BODHICITTA - The Purpose Of Life
By Lama Zopa Rinpoche
(July & August 2001 Newsletter)

For those of us who have been able to attend teachings and practice the Dharma that we learned from the Gurus this is a most precious, unbelievably fortunate time. It is just incredible that we have the karma to be able to see the Buddhas in human form. Thus, not only can we communicate with these living manifestations of the enlightened beings mind but we can also receive teachings on a path that, without doubt, without any question, liberates us from both the ocean of samaric suffering and its cause - karma, which are actions motivated by delusion, and the delusions themselves, the disturbing, obscuring thoughts whose continuity has no beginning. Even if we can not practise every single thing that our Gurus has taught us in the past, just hearing teachings leaves positive imprints on our mental continua, and sooner or later, these imprints will definitely liberate us from the ocean of samsaric suffering and its cause and bring us to full enlightenment, the peerless happiness of Buddha hood.

What is the purpose of our life? Why do we live? Why do we exert so much effort to survive every day, every hour, every minute, every second? Why do we spend so much money taking care of this body, checking our health every year to see if there's anything wrong, and if there is, under going expensive treatments? Why do we spend so much money on food, clothing and shelter - on the many things we need to survive and be healthy? Why do we do all those billions of exercises to keep our bodies healthy?

All these expenses and activities have meaning only if we have compassion within us. Compassion for others makes everything we do - spending money, studying, working, exercising, looking after our health - meaningful.

If, on the other hand, our hearts lack compassion, our lives become empty. All those expenses, all that effort, all those long hours on the job are totally devoid of meaning and we find no fulfillment in our everyday lives. Without compassion, the thought of benefiting others, our hearts remain unfulfilled and it is very difficult for us to find satisfaction in whatever we do. No matter how much external wealth we have, if our hearts lack compassion, they are always empty, hollow inside.

If you check carefully, you will see that no matter how many things you have or how hard you try to achieve them, if there's no compassion in your heart, you never feel quite right. There's no peace in your heart, and deep within, you always feel that there's something missing.

The best way to give meaning to your life is to make it beneficial for others by having compassion for them. That's also the best way to find peace, happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction in your own life. But compassion for others does not only bring you peace and happiness right now, every moment of your present life. Living your life for others also offers you the best possible future. And even at that most critical juncture, the end of your life, when your consciousness separates from your body, compassion makes your death happy, peaceful and satisfying. Moreover, your peaceful, happy death makes others happy too. Your friends and family can rejoice. You become an inspiration, an example of hope and courage. They see that their own deaths could also be happy.

However, even if you have realised the wisdom directly perceiving the very nature of phenomena - the ultimate nature of the I and mind - if you have no compassion, no good heart, the most you can achieve is simply the nirvana of the Lesser Vehicle path, the sorrow less state for yourself alone; you cannot achieve full enlightenment. You still have the hallucination of the dualistic view. There are still subtle negative imprints on your mental continuum that prevent you from seeing directly all existence, the emptiness of all phenomena - all absolute and conventional truths together.

The Purifying Power of Compassion
With compassion for others, leading your life for the benefit of others, you collect incredible merit. As the great bodhisattva pandit Shantideva said in the first chapter of his Guide to the Bodhisattva's Life (Bodhicharyavatara), when describing the benefits of bodhicitta, "Bodhicitta is the most powerful purifier of defilements, negative karma." There are a few stanzas where Shantideva talks about how powerful bodhicitta is in purifying negative karma.

He continues, "Like relying on a very powerful person when you want to be saved from danger, relying on bodhicitta, practising bodhicitta, the good heart, for just a minute, even a second, purifies very powerful, inexhaustible, negative karma. Why, then, would the conscientious not entrust themselves to bodhicitta?" [Chapter 1, verse 13.]

If you have compassion in your everyday life, you collect the most extensive merit and purify much negative karma in a very short time. Many lifetimes, many eons of negative karma get purified. That helps you to realise emptiness. How? To realise emptiness, you need much merit and great purification. For example, to realize a million dollar project, you need a million dollars. Similarly, to realize emptiness, you need a vast accumulation of merit. By practicing compassion, benefiting others, you accumulate great merit, and the realization of emptiness comes by the way.

Longdrol Lama Rinpoche, a great yogi from Sera-je Monastery who often saw Tara, the embodiment of all the buddhas' holy actions, said that she advised him to practice tong-len. This practice involves your taking other sentient beings' suffering and its cause onto yourself, destroying your ego, and giving your body, happiness, merit and everything else to other sentient beings, dedicating everything to others, causing them to receive whatever they need, as a result of which they actualize the path of method and wisdom and become enlightened. Tara told Longdrol Lama Rinpoche, "If you practise tong-len, taking and giving, the realization of emptiness will come by the way."

But that's not all. Through compassion, you not only realize emptiness; you also achieve full enlightenment, the total cessation of all mistakes of mind, all defilements, and the complete achievement of all realizations.

Universal Responsibility
If you don't have compassion, all you have is a self-centered mind. Due to that, anger, jealousy, desire and other such emotional thoughts arise. These negative thoughts then make you harm other sentient beings directly or indirectly, from life to life. You, one person with a negative attitude, inflict harm on all sentient beings. That's very dangerous. By comparison, even if all sentient beings get angry at, harm or even kill you, that's nothing. You are just one person; your importance is nothing. You are just one living being.

Therefore, it is essential, extremely important, that you, this one person, change your negative attitude and transform your mind into compassion, bodhicitta, in this life, immediately - now. Why? Because this life gives you every opportunity to do so. From beginningless rebirths up to now, you have not changed your attitude of self-cherishing - the source of all the problems and suffering that you yourself experience, and the source of your giving many problems and much harm to numberless other living beings - into the attitude of cherishing and benefiting others - the source of all peace and happiness for both yourself and numberless other living beings. You have not changed your ego, your self-centered mind, the thought of seeking happiness for only yourself, into the loving compassionate thought of bodhicitta. In this life, however, you can.

