Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. John Landaw opens this 49-minute introduction to Tantra by establishing the centrality of motivation in Buddhist practice. He contrasts the initial worldly motivation (seeking pleasure, avoiding pain) with successive higher motivations: first, concern for one’s future welfare through ethical discipline; second, the determination to escape cyclic existence entirely through the Three Higher Trainings (ethics, concentration, wisdom), illustrated through the analogy of a woodcutter cutting down a poisoned tree at its root. He then introduces the third and highest motivation—Bodhicitta, the altruistic resolve to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings. Drawing on the Dalai Lama’s concept of “wise selfishness” and the example of Lama Yeshe’s tireless compassion despite severe physical illness, Landaw demonstrates how Bodhicitta transforms even ordinary actions into practices of full enlightenment, turning the mind from narrow self-concern toward boundless benefit for others. Pitched at newcomers to Buddhist philosophy and earnest practitioners beginning to understand the motivational underpinnings of the path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 Intro to Tantra Day 1 no date.mp3
UUID: 47dd7c2d-f45e-4a98-b65f-0fddc6cdc65f
Teacher: John Landaw
Collection: Introduction to Tantra (John Landaw)
Date: 1984 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~5,599
In a way, I’m a little bit sorry that I’m that I’m the one who has to be giving the lectures because and the conversations that have been happening during the break time, it’s obvious that a lot of people here have areas of knowledge and expertise, which would be very, very nice to be able to share with everyone else, very much in the line of the type of direction that is being proposed through this to tantra. So perhaps during future discussion groups and so forth we can partake of some of the experiences that people here have had either personally or through the profession that help maybe give some meaning to what, for me, is perhaps more, let’s say, academically more abstract in nature. Anyway, if you do have anything in your own experience that ties down in practical terms any of the things we have discussed here, then it’s very good to be able to make those associations, because then it makes it, you know, it makes it live more, and then there’s this cross fertilization taking place between the other discipline and the discipline of the Buddhist Tantra. And so both sides benefit that way.
But it has to be done with a certain clarity of mind too, because it’s possible, as Lama Yeshe says, one’s not clear to make soup out of everything. Now there’s a little bit of this mixed with a little bit of that, and the end result is kind of mushy and has no particular distinctive quality. But as long as we’re aware that that’s, you know, aware to try to avoid that error error, then then I think it’s good to make these comparisons. It makes it much more living. So, up to now, we’ve been considering the general path of Buddhadharma and have understood it as a succession of higher and higher motivations, higher and higher, more advanced impulses.
And this question of motivation lies right at the very heart of the Buddhist Dharma, since there are many teachings, many accounts indicating that the most important single element in an activity to determine whether that activity is something wholesome and virtuous and effective, or whether it’s unwholesome and non virtuous and destructive. The main quality determining that is not the action itself, but the motive impelling the action. So for instance, if we establish that generosity is that positive activity, something which brings benefit to self and others, then when we come to describe generosity, to describe what generosity really is, it’s not the actual giving itself. Since there are people who can give without a generous mind. And there are other people who have very generous minds but don’t obviously give anything.
What they give is not something tangible or something we can see. So when we establish something, for example, generosity as being a positive quality, what’s being referred to is a certain quality of the mind that has a willingness to give or an openness to give. And so it’s motivation behind the action, the quality of the mind doing the action, as opposed to the action itself, which carries the main determining quality. And I think before I return to the subject matter, relate a story that I heard about this. It’s a story that goes back to the time when Shakyamun Buddha himself was alive two thousand five hundred years ago.
And in those days, in India, it was the custom that when a person was hosted for meal, like a king or a great sage or whatever, then at the end, there would be the reading of the list of names of the patrons of the meal who provided the meal and the entertainment and so forth. Actually, it’s a custom which is still served among the Tibetans and among the Indians to some extent. So, in one occasion, Buddha and his very large entourage were invited by a local king, a very powerful, very wealthy man, who laid on a sumptuous feast and music, and all kinds of attempts were made to make it a very beautiful, very astounding event. And during the time when this meal was being enjoyed, at the gateway there were people looking in, servants and attendants and strangers, people from the village who were looking in at this incredible spectacle. And among them, there was this one man, one poor man, who thought how marvelous it was for the rich man to have the opportunity to make such a glorious offering to the Buddha, such a perfect recipient to be able to that person to be able to make such a beautiful offering.
