The bodhisattva mind, what bodhisattvas want to develop is great compassion.
Our lives do not exist just by themselves,
they exist in relation to all others,
and so we don’t have any kind of independent existence.
The Heart of Chan Buddhism
Since there are so many causes and conditions supporting each other,
we can live and survive.
Every day, every breath, every second,
we can view the world with a sympathetic mind,
and we can view other beings with an empathetic mind.
In this way, we can give rise to great compassion.
We can see how many poor people there are out there,
how many sick people there are.
And it doesn’t matter whether it’s physical illness or mental illness,
even if the modern world, technology, and medicine are becoming so developed,
while many physical problems can be cured,
psychological problems seem to be growing stronger all the time.
When all is said and done, what we use Buddhism for is to help other people,
to show them compassion and empathy,
to bring ourselves one step closer to developing great compassion.
When we see any other person, we’ll want to help them,
and this way, we also benefit ourselves.
When we’re helping others,
we won’t have time to worry about our own things.
So our own troubles will gradually reduce,
because we’re busy helping others.
This is very effective, and this is the meaning of bodhichitta.
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liùzǔ Tánjīng) tells us,
“The body is like a Bodhi tree,
the mind like a mirror stand,
I constantly wipe it,
so it doesn’t become covered with dust.”
So we can say that it represents a gradual approach to practice.
We can gradually help ourselves more and more, and gradually help others more and more, too.
The other is the “sudden approach,”
which the Sixth Patriarch (Huìnéng) himself practiced.
He said, “The Bodhi has no tree,
the mirror also no stand,
there are no objects,
so nothing can become dusty.”
This represents the sudden approach to practice.
We can contemplate that when we help other people,
there are actually no other people being helped.
That’s because there is no form, everything is impermanent, no-self or non-ego.
Helping other people is the bodhisattva's practice,
and to see that there are no objects of our help is a kind of wisdom.
So, by reducing our grasping, by reducing our self-attachment,
we can develop wisdom.
Helping others represents the bodhisattva mind, bodhichitta
and can help us achieve the Pure Land, Buddha’s Pure Land.
Like this, one will be able to help many more people.
If we haven’t developed the bodhisattva mind and just work to benefit ourselves,
the results of our practice will be very, very small and limited.
It’s like a small little lamp compared to the sun.
They’re both forms of light,
their quality of being light is the same,
they both emit light,
but it’s the quantity and the brightness that are completely different.
Therefore, the meaning of developing the bodhisattva mind
is to tell us not to just be a small light bulb,
but to be like the sun that sends its light everywhere.
This is the meaning of the bodhisattva mind.