..續本文上一頁What if you poke your head out and see the whole universe

　　 The “slit” could be an explosion outside, or the sound of a bird, or someone teaching the dharma. Something gets through to your heart, and suddenly it seems like the whole universe is available to you. But then you go right back in.

　　Shantideva says that should bodhichitta come to birth for even an instant, in that instant you are called a bodhisattva, the Buddha”s heir. You”re worthy of being bowed to by gods and men and women—by everyone. In that instant, you”re as full-blown a bodhisattva as those who spend their whole life cultivating bodhicitta—those who hardly ever get hooked. Maybe you”ll go back to being a schmuck, but you did have a glimpse of what it”s like to feel the heart and mind of a bodhisattva.

　　In the beginning the contrast between being awake and being asleep is great; it feels like the clouds have the upper hand. But once you begin to hear the teachings on fixation and bodhichitta, you have tools that help you to stick your head out of the crack in the cocoon, and you begin to get enthusiastic about your potential to stay out there.

　　But I”ll tell you one thing: expect relapses.

　　That is why we need to seek support from people who will encourage us to open our hearts and minds. We need to stop seeking support from those who buy in to our complaining, the people who say, “You”re right, those people you think are awful, are awful,” and keep us caught in the small world. We need to find people and situations that encourage us to keep opening up, people who say, “You could look at it a different way.” Instead of wanting to punch them, we might actually listen to them.

　　For like the supreme substance of the alchemists,

　　It takes the impure form of human flesh

　　And makes of it the priceless body of a buddha.

　　Such is the bodhichitta: we should grasp it firmly!

　　Shantideva is saying that bodhichitta is like an alchemic substance—it can turn anything into gold. For instance, rage. Rage starts as a tightening. You buy into it, you get hooked, and then you lose control. What you want to do is catch the fact that you”ve been hooked, and realize that it”s got you in its grip. The sooner you realize you”re hooked, the easier the rage is to work with.

　　But even if you”ve gone through the whole habitual rage cycle already—even if you”ve broken things, yelled at people, marched out of the house and left a trail of misery behind you—it”s still possible to sit down and get in touch with how fixated, how hooked, you are. It may take a few days, or it may not. But the kindest thing you could do for yourself is develop your capacity to realize you”re hooked before you start the whole catastrophe. You may not be able to meditate, or contact bodhichitta, but you can catch the fixation and interrupt its momentum.

　　At some point when you”re more able to interrupt the momentum, you can begin to feel the quality underneath the tightening. That”s when it”s possible to touch the soft spot of the rage. There”s a lot of soft spot in rage, and it”s usually fear-based. Usually you feel hurt, and that”s why you get so angry. But without working with it—without touching the soft spot of the rage—you cause yourself and others a lot of pain. So if you can touch into the soft spot underneath the hardness, underneath the hookedness, underneath the clutchiness, then you can touch into the power of bodhichitta.

　　There are many helpful practices you can do at that point. One is to think of all the other enraged people and feel a sense of kinship with their rage and the fact that they, like you, cause harm, and they, like you, could stop. At that point your world begins to get bigger. In that way even the most poisonous of things—things that cause the most harm to you and others—can become doorways to bodhichitta.

　　As a way of dedicating this teaching and getting accustomed to thinking bigger, I”d like to look at a few verses at the end of The Bodhisattva”s Way of Life. Dedicating the teaching is a characteristic of the Mahayana: we think bigger than our usual self-absorption and realize our interconnectedness with other people. We take a global perspective and realize that just as what harms rivers in South America has an effect on the whole planet, in the same way, what harms us harms others, and what benefits us has a beneficial effect on other people.

　　So in that spirit, we could say to ourselves, “Anything virtuous I have ever done in my whole life, may it benefit other people.”

　　By all the virtue I have now amassed

　　By composition of this book, which speaks

　　Of entry to the bodhisattva way,

　　May every being tread the path to buddhahood.

　　May beings everywhere who suffer

　　Torment in their minds and bodies

　　Have, by virtue of my merit,

　　Joy and happiness in boundless measure.

　　As long as they may linger in samsara,

　　May their present joy know no decline,

　　And may they taste of unsurpassed beatitude

　　In constant and unbroken continuity.

　　Throughout the spheres and reaches of the world,

　　In hellish states wherever they may be,

　　May beings fettered there, tormented,

　　Taste the bliss and peace of Sukhavati.

　　We know that there are many beings in the world today living in hellish states and suffering terribly every moment of their lives. Shantideva says, May those beings fettered there, tormented, taste the bliss and peace of freedom from fixation—the bliss of bodhichitta.

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