Bodhicitta: Why Intention Matters in Buddhist Meditation

Bodhicitta is a Sanskrit word that can be translated as "the mind of awakening," with "bodhi" meaning awakening and "chitta" meaning mind or sometimes heart—or heart-mind, as heart and mind aren't necessarily two different things in Buddhist cultures. So it's the awakened heart-mind.

Bodhicitta is a huge topic and area. I would venture to say that when we're talking about the Mahayana Buddhist path, bodhicitta is everything. This is because we have what's called relative bodhicitta, which covers the development of compassion, loving-kindness, and altruism, and then we have absolute bodhicitta, which covers the teachings and practices on Buddhist non-duality. So really, this covers a majority of topics in Mahayana Buddhism, and its importance is not only imperative in understanding and practicing so our path can develop, but at the same time, it becomes the root of why we do what we do. It helps us to transform out of the stagnation of ego-clinging into enlightened living or awakened living.

Mostly I want to talk about relative bodhicitta here. Relative just means conceptual. It means that which we are generating as a conceptual experience connected to our thoughts and emotions, connected to our purpose, bringing meaning to why we do what we do, how we want to live our life, and what brings meaning in our actions essentially.

At first, we're developing relative bodhicitta as a strong intention for why we practice the Buddhist path in the first place. If we don't spend time working with clarifying and making ourselves more aware of our intention for meditation, it's probably going to default to the lowest common denominator, which is "I just want to feel better." This is fine—there's nothing wrong with that in the beginning. It's just that that won't take you very far. You can feel better through meditation, it's fine, it works for that somewhat, but it has a dead end. It's not limitless, whereas bodhicitta is kind of a limitless intention or motivation.

I don't think of bodhicitta as a fixed point in time. I think of it as something that evolves as our path grows, sort of like a practice in and of itself. So relative means we're developing certain conceptual states. We're doing contemplative or analytical meditations. We're reflecting on bodhicitta before we actually go into our main practice of, let's say, shamatha or meditative awareness. Then meditative awareness becomes purposeful. It becomes used as a practice towards awakening.

Maybe I should define bodhicitta a little bit more here. In relative bodhicitta, we have what's called aspirational and engaging bodhicitta. I'm mostly talking about aspirational bodhicitta here, which is just that—the aspirations we make to attain awakening for the benefit of all beings. So as I said, bodhicitta includes compassion and includes loving-kindness, but it also includes this special wish to actually become of service to others, to help them awaken to the truth.

Something that I often see gets mixed up here is people think that it's not bodhicitta if it's not immediate—like if we're not in service immediately, then it's not bodhicitta. Being in service to others at any capacity, at any level of help, is wonderful, and we should all aspire to that and actually try to do more in our life. Bodhicitta is something a little bit broader than that because it refers to actually the wish to attain awakening to serve others through that - the wish that all beings can awaken to the truth of the Dharma, and we take responsibility to help them with that. 

Just recognizing as we study the dharma, as we practice over time, that sure, we can help others, we can do a lot of good, but we're somewhat limited until we attain enlightenment. This is because as long as we are under the control of our afflictive emotions, we're going to harm others sometimes. We're not going to know the right answer, or we're going to be confused on the causes of suffering and the causes of happiness. An enlightened being, an awake being, is not confused about that. They are completely clear. There's no delusion, there's no confusion, and therefore when they guide others, they know exactly how to guide others. They're not going to lead people towards confusion.

What I just said is also something you need to chew on. That's not something I want to put out there as, "You should believe that." I have conviction in that just merely from some years of practice and study, and the conviction has grown enough that I see that as the best option. Though of course, on the way to enlightenment, we're not trying to be stingy. We're trying to help as much as we can, but also realizing there's a limitation and that we want to make aspirations towards that more limitless potential of how we can serve others from an awakened place. That's what aspirational bodhicitta is essentially.

Aspirational means we make that aspiration before we meditate, and throughout our day. We make it at the beginning of our session, and actually, we can practice it all day long. I'm here in Kathmandu, Nepal, and I had the fortune to go sit with the body of one of my main teachers, Lama Zopa Rinpoche. His body has been preserved (and concealed), and you can go into his room and do practice or meditate.

We believe he attained awakening at the time of death, if not before, and he had a very special kind of death where you remain in meditation even after clinical death. The heartbeat stops, the breath stops, but the skin is still pliable, and the heart is still warm. This is a type of meditation that great Himalayan Buddhist masters, great Vajrayana masters, can do based on their bodhicitta and based on their level of practice, having attained mastery. We call that "tugdam.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche was able to stay in tugdam for some time. Because he was such a bodhisattva, or a being who had realized bodhicitta, and just a wonderful teacher to so many people across the planet, that's my guess why they decided to preserve his body so people can always go there and practice and make offerings in the Buddhist tradition.

