The First steps to engendering Bodhichitta

Conquering pride through imbuing ones thought life with compassionate understanding and learning to love others more effectively through love and respect of oneself, brought about by the practice of mindfulness and the engendering of Bodhichitta.

Through consistent mindfulness we can find the centre of our being and be absorbed in the song of our heart our true note that goes ever outwards in love. Free from expectations or need of proof, acknowledgement or acceptance we can see the truth within us and it is nurturing and reflective of others’ truth. Mindfulness is the practice of observing our threefold manifest self and lovingly guiding it. Our mind, its thoughts, our emotions and feelings, and physical sensations, we cannot really separate these things from one another though one may have more prominent effect or emphasis than another at any one time.
Throughout our daily life our minds are plagued with thought, much of it goes un-noticed and is not controlled by concentrating the will or conscious thought form building, though it has magical potency all the same.Our ignorance and lack of observance or mindfulness of our own thought life can bring us down, so we attack ourselves and inevitably others. This is like a “thought form war” which we oftentimes forget is going on and fall into the traps of. To acknowledge that we do have negative thoughts of ourselves or others is a good starting point to understandin how this manifests.
How do we bind ourselves to an image of ourselves which is negative? And how to counteract it without falling into further tricks of pride?
Two methods of approach are:
Ritualistic mindfulness- the use of mantra in a ritualistic way
Dynamic or spontaneous mindfulness- the dynamic response to the observed negativities as they arise and general self observance.
Ritualistic mindfulness is to be employed when we are aware of a fundamental weakness or negativity. For example, if general negativity or unlove for oneself is the root problem we can use a mala to recite such things as “I love myself and others equally”, or it can be written down and stuck in our rooms or house in a prominent place which we are sure to look at every day- the more the better.
Keeping in mind that one should try always to formulate mantras that are equanimous and will not push ones thoughts to the opposite extreme, and also that they are precise in dealing with a problem and not to general or vague. Ritual mindfulness is about the wilful assertion of the consciousness to good.
Spontaneous mindfulness is manifested through being ever watchful and observant of the mind and whenever a negativity is detected or a positive effort is made one responds to it appropriately lovingly. Thought streams must be analysed in the moment in order to do this, so one will have to still themselves and be meditative. For example you may say or do something and your internal (ignorant) response is “you idiot!” or “I’m such an idiot, how could I have done something so stupid?”, immediately one must recognise – I am attacking myself- and counteract that with love, saying “that is not true, I am not an idiot, but I have not thought this out properly, what should I have done?” and think out a solution to your problem, meditate on it detachedly. The opposite extreme is overrating our actions, this often arises through comparing ourselves with others. If we take a moderate approach to self praise through appreciation of our actions then there is not need for the desire to hear others praise and acknowledgement, because we respect ourself and our own assessment of things as truthful, that is- moderate, without extreme, there arises natural satisfaction which is the starting point to becoming more loving. Why is this? Because we must learn to give and to love without the desire for reward, satisfaction will give way to joy when our efforts and actions become more and more loving and selfless.
Spontaneous mindfulness is also very important from the perspective that whatever one thinks of oneself so it is reflected upon others. If one thinks greatly of oneself they will think less of others, when one thinks poorly of oneself, they may be seeing others in a distorted or over glorified fashion which can lead to jealousy and other negativities. This by no means implies that people should attempt to constrain everyone into an homogenous category of “same” as this is just as unrealistic, what we need to do is properly appreciate the good aspects of ourselves and of others non-comparatively, and be understanding and compassionate towards our own and others weaknesses and faults. This is the middle way in daily practice of life and is part of the augmentation of Bodhichitta. All people have different areas of strength, we can respect this in one another without comparing each other and thus have a realistic perception of one another, and in turn see the group we are part of as the mandala with each person having their role of importance and nurturing it.

Written by Angie O'Sullivan