And while he was observing this feast, his mind was just filled with this thought of what a marvelous offering it was for the Buddha. And when it came time to read the list of the patrons of the feast, and it came time especially to mention the main patron, the Buddha was asked to read the list. And when he came to the main patron, instead of mentioning the name of the king, he mentioned the name of this poor person who was standing outside. And everybody was quite shocked, And it was explained that the reason that he mentioned it was that though the king was the one who actually gave, presented the meal, his mind was completely encompassed by thoughts of his own reputation that now become more famous as the host and patron of the Buddha. And his whole mind was involved in that.
Whereas the beggar, who hadn’t given anything, hadn’t given even one penny towards the meal, his whole mind was in his rejoicing frame, of rejoicing in how wonderful it was that someone could make such a glorious offering. So to bring that point back home, Buddha read the names, he read the name of the person who rejoiced in the action, thus creating something pure and positive, as opposed to the king himself, whose whole motive was contaminated by self-promotion, thoughts of reputation and the like. So that’s just an antidote to indicate the importance placed on motivation. So before we enter a path of spiritual or mental cultivation, development, then our motivation is largely the motivation of get and avoid. It’s mostly the motivation of seeking out experiences of pleasure and avoiding experiences of pain, and trying to arrange our life to maximize one and minimize the other.
But when we enter the spiritual path and we’re on the initial level, then the motive becomes an interest in one’s future welfare. So realizing that the immediate gratification of the senses and so forth does not produce any lasting effect, then the intention goes inward to try to find the sources of pain and misery, identifying them within the delusions of the mind. And then by observing one’s activity, one tries to minimize the presence of the delusions, and all of the deluded actions, the non virtuous, unwholesome actions that come from the delusions, and maximize the positive states of mind and the positive actions that result, knowing, having an understanding that one is thereby redressing the balance of cause and effect, and is creating causes which lead to happiness in the future, and diminishing causes which would have led to unhappiness. So the motive has already changed, at this point, from having just a vague notion of immediate gratification to an idea that the present is also influencing the future, and understanding that influences in the nature of the quality of mind. So trying to control the quality of the mind through one’s behavior, and thereby providing for one’s future happiness, as opposed to the immediate sense gratification.
So already one’s level of motivation has increased. But at a certain point, even this initial level of spiritual motivation is seen to be inadequate, because though it does provide for a positive future and avoidance of the negative, that too still has a quality of temporariness to it, since the root cause of the delusions, the root cause of the suffering hasn’t yet been removed. And so even though one may achieve beneficial states in the future, it’s still possible to fall from those states to something lower when the delusions reassert themselves. And even before the delusions reassert themselves, those positive states themselves are not wholly positive. They’re not free from a certain underlying sense of dissatisfaction and frustration.
Even states of enjoyments and riches and sensual delight and so forth. Even in those states, there is still something underlying, that’s some thirst that has not yet been quenched. So upon analysis, it’s discovered that it that the source of those delusions reside in a certain type of ignorance, a certain misapprehension of the mind, a certain repeated mistake about the nature of reality, specifically about the nature of one’s own being, who or what I am. That we tend to hold on to an image of our self as something rather permanent, concrete, having very specific, limited, circumscribed qualities, and from holding on to such an image, we’re forced to engage in actions motivated by the delusions. Those things which support this separate concrete sense of self identity to those things we long with strong longing desire to possess them, to help build up that image.
Whereas those things which threaten that identity, we tend to repulse, react to with a certain hatred, a certain repulsion. And so from that basic ego grasping ignorance, the other delusions of attachment on one end, hatred on the other, and all the other derivative delusions spontaneously arise, and so the mind knows no satisfaction. So on this level of practice, the main activity the main activity on the previous level was guarding one’s behavior noticing the tendency to speak, act, and think in negative ways, and guarding that behavior, trying to transform it into something positive. But now, on the second level of motivation, where one is not only interested in gaining pleasant state of the future for oneself, but to rid oneself of the compulsion to have to undergo these experiences again and again and again. This compulsion that is known as cyclic existence or saṃsāra, the state of being in which one is drawn uncontrollably from one unsatisfactory situation into another, within one’s lifetime, and from lifetime to lifetime.
