Our lives are so busy; we are preoccupied by many family and other obligations. When your life is so busy, there is no other refuge than your good heart. Your good heart is the most important thing in which to take refuge. Even though you might want to do long practices, sitting meditation, many prayers or retreat, your life is usually so busy that you don’t have time. You have too many other obligations; you can’t do everything that you’d like. If this is the case, your only refuge is your good heart, your compassion, the thought of benefiting others, bodhicitta. If you take refuge in that, if you can practice that, no matter how busy you are—even if you cannot do many hours of sitting meditation, prayers, preliminary practices and so forth, you will have no regrets over lost opportunities, now or in the future. In this life and in all future lives, you will go from happiness to happiness to enlightenment.
There are so many practices you can do—what’s the most important? What’s the most important thing to practice in life? I would say that it’s the good heart, your very precious thought of loving kindness, compassion; the thought of benefiting others, bodhicitta. That is the best meditation, the best Dharma practice. As Shantideva also said when talking about the benefits of bodhicitta in the Bodhicharyavatara, ‘‘After checking for many eons, the buddhas discovered that bodhicitta is the most beneficial thing for sentient beings.’’ [Chapter 1, verse 7.]
This quotation explains what’s best for you. That means that bodhicitta is the best thing for you too. What’s the best way to take care of yourself? What’s the best thing for your own well-being? It’s bodhicitta. The buddhas’ discovery applies equally to you. There are so many problems in life—cancer, AIDS, relationship problems, being in debt, not having enough money, job problems such as other people being jealous of you or interfering with your work or being unable to find a job. There are so many problems. But the one answer that takes care of everything, the one solution to all your life’s problems, the one thing that fulfills all your wishes, is again your mind, your good heart, your bodhicitta.
If you have a good heart, you don’t give harm others; you always help others with their problems, whatever they are. That causes you to have a long and healthy life. The lam-rim teachings talk about the eight ripened qualities of a good rebirth [see Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, p. 460]. One of these is a long life, the cause of which is explained as saving or sparing the lives of others, animal or human; for example, giving them food, medicine, clothing or helping them in various other ways [Liberation, p. 462].
Therefore, in your everyday life, try with a good heart to benefit others as much as possible. If you can do this, whether you are offering others great service or small, you’re continuously creating the cause of your own success—wealth, long life, good health, everything. Your actions are harmonious with such results. Thus, your good heart fulfills all your wishes for anyhappiness, including the highest, peerless happiness of full enlightenment. Actions done with a good heart are never non-virtuous, only virtuous. Actions done with a good heart only benefit and never harm others. Therefore, when you act with a good heart, you never create the cause for sicknesses, only health. Your wish to benefit others is a healthy mind. That healthy mind makes your body healthy.