This website is the home of The Four Noble Truths on the web.

Bodhicitta / Altruistic Mind

• Bodhicitta is the thought to benefit others.
• The only use of bodhicitta mind is to benefit others. Benefit countless beings in countless world systems.
• For a bodhisattva, one world to help is too little. Their ambition is huge.
• Nothing apart from this is necessary. I have nothing more to say than to cultivate the two types of bodhicitta. I have said this for seven years. You always hear this from me. Basically all the buddhist teachings are the same. They focus on this single point.
• To become enlightened, we need to dismantle attachment and aversion. To do that, we need to generate love and compassion. Then mind becomes buddha. When mind is not obscured by self, it becomes like space. It reaches out. It pervades.
• Be concerned about sufferings of others. Don’t hurry towards happiness. It will come.
• Habituate the intent to benefit beings. This is the cause of happiness.
• When you receive a letter from a loved one, you feel excited about it. You want to open it quickly. Why? Because in that letter is love and compassion.
• Think for a brief moment about benefitting others. This is like lighting a match. This gets rid of obscurations related to self-grasping.
• Who is reliable? Someone with bodhicitta.
• Develop concern for others. This is what you collect.
• Someone who has given rise to love and compassion, anyone who sees them will feel joyful.
• If someone comes to kill you, how do you feel? If someone comes to help you, how do you feel?
• Bodhicitta is the willingness to end the suffering of all sentient beings.
• When sun shines on a glacier, it doesn’t melt the glacier right away. Our suffering is due to layer upon layer of obscurations. Bodhicitta is a very skillful and potent way to peel layer upon layer of obscurations. It will take time to see the benefit.

• Right now we have no freedom not to experience negative ripenings. Engage in virtue now for the future. Resolve that no matter what happens, I will continue to engage in the service of sentient beings throughout this and future lives.

• When you practice bodhicitta, first you have to learn the words. Then you will feel a need to benefit others. At that time, self-grasping is diminishing.
• Be a bodhisattva under difficult circumstances - not just when it is comfortable.
• When you are suffering, a few heart-felt words from someone who is close to you will relieve your suffering. This is because there is love and compassion between you.
• The time to practice bodhicitta is when someone stirs us up.
• On the surface it looks like benefiting others, but it is benefiting oneself.
• Bodhicitta is the uncommon common sense.
• We are so fortunate buddha has come and said “generate love and compassion for all sentient beings”.
• Where there is love and compassion, there is the absence of attachment and aversion. Then you will experience the True Nature.
• Do you have this kind of quality? Bodhicitta is precious. Do not lose.
• Love and compassion means “for all sentient beings”, not just one or two.
• A yogi has the desire to serve, not dominate.
• Bodhicitta is moisture for the heart.
• Bodhisattva’s practice is about benefiting beings. It is not about finding faults. It is not about complaining.
• We are on an island of jewels. The human body is the island. The actual jewel to be obtained is bodhicitta.
• We go to receive teachings to benefit others. We eat food to sustain body to benefit others. Shift your focus to others. Reaching enlightenment is to benefit others.
• “Give me a share of your suffering.”
• You cannot cook without water. You cannot practice without bodhicitta.
• When you practice, the amount of benefit depends on bodhicitta, not on the number of recitations.
• Never lose the intention to benefit, 3 times during day, 3 times during night.
• Where there is space, there are sentient beings. You can reach them with bodhicitta mind.
• Love and compassion to all – this is relative samaya.
• Applying antidote to an affliction benefits all sentient beings. Practice for all sentient beings.
• Bodhisattvas have the fear self-cherishing like we have fear for suffering.
• Start with one person. Wish to liberate them from samsara. Increase to all sentient beings.
• Love and compassion is like a shield that protects.
• Through bodhicitta focusing on others, transform desire into love, anger into compassion, jealousy into joy, pride into equanimity, and ignorance into wisdom.
• Be firm about bodhicitta.
• Whatever concern you have for yourself, have this same concern for others.
• Bodhicitta is what we take with us from lifetime to lifetime.
• What prompted us to give in the first place? Love and compassion.
• Bodhicitta purifies self-clinging.
• Bodhicitta cannot be bought. You have to cultivate it.
• You have seed of bodhicitta, now grow it into a tree.
• Bodhicitta makes the mind workable. It makes a rough surface [mind with afflictive emotions] smooth.
• If we don’t practice bodhicitta after receiving all these teachings, what is the point?
• Be a bodhisattva with confidence, not ego.
• A bodhisattva is not an ordinary ‘do-gooder’. He is concerned about liberation of others without being hindred by attachment and aversion.
• Bodhicitta is the mind of the Three Jewels.
• Make a wish to help. Continue to wish to help.
• Pray that action may have far reaching consequences.
• Apart from cultivating the altruistic mind, there is no separate merit.
• The altruistic mind naturally accomplishes the benefit of oneself.
• Aspiring bodhicitta means to reduce self-grasping thoughts. Engaging bodhicitta means to reduce self-grasping actions.
• Relative bodhicitta is based on thoughts. Ultimate bodhicitta is wisdom beyond thoughts.
• Even animals can have occasional altruistic mind and are reborn in the upper realms.
• Pain and suffering in the lower realms is a lot more than over here. Think about the needs of others.
• Pray that you will be able to help one day even if you can’t help right now.
• Bodhicitta is what we take with us. Otherwise we leave empty handed.
• As long as one has the intention to benefit others, things will turn out okay.
• To increase bodhicitta, abondon attachment. Check again & again – is there bodhicitta or is there self-interest?
• Success in dharma means bodhicitta.
• Enlightened beings reached enlightenment because of bodhicitta.
• Be genuine in your practice of love and compassion. Don’t expect reciprocation.
• Love and compassion is the inner protection chakra.
• Coat your actions with bodhicitta and dedicate it for the benefit of beings. Mundane activities can be turned into virtuous deeds.
• Not stirring up others is also a bodhisattva practice.

The four links:

• Link of Aspiration: “May it happen”. These are seeds of virtue.
• Link of Wish: “If only it could happen”. “I want it to happen”. There is some impatience. There is greater involvement.
• Link of Commitment: “I take responsibility to make it happen”. It is not enough to aspire, wish, pray.
• Link of Prayer: Seek help from the Three Jewels.