Saving all Living Beings with a Aspirin

Guide to the Bodhisattvas Way of Life by Shantideva verse 22b "What need is there to mention the wish to dispel their inconceivable misery…"
22a"If even the thought to relieve living creatures of merely a headache is beneficial intention endowed with infinite goodness…" I’ve seen some of you rummage for an aspirin for someone. “Oh here, let me help you.” “Oh, you poor thing, I’m going to take care of you.” Like that. “I have a tincture at home and I will rush home and bring it to you.” If the thought to relieve living being of even a headache is a beneficial intention endowed with infinite goodness…. Why is that? Because it takes you away from self-centeredness. At the moment you look at others with the intention to relieve their symptoms, you are, briefly, looking away from your self-centeredness, self-cherishing. What a wonderful society [we would have] if everyone did this. Now let’s look at the vast method." Then what need is there to mention the wish to dispel their inconceivable misery?"

I’m feeling so joyful today, I don’t really want to go into inconceivable miseries. I opened my mouth and, nothing [about misery] wants to come out. The powerful wish to dispel the inconceivable miseries of living beings belongs to internal process rather than external process. A quality external process make you a good citizen, a wonderful family member and it creates your personality in a way that allows you to be pleasant to be around.

However, the external process shimmers with distortions, not in a pretty way.Shimmering like heat rising from the desert. It distorts so you cant really tell what is going on. You’re working a little bit blindly because you really cannot understand what is the need of this person and you are accomplishing good things but you must not harm the actual process, the internal vast process. The internal vast process is the seat of bodhicitta.

Bodhicitta does not happen out here (points outside the body). Bodhicitta happens on the inside. The internal process creates apowerful uprising of the your actual component of your personality, the nut of the personality that facilitates a powerful wish to achieve this high state of tremendous compassion. You must have preparation compassion in order to get the internal process so that you can arise correct compassion." The wish to dispel their inconceivable misery…"if you do not understand they are suffering, then there is nothing to meditate on and you [end up having] a luke-warm process and never get to do anything.

You waver on the edge of arising bodhichitta but the mind of bodhichitta is about the powerful needs of others, the powerful needs of living beings. Without that and using external compassion only, would be like fixing a wound by putting a little bit of gold leaf on top to make it look better. What living beings need is the removal of the actual root of suffering. Aspirin for someone who has cancer is not [correct medicine.] It’s useful if they’re feeling pain but it wont cure their cancer. You will need develop the strength of Hercules, the fully enlightened being, an unstoppable, hero that makes bodhisattvas true saviors rather than some luke-warm do-gooder.

exerpt from teaching What is Beneficial Intention 10-2003 http//www.white-conch.org