Cultivate Selfless Compassion

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

It’s almost impossible to attain the goal of selfless compassion, where you commit every fiber of your being to benefiting all sentient beings, seen and unseen, without a moment’s hesitation. It’s almost impossible to develop the kind of compassion where you understand that all sentient beings are revolving helplessly in such suffering that they can’t bear it, and you can’t bear to think it’s going on, without cultivating a deep understanding of suffering. You want to avoid the trap of making the very same prayers that the selfishly motivated person might do, but instead have the idea that you want to be a great Bodhisattva.

One goal will produce lasting results and the other will not. The person with the motivation of selflessness has the key. Through extraordinary, selfless compassion, that person has the strength to persevere through everything until he or she is awake. That person will persevere until he or she has completely purged from his or her mind even the smallest, gossamer thin seeds of hatred, greed and ignorance. The person whose motivation is to be the ‘good person’ will not be able to do the same for any length of time. The foundation isn’t strong enough. That person may need some kind of feedback, or warm fuzzies as reward for being good. Even tried and true Buddhists will find this impure motivation in your minds. Even our ordained Sangha will find that they, themselves, will have dry periods. You’ll go spiritually dry, bone dry, and you’ll think, “What am I doing here? I can’t go on; it’s just too hard.” Then the next day, you’ll wake up and you’ll think, “Another day…good.” You’ll have all these different feelings that are just so common. Everybody, everybody has them. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to have these feelings.

Why does it flip flop back and forth? Because you have not built the firm foundation of very pure, selfless compassion. You need to cultivate it every single moment. You need to get yourself past the point where you need warm fuzzies to keep you going. If you are only looking at the symptom of suffering and trying to manipulate your environment to turn suffering around, you will always need feedback. That feedback may or may not come. Your compassion, your love should not depend on that.

© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo