Bodhicitta is an important concept in Mahayana Buddhism that hints at an immense mystery. Literally, the heart or mind (citta) of awakening (bodhi). It is the ground of our being, and the path we walk in learning to live well and meaningfully. It is the fruition of a life illumined with profound understanding.
At the end of letters or e-mails
we sometimes sign off,
“with love and good wishes . . . ”
How profound!
How deep!
But what do we mean?
As Buddhists, do we mean “with bodhicitta“?
“with love and good wishes . . . ”
Citta is a Pali/Sanskrit word,
a sound, a dancing of larynx and a reverberating of ear parts.
It is an explosion of air density linked
with emotion, and feeling, and metabolic process.
It is a joining of humans in realizing our humanness.
We speak. We talk.
We reverberate with histories of mother and infant
learning the dancing of speaking and talking
and emotioning and being.
It takes all of us to talk – cultures unfolding,
all of me and all of you, and all of us.
This is the heart of the situation –
the life and living we find ourselves in.
This citta, this heart that minds.
This mind that heartens.
It minds itself mindfully,
a mine of minds, a treasury of jewels,
caring for everyone everywhere.
Bodhi is another word,
a world, emerging,
a mystery from the garden.
Blossoms blossoming everywhere.
Buddings and Buddha-ings.
Flowerings of ephemeral appearance.
Knowns and knowings,
arising in and as
this dance and dancing
of everything.
And when I settle, resting
open and easeful in, and as, the joy that is right now,
I feel the fabric of everything supporting.
We belong with each other.
And apart from this we are not.
Ungraspable, un-pin-downable,
totally responsive yet magnificently free,
life arises in love,
a deeper than imagined mutual interbeingness,
a collaborative co-creating,
this radiant emptiness that is our ultimate foundation and ground.
This is ultimate bodhicitta,
a together functioning,
flowering this currently arising life and living that I am;
that you are,
that we are;
that is this eternal, ever-fresh present.
And simultaneously,
arising with this blessing,
are unmodified, “good wishes”, child-like and guileless,
the unique contribution that is oneself in the act of stirring the universe.
May you be well, may you function well.
May you/me/we, be blessed with opportunities to see,
and care, and care for, and nurture,
however the situation and circumstance arises and allows.
This is relative bodhicitta,
an ocean of mutual relating.
An aspiration, thrown into the sea of becoming.
A wishing arising out of the dancing,
the foundational loving of everything – expressed in the most ordinary way.
May you be happy. May you realize your deepest heart desires.
May you be blessed with good health and boundless joy.
So much in such a short phase,
“with love and good wishes”!