Can awakening really be pursued only for oneself?
Bodhicitta is often described as the aspiration to awaken for the benefit of all beings. What interests me most is the practical consequence of this idea.
If practice becomes mainly a way to improve my calm, my well-being or my spiritual development, it can unintentionally reinforce the very sense of a separate self that Buddhist practice is meant to see through.
From this perspective, practising with others is not simply a support for our own meditation. Sitting together, accepting other people’s imperfections and our own, letting go of some personal preferences, and helping to sustain a community of practice can themselves be ways of cultivating bodhicitta.
The aspiration to awaken others before oneself may therefore begin with very ordinary actions rather than something heroic or abstract.
How do you understand bodhicitta in your own practice or tradition?