From your own side you have received the precious human body that has eight freedoms and ten richnesses. Furthermore, you have met not only a qualified virtuous friend who shows you virtue - the unmistaken cause of the happiness of future lives and the unmistaken path to liberation, freedom forever from samsara - but you have also met a qualified Mahayana virtuous friend, who reveals the complete, unmistaken path to full enlightenment, the non-abiding sorrowless state. You have met not only Buddhadharma, but the Mahayana teaching. Even if you haven't met such a teacher yet, you have every opportunity to do so. Especially now, you have the opportunity of meeting the virtuous friend, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is proven by historical quotations of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha to be the Buddha of Compassion. This is like a dream come true; it is so difficult to express.

If you, one living being, develop compassion in your heart, you no longer give harm to numberless other living beings. You stop harming others. The absence of harm that your compassion brings numberless other sentient beings is peace and happiness. That is what they receive from you.

Not only that. As well as not receiving harm from you, others also receive benefit. Out of compassion, you help them. Thus, numberless other sentient beings receive much peace and happiness from you. All that is in your hands, because it is completely up to what you do with your own mind - whether you generate compassion for others or whether you don't. Numberless other sentient beings receiving harm or peace and happiness all depends on what you do with your own mind. It's all up to you. Therefore, each one of us here has complete responsibility for the peace and happiness of every single sentient being. Each of us has universal responsibility.

Therefore, twenty-four hours a day, from morning till night, as much as you can, you should put all your effort into generating the thought of universal responsibility: "I'm responsible for the peace and happiness of numberless other living beings; the purpose of my life is to bring happiness to other sentient beings." Get up in the morning with this attitude; get dressed with this attitude, this feeling of responsibility: "I'm responsible for all sentient beings' happiness; their peace and happiness is up to me." Know that this truly is the meaning of your life. Get dressed with this attitude, bathe with this attitude, eat breakfast with this attitude, go to work with this attitude.

Working with Bodhicitta
Also, during the day, while you are working, keep checking your attitude. It's not enough simply to leave home in the morning with this attitude. At work, check your motivation again and again, and repeatedly transform your attitude in this way. Keep generating the good heart; keep feeling responsible for all sentient beings' happiness, that it's up to you to cause it. Maintain a constant attitude of compassion, bodhicitta.

Examine your motivation again and again: "For whom am I doing this job? Am I doing it for myself or others?" If deep in your heart, there's no continuity of the feeling that you are doing your job for others, if your attitude has changed, if you find that you're doing it for your own happiness, for yourself, then discard this attitude and replace it with the attitude that you are doing your job for the benefit of others, with compassion, the good heart, bodhicitta. Put as much effort as you possibly can into generating and maintaining the feeling that you're doing your job for the benefit of others, not only for yourself.

Just because you're working for money doesn't mean that you're not benefiting others. If you use the money you earn to help others - for example, to help the sick or the poor, to spread Dharma or to help sentient beings in any other way - that's certainly for the benefit of others. If you are doing your job to save money so that you can do retreat or practice or study Dharma for the benefit of other sentient beings, that's the right attitude; that's the attitude you should have. If you work and study so that you can live, but you live your life for the benefit of others; if you take care of yourself so that you can serve other sentient beings; if you feel, "I'm the servant of all sentient beings, serving to free them from suffering and bring them all happiness," you might be working in a regular job, but the work that you do is for others.

Sleeping with Bodhicitta
When you go to bed, you should also sleep with a feeling of responsibility for the happiness of all sentient beings: "The meaning of my life is to bring happiness to others. In order to do so, I need to be healthy and live long. Sleep is essential to sustain my body. Therefore, for the benefit of others, I am going to sleep." The teachings suggest that this is one way of going to sleep. "To free numberless other living beings from all their suffering and lead them to the great happiness of full enlightenment, I must first achieve enlightenment myself. In order to do so, I need to practise Dharma. To practise effectively, I need a long life and good health. Longevity and good health depend on sleep. Therefore, I'm now going to sleep."

The two things we spend most of our time doing are working and sleeping. Therefore, we need a good motivation for each, otherwise we are going to waste more than half of our lives. As the lam-rim teachings mention, we can spend almost half our lives sleeping. Therefore, it's very important to know not only how to make sleep virtuous, the cause of happiness, and not non-virtuous, the cause of suffering, but also how to make it the cause of numberless other living beings' happiness.

If you sleep with compassion, bodhicitta, the thought of benefiting others, your sleep becomes the cause of enlightenment, the cause of happiness of numberless other living beings. This is because anything you do with bodhicitta only benefits others, even before you become enlightened. As soon as you enter in the Mahayana path by developing bodhicitta, you begin to offer deep benefit to other sentient beings, and after you complete the path and achieve enlightenment, you bring numberless other sentient beings into full enlightenment. Thus, your action of sleeping becomes the cause of happiness for numberless other sentient beings.

Therefore, make sure that you put great effort into generating not only virtuous motivation but also the very best Dharma attitude of compassion, bodhicitta; not only when you go to work but also when you go to sleep. In that way, your sleep becomes the best Dharma because it is unstained by the self-cherishing thought. So, that is the sutra way of sleeping, but there are also tantric meditations for both when you go to sleep and when you wake up, so that you awaken with that continuity. If you have received commentaries on the lower tantras or Highest Yoga Tantra, you should practice whatever you can remember.

Source:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche (2001). Making Life Meaningful. Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive: USA.