When we finish Zazen, after we chant the Heart Sutra, we chant the four Bodhisattva vows.
The first is, “all living beings, I vow to save them”.
From this we might believe that a Bodhisattva is primarily concerned with doing, with saving all beings from suffering. Indeed, in Tibetan, the word for Bodhisattva literally means something like Enlightenment Hero.
Hidden underneath that idea of compassionate doing is a more subtle idea concerned with seeing.
In the normal way of things a person looks at another person and asks, “What is the value of that person to me?” The ordinary person looks at an object and says, “What use is that object to me?”
In contrast, the Bodhisattva will look at a person and say, “What is the value of that person?” The Bodhisattva will look at an object and say “What is the dignity and beauty of that object?”
In the literature Bodhisattvas are often occupying a heroic role. In the Vimalakirti Sutra for instance, at the start, in the scene setting, the Buddha is said to be preaching in the presence of 8,000 monks and 32,000 Bodhisattvas, all of whom are recognized by the monks.
These Bodhisattvas have heroic names. But if you look at the names closely, they are names you would associate with the activity of practice. This is a way of seeing differently. Seeing in terms, not of personal utility, but in terms of a reciprocal relationship. Meaning-giving and love fill the world with Bodhisattvas.
It isn’t that this person is a Bodhisattva who is going out to save all these other people. The change is primarily a change in how we see and hence, how we act. Dōgen for instance, humorously talks about the Broken Ladle Bodhisattva, and things like that. Everything is our teacher.
The Bodhisattva isn’t a being who sees themselves as a Bodhisattva. Rather, they are someone who sees other beings as bodhisattvas.
You yourself should ask whether you can see this or not. You yourself are full of Bodhisattvas: Enduring Through Doubt Bodhisattva, Loving Despite Everything Bodhisattva. And 32,000 others. And likewise the world.