Arya 

Shantideva 

Bodhisattva 

     This afternoon we will have a look at the excellent “companion” from various points, very important to go through once we feel engaged on the path of Mahayana . It's a work written by Arya Shantideva in the 8th century and the name of it is Bodhisattvacharyavattara or in Tibetan - if I'm not mistaken – Jang.Chub.Sem.Pai.Chö.Pa.La.Jug.Pa, which means the Way to enter into the practice of a Bodhisattva or to train as a Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva being the practitioner who does his best to help the others and whose main core motivation is to help the others, which means that the all spiritual path that practitioner will follow is dedicated for the sake of all sentient beings.
We will go briefly through each chapter, to give you an understanding of what each chapter is intended to develop and to generate within ourselves. Totally there are 10 chapters, and the first one is praising the quality of generating the awakening Mind .

     So, maybe it would be nice to once more briefly explain what Awakening Mind is. Usually it is briefly translated as Compassion , but this word "compassion" already has its own meaning in our society, so it's a little bit reductive to think only of compassion, when we think of awakening mind. Awakening mind is a complete way to open our mind to all the sentient beings, to all the beings, that are in Suffering  in one way or another, that are within the Realm of conditioned re-birth; and not to take out not even one single of that motivation. To have real deep inside wish that all the sentient beings, I'm not talking about only human beings, I'm talking about ALL kind of beings, so the deep wish that all sentient beings will find liberation from that suffering.
      So, it is a motivation, which is not just a kind of pity or kind of sadness to see the situation of all the sentient beings, but it is a deep inside engagement to enter into whatever necessary practice to help all the sentient beings. So, it is not just a statement and a kind of disturbing feelings that we experience, but it is the strong personal engagement into the resolution of the suffering of all the sentient beings. And that strong engagement is without time limitations, I mean by this, that even when we, ourselves, will be liberated from the suffering, liberated from the cycle of the conditioned re-birth, even then we will come back into that cycle of conditioned re-birth in order to help all the sentient beings that need to be liberated.

     This is why it is considered as the highest motivation, because in this situation we are not looking anymore for our own sake, for our own pleasure, for our own satisfaction, we are looking solely for the happiness of others. For many people, this is a concept, which is almost impossible to understand and many times, people told me that there should be some rewards for such motivation, that there should be something back, because it is impossible just to give, that everyone needs to get something back when he gives. But I don't completely agree, in the sense that the only "satisfaction" somehow the Bodhisattva could have, is just to be able to follow his motivation, to continue his path, and through that path to be able to help the others. So, the Bodhisattva is not looking for anything for himself, he is not looking for any rewards back to his activities. And he just continues to do what is according to the Dharma , beneficial for those beings to get liberated.

The benefits of generating this Awakening mind are innumerable. It is a great benefit, of course for the person, who generated it, in the sense that once we generate that mind, once we are motivated only by the benefit of the others, we enter a higher path that will purify our past negative activities and that will help us to develop the highest possible wisdom. And it is of course the higher benefit for all the sentient beings in the sense that once such a being generates his wish to help all of them, at one point this help will come true, will come as a real benefit for them. So the generation of Bodhicitta , the generation of Awakening mind, is an extremely big amount of positiveness. One thought of Bodhicitta, one second of pure Bodhicitta generates a huge amount of positiveness, huge amount of positive Karma ; for the person, who generates it, it purifies a huge amount of negativities from this life and past lives.

     The second chapter is called the Confession of Sin. It is in order to have very honest view about what we have been doing or what we are doing or of what we are, generally speaking. It is the mere recognition of that nowadays our mind may not be so well guided by ourselves, that we may not be engaged into such a virtue path. It is the understanding that we may not practice well enough, we may not practice far enough, we may not generate often enough this kind of Awakening mind, this kind of positive compassion and we generate something like regret in ourselves.
     I would like you to make a difference between regret and guilt. People, often, according to what they've gone through or what they've done to themselves, they generate a kind of guilt, and that guilt is like eating salt, burning inside. So, guilt by itself, is not a positive mental factor, is not a positive attitude, while regret is completely different. The regret is, when you have a sincere look at what you have been doing, when you say:" Well, that was not good, that was not appropriate" and following the regret, there is the taking of decision, taking a commitment for ourselves. So, making the decision as: “okay, what I've done is not correct, so, I will try my best not to do it again”. It is not useful to always eat our brains for what we have done, and think like: “I'm too bad, I'm too bad, I'm too bad” ... So, at one point it is just necessary to understand that what we have done was not so good, and we can do better, that we will do better, that from now on we take the decision that we will try our best. It may not give the results immediately, so maybe tomorrow we will fail in our decision, but tomorrow we will again recognize that we have failed, that we haven't reached what we wanted to, and we will again took the decision to do better.
     It is very important to make the difference between guilt and regret, in the sense that guilt will usually produce depression, depressive state of mind, and up to Self  aggression and sickness or situation in which we destroy ourselves, while regret generate a wish to do better, the understanding what has been done and a wish to progress. It is important if we are in this dynamics of progression to distinguish both. 

