Bodhicitta
Bodhichitta References
The following are excerpts from lineage texts that help to describe the qualities of Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity from the perspective of Shambhavananda Yoga and the Yogic tradition. You can download a PDF of the resources by clicking the button below, or read them here on the website.
Excerpt from “Tara’s Enlightened Activity”
By the Khenpo Brothers
The Supreme Preparation: Developing Bodhichitta
The first supreme quality describes the quality of preparation with which we begin our practice. The best preparation we could possibly have is to successfully develop the supreme motivation, which is bodhichitta. Thus, before we start any dharma practice, we should develop this quality with intensity, "from the core of our hearts and the marrow of our bones." We should develop powerful feelings of love and compassion for all beings, freshness and interest in the practices we are about to do, and closeness to the enlightened beings whose practice we are about to begin. We should then meditate with courage and commitment on the four immeasurables, or four boundless ones.
These are: boundless love, boundless compassion, boundless joy, and boundless equanimity. 46
With that preparation every teaching becomes a great source of wisdom and a great inspiration. We also never become bored and tired of our practice. Sometimes when we don't develop the first supreme one regularly and intensely enough, we may start with enthusiasm, but then our practice collapses. On the other hand, if we repeatedly, firmly reestablish our feelings of love, compassion, joyfulness in effort, and freshness, our practice will become an undying practice, continually staying in a state of growth. So motivation is really important!
Clearly recognize that this is the precious ground where every beautiful thing grows and develops. Whether receiving teachings,
contemplating teachings, meditating on teachings, doing formal practice, or carrying out positive activities, combine all of this with bodhichitta and the four immeasurables. Bring whatever arises into the practice and transform it into joy, peace, and benefit for others and ourselves.
Excerpts from “Spiritual Cannabalism”
By Swami Rudrananda
Love:
LOVE is complete trust and surrender. Only by letting go deeply can we take into ourselves the highest ingredients necessary for our evolvement.
More from this passage:“One morning I went to pay my respects to the saint, as usual. He had already prayed and breakfasted. The heat rising in me was beyond the point I could bear. As I started into his room, my body halted. I could not get it to move. I actually had to put my hands on the doorjamb and push myself through. That morning the heat within me reached such an intensity that it started a fire - a fire that burned in me for two years. I believe that this experience with the Shankaracharya of Puri started my real spiritual growth. The process which began in his presence has not stopped to this day. My love for the old saint was the catalyst which started the process. Love is complete trust and surrender. My love allowed all of the saint's forces to enter me. His forces broke down my coarser matter during the two years of burning. Only by letting go deeply can we take into ourselves the highest ingredients necessary for our evolvement.”
2. You must always find within your fellow man something to love. Love breaks down the barriers within people. Anyone who is alive is worthy of being loved, for the ability to live is a creative act.
3. Spiritual growth, like love, can exist only in freedom.
4. The statement "God is love" expresses a simple fact of consciousness which allows for increasing responsibility. If it is an act of love which allows us to increase our effort, the increased effort allows us to encompass all that was previously experienced.
Compassion:
1. Compassion is an expression of great objective understanding, not an idiot's response to someone else's emotional mess. All understanding must come from enlightenment and not from a philosophy swallowed as a whole emotional experience.
Joy:
1. Man is God. The thing that separates the two is what we work to surrender: the physical aspect. Nothing less than total evolvement can be the aim, or the fight is lost. The battle is too difficult to allow for less. The inner goal must be complete happiness. The daily work of overcoming should become joyful and understandable. It is not possible to drag through your days and reach this lofty goal.
2. Creativity should produce happiness and joy; anything less indicates wrong work or the presence of blocks .
3. I found that the releasing of tension opened in me a joyousness that allowed God to enter my being.
4. Time and Space can be approached similarly in that we move from one level to another simply and joyfully. In this manner we extract from each level the positive quantity that exists on that level. We begin digesting it and then consciously grow to the next level.
Equanimity:
The energy and activity in the average person is within his head. Your continual thinking and fighting to balance your ego - image of yourself, your indulgence in self-pity, the lack of fulfillment that you try to justify in your mind, all ravage your energy resources. The continual defense and construction of an ego - image composed of what you would like to be and how you wish others to see you occupies much time and consumes most of your energy. (This quote is a good “what not to do” if we want to use)
2. This is the nature of the total consciousness you seek. To begin to function, you must surrender. The surrender begins to effect a balance. At first, you will find great difficulty in making decisions. The mind and emotions which ruled you previously now provide resistance. Now you are working for the overall good of your system; previously you worked for an inner despot. A wise king works to serve all his people and provide for their welfare. If his counselors have vested interests he must ignore their advice. The mind and emotions are your inner enemies and you must learn to avoid their advice. Surrendering leads to deeper understanding and transforms bad counsel of the mind and emotions into eventual good.
