The Mind Set on Awakening for All Beings

Bodhicitta, the "mind of awakening," is the resolve to attain full buddhahood not for oneself alone but for the sake of liberating all sentient beings. It is the defining commitment of the Mahayana and the vow that constitutes a bodhisattva, one bound for awakening who takes on the deliverance of others as the point of the whole enterprise.

The tradition distinguishes two aspects. Aspirational bodhicitta is the wish itself, the heartfelt intention that all beings be freed; engaged bodhicitta is that intention taken up as a career, expressed in the actual practice of the perfections, generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. The classic source is Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, which treats the arising of bodhicitta as the pivotal event of a spiritual life, "like a flash of lightning in the dark," and devotes itself to how the aspiration is generated, protected and carried through. Its cultivation is understood to transform ordinary compassion into the engine of the entire path.