If true spiritual maturity aligns the personal will with the Divine Will, how do we recognize the difference between the two? I think the answer to that lies in the practice of Bodhicitta.
Mark often taught and talked about Bodhicitta. Bodhicitta means “Awakened Heart/Mind.” He is continually telling us to “raise Bodhicitta.” Through the years, as he would give this instruction, I would summon the idea of enlightenment. I thought of this condition of enlightenment as “Absolute Bodhicitta.” And, I raised the flag in my mind’s eye.
I would often ask Mark why he didn’t teach, as the Buddhists did, about “Relative Bodhicitta,” — those practices and behaviors that promote awareness and mind training while reducing the poisons of passion, aggression, and ignorance. I was looking for something more tactical, more tangible to bring into my practice.
Once again, in hindsight, as I have come to study Mark’s teachings on the Bodhicitta with more attention and absorption, I have come to understand that Mark did indeed speak of the tools used to connect the relative with the absolute bodhicitta, though he did not use those terms.
Mark teaches us that:
-Bodhicitta is the Ideal of enlightenment – the “burning sword” of the love of that enlightenment.
-He teaches that Bodhicitta is a place in the body at the breastbone where the anchor of the deep heart rests – geographically, a place where all four bodies intersect and integrate.
-He teaches that Bodhicitta is a station of the So-ham defined by the mechanics of the breath.
-He teaches that at the very top of the sushumna, the central nerve, where the seat of the syllable hum rests, an atmosphere forms and that atmosphere is the white bodhicitta, the white drop.
-Mark teaches that the anchor of the bodhicitta in the heart connects with the white drop at the crown of the head and that they are not two different places, a Point A and a Point B. They are a single structure.
-Mark says that the anchor of the Bodhicitta at the heart becomes a fountain of 100 fibers that goes upward and connects into the brain, 42 pacific and 58 wrathful energies that animate the space between the heart and the brain and produce the event of existence.
-The 42 pacific energies represent the mechanics of the heart and the 58 wrathful energies represent the mechanics of the mind. The framework of mind and heart, the light and dark angels. These 100 fibers of creation are the deities of the Bardo that reside within our very own human form.
Understanding the subtle-physical mechanics of the Bodhicitta was for me, the linchpin I had been missing. I’ve recently listened to Mark’s teaching on the “100 Fibers of Eternity” which flow from the anchor in the heart to the upper brain. Mark says that each of these fibers reaches into infinity and each operates independently in its own cycle of time.
Also, these fibers are anchored in the heart, where all four bodies intersect. All that needs to be done is to practice going there, entering that chamber, and letting the fields of awareness of each of the four bodies emerge and integrate. That’s the practice of the relative bodhicitta that I needed. It’s all there.
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