At the second level of motivation, this very pattern of cyclic existence is seen as the problem, and the source of that problem is this grasping onto self identity, this limited view of self. So the main method then to overcome that problem is a practice of what’s generally called the Three Higher Trainings. These are combined efforts at moral discipline, concentration, and wisdom. And the way that they can be described as working together is explained best through an analogy. I’m not sure I may have used the analogy over the weekend.
If I did, I’m sorry for repeating myself. But in this analogy, we think of a woodman, let’s say, attempting to cut down a tree. So the reason that he wants to cut down this tree is that it has poisonous fruit, so he wants to get rid of that tree. Now he knows that by just pruning back the branches, that this is just a temporary solution because the poisonous fruit will grow again after some time. So tired of just applying a temporary solution, he decides the best thing to do is just cut right through the trunk because once that happens, then the tree will never grow back again.
So the wisdom so the trunk that he wants to cut through is this basic ignorance, this ignorance of ego grasping, of holding on to a wrong, a wrongly conceived, concrete, limited conception of self. That’s what has to be cut to it. Otherwise, just trying to apply antidotes to the hatred and the greed, all the poisonous fruits that grow, is just like pruning back the branches. As long as the ignorance isn’t cut, eventually those delusions will grow again and bring the suffering results. So to cut through the tree, the woodsman needs, first of all, sharp axe.
Now in this course, we don’t have very much time to indicate the how this axe is sharpened, how we develop or acquire such a sharpened axe. But briefly, it’s wisdom. It’s the ability to discern the difference between what exists and what is only imagined to exist. Between what types of activities should be followed, because they’re beneficial, and those types of activities which shouldn’t be followed, because they’re detrimental. So the image is that of an axe, this sharp ability to discriminate between the correct and the incorrect, between the true and the false.
But if the woodsman just has an axe by itself, that’s not gonna be very helpful. If you’ve ever tried to cut through something, if you don’t have a sharp aim and you keep hitting a different point with the axe each time, you can chop that way for an hour and still not cut through anything. So in addition to the sharp axe, there has to be this kind of concentration, this control which allows one to apply the wisdom directly to the same point again and again until it penetrates. As long as our mind is unfocused and under the influence of all the distractions, as long as we don’t have that concentration, then it doesn’t matter how sharp our wisdom is, we won’t be able to apply it in an effective manner. We’ll just be able to strike brief insights here and there, but nothing to really penetrate.
So just as the axe, the woodsman needs a good aim to hit the same place again and again, the practitioner needs sharp concentration to apply the wisdom directly against the antidote, directly against this wrongly conceived notion of self. But a person could have a sharp axe and good aim, but still not be terribly strong. And therefore, even though the same place is hit again and again, it still doesn’t have penetrating power. The act of the woodsman still needs strength to wield the act. In fact, it needs strength just to have the concentration, just to be able to hit the same place.
So in a very similar manner, one has to start from a certain basis of discipline or ethics or, if you don’t mind the term morality, some ability of keeping the body, the mind, the speech in some kind of pure direction. I think all of us know of people who are very brilliant in some area, but we wonder why their brilliance hasn’t affected any major change in their life. You know, they obviously have the smarts There’s nothing wrong with that. But yet, their life remains a mess. It’s as if they were stupid, but we know they’re not.
We know they’re smart. So what’s the problem? And generally, if we look at such a person’s life carefully, what we see is that there’s no basic ethics. There’s no basic discipline. The person has no discipline in his or her life.
And so this lack of discipline, this lack of doing the correct behavior, the wholesome behavior at the right time, leads to a certain sloppiness, a physical sloppiness, which leads to a mental sloppiness. And because the mind is sloppy in that way, the brilliance that this person has is like a freak quality. It comes up at certain times, but it’s never applied directly. It’s just hit or miss. It just stays on an intellectual level.
So the strength of the Woodsman then becomes analogous to the strength of having disciplined behavior, of which we talked about before, guarding the activities of body, speech, and mind. So with strength, good concentration, and an axe, it’s possible to cut through the trunk of the tree, so that the poisonous fruit never grows again. Similarly, by the three higher trainings of some type of disciplined behavior, coupled with a very, very powerful sense of concentration, and then mounting on this concentration the sharp axe of wisdom, this honed ability to make proper distinctions between what is and what isn’t, then it’s really possible to cut through the delusion of this ego grasping, this self grasping ignorance. So on the second level of motivation, The main activity is the combined training in these three higher trainings, and the main goal is to cut through this compulsive ego grasping to attain a state of freedom, often known as nirvana, or sometimes known as the lower nirvana. A sense of emancipation or liberation.
