Don’t Stop Short of Supreme Insight

ART BY CRYPTIK

THE TITLE OF THE final section of the Lamrim Chenmo (Tsongkhapa’s classic text, “The Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path”) says:

How to practice insight, the essence of wisdom, after practicing the bodhisattvas’ deeds on the stages of the path of the great being.

Here we find an explanation of the latter stages of the Mahayana path. A “great being” is someone who has developed universal love and compassion and who always takes more care of others’ problems than his or her own. The heartfelt wish of a great being is to free all sentient beings from cyclic existence. Therefore a great being takes on the responsibility to lead all sentient beings away from suffering and place them in a state of freedom and lasting peace. Such a being will sacrifice him- or herself in order to benefit others. When this heartfelt sense of responsibility arises spontaneously it is called bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is literally the mind of enlightenment; it is the wish to attain buddhahood as soon as possible solely for the purpose of benefiting others. When bodhicitta arises spontaneously within one’s mindstream, one enters the Mahayana path; at this point one becomes a bodhisattva.

Bodhicitta alone is not enough to attain enlightenment. So what else must we do? We must practice the various stages of the path from the basic level, through the intermediate level, and finally through all the practices of a being of great spiritual capacity. After a practitioner has developed bodhicitta, he or she engages in the bodhisattva’s deeds or activities. This means taking the bodhisattva vows and practicing the six perfections. The vows embrace all physical, verbal, and mental actions, whereby whatever we do is only for the benefit of others and never just for ourselves. The great waves of the bodhisattva’s deeds can be summarized as the six perfections: generosity, ethical conduct, patience, joyous effort, meditative concentration, and wisdom. The first five perfections are the method side of a bodhisattva’s practice. The sixth perfection is about developing wisdom or insight.

Before beginning a discussion about how to develop insight, it is helpful to recall briefly the nature of the fifth perfection, meditative concentration. This is the ability of the mind to settle calmly on the object of one’s choice for as long as one wishes. With meditative concentration, the mind can comfortably focus without distraction. Usually, when we try to think about something, the mind stays with the object for a short while—but before we know it, the mind goes off somewhere else without control. When we develop a special type of single-pointed meditative concentration known as shamatha, the mind no longer has this negative quality. It can remain focused