Chua Duoc Su

The most essential practice is using Obstacles and all other problems to generate Bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is the altruistic mind that wishes to attain enlightenment for the benefit of sentient beings. The compassionate thought of Bodhicitta is the core teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha. Bodhicitta is the best medicine, practice, and spiritual practice. Living a life with Bodhicitta is the best way to take care of your health and the best way to overcome obstacles and any other illness.

Accumulating Bodhicitta is the way to let go of the ego and love and care for others. The ego is the source of all your emotional problems and the source of all the obstacles that prevent you from achieving success and happiness. As well as preventing you from bringing happiness and success to countless sentient beings. Other sentient beings are the source of your happiness, the temporary happiness you enjoy in this life, as well as the ultimate happiness of liberation and enlightenment. Because of Bodhicitta, which is the altruistic mind that cares for others and seeks to bring happiness to sentient beings who are suffering. Therefore, all your happiness comes from the kindness of other sentient beings.

Bodhicitta is also your best friend. Worldly friends may change, but Bodhicitta is always the same. Bodhicitta never changes and never deceives you. Bodhicitta never harms you, but always brings benefit to you and other sentient beings. Therefore, Bodhicitta is your best and most trustworthy friend.

Bodhicitta is also the best means to achieve success in this life as well as in future lives, especially success in achieving liberation and enlightenment. Success is an event that depends on causes and conditions. Success in finding happiness must come from a special cause, a good karma, and this cause must come from a good intention. With bodhicitta, that is, thinking of benefiting sentient beings, you can accumulate immeasurable merit, that is, good karma. As Shantideva said in the Bodhisattva's Way of Life:

- Even if a person does not engage in benefiting others, just by wishing for it, he has accumulated sky-high merit.

By simply wishing to benefit others, you have accumulated a sky-high merit, so bodhicitta is the best means to achieve success in finding happiness. This is the logical explanation of bodhicitta being the source of success. This explanation can also be applied to the search for wealth.

With bodhicitta, you become a friend to all sentient beings. If you feel distant from sentient beings, as if there is a wall separating you from them, then Bodhicitta will break down that wall, making you feel close to all sentient beings. Once you realize Bodhicitta, you hold all sentient beings in your heart. Your loving-kindness, compassion, and Bodhicitta are the source of all happiness and success for you and all sentient beings.

Whether you succeed or fail, whether you are sick or healthy, with Bodhicitta, your life is always for the benefit of others. Everything you do is for the benefit of sentient beings. Your life is always beneficial because you are always living for others. With this way of living, the purpose of your life is fulfilled.

Therefore, developing and accumulating the Bodhicitta is the fastest and most powerful way to eliminate all obstacles to happiness, and to accumulate merit, the causes of happiness, especially the ultimate happiness of perfect enlightenment. Without the Bodhicitta, you cannot attain enlightenment or achieve the highest purpose of life, which is to bring all suffering sentient beings to the shore of enlightenment. The wish to cultivate the Bodhicitta, to exchange with others, is the best wish of all wishes. The question is:

- How to attain the Bodhicitta

Answer:

- When you know how to use obstacles, you can generate the Bodhi mind.

The next question is:

- How can you use your obstacles to generate this enlightened mind?

For this, you have to examine the origin of all your problems. All your problems and obstacles come from your selfish mind, which only knows how to love and care for your ego, so the ego is the object that needs to be permanently eliminated.

You should know that all your happiness comes from the kindness of others, so other sentient beings are the objects that need to be loved and cared for by you forever. For this reason, you have to abandon the ego and instead love and care for other sentient beings. To train your mind in the practice of exchanging yourself with others, you need to analyze in detail the shortcomings of the selfish mind and thoroughly understand the endless benefits of loving and caring for others. Removing selfishness will help you develop and accumulate Bodhicitta, which will lead you to the ultimate happiness of complete enlightenment and enable you to lead others to enlightenment. At the same time, even though you do not expect it, Bodhicitta will naturally bring you temporary rewards such as happiness, success, prestige, wealth, and power.

As mentioned before, obstacles are caused by your selfishness, because you mistakenly cling to and hold on to it. Take the example of problems that arise in relationships with loved ones. It is the attachment that arises from selfishness that makes you dissatisfied with your current partner, and you leave him or her for someone new. You can see that this problem would not have happened if you had not followed your selfishness.

Furthermore, when you live in a way that identifies yourself with your selfishness, you will be hurt when your partner no longer loves you. Why? Because the selfish mind is hurt. Because you identify yourself with the selfish mind, when the selfish mind is hurt in any way, you are hurt. This way of identifying yourself is completely wrong, completely different from the reality of yourself. When you analyze the problems you experience in everyday life, you find that those problems are directly related to your selfish mind. The proof of this discovery is that if you let go of the selfish mind, you will no longer have any obstacles in life. For example, you will not feel sad when your partner leaves you.

