Unleashing the Heart

Have you stopped looking at the daily news? I have. I just can’t bear it. The relentless cruelty and suffering. The fear and utter stupidity that causes it. And yet at the same time I know I'm trying to embrace the aspiration of a bodhisattva - but how can I be when, out of my own fear, I hide my head in the sand? This brings us to the second of these blogs on being a bodhisattva. How do we manage to really feel the unhappiness and suffering of others in such a way that it does not entirely swamp and overwhelm us. How do we avoid despair when we open our hearts more fully?

The word ‘bodhisattva’ means an awakened being. It is someone who is delaying full liberation until everyone else joins them. Their motivation to do this extraordinarily generous thing is called ‘bodhichitta’ which means the awakened mind. This is both something we cultivate through our practice but is also naturally present as one aspect of our buddha-nature. Our practice unlocks what is already in our hearts if we only dare to unleash it.

But what about the swamping issue? Mahayana Buddhism resolves this by balancing compassion with wisdom. Each may aid the other. Through our wisdom we can gain insight into our compassion, gradually beginning to differentiate between those compassionate acts that are actually motivated by our own wounded-ness and those that are not. Those that are not secretly self-seeking. In this way our compassion becomes more true and powerful. Wisdom, the recognition of the transitory nature of everything, may also generate fellow feeling. We are all in the exact same boat. There is nothing fundamentally different about me from anyone else. We all experience the same suffering. Furthermore, wisdom is the nature of a buddha’s mind and so by cultivating wisdom, and thereby recognising our buddha-nature, we place ourselves in the ultimately compassionate position of being able to help others realise their own buddha-nature. What could be more compassionate than this? Finally Wisdom is equated with having a sense of how this perpetually passing world has a dream like quality. It’s not quite a solid as it seems. Nothing remains the same. Or in Buddhist speak it’s ‘empty’. This leads to a lighter touch with less-emotional baggage. Compassion also supports our understanding of wisdom. The gradual erosion of making everything all about me leads to a more open heart and it is this generosity of spirit that creates the circumstances for wisdom to arise. Without an opening heart there will be no awakening further along the path.

However this balance between compassion and wisdom is also a really tricky thing. Err too much on the side of wisdom and it becomes a way of defending ourselves against the pain. You can hear a somewhat emotionally cold person saying: “Oh, it’s all empty really”, and thereby diminishing others unhappiness. But then on the other hand, erring the other way, we are back in emotional overwhelm where perhaps the wounded child in us struggles to make everything OK for all those around us. A god-like struggle it can never win. So too cold or too hot. The balance requires we somehow find and maintain how to really care but at the same time not loose sight of the fact that we poor suffering beings are all living a dream like existence. It seems real but it’s not and yet this unreality does truly hurt.

So one more impossible thing before we stop. In the first entry on the bodhisattva we ended with Shantideva’s beautiful and also challenging bodhisattva’s aspiration prayer. Now, to this let’s add the bodhisattva vow that is found in some traditions of the Dharma. Here it is:

• Beings are numberless, I vow to free them all.

• Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them all.

• Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it all.

• The awakened way is unsurpassable, I vow to fully embody it.

And here’s another from our own tradition:

Ho! To establish every being in numbers vast as space,

In the state of buddha-hood,

I will realise self-knowing awareness,

Through the instructions of the Great Perfection.

It’s another serious stretch: I’m committing myself to help everyone bring their suffering to an end through achieving liberation. And to achieve this I will, through my profound understanding of the Dharma, tread the unsurpassable path that removes all my obscurations, and finally leads to perfect buddha-hood.

Hmmm, OK it’s a stretch, but remember. These are aspirations not commandments and our practice is being present with all the different reactions they evoke within us. And also remember that bodhichitta, the awakened heart, is already who we truly are. We feel it when confronted by a crying child, a wounded animal or finding the worm on the path that we stoop to pick up and rescue.

NW. and P.V. 2 November 2025