By Lama Zopa Rinpoche
The practice of compassion, the
good heart, is incredibly important. We really need compassion. Compassion is
the source of all our happiness.
Every single happiness that you experience in your life, every single comfort
and enjoyment of your daily life, as well as everlasting happiness of liberation
and the bliss of highest enlightenment, comes from bodhicitta. The root of bodhicitta
is great compassion. Thus, whatever happiness you experience derives from great
compassion. Then, your bringing happiness to all sentient beings - the happiness
of this life, the happiness of future lives, the everlasting happiness of liberation
and enlightenment - all depends upon your having compassion for yourself. It
all has to come from your own compassion. Therefore, compassion is the most
important human quality in which you can educate your mind.
When do we need compassion?
In every life situation, you need compassion. When you live with your family,
you need compassion. Without compassion, your family life is full of problems
and suffering. When you do business, you need compassion. Otherwise you experience
so much frustration, unhappiness and dissatisfaction. If you're a doctor or
a nurse working in a hospital you need compassion. If you don't have compassion,
your job becomes boring, tiring, exhausting and uninteresting because you are
motivated by only the wish for your own happiness. You're trying to do something
for others but it becomes just a job.
When teaching in school, you need compassion. When studying, the best way to
learn is with compassion. In that way your study becomes meaningful; beneficial
for other sentient beings. Your life becomes beneficial for others; your study
becomes service for other sentient beings. Whatever your lifestyle - singing,
dancing, acting, theatre - what makes it meaningful is having compassion for
others. That transforms it into service for others. Even in the army you need
compassion. In that way you can make your actions transcendent, special, out
of the ordinary. With compassion for others, instead of being negative, your
actions can become virtuous, the cause of enlightenment, a means of purifying
negative karma and gathering merit. Even an action such as killing, if done
with very strong compassion, strong bodhicitta, can become a cause for enlightenment
- if done with strong bodhicitta, totally renouncing yourself to
suffer for the sake of others.
Even if you're a prostitute, if you are motivated by compassion, by bodhicitta,
your life is not ordinary. Your life becomes transcendent; your deeds those
of a bodhisattva. No matter what you do, if your motivation is out of the ordinary,
great compassion, bodhicitta, your life becomes meaningful, beneficial for others.
There's no risk, no danger.
Similarly, if you are in retreat, what makes your retreat most beneficial, extremely
effective and highly meaningful is if you do it with compassion for others,
and the stronger your compassion, the more powerful a purification it becomes.
And not only in retreat. Even if in your everyday life you do your prayers and
sadhanas - even a rosary of mantras with compassion for others, each mantra
you recite becomes highly meaningful, beneficial for all sentient beings. The
stronger your compassion, the more powerful each mantra. Each little mantra
can have the power of an atomic bomb. Nuclear weapons are so small but they
can destroy so much. Like that, even short mantras, when done with strong compassion,
can purify the karma of having killed human beings. One repetition of the mantra
om mani padme hung motivated by strong compassion, can purify the negative karma
of the ten non-virtuous actions. One repetition of this mantra can purify a
fully ordained monk's having committed all four defeats, the violation of his
four root vows - killing a human being, lying about realisations he doesn't
have, engaging in sexual intercourse and stealing something that was not given
- even one of which is extremely heavy.
Far beyond our level, similar principles apply. Maitreya Buddha generated bodhicitta,
became a bodhisattva, much earlier than Guru Shakyamuni Buddha did, yet Guru
Shakyamuni Buddha became enlightened before Maitreya. That is because his bodhicitta
was greater. Before becoming a Buddha, you have to become a bodhisattva. First
you have to realise renunciation of samsara, your own samsara. Then you generate
compassion for the samsaric suffering of others using your own suffering as
an example. Your compassion for other sentient beings wishing them to be free
of all suffering and to have all happiness, including that of enlightenment
- leads you to the decision to bring about all sentient beings' enlightenment
by yourself.