A Bodhisattva ?

Fr. Giuseppe Berardelli

Photo: Fr. Giuseppe Berardelli, a 72-year-old priest in Bergamo, Italy, who gave a respirator (that his parishioners had purchased for him) to a younger patient (whom he did not know), has died from coronavirus.

 

Many people think that one becomes a bodhisattva by helping others, but that is not necessarily the case. Giving a little help here and there is too simple; the act of helping alone is not enough to make a person a bodhisattva.

The main thing that makes one a bodhisattva is being willing to endure hardship and suffering oneself in the act of helping others – however great the suffering may be, they take it on fearlessly and with no regrets. So it is only when one is thinking something along the lines of, ‘As long as it will be helpful for another, I am willing to forsake myself. I will forebear whatever suffering helping might entail,’ one has the attitude of a bodhisattva and is practicing the Greater Vehicle (Mahayana) dharma.


If we look at the stories of the Buddha, we see that in many lives when he was a bodhisattva, he gave up his life for sentient beings. In one life, the Buddha gave his body to a tigress. It is not because he helped the tigress that he was considered a bodhisattva, it is the fact that he sacrificed his own life in order to do so.

We do help others in various ways, but usually with our own welfare in mind. Basically we don’t give of ourselves fully, we are not able to put ourselves aside in the help that we give to others.

For it to be bodhichitta, we have to be able to give ourselves up, forsake ourselves, even if it is dangerous and there will be difficult consequences that are hard to face. A bodhisattva has the view that, ‘Whatever happens to me is irrelevant; it makes no difference.’ They forsake themselves, and that’s the foundation through which they help others.

We should not be thinking that in order to be a bodhisattva, we have to sacrifice our life. Whether we give up our life or not is not the point. It’s whether we are willing and able to do that. A bodhisattva would not necessarily lose their life – they might, they might not. But whatever the case, they are not afraid of suffering and are able to forsake themselves. That’s what makes one a bodhisattva and it’s the bodhisattva mindset that causes one to become a buddha. As is said:
Those who work for the good of others awaken,
While those who work for their own good remain sentient beings.

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