Bodhisattva

six places at which the tales were told circa seven the bodhisattva eight jatakas illustrated in bas relief on the ancient monuments one hundred and two The Ceylon Compiler's introduction,

called the Nidana Katha, story of Sumedha, the first Bodhisatta too.

The successive Bodhisattvas in the times of the previous Buddhas, 31.

Life

of the last Bodhisatta who became Buddha, 58.

The Ploughing

Festival, 75.

The Young Bodhisattva, Skill and Wisdom, 76.

This is called the harmony of the Noble Eightfold Path Factors.

Even when the Buddha as a Bodhisattva was the leader of wild boars, they were united.

Through the wisdom of the Sammasambuddha, the Bodhisattva, they cried out together and frightened the lion.

The boars were no longer afraid.

The lion was startled and jumped, landing in the trap the Buddha had made.

And this is a foundational text by Ehe Dogen, who's the 13th century founder of the Soto Zen school.

And this is the source of the Bodhisattva precepts in our tradition.

So... 16 precepts have been passed from Buddha to Buddha and ancestor to ancestor.

I was looking at these vows and thinking about what I had said I would do and signed up for, and the one that really stood out to me this week was the seventh one, which is, I vow no praising self and disparaging others.

No wisdom and no attainment.

Because there is nothing to attain, the Bodhisattvas, relying on Patna Paramita, have no hindrance in their heart, no hindrance and therefore no fears.

Away from all deluded dreams, they realize the ultimate nirvana.

All Buddhas after three times relying on Prajnaparamita attain anuttaya-sanya-sambodhi.

Arhat, it's like the middle school of enlightened beings.

Bodhisattva, like the high school, Buddha, university, PhD.

So Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings that works for the benefit of all others.

So their goal is to reach perfect enlightenment themselves, but not just for themselves, but for the benefit of all sentient beings.

There's actually a fascinating party mockery in quite one of the more serious ones, Sangha Desi is our offence, And that was originated by the Buddha's charioteer, Venerable Channa.

You may have heard the story of the outings of the Bodhisattva.

And he was a prince and he wanted to see the kingdom.

And then he went out and going to the pleasure grove, that was a plan, and amusing himself.

And I thought a good section today would be about how we can be helpful, not so much thinking about ourselves so much.

What we get to offer the world, move towards a Bodhisattva view of compassion and how we get to help others.

So that's the part of the text I read.

I'll bring up, oops, I brought up the prayer again.

How can you cultivate this other-concerned attitude? The main approach for orientating yourself towards caring is to consider your importance relative to others.

A practice that traveled from India to Tibet involves first finding common ground with others, equalizing, and then replacing your self-centeredness with other-centeredness.

The Indian scholar Yogi Shantideva explains this practice of equalizing and switching self and other thoroughly in his Guide to a Bodhisattva Way of Life.

And many Tibetans have written commentaries on this text.

It's too difficult for the ordinary person to become awakened.

So instead, you should put your faith in a... what they would call a Bodhisattva figure, and that Bodhisattva will take you upon death to their Pure Land.

And from the Pure Land is a really great place, and from there you can become... enlightened because he'll teach you and the most popular bodhisattva figure of in the pure land tradition is is amitabha and he has his his pure land and you know like people people from the west often associate buddhism with meditation and like really hard you know like this deep meditation practice and and often aren't aware of how much actual Asians or how little actual Asian Buddhists meditate as a whole and put emphasis on this Pure Land.

Pure Land Buddhism is the number one school of Buddhism in Japan.