The desire to practice bodhicitta is a basic tenet of Mahayana Buddhism. This implies that everything we do both in practice and in our daily lives is backed by the motivation to benefit others in all that we do. On the surface this seems an obvious and desirous achievement, but in reality it is not easy and, consequently we approach bodhicitta in a gradual and step-by-step manner.

First, we divide bodhicitta into two main categories: ultimate Bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta. So far, every sutra and commentary I’v read on the subject teaches these backwards, beginning with the ultimate aspect of bodhicitta and then reviewing the relative benefit. We can approach any desire by enumerating our ultimate goal, our mission statement, if you will, but first we need to recognize that nearly everything we cover when discussing Mahayana Buddhism revolves around dealing with samsara, recognizing its attributes, discovering a path and methods for diminishing the suffering, negative emotions and so on associated with samsara.