Some may say, however, that the Buddhist sympathy or commiseration somewhat betrays a sense of passive contemplation on evils. When Christians say that God loves his creatures, the love implies activity and shows God’s willingness to do whatever for the actual benefits of his subject-beings. Quite true. Yet when the Buddha is stated to have declared that all sentient beings in the triple world are his own children or that he will not enter into his final Nirvana unless all beings in the three thousand great chiliocosms, not a single soul excepted, are emancipated from the misery of birth and death, his self-sacrificing love must be considered to be all-comprehensive and at the same time full of energy and activity. Whatever objections there may be, we do not see any sufficient reason against speaking of the love-essence of the Dharmakâya and the Bodhicitta.
Nâgârjuna and Sthiramati on the Bodhicitta.
Says Nâgârjuna in his Discourse on the Transcendentality of the Bodhicitta: “The Bodhicitta is free from all determinations, that is, it is not included in the categories of the five skandhas, the twelve âyatanas, and the eighteen dhâtus. It is not a particular existence which is palpable. It is non-atmanic, universal. It is uncreated and its self-essence is void [çûnya, immaterial, or transcendental].
“One who understands the nature of the Bodhicitta sees everything with a loving heart, for love is the essence of the Bodhicitta.
“The Bodhicitta is the highest essence.
“Therefore, all Bodhisattvas find their raison d’être of existence in this great loving heart.
“The Bodhicitta, abiding in the heart of sameness (samatâ) creates individual means of salvation (upaya).[125] One who understands this heart becomes emancipated from the dualistic view of birth and death and performs such acts as are beneficial both to oneself and to others.”
Sthiramati advocates in his Discourse on the Mahâyâna-Dharmadhâtu[126] the same view as Nâgârjuna’s on the nature of the Bodhicitta, which I summarise here: “Nirvâna, Dharmakâya, Tathâgata, Tathâgata-garbha, Paramârtha, Buddha, Bodhicitta, or Bhûtatathâtâ,—all these terms signify merely so many different aspects of one and the same reality; and Bodhicitta is the name given to a form of the Dharmakâya or Bhûtatathâtâ as it manifests itself in the human heart, and its perfection, or negatively its liberation from all egoistic impurities, constitutes the state of Nirvana.”
Being a reflex of the Dharmakâya, the Bodhicitta is practically the same as the original in all its characteristics; so continues Sthiramati: “It is free from compulsive activities; it has no beginning, it has no end; it cannot be defiled by impurities, it cannot be obscured by egoistic individualistic prejudices; it is incorporeal, it is the spiritual essence of Buddhas, it is the source of all virtues earthly as well as transcendental; it is constantly becoming, yet its original purity is never lost.
“It may be likened unto the ever-shining sunlight which may temporarily be hidden behind the clouds. All the modes of passion and sin arising from egoism may sometimes darken the light of the Bodhicitta, but the Citta itself forever remains free from these external impurities. It may again be likened unto all-comprehending space which remains eternally identical, whatever happenings and changes may occur in things enveloped therein. When the Bodhicitta manifests itself in a relative world, it looks as if being subject to constant becoming, but in reality it transcends all determinations, it is above the reach of birth and death (samsâra).