     If we have understood well the first chapter, which is looking at benefits of the Awakening mind, if we have understood well the second chapter, which is to look at how we behaved, how we tend to behave in our usually life and if we generated that wish to go further, to do more, to change the path of our life, according to the Dharma and according to the Awakening mind motivation, then we arrive naturally to the third chapter, which is Adopting the Awakening mind, which is to make the step: “okay, I understand how good is that motivation, I understand that up to now, what I have done, did not lead me to Liberation, and I make the decision that from now on, I choose this motivation as my guide in my life”. It is as we find a jewel somewhere, recognize its preciousness and follow the light that it produces. So, when we clearly understand the benefits of the Awakening mind, when we clearly understand how far it will lead us, and how far we will be able to help many people, following such motivation, then there is somehow no other choice than to adopt that motivation, to try to find all different possibilities in our life to apply this Awakening mind.
Through the meditation and as well through the daily life we will seek for all the different opportunities in which we have to be more compassionate, in which we have to change our attitude towards beings, events, administration, towards whatever, in order to have different approach of the situation. And clearly, our daily life is valuable in the sense that it gives us a lot of possibilities to practice. We have a lot of situations in which we could become angry, in which we could not be compassionate at all, or at the opposite we could be quite selfish, and in all those moments we have to choose the compassionate way, the Awakening mind motivation to deal with the situation.

     So, once we have taken the decision to do something, once we have generated this strong wish to apply Bodhicitta, to apply this Awakening mind within our life, then the next step is the next chapter in the book, which is to apply our decision, to Apply the Awakening Mind within our daily life, to attend our own decision in a way. And this is to be done not toward certain amount of beings, this is not to be done with any restrictive type of mind, but this has to be applied to all kind of sentient beings in any situation. Of course it is easier to say it than to do it, but it has to be the motivation. At least if you have the wish to do something in one direction even if you can not do it immediately, you have to keep that motivation and you have to keep it without any discouragement. And slowly by slowly along the path in the following months it will be possible to change some attitude in our life and to come closer to that motivation.

     As we continue in the text, we would continue within our life. Once we really have taken the decision to apply and once we start to apply that motivation, we have to be extremely aware of how our mind is working. We have to be extremely conscious of how we act and how we react in those different events that would usually bring either aggression or hate or jealousy or whatever. So, the next, the fifth chapter is about the guard of our mind; to have this constant Introspection , which allow us to know what is happening within our mind, to know which mental factor is arising in our mind.

     That introspection, that way of looking into our mind is similar to a kind of discipline, discipline that we organize in order that our life don't get disturbed, dispersed, but at the opposite so that all our activities, our thoughts, talks, get in one line, get in the direction of the spiritual progression, get according to a certain ethic of life, not necessarily following the crowd, not necessarily following all what the society would like us to do, in the competitiveness, in the collection of wealth and money and so on, but according to spiritual ethic of life.

     So, when I say to follow one line it is not to follow the line the society is leading, but to follow our spiritual path, to follow our deep inside motivation. This chapter is all about that, all about keeping our mind away from creating negativity, about keeping our mind away from engaging into negativity, negative action, negative talks, negative thoughts, and every time we would generate negativity, every time we would generate anger or whatever, the text say that it is much better to remain as a piece of wood, to remain immobile, instead of creating some negativity. So, we need this kind of introspection in order to know ourselves well and in order to know that we are not acting in negative way.

     When we watch our mind carefully, when we try to see exactly what is happening, then we can see that an attitude that comes often is a kind of aggression or a kind of anger that we tend to generate in many different situations and which comes from a lack of patience, a lack of capacity to endure the given situation. So, the next chapter within the Bodhisattvacharyavattara is dedicated to Patience. 