A state which, because this basic ignorance is forever removed from the mind, is no longer any root cause for the delusions to arise, and therefore there’s no cause for deluded actions to arise, and therefore there’s no cause for suffering results to be experienced. So having uprooted this type of ignorance from the mind completely, one experiences a blissful state, a state of a so called Arhat, a r h a t. An Arhat, someone who is known as the foe destroyer, that’s really what means. He or she is a foe destroyer. The foe is the delusions.
Delusions of the completely destroyed, not merely placated. Having been destroyed, there is no possibility for suffering to arise anymore. Even if one meets a suffering producing situation, because the root of suffering is no longer in one’s mind, peace, the peace of the mind is not disturbed, even though situation may be a negative one. Up to this point, the person has been concentrating on his or her own desire to experience happiness and overcome suffering, and has gone through several graded techniques culminating in the three higher trainings, and eventually capable of producing this state of peace. This is nirvana.
But this attainment as well, even though it’s a state which lacks suffering, is still not a final attainment. And to understand why, there’s another commonly used analogy, and that is being trapped with one’s family and friends inside a burning building. Now, one might think that if you escape to the upper stories of that building where the smoke or the flames haven’t yet reached, that this is some kind of safe place. Certainly better than being down where the fire and the smoke is. But if you stop to think about it for a minute, as long as you’re still in the house, if haven’t escaped, then the flames and the smoke will reach eventually.
Escaping to the upper floors is not a final solution. So that’s like from the point of view of seeing that merely gaining higher states within cyclic existence, even though they’re temporary solutions, are still not ultimate, because one is still in the house of one’s own true identity. So that’s not a solution. So then we make for the door and get out to the lawn outside. We’ve actually broken free from the house, and now we’re no longer under the danger of the fire and the smoke.
The house may get consumed, but we’re safe. We’re outside. Yet, our family, our friends, our relatives, they’re all still inside. So if you can imagine that situation of being out there and belong, imagine the incredible relief of having made one’s way through the flames and the smoke outside, but how strong a sense of relief would that be if all of one’s relatives, friends, and so forth were still inside? So what most people would then try to do is, having gained the outside, one would try to pick up some piece of equipment, something helpful, a hose or gas mask or something, and re enter, or attempt to re enter the house and bring others out to safety.
Because what would life be like if we were just on the outside and just had to watch while all our relatives were still inside. So this analogy, realizing that up till now, this concentration on one’s own salvation is not enough, that one has to develop to a state not only where one itself is out of suffering, but also has the skill and the ability to benefit others who are caught without a guide, still in that burning house, the burning house of the delusions. So when one develops this kind of motivation of wishing to attain a state, which instead of being characterized by merely being free of suffering, is also characterized by having the type of compassion, the type of wisdom, and the type of skill that can actually bring benefit to others. That particular motivation is the motivation of the third and the highest scope. The first scope was wishing for a better future for oneself within cyclic existence.
The second one was wishing to escape from cyclic existence oneself. But now, there comes the highest goal in motivations. The motivation to win a state of enlightenment so that we’d be in a position to benefit others, to win a state of enlightenment for the sake of benefiting others. And so, this motivation, which is known as the Bodhicitta, it’s very commonly referred to by the Sanskrit name Bodhi, that’s B O D H I, refers to the state of enlightenment, the state of supreme compassion and wisdom and skill. And Citta, C I T T A, is referring to the mind or the attitude wishing to gain that state.
So it’s the mind striving to enlightenment. Synonyms are the altruistic attitude. And Lama Yeshe, in his last years of his life, used to refer to it very much as the heart of dedication, the dedicated mind. Dedicated to the benefit of others and wishing to secure that benefit by oneself becoming an enlightened being. Do people feel uncomfortable?