Only in a condition of complete inner harmony can you understand your own potential. In this condition you comprehend the responsibility for maintaining growth and the development that inner balance allows. A student should never be satisfied with a finished product. Work is forever and endless; it either grows or disintegrates. The creative force is vital only in the moment of flow. People like to think the reward of work is the end of working. The reward of work is increased capacity to perform.
3. An important factor in our growing is to be sure that all our objectives flow in the same direction. Anything counter to our purpose becomes a tension which impedes the rapidity with which we can grow. It is no different than a plant growing in nature. There must be enough water and sun. Too much water or too much sun will hurt the growth. It is the conscious balance that a human being can maintain that will produce not only growth but a healthy spiritual being. There is an instinct within us that allows us to attract what we need.
4. In man, the original lack of harmony must be overcome in the attempt to grow spiritually.
5. The mind must be totally removed from the creative force as the inner work begins. The flow of creativity must travel throughout the mechanism. If the force enters the mind or emotions and is stopped there, it builds blocks. These blocks build tension.
It does not matter how much force comes through you but how much of it you absorb into your internal system. If the force comes through the mind and emotions and you internally digest it, then the force is within your spiritual system and will produce harmony.
6. Working every day you take into your psychic system properties which exist naturally in the atmosphere. It has the effect of a balanced diet. There is in us, as in all nature, a continual change of chemistry, and when spiritual exercises are done regularly, harmony is created within and without.
Excerpts from “A Seat by the Fire”
By Sri Shambhavananda
Love:
1. The path of devotion and unconditional love is the most joyful and blissful path to the experience of the divine. Unconditional love is not about the outer world. It is about spirituality. This love does not contain any limitation. It is truly an extraordinary experience. It is a foreign concept to most people. Most people’s idea of love is, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch your back, and then we are in love. But don’t you dare scratch any- one else’s back or we are out of love. You do what I want you to do, and I love you. You do what I don’t want you to do, and I don’t love you.” That is mundane love.
How do you get a taste of divine love? You can begin by meditating and surrendering in front of your ishtadeva or guru. Surrender every distraction that comes up between you and the deity or guru. If your mind isn’t focused, it gets in the way. It can put conditions on your experience. You can cultivate this feeling of love and devotion for God to the degree that there is no longer any sense of your limited self. Most people cling to the small self, but that is exactly what leaves us when we die. It is impermanent. Meditation will give you the experience of your true Inner Self and your true nature. Once you get a glimpse of that and can zero in on that, everything else is just compost, and you will begin to evolve rapidly.
2. Spiritual growth is the process of finding the source of love that exists inside of yourself, which is independent of other people, other situations, and anything of a material nature. When you have found the source of love in yourself, you have found real love.
3. The love that you can bring forth that is unbiased, flowing, and expansive is ananda that comes from the Inner Self. When you try to love everyone from your mind and your concept of what love is, of what good and bad are and of what just and unjust are–that is, from a psychological perspective–then it is very difficult to love everyone. But when you discover this place inside of you that is beyond mind and beyond the self that you think is you–when you find your spiritual or Inner Self, and you experience the love and conscious- ness which flows from there, it is quite a different thing.
4. As you grow and evolve you get freer, you get happier, not because you get everything that you want and the world is the way you think it ought to be. It is because you are discovering that there is something inside of you which is like a sun sitting in there radiating this love, this bliss, this compassion.
Compassion:
1. Simplicity is living from a deep place of surrender inside, a deep place of compassion.
2. A byproduct of what might appear to be a selfish motivation is that you grow and truly do evolve. You also develop loving compassion. You develop the qualities that will be of benefit to you and the people around you. That is how we can truly help others in a real way, by offering them a higher level of consciousness.
3. There is no “you” involved in true compassion, because you are working from a transcendental state of consciousness from where you have risen above your ordinary tensions. Learning how to deal with your own stuff– your own weaknesses, your own anxieties, your own challenges–learning how to survive them gives you a sense of compassion. That won’t be a sense of superiority. It will be a real sense of compassion for yourself and others. Compassion isn’t earned by feeling superior to someone or by having an idea that you are going to bestow upon someone your understanding and your wisdom. Compassion comes from having gone through difficulties and having gained some wisdom about the nature of samsara.
When you develop wisdom, you also develop understanding, and compassion comes naturally. You don’t have to force your- self to have compassion. It is a by–product of your spiritual growth. From compassion comes the ability to act consciously, but with kindness and with clarity. You gain the discrimination to know that there are some things that are just going to be the way they are, and there are other things that you can change at least in a little way. So that is how you begin to experience true compassion.