     Almost every day at home, at work, in our relations with the others, there are many situations, where we tend not to be patient, and we tend to answer with anger or with aggression, with this type of mind that doesn't want to spend time or doesn't want to deal with the given event or other beings. All those motivations, all those situations create negativity, create negativity for ourselves, because we become unsatisfied, frustrated of a situation or another, and negativity in our relationship with the others. Anger doesn't help to keep good relationship with anybody, maybe our friend, maybe our boss, our girlfriend, boyfriend or whoever. So, due to that incapacity to be more patient, to be more attentive to the well-being of the others in all situations, we create a lot of disturbances, a lot of negative emotions. That chapter is dealing about how it is important to watch our mind carefully and to recognize that most of the time we generate impatience, generate anger on basis that should not be source of such disturbed emotions. And this is true in many occasions where we recognize that we were angry, and we say:” well, why I've been angry, why I couldn't handle that situation, because if I look well, it was not necessary to act like that. So I acted like that, because it was the quickest, the shortest way to react, but if I would thought a little bit more, if I would analyzed a little bit more the situation, then I could have understood that it was absolutely not necessary. I could have discussed, I could have talked, I could have even expressed my opinion firmly, without being angry, without losing control of my own mind”.
And we lack often that analyze, we lack often that little distance with what happened. So, at this point, Shantideva is teaching about the benefit to take this time, to analyze the situation, before jumping into it with disturbed emotions.

     There are sometimes situations in which we generate that impatience, aggressiveness, that are extremely ridiculous. In the text in the Bodhisattvacharyavattara Arya Shantideva makes a little analogy with little children when they build a sand castle. So they build their sand castle in the same way that we are projecting and expecting things in our life and at one moment the sand castle get destroyed by the sea, as it is the nature of the impermanence - it was not meant to last forever - but the child, not understanding this process well, gets angry and yells or screams or cries because the sand castle has been completely destroyed. And if we watch our mind well, we do not act in much more mature way in many situations. We start to yell at somebody or to kick at some things or to cry about an event, that was due to happen, that could had happen and that we should thought about the impermanence of that situation, but because we did not, then we felt destroyed as the sand castle.
     We have to get a deeper analysis of ever situation in which we lose or lack patience. How many times we pass from one room to another and we hit a table and we tend to answer back to the table, because we were hurt by the table!! What is the point in this? What is the situation? And if some of you have a computer, you will understand well the example about when we get angry against the computer: you know, when we get that blue screen: Fatal error. What is the real necessity to get angry against it? How does it help? Does it scare the computer to the point to work again? And yet, in such situation we get angry. Fortunately a computer costs a lot, otherwise it would fly out through the window.

     So, we can see, when we can talk about those examples, we are laughing about it, but when it really happens to us, in those moments, are we really laughing about it? It would be good, if we could keep a little distance from the example even when it takes place in our life. The computer is an example, but we can take a car as well, when we drive it; I will not repeat the example of a parking place, but there are many situations in our daily life in which we really get out of control, without noticing it sometimes, and if we think about it carefully a bit latter, then we say: “oh yes, well, this was completely stupid”. If would be better to say in front of the situation: “I will not get angry against it”. By developing that awareness about our mind, we will be able to catch slowly by slowly all the different situations in which we will tend to lose our temper or in which we would tend to generate negative emotions and to stop them in time, before they arise, before they overwhelm ourselves. Because as I said, when we think about them with a distance, it is funny, when we are in the situation, it is a bit less funny.
     So, we shall see a computer or a driver on the road as a master of patience, in a way. Last year I found the computer probably the highest master of patience, especially because of many changes of the operating systems and this kind of things, which is really annoying sometimes, so it really helps us develop a lot of patience. But if you don't have a computer, you have a car, and you can understand, it's the same thing, when you are driving quietly and suddenly somebody comes in front of you, takes the place you wanted to go in, or crosses your way, or forces you to make a big break or whatever and it is interesting how we react usually and all kind of names that we give to that person. So, is it really necessary? When we think from a little distance, we say: “well, this was stupid”. But it would be interesting to catch that moment when it happens, and not let it to take place. 

