nonduality | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “The Bodhisattva Ideal”

So the Bodhisattva thinks and meditates constantly on which things are worth putting effort into, and which things are not. Now the Buddha also taught about the Middle Way. When the Buddha realized the suffering of sentient beings, he tried at first the life of the ascetic. And he even tried to sit with those who engaged in the kind of meditation that was based on self-mutilation, a kind of meditation that was very strict and very severe. He meditated with yogis who would mutilate their bodies in order to overcome pain and renounce the attraction of comfort. So the Buddha tried that. These yogis did not eat or sleep comfortably. They meditated constantly. They remained in this one little grove and they ate very little. They might live on bits of plants and even bits of mushroom that grow in the ground. If someone gave them something to eat, they might eat on that, but they had no determination about wanting a certain kind of food. Whatever they found that day, that’s what they ate. There was no dependence on comfort for their happiness and well-being. So Lord Buddha practiced with them for a while and eventually he gave up on that method.

He gave up on that method because he saw that there is a kind of limitation to that focus, that that particular focus was sort of a dead-end street. It can result even in a kind of poison, or a kind of pridefulness, where the yogi is more concerned with their strict discipline than they are with the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings. It becomes something of an obsession, you know. It becomes something of a medal of honor that one wears. So Lord Buddha found that kind of rigidity, that kind of narrow view, somewhat distasteful. And so Lord Buddha went on to the Middle Way.

Therefore, as a Bodhisattva we are not being asked to never have a moment of comfort. No one is asking you to pierce your tongue or do any of those things those funny yogis did. No one is asking you to sit on a bed of nails and sleep on a bed of nails. No one is asking you to hang out in a grove and not have a house, not keep warm in the wintertime. No one is saying that you have to wear the same robes until they rot off your body. Lord Buddha does not teach that as a method. Lord Buddha teaches instead that all sentient beings are suffering, that we are suffering due to desire, that there is an end to suffering, and that end to suffering can be practiced as the eightfold path which we, in our tradition, condense into the practice of wisdom, or the realization of emptiness, and compassion, or the Bodhicitta. These are the two legs of the path, and this is the moderate Middle Way that Lord Buddha taught.

So as a Bodhisattva you are not being asked to never be happy. One’s own happiness, both temporary and ultimate, and the happiness of others, becomes instead inseparable, nondual. One would not honor oneself and cling to ego because that would be a nonsensical thing to do. There is no good result from that. The Bodhisattva realizes that. The Bodhisattva, however, would not make oneself suffer purposely, or hurt oneself in some way, because there is really no point to that. The point of practicing the path is the liberation and salvation of all sentient beings, and you are one of them.