 Cultivate Your Arising Bodhisattva Nature
We’d like to speak to the idea that everyone on the planet may actually be in Bodhisattva training right now. We would like to use this term, Bodhisattva, to refer to the archetype of a Bodhisattva. Simply, a person who follows a path in life that moves in the direction of truly enlightened actions dedicated to the benefit of all sentient beings. When you realize you are not separate from anything that seems to surround you, you realize that you truly are One Life with All That Is. Once this occurs, your motivation for living life naturally shifts from thinking only about your own personal desires and circumstances, to knowing that all of One Life lives with you. You become motivated to find compassion, generosity, and loving kindness is for all of One Life. Being dedicated to the Awareness of all, being on the bodhisattva path, is a path anyone can embark upon. Very ordinary people can be bodhisattvas, as can very extraordinary people be bodhisattvas. They arise in all situations and circumstances. And in the extraordinary circumstance of a raging pandemic, we suggest that the bodhisattva archetype, the inner bodhisattva, is arising in many people--perhaps in you. This arising is not about promoting others at the expense of yourself, it is really about approaching all things in life from the point of understanding “we are all in it together” or we are all One Life. Your truest mission is to simply take actions that reinforce that knowing, and promote the best outcome for everyone. Buddhists understand the idea of being awakened as having fully realized liberation from the delusions and conditionings that are at the root of an unsatisfactory life. The inner bodhisattva in you knows this liberation as relevant especially in this now time and in this now world. The inner bodhisattva also knows that actions based in Awareness are not idealistic or beyond reach, they know they are simply actions that in some small way may alleviate the suffering of another. The actions reflect a commitment to ordinary and extraordinary kindness and helpfulness in everyday life. When you begin to contemplate the basic questions that compelled you to engage a spiritual path, you become aware of your attachments that have emerged out of your desires. You start to let go of a need to protect an “independent self” that judges everyone and everything, and your unconscious denial of One Life diminishes. You open up your heart and begin the practice of looking inside to discover the internal forces that connect one sentient being to another. What was once seen as sacred becomes ordinary. What was once seen as ordinary becomes sacred, and the illusory nature of a self that is separate from One Life dissolves. We suggest that during this time of a pandemic, there has likely been a revolution in your priorities. What once was important in the external world has become less distracting. What is important in the internal world has transformed as One Life Awareness has grown. It has become obvious that the qualities you have developed like generosity, patience, kindness, equanimity, and goodwill serve your happiness much more satisfactorily than any external acquisitions. You may have discovered that when you accept your challenges with a sense of gratitude and release the hesitancy that sometimes causes you to withhold your generosity, you will find your inner bodhisattva guiding you. There is no need for assigning yourself the role of giver or receiver any longer, there is just the true perfection of unfolding One Life Awareness. Have enthusiasm and curiosity about All That Is. Be patient with your self while losing the “self” that tries to hold on. And just see that in all ways, at all times, you are One Life
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