4. Loving compassion doesn’t mean that you bring the suffering into you. It means that you are above it. And when you are above it energetically, you can serve others a dish that they can’t ordinarily get–which is real love and real compassion.
5. The philosophy and practice of yoga is not about limiting and binding people. It is about freeing them. And what does that “freeing” mean? A person who is free is able, through their own efforts and awareness, to discover the spark of divinity that exists in them and in everyone else. That discovery is very liberating and expanding. It is not an exclusive philosophy where you are right and everyone else is wrong. Spiritual growth is exhilarating. Spiritual growth–the practice of meditation and the practice of yoga–has to do with expanded aware- ness. You get bigger inside. There’s more room in you for more love and compassion and more understanding. It’s an important thing to understand.
6. Generally in our culture, people who declare that they know the truth use it as a weapon to attack other people. If you experience a real spiritual truth, it frees you and brings up boundless compassion and love. You no longer need to do anything to others except to have deep compassion for them. Truth exists inside of everyone equally. It is simply a matter of recognizing that.
Joy:
1. Some people feel that they are progressing as they accumulate more intellectual knowledge or wisdom. You are progressing when you find more joy in your life. You are progressing when you have a deeper sense of com- passion for the people around you. This is a sign of spiritual maturity. And all of this comes not from you intellectually understanding some principle. It comes from the ability to sit down and to begin to meditate and to get beyond the state of consciousness that you normally exist in. This takes practice, it takes discipline, and it takes focus. The rewards are cosmic. And that is the crux of meditation.
2. When you serve something greater than your own small needs you find tremendous joy. People such as Mother Teresa, people who have given themselves to some- thing greater than themselves, always radiate with this happiness. On a material level they don't have much and they work long hours for little or no money and no appreciation, but they have an inner joy and an inner radiance. They have discovered something.
3. As you do purification practices, release into the joy that exists inside of you. As you take part in yajna, throw your psychic ten- sions into the fire, releasing the burdens that you have been clinging to, even though they make you miserable. You may identify the source of these burdens as external and then try to change your outer circumstances, because you think that will make you happy. But purification practices lead you to the understanding that the source of your suffering is your attachments, which are inside of you.
4. As I became better at staying centered, the old things that were still lingering around had less of a hold on me because I was moving away from the level that they were on. When you raise your consciousness through an inner spiritual discipline some things will just drop away. It has happened to me. Hundreds of things that have tormented me for years all of a sudden would just disappear! But I didn’t spend too much time patting myself on the back. I was looking for the next hole I was going to fall into. And it was not that I was paranoid. It was with a sense of joy that, “My God! I can get free of some of these things that were major pains in my life!” And to know that it was possible to get rid of even one of them inspired me and I became greedy for getting rid of all of them.
5. The point is, don’t try to be something you are not. The point is, to take where you are at, the karma that you have been given, the body that you have been given, the situation that you have been given–the life that you’ve been given–and use it in the highest and best way that you can. And that will bring you happiness and joy.
6. If you can’t open up to your life and encompass it and find the love and the depth and the joy that’s possible in the moment, working towards your retirement or working towards the day when you are doing all the things you want to do is pure illusion.
7. You have to find that joy and that happiness inside of yourself in spite of all the dramas and the unfulfilled desires that you have. This is real spiritual understanding. This isn’t some kind of new age philosophy. This is a very, very profound understand- ing of the universe that we live in. Illusions are more appetizing, they taste better, and they are more fun. Reality takes consciousness, work and effort. The rewards are completely indescribable. The rewards are out of this world. It’s called enlightenment, it’s called a realization, and it’s called living a spiritual life. It’s not a small, petty little self–centered existence. It’s something that can encompass more people and more situations than you can ever imagine. It’s truly a remarkable experience.
8. If a spiritual practice isn’t bringing you joy, and growth, what’s the use of doing it? Things appear foreign to you only because they are new. When I go to Kansas, it is like a foreign country to me! Our practices are a manifestation and expression of joy and spirituality.
Equanimity:
Work done consciously and done with devotion and with real commitment brings great joy. And where there's inner harmony inside, there's harmony outside. If there is always conflict in your life, it means you aren't balanced inside.
2. If you sit down and have an inner spiritual practice and truly grow inside, you will see the truth in yourself, you will gain insight into your own patterns, and you will be able to make decisions that are based upon inner truth, based upon an inner sense of balance and harmony, instead of decisions based upon confusion and denial.