     Something that could help us in many situations is to understand the law of cause and effect, to understand better, to go deeper in the understanding of the law of the cause and effect. If we can understand that everything that takes place, everything that we experience is a result of the past created karma, that nothing happening to us is without created cause for it, then we will take a little more distance from it, we will take it like:” well, it is like this”. It doesn't mean to be fatalistic in front of a situation, in the sense that karma that we experience is coming from causes we have this life and past lives, but it doesn't mean that we can't change it, it doesn't mean that we can't improve it, and if we understand the law of cause and effect, of course we can improve it. Whatever is the situation in which we are, we can change it, we can turn it into something different; if we understand this correctly, then when an unpleasant event takes place then we could look at it with a little distance. To take the computer example: when you have spent one hour and a half to make a drawing or to type some text and of course since you were completely into it, you forgot to save it and there is an electricity shortcut and you don't have backup battery, then suddenly you lose one hour and a half, and it is very easy to generate negativity in such moment. If you have deepen your understanding of the law of the cause and effect, if you understand that you might be somewhere behind that event! And just to understand it, it helps you to have a little distance from the situation.

     Of course we are not used to take such distance and we are not used to generate such patience most of the time, and so when we encounter such event, there are many moments when we just don't want to go into any practice or into any effort, this lack of effort is something which causes a great prejudice to our practice, because a single moment of anger is negative to the point to destroy a lot of positive moments. The power, the negative power of anger is high and it is extremely negative. We should really pay attention to that in order to engage more into the practice; and to wish to engage into the practice, we have to develop within ourselves what we call joyous effort or enthusiasm that gives us strength and energy for the practice. And this is the next chapter, the 7th chapter about how to develop that enthusiasm, about how to remember that it is important to practice in such and such way in order to progress on the spiritual path.
This understanding and this chapter is acting against laziness, is acting against all those dull types of mind that we have, when it is time to practice; because when it is time for restaurant or party or cinema or whatever, usually we are not so lazy, but when it is time to practice, to sit and to meditate, suddenly we feel tired, it is the end of the day, we had enough work for today and we might do it tomorrow and so on. And because of that type of attitude we do not engage enough into some practice and positive attitude.

     So the chapter 7 is dealing with how to develop that Enthusiasm, how to recognize the benefit of the practice and how to fight against laziness. So whenever we feel a little bit down, a little bit lazy, it is important to whatsoever take the decision to do the practice, and while we start to do the practice, we'll remember all the its benefits, we'll understand all what it can bring if we do it good, if we do it well. And while generating that motivation, that positiveness, within our mind, it wakes us up, it gives us the strength and energy to go further into the practice. It is like with children: when you tell them it is time for the shower, they are usually yelling and grumbling and saying:” I don't want to go and bla bla bla”, but once they are under the shower you must turn the water to cold, to get them out! I'm not doing that often :-) For the practice it is something which is similar, it is difficult to engage into it, but if we do it well, if we do it in the correct way, then it gives us a really good feeling of it and a wish to continue.

     We have to understand the importance of setting a quiet time in our daily life, a quiet time in which we will settle down our mind, in which we will appease our thoughts and during which we will meditate, during which we will focus our mind on a subject or an object. In many situations of the daily life, we do not have this space for the meditation and we get caught up in an emotion very quickly and without a possibility to really have a control over it before it comes out. If we make our mind used to take the decision to do not let anger or jealousy or whatever to happen too often, then we will slowly by slowly come into the control of it. So, it is important to have every morning and evening, for example, a little meditation time not necessary long, during which we will analyze different situations in which we have lost the control of ourselves, and to take the decision to try to do better, to change it for the best, because by doing that again and again, we will set a good imprint in our mind.
That good motivation, that good decision, will set a good imprint that will turn into the result that we can slowly by slowly better control our emotions even when we are in front of adverse conditions, conditions that could make us to get angry or jealous or unhappy.

     All the point about the Meditation is described in the next chapter. Exactly how important it is to set this quiet time, how it is important to focus our mind on a subject and how to set it, with the right intension, with the right motivation, in the right way. And by setting the meditation, by practicing meditation regularly we can reduce the amount of negative emotions, we can reduce the strength of those negative emotions, and by the time it becomes easier to engage into the practice, to engage into virtuous actions with better and clearer approach to it, clearer view about what has to be done and what shall be avoid.

     Mediation is the eight chapter; then we come to the next chapter, which is about Wisdom, the ninth chapter, which describes the methods how to understand the real nature of everything that surrounds us. Most of the time, following the example of the sandcastle, we tend to take as real, as independent, as permanent, all the things that we enter in contact with including our own life. And due to that, we create a lot of expectations, we create a lot of projections on phenomena or beings that end up to be completely illusion and that end up in a lot of suffering, and a lot of sadness within ourselves or at the opposite a lot of anger and a lot of distress.

