What Are the Criteria for a Good Bodhisattva?

If you wish to cultivate quickly and be a good bodhisattva, you must speak gently with others, avoiding sharp and aggressive words. You should skillfully reconcile disputes and strive to gather in and embrace sentient beings. A bodhisattva should practice the four means of attraction (catuḥ-saṃgraha-vastu) as much as possible—embracing sentient beings comes first, while making enemies is the greatest taboo for a bodhisattva. In a bodhisattva's eyes, there should be no adversaries; all sentient beings are objects to be embraced by oneself. Therefore, do not treat the practice center as a battlefield, endlessly debating in pursuit of victory or defeat, of who is superior and who is inferior, who is strong and who is weak.

The self within each person's mind must be strictly guarded. Do not constantly show your edge, provoking others' anger with a strong and forceful ego. You should be adept at subduing and concealing the self; subduing afflictions is true cultivation, rather than always seeking to subdue and suppress others. A bodhisattva's disposition should be gentle—moving others with emotion and persuading them with reason, never refusing to yield even when in the right. Sometimes, yielding a step to others actually makes it easier to win them over and embrace them.

Both saving others and cultivating oneself require a balance of firmness and gentleness: be firm with yourself and firm in the face of adverse circumstances, but be as gentle as possible toward others. Only in this way can you gather sentient beings around yourself and become one with them. If your words keep people a thousand miles away, it will only drive sentient beings away and estrange you from them, making it impossible to form wholesome karmic connections with them. Such a person is not a qualified bodhisattva and cannot embrace sentient beings.

When the disposition is rigid, it is prone to snapping and sudden violence; when the disposition is soft, it bends but does not break. As a bodhisattva, one should be resilient—able to bend when bending is needed, yet able to return to the original position and remain unchanged. A bodhisattva should by nature be skilled at harmonizing all kinds of disputes, not constantly provoking endless conflicts. Learning to be a good bodhisattva—gentle, compliant, and harmonious—and learning to embrace sentient beings is a required course for every bodhisattva. Refusing to yield even when in the right is a great taboo for a bodhisattva; sharp and aggressive words are a great taboo for a bodhisattva. Violating this alienates sentient beings and forms unwholesome karmic connections with them, thereby transgressing the bodhisattva's four means of attraction.