3. To experience this state, you need to let go of outer stimula- tion, noise, your mental thoughts, the pain in your leg, or what- ever it might be. You do that by turning your attention inward and putting it on the mantra or breath. You turn your attention towards the navel center and draw your breath down to the navel. You will reach a state of total balance. Your mind will still have thoughts, and you still will have physical sensations, but it will be as though you were standing on the bank of a river and watching these distractions just float by. You don’t jump in and grab them. That is attachment. Surrender is allowing the thoughts to come and to go. You don’t have to follow them or analyze them or have a conversation with them. Just let them arise and subside.
4. Pushing too hard can build tension and make you out of balance. The practice, done correctly, should be a very easy and natural progression.
5. Spiritual surrender has nothing to do with being a victim, turn- ing your will over to someone else, or manipulation. Surrender is the ability to let go of the manifestation of attachments that arise in your mind. These manifestations are the source of your suffering. Surrender is a process that takes place inside of you. When fear, anger or any strong emotion arises, if you can let those feelings go, you are surrendering. In the moment when tension arises, your ability to expand beyond it and release it is surrender. You can take the same energy that you use to get angry and use it to grow spiritually. Surrender brings about a transcendental state, because you gain the ability to rise above your own tensions and limitations.
6. Surrender is the only way you can make the transition from being a part of the outer activity to that separate state of awareness. Surrender is the ability to let go of thought constructs and the identification with the physical world that you have. When you do that, you go right into a state of conscious awareness.
7. Hatha yoga can tune up the nervous system and discipline the body enough to let it find that point of balance. As you become familiar with the state of surrender, you can reach it more easily.
8. From deep surrender comes serenity. Serenity brings wisdom. You will see things clearly.
9. Surrender is the ability to understand the nature of your existence, the life that you created.
10. Surrendering is letting go of illusion and discovering the reality that exists within you. All of the con- structs of the mind and emotions are just manifestations of the illusion that exists to give form to your karma. If you can truly surrender the illusion, it dissolves.
11. When you arrive through meditation to a place of clarity and deep, deep, surrender to God inside, then the next step is fairly simple and very obvious. It isn’t something that you have to reach out for.
12. The only thing you can do with grace, especially descending grace, is to open up, surrender, and absorb it. When you try to manipulate it, all you are doing is building barriers between you and this grace.
13. Surrender has to do with totally and completely going inside and letting go completely. That brings to you your spiritual growth.
14. You need to learn how to breathe into your negative emotions and surrender. And when you do that, you find a higher state to exist in. You start to get in touch with God. You start to get in touch with a bigger picture than just your own little drama.
15. The whole concept of surrender of one's self, ego and desires has to do with reducing that contracting process of the mind.
16. With surrender and a deep devotion to God, a deeper commitment to your spiritual practices, and more surrender–you arrive there. But when you are focused on your work, your needs, your problems, you are at a very low level of spirituality.
17. A place of love, a place of devotion to God and a place of deep surrender, these make it much easier to commune with and connect to a deeper level. A place of intellect–the mind, and even technique sometimes–can become an obstacle.
18. In one instance of deep surrender, you can move ahead lifetimes. I'm serious. You can travel enormous distances in your spiritual journey.
19. The scriptures say that a yogi neither accepts nor rejects. That doesn't mean that you are a vegetable. What that means is that you approach life in a state of surrender, a state of being, a state of openness. You neither embrace anything that comes or run away from it. You stay in that state and everything washes through.
20. Surrender has to do with letting go of your reaction and attachment, and becoming centered and balanced.
21. Whenever I have to make an important decision, I don’t line all the ‘do’s’ and the ‘don’ts’ up. I just get empty and clear inside, as clear as I can, in a state of deep surrender. I let it all go and turn my attention inside. That’s how you develop intuition. You learn to listen to this inner voice, rather than to the voice of your logic, the voice of reason.
22. Developing intuition has to do with clarity of mind. That means that you are able to put your mind and emotions aside and look at things from a very open place of deep surrender.
23. Most people experience themselves as their thoughts, minds, emotions, and their physical bodies. When you develop the ability to surrender enough to get in touch with your true spiritual nature, you realize that these things aren’t the Self.
24. Surrender means that you get out of the mode of trying to manipulate everything to make it the way you want or even of being confused about knowing what to do and what not to do. You let go of all of that and you turn inside until you find that state of being or that state of consciousness that will easily allow you to resolve these conflicts.
Excerpts from “Spritual Practice”
By Sri Shambhavananda
Love:
1. But, when we find that state of being that all the scriptures, all the yogis, and all the great teachers of the world have talked about—when we find that internally--we become supremely free. We are able to love more, be more open, and experience life more fully.
