1 00:00:00,031 --> 00:00:08,513 My understanding of the Buddhist conception of love is that it is a kind of delusion, an attachment with attendant negative connotations. 2 00:00:09,295 --> 00:00:14,749 If this is the case, how could we characterize the emotion motivation which impels a bodhisattva to be reborn? 3 00:00:16,855 --> 00:00:18,920 Well, love is not delusion. 4 00:00:19,001 --> 00:00:33,177 And again, back to the Abhidhamma, love is a word and is ambiguous because most often in the West we're referring to eros, right? 5 00:00:33,157 --> 00:00:40,870 Eros which is lustful love or not even lustful but just desire for something. 6 00:00:41,551 --> 00:00:48,482 I love apples or I love my wife or my girlfriend or my boyfriend or I love my children. 7 00:00:49,930 --> 00:01:02,509 adoration and so on, is often unwholesome, not delusion, based on delusion, but is craving or greed-based, desire-based. 8 00:01:04,812 --> 00:01:05,954 And so that's unwholesome. 9 00:01:07,416 --> 00:01:17,271 But love that is desire for beings to be happy, wishing for them to be happy, or acting, the impulsion that impuls... 10 00:01:17,251 --> 00:01:21,337 that moves us to act for the benefit of others. 11 00:01:21,757 --> 00:01:24,201 This is metta and this is a positive state. 12 00:01:25,122 --> 00:01:45,570 It's wholesome, it's worldly, it won't get you to nibbana but it's wholesome and if cultivated can eventually lead to limitless love for the whole universe and which can lead you to be born as a Brahma and can give great states of concentration which are also beneficial to the practice of insight meditation. 13 00:01:47,609 --> 00:01:54,018 So, depends what you mean by love, but the emotion motivation that impels a bodhisattva to be reborn. 14 00:01:55,380 --> 00:02:14,528 Okay, the reason a bodhisattva in the Theravada tradition is reborn, and I'm assuming you're talking about the Theravada bodhisattva without the V, because with the V in there it gets kind of weird and the Mahayana conception gets pretty radical. 15 00:02:14,508 --> 00:02:20,387 But what impels a bodhisattva to be reborn again is delusion and defilement. 16 00:02:20,407 --> 00:02:23,337 The only reason we're reborn is because of some kind of attachment. 17 00:02:24,633 --> 00:02:39,114 Now, all that a bodhisatta has done is refused to listen or to accept an enlightenment that is devoid of omniscience. 18 00:02:39,875 --> 00:02:47,927 So, given the opportunity to become enlightened in this life without being omniscient, they discard it. 19 00:02:49,930 --> 00:02:50,571 There's that. 20 00:02:50,732 --> 00:02:53,796 Now, what moves them to do it? 21 00:02:53,776 --> 00:02:59,645 So now we have to distinguish between bodhisattvas. 22 00:02:59,665 --> 00:03:07,357 Some bodhisattvas are not going to become Buddhas and they make a determination to become a Buddha and are unsuccessful. 23 00:03:07,877 --> 00:03:13,606 And often these determinations that they make are based on ego or desire or whatever. 24 00:03:13,646 --> 00:03:22,720 In the case of our Buddha, he made a vow out of, I guess you could say, wisdom and confidence. 25 00:03:22,700 --> 00:03:51,070 and faith because he was a highly developed ascetic who had magical powers and insight and he knew with certainty with confidence that if he listened to the Buddha's teaching he would become an arahant very quickly right away and so he made the determination to go one step further to go the next step which was a huge step out of wisdom and understanding 26 00:03:52,636 --> 00:04:04,367 It's interesting, curious to note that as soon as he became a Buddha, one of the first things he thought of was not taking advantage of his omniscience, was to pass away into parinibbana, which 27 00:04:04,870 --> 00:04:15,369 He would have saved himself a lot of time had he just done that back in the time of Dipankara Buddha. 28 00:04:15,409 --> 00:04:22,321 But the result of his omniscience was such that he wasn't able to do it because immediately he was asked to teach. 29 00:04:22,441 --> 00:04:24,685 Brahma came down and asked him to teach. 30 00:04:24,665 --> 00:04:44,344 because he was omniscient no one would come down and ask Brahma would not come down and ask me to teach for example because I'm not omniscient but he came down and asked the Buddha to teach and so it was based on this quality what motivated it and so again this is it differs from person to person but the real bodhisattvas 31 00:04:44,324 --> 00:04:47,655 It would seem they do it out of confidence and wisdom. 32 00:04:47,916 --> 00:04:57,388 On that occasion, where they are recognized and when another Buddha says, see that guy's lying in the mud, he's going to become a Buddha in a future life.