The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life – Chapter 5 ‘Introspection’

Hi. Rinpoche is teaching a Tibetan text called ‘The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life’ by the great sage, Shantideva. This text documents the moral framework of Buddhism’s Great Beings of Compassion, the Bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas vow to stay and always help sentient beings – even after their enlightenment. Actually there are different ways of thinking of the Bodhisattva vows. Most commonly, their vow is described as putting off their own enlightenment to stay and help all beings. This is not the correct understanding, however. It is the full rewards of Nirvana that is put off, not enlightenment.

The View
Actually, a Bodhisattva vows to get enlightened as soon as possible in order to help all sentient beings right now. One of the qualities of the fully enlightened Buddha is that of omniscience. Omniscience allows the Buddha to know the mind of anyone that comes before him and from that understanding, he is able to prescribe exact mental remedies to the negative afflictions of that specific person and so show immediate enlightenment to them. It is from this ground of Buddhahood that Shakyamuni was able to bring everlasting peace to those who sought him out.

Bodhicitta is true compassion, the compassion of the Buddha’s – it perceives all suffering and is able to empathize with all miserable states without being overwhelmed. There is also something called ‘aspiring Bodhicitta’, meaning that a person wishes to become a fully compassionate being. I think that Bodhicitta arises naturally in all beings, but through the noise of chasing after our own self interests, the wisdom of that compassion is drowned out. With effort, though, I think this very strong motivation can be revealed.

It follows that when our Aspiring Bodhicitta is revealed, that we would want to become a Buddha as soon as possible so that we can also have that omniscience and help as many beings as possible. This (Buddhahood) is the most efficient and correct ground from which to help. The Mahayana Buddhist path is practice for these higher states of mind and helps the practitioner to develop these states very quickly.

In Shantideva’s “The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life”, he enumerates the qualities and function of a Bodhisattva. Rinpoche is teaching this text to us a chapter at a time. We read the chapter privately and come together for his commentaries. He reads the chapter in Tibetan to us and then provides analysis of the text – he is even providing his own translation of the original Tibetan text. This month we read the chapter on ‘Introspection’

Mindfullness
In order to understand Introspection, I think I should first describe Mindfulness from a Buddhist perspective. Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of what we do with our body, speech, and mind from moment to moment. So, it is said, when you walk, know you are walking, when you speak, know you are speaking, when you are thinking, know that you are thinking. Simply being aware and conscious of all of your actions and thoughts is mindfulness. That is my understanding anyway. Mindfulness doesn’t imply any kind of ethical constraints. Through mindfulness we simply observe what happens. We call ‘what happens’, cause and effect. All things that arise before us, whether in thought or form, come from some cause. The effect that results from a cause becomes the cause of another effect. This is interdependent nature of one thing always coming from a series of causes is called Dependent Origination or Causality. All things come from their causes and become causes for something else. Dependent Origination describes the continuum of one thing creating another since beginningless time. Mindfulness practice brings us in contact and makes us very aware of this nature of things, the nature of things meaning the nature of phenomenon – or ‘subjective reality’.

Wow. My head just exploded.

It’s hard to write about all of this without sounding like the books I have read. I think it is much more interesting if people speak from their own experience – but since I read so much, my experience is one of reading books and taking teachings – so I sound like a book, I think. Very much to say, though. It will come.

So that is mindfulness – being aware from moment to moment of what we do with our body, speech, and mind which shows us the nature of the dependency of phenomenon.

Introspection
Introspection is defined as ‘the guarding of the mind’. I am still a bit confused as to how introspection works, but this is my guess: After watching the mind for a while, it begins to become clear that certain actions lead to undesirable effects. Certain types of thinking, speech, and action lead to effects that create disharmony and unrest. These types of actions are labeled ‘negative afflictions’. That makes sense, right? It’s important to me that it come across that there is no established dogma in Buddhism. This means that what is said is to be considered and accepted or rejected based on one’s own experiences.

So after some time spent in mindfulness we see that there are actions that come from negative thinking that have no benefit for ourselves or others – these actions are rooted in fear – anger, jealousy, envy and others are examples of these negative afflictions. Someone on the Bodhisattva path, practicing mindfulness will see that these types of actions only cause problems. So introspection, I think is the practice of not engaging in actions rooted in negative afflictions and eventually, circumventing those types of motivations all together.

Introspection protects oneself so that one can stay mindful and not got carried away by emotions. Staying mindful allows one to see the cause and effect nature of things which leads to an understanding of dependent origination. Understanding dependent origination is the beginning of understanding ‘emptiness nature’. Understanding emptiness nature is the base of Buddhahood. Yes, all things are interconnected.