2. Sometimes we get so focused on what is wrong with us and our lives that we do not experience the joy and love that are possible.
3. Being a vehicle of spiritual energy is one of the highest callings in life. Also,
serving others with love is the quickest way to grow spiritually.
4. The best thing you can do when sadness arises is to work to open you heart and feel love and compassion.
5. What is called for is to have faith in that feeling of love in your heart. Know that as you keep expanding that love, everything will work out. We all experience physical, mental, and emotional adversities, but we don’t have to allow them to destroy our happiness and the connection to the love in our hearts.
6. People often define love and experience it in a very emotional way. The spiritual approach is different. Through meditation you reach a state of being or a quality of energy that exists in all of us all the time, though it is sometimes hard to find when you are caught up in the emotions of another person.
7. To have a big heart first has to do with you developing some positive inner energy and feelings. Then you will be able to open the heart and find love and gratitude.
8. Love is this very special feeling that you experience in your heart. Sometimes when you meet somebody you actually get a glimpse of that love, but the funny thing is that it’s there all the time. When you feel love for another person, that person has acted as a catalyst to open you up. If there is a response, then the two people feel the love. If they really are in that place, the vibration of that love spreads out all around them. They include a lot of people in their lives—their kids, their family and their sangha.
Compassion:
1. Real compassion is the ability to be fairly neutral, yet to provide something as extraordinary as we are able. Often we become attached to our own doership, and that’s not always healthy. If we are looking for some kind of return, it can be found in our own growth.
2. When you are pursuing a spiritual life, working inside and really growing, your life can become sweet, very simple, and very nourishing. You find beauty, harmony, and compassion all around you. It isn’t some grueling, terrible task to grow spiritually. It can be a joyful one.
3. Spending a few moments in deep meditation is strengthening that part of us that will allow us to be compassionate all the way around.
4. Loving compassion is something that you feel in your heart. loving compassion is something that comes from inside, a place where everything is done naturally, simply, and not with any exaggerated demonstration. Loving compassion is an inner state that overflows and that is filled with positive energy.
Joy:
1. When we try to hang on to this thing or not lose that concept, we miss a lot of what’s going on in a more subtle realm. We also miss joy, bliss, and fulfillment.
2. Sometimes we get so focused on what is wrong with us and our lives that we do not experience the joy and love that are possible.
3. I think it’s important that every day you find something to be grateful for. If you never make that effort to be grateful and to offer it up, then you will get dry as a bone. You will find no joy and no nectar in your life.
Equanimity:
We are very attached to our definitions. We defend them rigorously. You can tell the maturity of people by how vehemently they oppose someone who is challenging their illusions. Once you find that point of balance, that state of being inside of you, you don’t worry about defending your definitions so much.
2. Once you find your balance, what you do in the next stage of work is that you use that balance in all the different situations that are a part of your life.
3. Keep meditating until you drop. If you can keep your balance during this upheaval, then you will learn much about what you have allowed to exist in your life. You will start to see what is draining you. We don’t realize it at first, but it is often our attachments that cause our lack of energy. Through meditation we learn to sit and be present and comfortable in our own skin.
4. Use the grace that is available, and you should get better at your life. You should find more peace and more balance in yourself.
5. If two people are fighting, and you get in the middle of it and tell them to calm down, then you are feeding into the situation. On the other hand if you are very balanced and calm in yourself, then you may be able to influence the outcome. You don’t run away from the situation.
6. To have the opportunity at any point in your life to seriously work on those patterns is rare. If you get the chance, then you really should do it because it will only improve everything that you do in the future. It will give you the inner balance and the inner strength to have a successful and productive life and a creative existence.
7. I used to spend a lot of time and energy trying to fix those things that I thought were wrong, but I have learned that sometimes things are beyond fixing. My idea now is to become as stable and balanced in my own being as I can, even when I am being attacked or misunderstood.
8. It is very productive to spend a little time each day to empty out the accumulation all of the negativity that you might have experienced in your day. Every day you should find a place of balance internally. That place is often referred to as a state of being.
9. As your practice develops and you find an inner balance, then you will not be so wor- ried about the unknown because your definition will not be dependent on something in the external world.
10. The more balanced you are, the more consciously you are able to deal with life’s situations. You are more perceptive and aware. You see a broader picture.
11. So, you have to learn how to find your inner balance and learn how to stay there. It’s always helpful to be quiet, if you really want to know what’s going on around you.
12. If you look at something and you find your center in yourself, then you are balanced and your awareness is internalized.
13. The more balanced you are in yourself, the more positive effect you will have on the people around you and those who are a part of your life.