Someone asked about importance of bodhicitta on realising emptiness.

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Soh Wei Yu
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Bodhicitta is important. Bodhicitta is not just mundane compassion, lots of non-Buddhists or even non-spiritual, or even total materialists have compassion. Compassion is not the monopoly of a specific group of people (of a specific religion or whether they are spiritual or not). Although, compassion is in fact very important along with the other four immeasurables and does help development and maturation of insight, and should never be downplayed. Personally, I find that compassion does come forth more spontaneously after insights.
However, Bodhicitta is specifically this, not just compassion:
"It is true many people mistake compassion, which does not have the force to lead to buddhahood, with bodhicitta, the aspiration to become a buddha to benefit sentient beings." -- Acarya Malcolm Smith
Bodhicitta is specifically the aspiration for Buddhahood, nothing more and nothing less.
And how does it relate to realising emptiness? Because realising [twofold] emptiness and the full actualization of that realisation which directly corresponds with the overcoming of the two obscurations which directly translates to omniscience or the total knowledge of the nature of all phenomena completely or the exhaustion of all phenomena, etc etc.... depends first of all on the aspiration that this is what you want to attain.
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Soh Wei Yu
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And personally I have taken the vows and so on ceremoniously and so does John Tan and I believe many others in this group. But more important than that... the crucial point of it is that both John Tan and I do aim to attain Buddhahood as our goal. A true sincere aspiration to awaken fully for the benefit of all IMO is better than people who just went through the motions and ceremony but their heart is not there.. their deep yearning for waking up is not there yet.
Also, some may bring up the point... does one need to formally recite the bodhicitta vows, the refuge vows and so on... are they important? To me, they are important causes for awakening. However the essence of it is always more important than the formality or ceremonial aspect of it. It is always good to formally undertake these vows in a ceremony under the presence of a great master. If you have the opportunity to do so, then go for it. That itself is meritorious in many ways and plants a strong seed of awakening.
But we do hear of stories like Bahiya and many others who attained awakening, in fact liberation from samsara as an Arahant, upon hearing Buddha speak of a few verses of dharma, and that was the first time they have even met the Buddha. Does this mean they have not taken refuge? They certainly haven't got the time to formally recite the refuge verses to Buddha before they awakened. But I think they do take refuge in a more fundamental way. I wrote in recent months:
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Soh Wei Yu
Liu Zhi Guan
Kyle Dixon's post from years ago: "The true meaning of refuge is recognizing the nature of mind [cittatā].""
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Soh Wei Yu
Liu Zhi Guan
The intention is more important than the formality or ceremony.
Bahiya had very strong intention to rely on Buddha’s teachings to attain liberation. In a sense that is the key of refuge. It is not just a formality but a very strong genuine intention to rely on the triple gems to attain liberation. That is the kind of “taking refuge” one must awaken in oneself. That paves the way to liberation. If one simply attends a refuge ceremony half heartedly, like going through the motions, it is still a positive act that creates a good karmic connection with the triple gems for this life and the next, but may not be as effective as the earnest desire of Bahiya to take refuge in Buddha and his instructions to attain liberation as soon as possible."
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