Maybe a short break or a stretch, or we can maybe just continue in about a minute or so. Initially, to make too many distinctions between Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna, because a lot of times confusion arises, you know, we tend to think like, as an example, Tibetans are Mahayanists, Sri Lankans, and Thai, and Burmese are Hinayanists, and that’s just the way it One belongs to one school, they practice this, and they receive this result, and the others belong to this school, and they practice this, and they receive that result. But Lama Yeshe, among others, has been very, very emphatic in indicating that this just isn’t true, that the proper, the gut distinction between Himayana and Mahāyāna refers to one’s own inner motivation. So one could have a text in front of oneself which is written from a so called Hīnayāna point of view or Mahāyāna point of view, but could be following that text for one’s own motivation. And so the text could be a Mahāyāna text, and the motivation might not even be a Hīnayāna motivation, Might might not even have any interest in liberation.
It just might be desire for one’s reputation. So even though one is, let’s say, a monk and wearing the robes of a Hinayanist and the text is, excuse me, the robes of the Mahāyāna and text is a Mahāyāna text and the teachers from the Mahāyāna tradition, one’s own motivation will transform that entire practice perhaps to a lower level than Hīnayāna even, just a worldly activity. On the other hand, the text, the teacher, the robes, the environment, the country could all be unquote Hīnayāna, and yet the motive behind the practitioner is to bring as much benefit to others as possible, immediately transforming everything into Mahāyāna practice. So the healthy distinction is not to indicate that one country or one tradition is Hīnayāna or Mahāyāna, as much as it is to indicate that the whole movement from no motivation to a Hīnayāna motivation of self concern, to a Mahāyāna motivation of concern for others, is all something which evolves in one person. That one person strives to go from being totally worldly to a Hīnayāna level, and then strives to move from a Hīnayāna to a Mahāyāna level, thereby transforming whatever it is that he or she practices.
Rather than thinking, well, Tibetan Dharma is better than Burmese Dharma because Burmese, everybody knows as Hīnayāna, in Tibetan everybody knows as Maya. It’s just not true. It just doesn’t work that way. Now sometimes distinctions are made on philosophical grounds, and then certain terms such as Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna thrown around. But that’s another matter.
That’s not nearly as deep and as profound. The true distinction has to do with one’s own motivation. And so, at the third level of motivation, the attitude being cultivated is this Mahāyāna, or great vehicle motivation, that whatever activity is being engaged in is done for the sake of being able to benefit others. And so this Bodhicitta, this quality of turning the mind outward from its concern only with self towards a real heartfelt concern for the welfare of others, itself is a type of enlightenment. Now people could debate that, saying no, it’s not really enlightenment, cause enlightenment has these and these and these qualities, and bodhicitta doesn’t have any of those qualities.
Nevertheless, the bodhicitta mind indicates that at least some level of selfishness and egocentricity has been overcome. And to whatever level it’s been overcome, to that level it’s an enlightened experience. It’s an experience of freedom. An experience of an outward turning of the mind. Because remember, up to this point, the main problem has been that out of a vast array of human possibilities, a vast scope of potential, we’ve imprisoned ourselves into a very narrow confine, thinking I’m this, I’m not that, I have this quality, I want this for myself, I, I, I, continually.
Now when we gain a heartfelt appreciation that there’s no essential difference whatsoever between myself in terms of my wanting happiness and my wanting to avoid suffering, no distinction between myself and others who all want the same thing, then it’s possible to begin a very, very deep transformation of one’s attitude, of one’s concern, and to reach a state where one is as concerned for the welfare of others as one has been, up to that point, concerned with the welfare of oneself. And concerning these points, the Dalai Lama has coined a phrase which he calls wise selfish. He says, ordinarily we’re selfish, we’re self centered, but what we do under the impetus of that kind of selfishness is we want to be happy, but out of our selfishness we engage in activities, self centered activities, which have the end result of producing unhappiness for ourselves. It says, much better to have a wise kind of selfishness. With this, we’re still after our own welfare, but we realize that the only way that we can gain an experience of our own welfare is to benefit others, is to be concerned with their welfare.
And it’s possible to understand this by looking at our own experience, trying to compare the depth of joy that we experience when we’ve truly benefited someone else with the superficiality of the pleasure we experience when we grab something, even something we wanted for ourselves. There seems no comparison. When we grab something for ourselves and satisfy some basic, sensual desire, let’s say, there’s a certain immediate intensity of pleasure which very quickly fades and leaves behind a feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction. So it’s kind of intense, but it’s very short lived and leaves behind a bad taste. Whereas when we benefit others, there may be no immediate rush of pleasure, but there’s a certain feeling of well-being.
