Monshin Nannette Overley: I Offer You This Bodhi Mind

“Once bodhichitta is awakened in us, it is a treasure that continues to open.” In this beautiful exploration, Monshin Nannette Overley characterizes bodhichitta as “the first impulse or intention towards awakening,” as “a longing for the end of suffering,” and as “a longing for connection.” She offers examples from The Hidden Lamp and from her own life of times when she and other women were able to touch into their tender, open hearts through moments of personal vulnerability. Monshin saw how that very soft spot — the part in her that wants to get things right, that wants credit—connects her to others, if she lets it, and does not follow the urge to “cement it over.” She discusses relative and absolute bodhicitta: relative being how we train to meet suffering, absolute being our unconditionally loving response to suffering that is just like reaching back to adjust the pillow at night — just what we do without thinking. She concludes with Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s affirmingly straightforward words— “Sometimes you’re the one in the room”— as a reply to the question of why we might find ourselves serving the world.