The Benefits of Bodhicitta

There is a story about the man who wrote this text, and it begins with an insult.

At the great monastic university of Nalanda in eighth-century India -- a place that housed thousands of scholar-monks and was the intellectual center of the Buddhist world -- there lived a monk who appeared to do nothing. The other monks, who rose before dawn for prayers, who debated philosophy for hours, who memorized vast treatises, looked at this man and saw a lump. He seemed to spend his days doing only three things: eating, sleeping, and visiting the toilet. They gave him a nickname: Bhusuku -- a mocking contraction of the words for "eat, sleep, defecate."

One day, apparently determined to expose his uselessness, the monks asked him to give a public teaching. They expected him to be humiliated -- to stammer and fumble and reveal his ignorance for all to see. They even built a high teaching throne, so his embarrassment would be visible from every corner of the assembly hall.

Shantideva climbed the throne. He asked the assembled monks whether they wanted to hear something that had already been taught before or something they had never heard. They asked for something new. And then he began to speak.

What came out of his mouth was the Bodhisattvacharyavatara -- the Way of the Bodhisattva -- one of the most beloved, most studied, most transformative texts in the entire Buddhist tradition. According to the legend, when he reached the ninth chapter on wisdom and spoke the verse on emptiness, his body began to rise into the air until he disappeared from sight, his voice alone continuing to resound through the hall.

Whether or not you take this story literally, it tells us something essential about what follows. This text was not assembled in a library. It was not written to impress scholars. It emerged from a depth of realization that was completely invisible to those who saw only the surface. The monk they dismissed as lazy turned out to be the one with the most to say.

Shantideva's Opening

Shantideva begins in a way that could not be more different from how you might expect, given the magnificence of what follows. He says, essentially: I have nothing new to offer. I am not skilled at poetry. I am writing this for myself, to strengthen my own practice and faith.

This is not false modesty. It is a genuine positioning -- and it matters. Shantideva is not writing from a throne. He is writing from the floor, as a practitioner sharing what has helped him, hoping it might help someone else. This tone of intimacy and personal practice runs throughout the entire text and gives it much of its power. You are not reading a lecture. You are overhearing a practitioner's most private conversation with themselves.

The Preciousness of This Moment

Before he gets to bodhicitta itself, Shantideva pauses to make sure you understand what you hold in your hands. A human life endowed with the freedoms and advantages necessary for Dharma practice is extraordinarily rare -- he compares it to a blind person finding a precious jewel in a heap of garbage. Not just rare, but fragile: the opportunity to practice is like a flash of lightning in a dark sky. For one brilliant instant, the darkness parts and you can see. And then it is gone.

This image should stop you in your tracks. You have this moment. You may not have the next one. The question is what you will do with the light while it lasts.

Without bodhicitta, Shantideva argues, virtue remains weak while the forces of negativity are overwhelming. We have spent lifetimes reinforcing habits of self-concern, aggression, and confusion. Only bodhicitta has the power to counteract that accumulated momentum -- the way a single match can set ablaze an entire field of dry grass, bodhicitta can consume eons of negative karma.

What Is Bodhicitta?

Bodhicitta -- the mind of awakening -- is the heart of everything Shantideva has to say. He presents it in two aspects.

Aspirational bodhicitta is the wish to attain complete enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. It is the desire to go somewhere -- the moment you look at a suffering world and think: "I will become fully awakened so that I can truly help."

Engaged bodhicitta is the actual practice of the path. It is setting out on the journey -- taking the concrete steps of generosity, discipline, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom that move you toward that goal.

Both aspects are necessary. Aspiration without engagement remains a beautiful wish that never touches the ground. Engagement without aspiration is like rowing a boat without knowing which shore you are heading for. The two work together: aspiration provides direction, and engagement provides motion.

The Extraordinary Power of Bodhicitta

The remainder of the chapter is a hymn of praise to bodhicitta, and Shantideva's images are unforgettable.

Bodhicitta is like the philosopher's stone -- the legendary alchemical substance that transforms base metals into gold. No matter how defiled your current state, how confused your mind, how heavy your negative karma, bodhicitta transforms it all. You do not need to be perfect to begin. You only need this wish, sincerely held, and the alchemy begins.

Bodhicitta is like a wish-fulfilling tree that produces fruit continuously and grows ever larger, unlike the plantain tree that bears fruit once and dies. Other virtues are exhausted when they produce their results. Bodhicitta multiplies endlessly.

Bodhicitta is like a heroic guardian who protects travelers through dangerous territory. Even those weighed down with terrible negativity can pass through safely under its protection.

And bodhicitta is like the fire at the end of an eon -- the cosmic conflagration that destroys the entire world system. Just so, bodhicitta consumes even the most deeply rooted negative karma, burning it away completely.

The Child of the Buddhas

Here is perhaps the most startling thing Shantideva says in this chapter: when bodhicitta arises in someone's mind -- even if that person is chained in the prison of samsara, even if they are weighed down by misdeeds, even if they appear to be the most unlikely candidate for awakening -- in that instant, they become worthy of reverence by gods and humans alike. They are called "children of the buddhas," because they have entered the family of the awakened ones.

Think about what this means. The person who generates bodhicitta has not yet accomplished anything. They have not meditated for decades. They have not mastered the scriptures. They have not overcome their afflictions. All they have done is form a wish -- but what a wish. In that single moment of genuine aspiration, everything changes. They are no longer merely a suffering being caught in cyclic existence. They are an heir to the buddhas, someone who will inevitably attain complete enlightenment and become a source of refuge for countless beings.

Shantideva drives the logic home: if simply wishing to relieve someone's headache generates immense merit, what about the wish to remove all suffering from all beings? If a person who feeds a few people for a single meal is praised as generous, what about someone who aspires to offer the everlasting happiness of buddhahood to every sentient being? The scale of the aspiration determines the scale of the result. And bodhicitta, by taking all beings as its object and complete enlightenment as its aim, generates merit that is literally immeasurable.

The chapter closes with Shantideva bowing to those in whom bodhicitta has arisen, taking refuge in them as springs of happiness -- beings who bring even their enemies to perfect bliss. This final note captures something extraordinary about bodhicitta: it makes no exceptions. It draws no lines. Its warmth extends even to those who wish you harm.

The great master Dza Patrul Rinpoche (1808-1887) taught this text more than a hundred times throughout his life. When he died, it is said that he owned only the clothes on his back, a bowl, and a copy of the Bodhicaryavatara. That tells you everything you need to know about the kind of text this is and the kind of life it inspires.