When you recognize the obstacles caused by the selfish mind, you will see it as the cause of the obstacles and no longer see external factors as the cause of the obstacles. Separating the ego from the selfish mind will allow you to see the selfish mind as your real enemy.

With your ignorant perceptions, you regard the ego as the self, and you think that the self cannot exist without the ego. But this mind is not independent. It exists in dependence on causes and conditions, and so it can be eliminated by other causes and conditions. For example, you can eliminate it by training your mind in the practice of exchanging yourself with others, that is, learning to let go of the ego and lovingly care for others.

Every problem that comes into your life is created by you. All your problems come from your ego, not from anyone else. Your mind is the main cause of your problems, including your illness. It is clear that a person with a strong ego always has little happiness and little peace, and always creates many problems for others. Such people always cause discord wherever they go.

As long as you are dominated by selfishness, you are jealous of anyone who surpasses you in wealth, education, or power. You are jealous of those you consider your equals, and you feel arrogant towards those you consider your inferiors. Whenever you meet anyone, selfishness prompts you to develop perverse thoughts and create negative karma. Selfishness constantly torments you. It never leaves you alone and always causes you to suffer from anxiety and fear. It also causes you to suffer from greed, anger, jealousy, pride, and other delusions.

It is very important to cure yourself of selfishness. Because a selfish attitude is the root of so much unhappiness, despair, loneliness, and stress. If you do everything to seek happiness for yourself, even just for this one life, that selfish motive will cause you stress. The selfish mind also makes you always try to win for yourself and let others lose, and this means that, in reality, you are forced to create the causes of failure in the future. This will bring you failure and loss for thousands of lifetimes and create obstacles to enlightenment.

It is the selfish mind that prevents you from developing and accumulating bodhicitta, feeling compassion for others who are suffering and helping them. It also prevents you from developing wisdom. The selfish mind also prevents you from practicing meditation and ending all suffering; it prevents you from attaining the ultimate happiness of full enlightenment.

Therefore, you must use each obstacle you are experiencing as a weapon to destroy the selfish mind, your real enemy. For each problem that the selfish mind brings, you try to destroy it. For example, when you are criticized, instead of seeing yourself as the object of criticism, you should change the object and use that criticism as a weapon to destroy your selfish mind. You should immediately think:

- This is exactly what I need to destroy my selfish mind, which is constantly tormenting me. It prevents my temporary happiness and ultimate happiness, and causes all kinds of problems for me. My selfish mind also harms other beings, directly or indirectly, from life to life, and prevents me from developing and accumulating bodhicitta.

If you reflect in this way, you will see that criticism and other undesirable things are useful and necessary. Because they help you develop bodhicitta and aim for a better life. A selfish mind is a disease, and criticism is the medicine that can cure this chronic disease of your mind.

So you must realize that a selfish mind is your real enemy, while when you encounter obstacles, criticism, and all other problems are weapons that can destroy that selfish mind. You should happily accept the problem and destroy it; the enemy always harms you and prevents you from accumulating bodhicitta. It has harmed you in the past, it is harming you now, and it will harm you in the future. Realizing that problems are harmful to you will disappear when you transform those problems into bodhicitta. Then the problems will no longer bother you, because you will see that they are benefiting you by helping you to accumulate bodhicitta, the good friend who always brings you all the problems and makes you always happy, always satisfied.

Instead of being sad sometimes when you encounter obstacles, you should love and care for others, because sentient beings are the source of all your happiness. Your happiness in the past, present, and future is all due to the kindness of sentient beings. For example, sentient beings are the conditions, or causes, for you to have this precious human rebirth. And for this body of yours to live long in a safe and peaceful environment. These conditions are due to the good deeds you have done in the past, living according to the precept of not killing other living beings. You get four different kinds of happy results when you create the good cause of living according to this precept:

- One is that you have a precious human body.

- Two is that you will live long, which means the result is similar to the cause you created.

- Three is the dependent result, you live in a place with less danger, less fear, and you have a comfortable, convenient life. And

- Four is that in this life you practice the precept of not killing again, this practice will create the same result as the cause.