And this feeling lasts longer for many reasons. One, it’s a deeper feeling, so it lasts longer. And also, it lasts longer because not only does one self feel good about it, but someone else now feels good about it. And one can experience that well-being that the other person has. So the Dalai Lama says that if we’re going to be selfish, if we really are going to be concerned with gaining happiness for ourselves, well at least we should be wise selfish.
And the method of doing that is to exchange this typical attitude of only being concerned with one’s own welfare and trying to cultivate an attitude of cherishing the welfare of others. So any activity engaged in with such a motive, wishing to win a state of enlightenment, to be of benefit to others. Any such activity then becomes a so called great vehicle or Mahāyāna activity, whether it’s within the scope of Buddhism or not. So Bodhicitta is sometimes called the great elixir, the philosopher’s stone, which is capable of transforming base metals into gold. It’s referred to as that way because if one has this type of expansive Bodhicitta vision aimed at the welfare of others and at the same time aimed at attaining the state of perfect clarity, of enlightenment, so that one can actually benefit others.
If one has that, then the benefits deriving from even the simplest activities turn into gold, become extraordinarily valuable. Even if the activity is something which the world counts as very, very little, like giving a, you know, just a piece of food, a small piece of food to one animal, or lighting a piece of incense and placing it on an altar with images of enlightened beings on it. Even such tiny, apparently insignificant actions as that can have extraordinary effects on one’s mind if those actions are done with the Bodhicitta motivation. Because everything then, if I can use this expression, becomes centered outwards. And so every activity increases these tendencies — let me start again.
Every action done with this motivation decreases the habitual grasp of selfishness, of egocentricity, and reestablishes a pattern of turning out. And so one is immediately thrust onto the path of full enlightenment, a state which is like the sun, which effortlessly radiates outwards. So having motivation which points outwards and directing all activities from that kind of expansive center brings the result of enlightenment itself. It’s like a foretaste of enlightenment. Now, those people who have had the fortune of meeting spiritual masters who have made this Bodhicitta an integral part of the mind, not something that just arises sometimes and then disappears, but something that’s always active.
They can see for themselves how powerful the Bodhicitta is. This center is particularly blessed, having been founded by Venerable Lama Yeshe, because in Lama Yeshe’s case, there was a man who, for all intents and purposes, was just an ordinary Tibetan man, a monk, who had a very, very bad heart from a rheumatic fever condition he had as a child, a completely inefficient machine which had to expand eventually to fill his whole chest area because it was so inefficient, its valves were not working. It regurgitated most of its blood back onto itself rather than pumping it through his body. He’s a man who, medical science, as long ago as ten to twelve years ago, said at that time there was no reason for him to have been alive, and he certainly was going to pass away very shortly. So a person who, if you look just on a physical level, was in a situation of incredible weakness and lack of strength, and yet his activity encompassed the activity far beyond that of whole groups of people, constantly giving, constantly active, constantly moving, constantly teaching, not only in teaching situations, but by his everyday activity.
It’s as if he had struck a well within himself like a cornucopia, just constantly flooding like this. And it’s clear, it was clear that the source of this superhuman ability to be able to give when there didn’t seem to be any physical basis from which to give, constant outpouring of energy, was solely due to the Bodhicitta that he developed. That was the sole reason. The fact that his concern was so obviously sympathetic to the needs of others. And Lama Yeshe is only one of many examples that can be given, and the only reason I feel free to give it here is because of the extraordinary close connection which exists between the very establishment of Buddha House and Lama’s own presence in both Nepal and Australia over the years.
So from the experience of meeting some Master like that, from whatever tradition, we can look, for instance, to the frail form of Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and to see what extraordinary energy is forthcoming from her for the exact same reason. Whether or not it’s called Bodhicitta is irrelevant, the whole reason is she’s able to do as much as she does is because her concern for others is as strong as her concern for herself, stronger. And so, what the Bodhicitta does, what the cultivation of the Bodhicitta does, is indicate that we have this untapped potential, that we’ve been looking in the wrong place up to now for where to get our energy from, where to get our benefit from. And we’ve neglected this source of unending energy. Now sometimes, in the course of our life, we touch it very deeply, and it can have a very profound effect.
I know every once in a while, you read in the newspapers of some person who is just a very ordinary person, not strong at all, but who sees someone trapped underneath an automobile. And out of this extraordinary concern of the welfare of that person, like maybe it’s maybe the person’s the mother.