     This understanding of the true nature of the phenomena comes also with a good analyze of the law of the cause and effect, by understanding exactly that everything we enter in contact with is a result of past created causes; we understand that the way we perceive all the phenomena may not be exactly the way they truly exist, that there are a lot of perceptions that may be deluded, many situations, phenomena, beings, as well an event, a person or an object. So when we encounter whatever phenomena, we tend to give it its own existence, its own reality outside ourselves; in such way we generate anger if it's something we don't like or an attachment or a desire, when it is something we feel close to and we don't want to lose. But in any case, it is a misunderstanding of the reality that led us to generate any negativity and any disturbed mental factor.
It's a little bit like a magician: when a good magician makes somebody appear in front of you! He’ll snaps with his fingers, makes some smoke and when the smoke goes out, then you have a person, a being. You take it as a being, you believe it is somebody really existing; yet it is only a creation of the magician, but we are in the position of the observer of the magic trick, we believe the being that appears in front of us exists exactly as we perceive it and that it will last forever. On his side, the magician - that we could compare to a person having more wisdom in the case of meditation - understands that the form that appears is just his creation. Understanding that the form is just his creation, the magician will not get tricked with his own trick. He will not get caught in the illusion he had created for others. So we have to understand that most of the things that appear in front of us are creations of our past accumulated karma. They may not exist exactly the way you perceive them.
There is one movie I like to refer to when we talk about this, it is the Matrix. For those who have seen it, of course it is necessary to take out all the Hollywood stuff, but there is something behind this movie, which helps us to have a glimpse of understanding about this topic.

     Usually we divide the reality in two ways to perceive it, two different truths to comprehend the existence in which we are. One is called the conventional truth and the other one is called the Ultimate truth . Ultimately we understand now that all the phenomena do not exist, that they are just creation from our past karma, that they do not exist from their own but completely in dependence of other phenomena and all the cause and condition. Basically the flower does not have its own existence, does not exist by itself, but it is possible to perceive it, to see it, to touch it, because I have created the causes for it. We can say that ultimately the flower does not really exist and at least does not exist the way I perceive it.

     On the other end we can not deny the flower as a form of existence, because I am entering in contact with, because I can feel it, so we say that it exists conventionally in our field of perception in this world; in that way, it does exist, it does have a function, it does have a name. Conventionally the things are existing, ultimately they are not. 

     It is a little bit like when we dream. When we are within the dream, we take everything around ourselves as real. When you are inside your dream and you see things, you don't tell yourself, most of the time: “this is just a dream it does not exist”. You live in it, you perceive all the things, you smell them, you feel them, you name them, you perceive their function, yet when you wake up, you understand that it was not real. But you have been living in it, taking care of it, you have been attached to it, you have experienced pleasure, you have experienced hatred sometimes or fear out of phenomena, object or beings which were existing within the dream. It is in a similar way that we could perceive our world, that we could perceive all the surrounding as we do think that it exists in a complete, true, strong way and we project on it; and we get angry against it and we fear some things and we love some other things, but they may not exist exactly in that so strong, so ‘indefective’ way.

     I will not go too much in the details right now, but the feeling is this one: what we do perceive and take as real may not be exactly as we perceive it. So we shall try to have some kind of distance between the object or the phenomena that we are entering in contact with and our way to react to it, and we shall not react too strongly against something that we might be at the origin of it.

