Retiring the Bodhisattva

"Bodhisattva - (in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so through compassion for suffering beings.

Origin: Sanskrit, ‘a person whose essence is perfect knowledge’, from bodhi ‘perfect knowledge’ (from budh- ‘know perfectly’) + sattva ‘being, essence’."

At its simplest understanding, the bodhisattva is one who has vowed to liberate all sentient beings; - to cultivate supreme moral and spiritual perfection and place that attainment into service to others, gaining enlightenment for the sake of all living creatures.

In practice, this is a being who remains cycle after cycle, attaining the lessons of being spirit within body, and then living them so as to teach by example. They take on the unresolved processes of others, to transmute and transform them so as to demonstrate how it can be done, and they take on the unpleasantness of human characteristics for the purpose of being the mirror to those refusing to look at their own selves. All for the purpose of teaching. Committing themselves to never moving on until all are ready to move.

I have been doing this. I took this role on a very long time ago. It is not bearing fruit. It is another self-perpetuating life story, one with no concluding chapter yet written.

Retiring the bodhisattva is my latest now-moment choice, as I have rummaged through the baggage tying my gut in knots and filling my nervous system with stress until I want to fall into a quiet oblivion. I have made choices in countless lives to take on the role of teacher and leader, pouring out my compassion, and persistently giving up my own pathway to assist others.

The layer cake of responsibilities that role has caused me to take on is so unbalanced it could possibly tilt the earth's axis. It is no wonder I feel as though I am sliding off the face of the planet all the time.

What I discover now is that the many many many beings here playing are quite aware of how to cultivate spiritual and moral understanding, they just do not want to for the most part. They rely on ones such as myself to keep thinking we have a duty of compassion to stay involved with the merry-go-round and assist, assist, assist whilst they stubbornly refuse to shift. And they spin new webs with the sticky lines of attachment, effort, loss.

The accumulation of lines of action and thought outlayed by the bodhisattva over many thousands of cycles - which cannot reach a terminal point of conclusion - sits dangerously eruptive in the vortices of my solar plexus, and whizzes along the highways of my nervous system. Disappointment, accusation, failure to complete, failure to attain - lost, spinning, muddy, living memories.

I am retiring those archives.

As this understanding sprouted in my thoughts, digging roots down into my gut, it seemed sensible to create another sound symbol medicine audio for the very purpose of releasing the role of bodhisattva, laying down the self-acquired duties of one who helps until understanding comes. This is an old world model of character, and an outdated method of enticing change within the human conglomerate.

The bodhisattva model may have been created with healthy intentions for a hopeful outcome, but the twisting distortion of this place over millennia has co-opted the data of it. It has become another tool of enslavement to endless work.

To move on closer to my own nirvana I release the role of bodhisattva. The exhausting task of maintaining a place of spiritual and moral perfection in a realm which sees imperfection in everything will no longer hold me as a game piece on the playboard.

If any would like to use the 'Retiring the Bodhisattva' audio themselves, I have made it available for online listening. I continue regular use of the Awakeners audio, Settling the Butterfly, and now this new sound tool. They work for me. 💜