James Ford says in his essay about Saint Francis of Assisi being a Bodhisattva, “Wali Ali Meyer once described a madzub as ‘a human being who has an immediate and intimate relationship with the God reality, and who often is absorbed in that realm and at the same time appears strange, incoherent, eccentric, but somehow deeply invested with power. In some cultures madzubs would be treated as sacred treasures, in others treated as if insane.` The Madzubs (distinguished as a kind or level of mysticism) may be more Sufi than anybody else for they may be seeing God in everything and everybody.
While I found this description challenging, I also thought that it was clearly discriminatory. I went back to the various texts from the major traditions and looked for a clear definition of Bodhisattva. It is not to be found. There seems to be a basic definition with a lot of elaboration reflecting the practice in the various schools.
A bodhisattva:
(in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so through compassion for suffering beings.
A bodhisattva, or bodhisatva, is a person who is on the path towards bodhi or Buddhahood.
Bodhisattva, (Sanskrit), Pali bodhisatta (“one whose goal is awakening”), in Buddhism, one who seeks awakening (bodhi)—hence, an individual on the path to becoming a buddha. Because of the high degree of difficulty in the undertaking, the Elder School reserves the distinction to a few heroic practitioners who are little less than gods.
Bodhisattvas can in some of the Mahayana forms take on the celestial qualities that Buddhists like to celebrate even if not cultivating the same. There are the Four Great Bodhisattvas: Avalokiteśvara or Compassion. Kṣitigarbha, a kind of factotum for relieving suffering; Mañjuśrī, Wisdom; Samantabhadra, or the pure essence of Being; I did actually know one man who came close to being a living, breathing Avalokiteśvara, but that’s another story.
In the Tibetan tradition, there is the added qualification of having generated bodhichitta, a spontaneous awakening of great compassion which, coupled with equanimity, allows us to wish that everyone from our mother-in-law to our two timing ex the ability to escape from samsara. This is labeled as an heroic feat, and well it might be.
In western Zen the word has taken on a more egalitarian meaning. One famous American Zen master used to begin all his teisho “Greetings Bodhisattvas,” encouragement no matter where we stood on the Bell curve of enlightenment. No matter if someone within earshot would go out and backstab a fellow sangha member by evening of the same day, the fact that they’d plunked their ass down on a cushion for some period of meditation was enough for Aitken Roshi to confer this high title of respect. I respect that.
Saint Francis spoke the language of the birds and stripped naked in front of the Bishop of Assisi to teach a few things about the essentials. I certainly don’t want to take away any of his powerful mysticism or his rather rudimentary teaching methods, but if we are to follow in this new iteration of Buddhist teaching, I don’t want to necessarily create a new category of naked roshis showing how to be genuinely authentic, but I do want to extend the definition.
Without the boring, sometimes insufferable characters in our sanghas, we’d be lost. They also qualify as true seekers of the Way. So are also the timid practitioners, the less intellectually gifted, the scholarly, the nerds, the sanctimonious, the annoying, the repressed. They all fit into the definition of Bodhisattva that I’ve landed on.
Given that it’s Buddhism in many variant forms, there’s going to be some dispute about the meaning of terms and extent of the list: Boring Bodhisattva. Timid Bodhisattva. Nerdy Bodhisattva. Dumb Bodhisattva. IvoryTower Bodhisattva. Saccharine Sweet Bodhisattva. Insufferable Bodhisattva. Uptight Bodhisattva. The list goes on,
Oh how human human beings are.
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