Each of the ten good deeds will lead to happy results similar to the above. Therefore, speaking, all the happiness you have in your daily life is closely related to the good deeds you have done in your past lives. The main point I want to make is that all the happiness you have is due to the kindness of other sentient beings. Take this perfect human rebirth as an example. This is a human rebirth that allows you to develop bodhicitta and achieve the temporary happiness and eternal happiness that you wish for. It also allows you to liberate sentient beings from suffering and the causes of suffering and bring them happiness. You have received this perfect human rebirth and the causes of the human rebirth, that is, having kept the vow not to kill, having made offerings, and having dedicated the merits for the perfect human rebirth, all because of the kindness of other sentient beings. Without other sentient beings, you would not have the opportunity to practice morality.

For example, when you practice not killing, you make that vow about each living being. Your perfect human rebirth depends on the kindness of each living being. Every merit you can accumulate and every happiness you can give to others depends on that kindness. For example, every time you generate a bodhichitta aspiration, you accumulate immeasurable merit, which is possible because of the kindness of each living being.

You will also achieve good rebirths in the future because of the kindness of each living being, because the creation of the causes for a good rebirth depends on the existence of living beings. You will also achieve the ultimate, everlasting happiness of liberation, with the cessation of all suffering and its causes, because of the kindness of each living being.

The question is, how?

The fundamental Buddhist path that enables you to achieve the above is morality. Depending on the further training in morality, you will attain the state of concentration. Depending on the perfection of concentration, you will attain great wisdom. So too, you attain the stages of liberation of morality, concentration, and wisdom depending on the kindness of each sentient being who has allowed you to practice morality.

Even if you attain the ultimate happiness of perfect enlightenment, the cessation of all obscurations, and the completion of all realizations, thanks to the kindness of each sentient being. The final destination of the Mahayana path is perfect enlightenment, and its root is bodhicitta, which depends on sentient beings. Without the existence of sentient beings who suffer, there is no way for you to practice bodhicitta. Therefore, each sentient being is extremely precious and extremely kind.

Most obviously, all the comforts and all the pleasures you enjoy in your daily life depend on the kindness of sentient beings. For countless insects have suffered and died so that you can live in a comfortable house. And many other sentient beings have created negative karma by harming and killing those insects. You have received the comfort of a house that protects you from the dangers of nature through the suffering and death of countless sentient beings.

The same is true of the clothes you wear. Many sentient beings have suffered and died so that you can enjoy the comfort of clothes, especially when it comes to silk and fur clothes; many others have sinned by killing.

You also have the pleasure of eating and drinking because of the kindness of sentient beings. Even when you drink a cup of tea or eat a bowl of soup, countless microorganisms have suffered and died. Countless insects suffer and die in the fields so that you can eat the rice, and many other beings have to create negative karma by harming them. And each grain of rice has come from the grain of the previous season, and the grain of the previous season has come from the grain of the previous season, and so on. When you think about the continuum of a grain of rice, you cannot imagine the number of beings who have suffered and died during the long life of a single grain of rice. Just as you cannot realize the number of people who have created negative karma by harming those beings. Since you depend on the kindness of other beings for the comforts and means of enjoyment in life, you cannot use the comforts and many other things with the sole thought of your happiness. Such an attitude would be very cruel to other beings. Since they are the source of all your enjoyment, you must do something for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Every sentient being is infinitely precious and can bring you so much benefit. Therefore, cultivating bodhicitta, loving and caring for even one sentient being, will lead you to enlightenment, because it purifies so many obstacles and accumulates so much merit. Loving and caring for even one sentient being, whether it is your parents, your children, or your enemies, will enable you to quickly develop bodhicitta on the path to enlightenment. They are truly your teachers. By showing loving kindness to even one sentient being, you can attain all the realizations of the Mahayana path, from bodhicitta up to full enlightenment.

On the other hand, if you do not love and care for even one sentient being, such as someone who dislikes you, this will also prevent your enlightenment. This is the fundamental obstacle to the attainment of the supreme happiness of full enlightenment, because it blocks bodhicitta, the gateway to the Mahayana path.

In short, as long as your selfish mind is still there, you cannot develop and accumulate bodhicitta; there is no enlightenment. As I said before, this selfish mind is the biggest obstacle to happiness, even temporary happiness. That is why in your daily life, you do not find peace. And since a selfish mind is the gateway to all problems, if you want to accumulate bodhicitta, you have to let go of yourself to love and care for others, even if it is just one sentient being. Even one other sentient being is more precious than yourself, because all your happiness and success come from that one sentient being, while all your problems come from the ego.

Now, you can realize that your problems are nothing! When you are only concerned with yourself, you find that you have many problems. However, when you meditate on exchanging yourself with others, you will see that no matter how many problems you encounter, they are all insignificant. There is nothing more important in your life than developing and accumulating bodhichitta, loving and caring for, and working for countless other sentient beings. With this reflection, all other work will seem empty and meaningless.