Anyway, I was there meditating in his room with others, and I just couldn't stop remembering my introduction to bodhicitta, which was more or less through him and how he valued it highly over all dharma teachings. He would always prize aspirational bodhicitta and recommend it and teach different ways to do it. He has wonderful books on how to make everything bodhicitta. He would often go to a restaurant and make aspirational prayers with the plates and the forks: "Anybody who touches this, may they become awakened as soon as possible"—those kinds of aspirational prayers.

Also, when he was living his life, when he was putting on his robes (he was a monk), he would generate bodhicitta. When he was going to bed, he would reflect on bodhicitta. All the time, just making life about generating the aspiration of bodhicitta. So knowing him and receiving teachings from him made a strong imprint on me regarding the importance of it, and that's one reason I'm sharing about it here. It's actually because of him and how precious it is.

For me, it wasn't a quick thing to gain conviction in. It's something I want to practice. By the way, I'm very far from actually embodying bodhicitta, but I'm just talking about the practice here. It took some time for me to feel conviction in it, to feel "Okay, this is something quite unique that I want to put time into." But over some years, I was able to realize this is really the center of our practice. If we really want to engage in the dharma or the Buddhist path, we need to make bodhicitta the center.

If it's not the center, often what can happen is we're reinforcing our practice with techniques that are going to embolden the ego and lead to more suffering. Maybe not suffering in the way we normally think of it, but basically, we're not going to be able to connect with genuine liberation or freedom. This isn't something I can sort of convince you about, but it's just something you have to engage with and study and practice and start to gain some kind of conviction that the intention is actually the most important part of the practice. It's like the rudder of a ship—when we turn it a certain way, it's going to go in that direction.

If we're not aware of that, it's just probably going to go in the direction of our habitual patterns, reifying more patterns of dissatisfaction, pain, and suffering. In Buddhism, we believe that when we reify the self, when we make all of the things we're gathering and doing about "How can I get more happiness for myself?", this actually creates more pain, unfortunately, and paradoxically. This is not an easy thing to see, and it's even more difficult to turn that ship around. But once we see it, we actually want to engage in aspirational bodhicitta because aspirational bodhicitta and the many practices of how we engage it are a way to start to turn that ship from being preoccupied about "What about me? to "other."

And then more particularly, not just to "other" but towards awakening for the benefit of others, so all of our practice gets moved in that direction. That's the "why." Of course, we're sentient beings too, so we're included in that, but I think you understand what I'm saying goes beyond the ego's idea of its own borders and how to reify that and how to sort of hoard things for ourselves.

As you can see, this is a huge topic. There are many practices for developing bodhicitta. Often, one of the things we do before we practice a meditation session is to chant a simple aspirational chant or prayer where we take refuge and we generate bodhicitta. When we do that, we're training the mind, we're conditioning the mind towards a refuge, which is another topic, and bodhicitta—aspirational bodhicitta.

Now, engaging bodhicitta—there are many ways to talk about this, but engaging bodhicitta is when we're not just aspiring to something, we are becoming something. We usually engage in bodhicitta through what's called the six paramitas: the paramita of generosity, discipline, patience, perseverance, meditation, and wisdom. These six paramitas form the basis for not only practice but they're a little bit more when the aspirational bodhicitta has taken fruition and we have some taste of Buddhist non-duality. Then the six paramitas come to life, and our actions, our life, actually become service. So "engaging" means we're engaging in the service of a bodhisattva.

But of course, on the path, if we're still a beginner and we haven't actualized aspirational bodhicitta yet, it's okay. We engage in these six paramitas—they're also part of the path for all of us. But we also need to make sure, in my opinion, that we're spending enough time on aspirational bodhicitta. This is really important.

One of my teachers convinced me of this at some point. It doesn't seem that important until you start doing it more and more, and you see how it starts to change and shape your mind in a positive way. It starts to change why and how you practice meditation and dharma and everyday life, and then you start to get convinced about how much we can shape our mind with aspiration.

The truth is, we're speaking aspirations all day long—they're just unconscious, and usually, they're very selfish (no offense). In my case, they're very selfish. So when we make aspirations consciously, not only are we moving towards things that are more universal and compassionate, but actually, we also see the selfish ones, which isn't bad. We need to see them in order to uproot them. We've all got them—no shame. It doesn't define us as a good or bad person; it just means we're seeing more where we get stuck, where we get trapped.

So when we practice aspirational bodhicitta, we see the light, we see the good, but we also see the things we need to work on. This is another reason I find it really, really precious in my practice.