     And the next and last chapter is called Dedication. It brings me to give a little explanation, to explain the difference between positive karma and the merits.
When we do act in a positive way, when we do something nice and good, we create a good karma, we create a positive karma. That positive karma will bring us in the future a positive result directly to us, usually as a pleasure, a pleasant event, a pleasant environment; so that's how it works. Positive karma will give positive result in a form of something satisfactory, so to say.
When you do something good, and you dedicate it, which means, you do not wish the result to come to you as something satisfactory and pleasurable, but you wish that this positive action, this positive karma brings you the possibility to help more other sentient beings. In a way you do hope that the positive karma you have accumulated will come back not to you but will come back to the others, will help the others to reach Enlightenment , will help the others to come out of the suffering. So when you accumulate a Merit , that merit will not come back as a pleasure for yourself, a pleasurable situation, but will come back as a spiritual result, will come back as a possibility to practice more, a possibility to help more, a possibility to increase your capacity to help, and your wisdom.
     So, that's the difference when we talk about positive karma and when we talk about merits. If all your life you do good things, you help, you act in a good way, you accumulate a huge amount of positive karma, but if it has not been dedicated at all in any spiritual way, you could end up in a god realm, you could be a kind of haven or in a human place with all you need, without any problem, without any sickness for a while and so on; but not with something that will help you to progress on the path. When you have done something good that has been dedicated for the sake of all sentient beings, it will come back to you as a spiritual potential, so you may take a next human rebirth with a quick contact with the Dharma, a quick contact with a spiritual path and with a facility to learn some text, a facility to understand some philosophical or religious concepts.
That is the difference between positive karma and a merit. In that chapter of the Dedication, we dedicate all the merits accumulated by the understanding and the practice of patience, of generosity, of ethic, of joyful effort, enthusiasm, of concentration, of meditation and of the fact to develop wisdom. We dedicate all our merits, not for our own sake, not for our own pleasure, but for the sake of all other sentient beings. We say: “may all those merits help me to help the others in a better way! May all those merits accumulated by my practice be positive for the others, give a good result for the others”. And the dedication, which is at the end of this text, should be a dedication done at the end of each day of our life. At the best, even every time, when you do a meditation, every time you do a practice, every time you do something good; it is always better to dedicate it immediately; to transform the potential of that positive imprint.

     We have gone through the 10 chapters, of course it is extremely brief, and we could spend months on that text trying to go more in details.
I hope that it has given you the wish to go into that book, to get it, to read it carefully, and to meditate about it, so that you can get a deeper understanding and go much deeper in the practice of the Awakening mind.

Question/Answer

If some of you have some question?

- Talking about karma. When we are facing a fact, is it necessary to search for the cause, or is it enough just to accept the situation?

= It is not always necessary to know the cause of the things that happened to us, because not only it will be very difficult, but in some cases it may be completely impossible! The causes might not be in this life, but in past live and two lives before or more, so sometimes it will be completely impossible to know it. So in many situations it is good to have the understanding that it is coming from our past karmas, without the need to know exactly which cause has brought which result.

- It is about a decision to serve the others; is it enough just to decide to serve the others in your mind, or must the decision come from your heart?

= Of course it is not enough just to wish to develop that motivation. When we talk about Bodhicitta, we can for some time aspire to develop the Bodhicitta, but it will take some time before to really get it. And in order to get that Awakening mind, we have to practice, so just when we say: “I wish to serve the others”, doesn't help much. It will help to progress in the direction of the Awakening mind, but it has to be put into practice, and the practice is not a "Sunday practice", is not like a Sunday school, so it is not possible just to go to meditate in the Sunday afternoon in any temple and to say: “Okay, now I want to serve all sentient beings, may all my merits be dedicated for the benefit of all sentient beings”. It is not just the texts, or the mere intellectual understanding that will change our life. It is the application within that everyday life from the morning to the night and from night to the next morning. We shall be motivated by helping the others always and not only at some moment.
So clearly, the Awakening mind is not just an intellectual concept, it is not just a decision that we take lightly; it is a deep inside wish to engage ourselves physically, morally, intellectually, spiritually for the sake of all sentient beings. It does not have to be at the exclusion of ourselves, in the sense that if we want to go far, we also have to take care of ourselves. Some people sometimes think that in order to look a completely dedicated being, we have to be in a half destroyed way, with dirty clothes, with long hair, not brushed since few months, and smelling so-so, and so on. Of course it is not like that, if we want to go far in helping the others, we have to take care a minimum of ourselves. Yet, we have to escape the self-cherishing attitude (spent too much time every morning, about make up...). So we have to find a balance, we have to find the Middle way  between spending too much time for ourselves and not spending enough. I thinking also of food for example; some people who are really engaged in helping the others sometimes forget to feed themselves in the correct way and then they get sick and then they get infection and whatever... which will stop them from helping the others. We have to find a balanced attitude. There is a French saying, which says: <Who wants to go far, has to take care of his vehicle> (a horse in this case), but we could talk about our human vehicle.
But to come back to the origin of the question: clearly the Awakening mind, Bodhicitta, is something we have to LIVE from the inside and not just a light decision.

Thank you for your patience!