BEN KINGSLEY: The Mahayana Bodhisattva is willing to remain in Samsara, to be born again and again, endlessly, always striving for the welfare of his fellow beings until these beings, too, attain release.

KWONG-ROSHI (Dharma Successor to Suzuki-Roshi): The Bodhisattva — Bodhi means enlightened, Sattva means being — enlightened being. And her or his vow was to not enter nirvana until everyone was enlightened. So this is very important because we’re always doing things for ourselves. But she’s waiting for everyone, the whole humanity, to be enlightened before she enters nirvana.

So on the front part, you look at her face, and she’s pretty calm, and then the three faces above her face are pretty calm, but as you go clockwise around, the faces become more and more filled with anger, frustration, anxiety, horror until you come to the last three, and that’s devastation, despair, and hopelessness. And this is the part where most young people . . . kill themselves or commit suicide.

But what the Bodhisattva wears is a crown because this is part of life and because we have a mind and a body, we’re going to encounter this whether you’re a Buddhist or not. So she wears it as her crown, as her path.

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