Bodhicitta is universal. You don’t have to be Buddhist to practice.

[Eva Libre]

Percy Bysshe Shelley was a great English poet. He was admired by Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Bernard Shaw, and wrote, “A man (and woman) to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.” Shelley, though not a Buddhist, yet interested in the philosophy and psychology of the East, expresses the Bodhisattva ideal beautifully! We must imagine the pains of others as not separate from ourselves. Rather, as one human and animal family, we feel the pains of others. This spontaneously catalyzes compassion. As Mahayana Buddhists we practice Bodhicitta as ‘tonglen’, exchanging our self-cherishing and self-grasping with cherishing others. With the inbreath, we take on the sufferings of others, and with the outbreath we fill everyone with happiness and causes of happiness. Shelley was espousing Bodhicitta. Mahatma Gandhi recognized this. Bodhicitta is universal. You don’t have to be Buddhist to practice. Emaho!

Barry Kerzin