“Mindset of Awakening” (bodhicitta)
The Sanskrit term bodhicitta—translated here as “mindset of awakening”—may not have been included in the early recensions of what eventually became the Eight Thousand. But the term may have first come into being and evolved in connection with this very scripture, enshrining as it does the term’s earliest usage before it was reinterpreted in the writings attributed to Nāgārjuna and Asaṅga. Although the Sanskrit word citta (in the compound bodhicitta) has both cognitive and affective aspects difficult to render accurately in a single English word, the term “mindset” has been adopted in the sense of a complex mental state constantly arising in each moment, shaped by particular past actions that affect the way one sees, thinks, feels, interprets, and acts moment to moment.54 However, it should also be pointed out that in this scripture wherever the term citta appears alone (i.e., not in the compound bodhicitta), it may refer to the mindset of awakening, or to a proper mindset directly related to it, or to an improper mindset antithetical to it, or to the immediate content of any of these three senses of the word mindset.55 For instance, when Subhūti makes this scripture’s most famous statement—namely “that mindset is free of a mindset” (acitta)—he is referring, specifically, to that mindset of awakening. That is to say, the term itself is not being used in a technical, Abhidharma sense relating purely to cognition or consciousness, but is framing the liberative value connected with specific cognitive and affective mental states. The subsequent ontological discussion about the existence or nonexistence of “that mindset” is another matter.
The use of the translation “mindset of awakening” also allows for divergent interpretations of the ambiguous term by Haribhadra and Ratnākaraśānti. In fact, the Sanskrit compound bodhicitta may well have been understood to implicitly criticize the soteriology of the Abhidharma, in which an ordinary sentient being’s mindset and its components (cittacaitta; sems dang sems ’byung) had to be brought to an end in order to reach the awakening (bodhi) of an arhat or a buddha. In other words, the term bodhicitta would likely have been received as an oxymoron that aimed to describe how a Mahāyāna practitioner could reach the freedom of nirvāṇa without entirely leaving behind cyclic existence—i.e., still be in the world, but not be of the world. Just as one might say something is “icy hot,” to speak of a bodhisattva’s mindset of awakening—a term that combines an ordinary person’s “mindset” with a buddha’s complete “awakening” free of that mindset—is an expression of the state of a bodhisattva’s knowing midway between an ordinary being’s and a buddha’s. In its time, it must also have evoked a particular experience that was comprehensible, but difficult to pinpoint except through combining such contradictory terms. For this very reason, some translators insist on leaving the term bodhicitta untranslated. Unfortunately, that approach misses the pedagogical value of the paradox at the heart of the term, which any Sanskrit speaker familiar with the difference between the viewpoints of the Disciple Vehicle and the Bodhisattva Vehicle might well have understood immediately. Probably, Mahāyāna Buddhists would recognize in this terminology that their very own mindset does not need to be reviled or eliminated but embraced as a means for attaining an awakening that surpasses that of arhats or pratyekabuddhas. The choice to translate the term into English aims at replicating this effect as far as it is possible.
Certainly, in their commentaries, both Haribhadra and Ratnākaraśānti rely upon this paradox in the term bodhicitta to interpret it in the light of their respective Madhyamaka and Yogācāra perspectives, which treat it, respectively, as a description of the relative and ultimate aspect of a buddha’s knowing (i.e., the goal) or as a description of the bodhisattvas’ aspiration and practical engagement that leads to their awakening for the sake of all beings (i.e., the path itself). However, rather than dispute the etymology of bodhicitta the two commentators dispute whether, in Abhidharma terms, the word bodhicitta highlights a difference in a bodhisattva’s general mindset or in that mindset’s particular components (cittacaitta; sems dang sems ’byung). To explain this complex issue briefly, the Abhidharma of the Disciple Vehicle claims that the three terms “consciousness” (vijñāna), “thinker” (manas), and “mindset” (citta) all share the same referent but that each term highlights one of its three different functions. But according to Yogācāra scholars—who are closer in spirit than the Ābhidharmikas to the usages in the Eight Thousand—“consciousness” (vijñāna), “thinker” (manas), and “mindset” (citta) refer to different things, i.e., respectively, to the six sensory consciousnesses, the afflicted ego-consciousness, and the receptacle (ālaya) consciousness. Since the receptacle consciousness in ordinary beings is said not to recognize its object as the dream world it projects, its appearances continue to change moment to moment—under the negative influence of ignorance, habitual fixation, and prior karmic deeds—until its very basis is transformed upon awakening, after which it remains permanently in the state of a buddha’s knowing.
However, although Haribhadra and Ratnākaraśānti generally agree about a buddha’s nondual knowing emerging from the transformation of consciousness, they disagree about the role that the nature of the mindset of awakening plays in causing that transformation. They also read this interpretive difference into the scripture, based on their divergent philosophical perspectives.
On the one hand, for Haribhadra, the term “mindset” (in mindset of awakening) can only describe a mindset, not the components of the mindset, because, like the transcendent state of wisdom, it must refer to a buddha’s nondual knowing, which has relative and ultimate aspects. In Haribhadra’s view, the mindset of awakening is only described, at the relative level, as an aspiration (praṇidhāna) to attain awakening—widely defined as the wish to attain awakening for the sake of all beings—and the engagement (prasthāna) in the six transcendent practices, such as generosity and so on. Thus, although Haribhadra does not explicitly state this, he reads the “mindset of awakening” in aspiration and engagement as mere figurative descriptions of how to repeatedly reset one’s mind on awakening and then proceed on that basis.
On the other hand, for Ratnākaraśānti, the “mindset of awakening” is a term, like the transcendent state of wisdom, that refers to a series of mindsets transformed along the path. But since the nature of that knowing is always sheer illumination throughout that path, the term bodhicitta can only refer to the conditioned components of a mindset, not to the mindset itself. Thus, in Ratnākaraśānti’s explanation, the “mindset of awakening” at the level of aspiration refers to an actual wish made at the time of formally taking a vow, during which one’s mind actually becomes set on awakening, whereas engagement refers to the effect of that initial wish on the mind once it has set out on the path to awakening. Although Ratnākaraśānti does not explicitly state it, he implies that the ultimate mindset of awakening, contra Haribhadra, is a figurative usage.
Whether or not the translation of key terms such as “mindset” actually captures the full cognitive and affective implications of the Sanskrit, an effort has been made in this translation to use terminology amenable to both Haribhadra’s and Ratnākaraśānti’s interpretations, as well as to the traditions of Nāgārjuna and Asaṅga on which they respectively rely.56 The translation also attempts to dovetail more closely with the general spirit of the traditional definitions and the use of clever heuristic etymologies. For instance, one might heuristically answer the question “What is a mindset of awakening?” as follows: At the level of aspiration, the “mindset of awakening” is a mind set on awakening, i.e., the wish to attain complete awakening for the sake of all beings. At the level of engagement, the “mindset of awakening” is the mindset while awakening through the six transcendent states. At the ultimate level, the “mindset of awakening” is nondual wisdom inseparable from compassion.