Concept
Bodhicitta
Overview
In Mahayana Buddhism, bodhicitta ("aspiration to enlightenment" or "the thought of awakening") is the mind (citta) that is aimed at awakening (bodhi) through wisdom and compassion for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Bodhicitta is the defining quality of the Mahayana bodhisattva (a being striving towards Buddhahood) and the act of giving rise to bodhicitta (bodhicittotpāda) is what makes a bodhisattva a bodhisattva. Bodhicitta is the generative cause of a bodhisattva's eventual Buddhahood. The Daśabhūmika Sūtra explains that the arising of bodhicitta is the first step in the bodhisattva's career.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Again, we find in the narrative of Moses that the occasion which led man to leave his natural unity is attributed to solicitation from without. The serpent was the tempter. But the truth is, that the step into opposition, the awakening of consciousness, follows from the very nature of man: and the same history repeats itself in every son of Adam.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
States what Bodhicitta is.
The higher life which belongs to this sphere, this supreme enjoyment of truth, which as feeling is called "blessedness," and as conscious thought "contemplation," we may describe generically as the life known to religion. For religion is just this universal domain[184], in virtue of which the _one_ concrete totality of the World comes to each man in union with himself, as his essential substance, while it remains no…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
States what Bodhicitta is.
This mind, calm in the citadel of its own essential simplicity, has decreed that the method of its rule shall be manifold. Viewed in the very purity of the Divine intelligence, this method is called _providence_; but viewed in regard to those things which it moves and disposes, it is what the ancients called _fate_. That these two are different will easily be clear to anyone who passes in review their respective…
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
States what Bodhicitta is.
Philosophers who discussed Bodhicitta
Related ideas
- Prajñā (Buddhism)
- Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi Sūtra
- Je Tsongkhapa
- Sentient beings (Buddhism)
- Two truths doctrine
- Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana
- Prajnaparamita
- Nyingma
- Saṃsāra
- Buddhahood
- Kleshas (Buddhism)
- Luminous mind
- Mantra
- Dzogchen
- Śūnyatā
- 14th Dalai Lama
- Nirvana
- Kamalaśīla
- Nagarjuna
- Pāramitā
- Sanskrit
- Mahayana
- Yogachara
- Dhyana in Buddhism
Place in the tradition
Part of Nondualism.