The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Your Treasure is Heart”
When we begin to practice the Bodhichitta, we become more in tune with the idea that the great Bodhisattvas are willing to do whatever it takes regarding the suffering of sentient beings,. We, in our practice, should follow accordingly, and use them as our example. When we look at the world today, and when we study in the texts, we see that sentient beings, as numberless as grains of sand on the earth, are revolving in the six realms of cyclic existence. And we are suffering horribly— horribly and needlessly. Needlessly because, other than our own habitual tendency, our desire and our own distorted perception, there are no chains that bind us here. And so the Bodhisattva is moved to tears watching the suffering of sentient beings and seeing that even here in the human realm where things are pretty terrific and we have the capacity to practice, we are still suffering from old age, sickness and death. And there is nothing we can do about it.
When the Bodhisattvas see that, they consider that enough is enough and they feel a heartfelt courage or concern come up within them. Therefore, their determination to be of benefit to sentient beings and to do, literally, whatever it takes is born. So now we are on the path of the Bodhisattva. How should we engage on that path? We really don’t know how the mechanical appearance of it should look in our lives,. This is a big dilemma for westerners. I’ve noticed this myself. Once we vibe with the idea of compassion, we seem to understand it. When so many of the ideas of Dharma seem foreign, why is it that the idea of compassion is somehow more palatable and more understandable? Well, probably because we’ve seen the idea before, in other religious systems in our culture with which we are better acquainted. So we have the idea in our minds already. I think also, for those of us who are American, we have this national identity of being a great country, or a prosperous country, and therefore we feel that we are in a position to minister to others. It’s almost like a subtle national identity that we all seem to have. We know we’ve got more food , more clothes , and better conditions than a lot of the other guys. So, in a national or group way, we are aware of our capacity to be an elder brother or sister in the world. I really think that that’s part of us. Our national identity is definitely a factor here..
Where the terrible confusion comes in is that we don’t know what Bodhichitta should look like. When we actually get down to the nuts and bolts of our practice, something is missing. Something just flies the coop. It really doesn’t quite connect in our mind. So we try to draw on these archetypal pictures that we have in our culture. One of the pictures that we have is a saintly archetype. Does it come from medieval time? Probably, I would think so. I would say that we are very slow to change some of our ideas. We’re pretty quick to change our fashion sense, our idea of how to get educated and how to remain current in certain things in the world, but subtle archetypal ideas take a long time to change. We have the idea that that we would look saintly practicing compassion, the idea that a Bodhisattva has to be something that… Well I don’t know. What did medieval saints look like? Maybe a little anemic, you know? Like if you were too robust, or maybe had a pint too much blood, you wouldn’t look very saintly. I don’t think I’d pass for a saint either. You know I think I look like a make-up expert or something else, a beautician.
So we have these pictures and our saintly image is somewhat anemic. We have this idea that saintly people should never really let out a good guffaw, and have absolutely zero capacity to find anything truly amusing, most especially not themselves. Lord knows that saintly types have no capacity to laugh at themselves. In fact, all they are able to do for the most part is to roll those eyes ever skyward and look pure. So we have some kind of ridiculous idea of what sainthood or compassion actually ought to look like.
Well, I don’t think compassion looks like that at all. I think compassion can look like a banana, if that’s what sentient beings need. I think compassion can look like a puppy if it brings comfort to sentient beings. I think compassion can look exactly like whatever it takes. Actually all the teachings about the great Bodhisattvas say that they literally appear in any form in order to bring benefit to sentient beings. In The Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, which I hope each and every one of you will buy a copy of at some point, there are many beautiful and heart-wrenching prayers, like, “Let me return as a bridge so that sentient beings may cross over. Let me return as food so that sentient beings will be nourished. Let me return as shelter so that sentient beings will be protected,” this heartfelt cry to return in whatever form necessary in order to be of benefit to sentient beings.
I don’t think that a bridge or a banana or whatever it takes will necessarily look like some anemic saintly thing. Instead, I think compassion can be pretty exotic and meaty stuff. I think it can look like meat and potatoes. I think it can look like whatever it damn well pleases, so long as it gets the job done.
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