' No Part-Time Bodhisattvas '...

"The bodhisattva vows to save all sentient beings, but that is not a goal in the relative sense.

The bodhisattva realizes that what she is saying in that vow is completely impractical. You can’t really do it.

We see this from the mythical story of the great bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. He had a literal mind in the beginning. He took that vow, “Until I save all six realms of existence, I will not attain enlightenment.” He worked and he worked and he worked to fulfill his vow.

He helped beings, and he thought he’d saved hundreds of millions of them. Then he turned around and saw that an even greater number than he had saved were still suffering, and he had flickers of doubts at that point.

At the beginning, when he took the vow, he had said, “If I have any doubts about my path, may my head split into a thousand pieces.” This vow came true at this time. His head began to fall apart. He was in tremendous pain of confusion, not knowing what he was doing. Then, according to the myth, Amitabha—a great buddha of compassion—came to him and said, “Now you’re being foolish.

That vow you took shouldn’t be taken literally. What you took was a vow of limitless compassion.” Avalokiteshvara realized that and understood it. Through that recognition, he became a thousand times more powerful. That’s why the iconographical image of Avalokiteshvara often has twelve heads and a thousand arms.

You see, once you take the meaning of saving all others literally, you lose the sacredness of it. If you’re able to see that compassion applies to every situation, then compassion becomes limitless.

You don’t try to attain enlightenment at all, but you find yourself enlightened at a certain stage, because you continuously put in such a concentrated effort. You realize that the path is also the goal.

The bodhisattva is quite happy with the path he is treading on. The path is what there is to work with, and that work is there eternally, because sentient beings are numberless, and we have to work with them eternally.

That realization manifests as vast energy. The bodhisattva vow is really an acceptance of the energy. It is saying, “I take a vow to commit myself to work with this limitless energy.”

It is a commitment to work twenty-four hours a day without time off. You can’t have part-time bodhisattvas."



– Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Work, Sex, Money