Tharpa wrote:
I prefer to be much simpler.T: "Compassion is Tenderness of heart. You say the Tao is possible without tenderness? With that sort of Tao, what petty larceny do you intend?"
K: The true heart is wisdom: the understanding of Ultimate Reality - which is absolutely rational, relying not on emotion at all.
T: True enlightened heart* is wisdom, compassion and power. [snip] * rough translation of bodhichitta, the two words therein meaning awake/conscious (bodhi) and mind/heart (chitta). Bodhichitta is the mahayana buddhist term for enlightened mind, or in shorthand: enlightenment, although that is a result term not an essence term.
Bodhicitta is the will to Ultimate Truth. It's a "mind" that has one sole virtue, namely, aspiring to Ultimate Truth.
The Buddha is Ultimate Truth. It is the "heart" of wisdom, because it's the core truth of all things.
Calling the Buddha the heart is just figurative. It doesn't mean that only things like vertebrates, annelids, mollusks, and arthropods are the Buddha.
Tharpa: True enlightened heart* is wisdom, compassion and power.
In Mahayana imagery this is exemplified as:
Manjusri, Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani.
This also relates to what are called respectively mind, speech and body.
Mind is beyond place and time, pure awareness/awakeness.
Body is place and time, or 'being'.
Speech joins the two - any two for that matter.
The sword of Manjusri is uncompromising faith in reason, cutting through all delusion. This is the same as samadhi (powerful, concentrated mind).
Such a mind is capable of realising non-attachment, which is compassion, or Avalokitesvara (transcendance above all attachment).
Only the mind of enlightenment (bodhicitta, will to Truth) will take up the sword of Manjusri. This is the same as Vajrapani (the uncompromising power that guides the mind to Truth).
Wisdom without heart has no being.
More clearly:
Without understanding the core truth of all life, there is no awareness of the Buddha.
All beings live and breathe because of the heart (Truth). But they aren't necessarily wise.Beings without heart have no wisdom.
Wisdom only arises with: a great will to Truth (bodhicitta), a single-pointed focus (samadhi), and the intellectual capacity of a human (human realm birth).
Correct. It's a metaphor for "core" or "origin" or "centre".Heart, in this context, has nothing to do with a muscular organ in a body necessarily.
By "mind", do you mean "citta" or "bodhi" or "consciousness" now?Though just as it can be said that the seat of mind is the brain, so also could it be said that the seat of the heart is the heart.
Regardless, the location of anything is not the brain, since the brain is a finite thing and not everywhere. The location or source of anything is certainly Ultimate Truth.
No, the heart (source) of being (all things) is still the Buddha. The heart cannot be found within the heart.And also it could be said that the seat of the body is here and now, which is why both wisdom and heart are found therein.
This does not help anyone to perceive the heart of all things.A perhaps interesting aside in terms of organs/the body in terms of this threefold matrix. Traditionally:
The brain/head relates to body;
The heart/chest relates to mind;
The throat relates to speech.
.