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Many years ago, I was discussing the Four Bodhisattva Vows with a fellow practitioner, and feeling a little put upon by whatever conflict we were in the middle of at the monastery, I said something along the lines of: “I’m not quite sure how I ended up as a monk, since I so often don’t want to deal with sentient beings.”
“But, you make those vows every night…” she said, and I braced, readying myself for her inexorable logic. “When you became a monk, how did you think you were going to save all beings without dealing with them?”
“Well,” I answered, “I just didn’t think that part through.”
We laughed, but I realized it was true. I’d chanted those vows every night for years, but when I’d first heard them—and for a good long while after—I hadn’t considered them with the careful attention they deserved. If I’d had, I might have run for my life. In fact, something like this had happened with a woman who’d visited the monastery for the first time. She’d received beginning instruction in meditation, joined the sangha for zazen, listened to the dharma discourse, and then sat open-mouthed and a bit horrified as we all chanted the Four Bodhisattva Vows:
Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them.
Desires are inexhaustible; I vow to put an end to them.
The dharmas are boundless; I vow to master them.
The buddha way is unattainable; I vow to attain it.
Do these people hear what they’re saying?! she thought to herself, and as soon as we were done with the morning service, she ran to her car and drove away, not to return to the monastery for another twenty years.
What would prompt anyone to make vows that are essentially impossible? There are eight billion people on the planet, not to mention the trillions more sentient beings that stand to be saved. How could we possibly save them all?
Desire, by nature, feeds on itself. But even when able to curb it, how do we account for those wholesome desires, like the desire for nourishment, for love, for awakening? What does it mean to put an end to desire? Is that even desirable as a goal?
By definition, the dharma is boundless—all the many teachings that describe all the many ways in which phenomena behave and interact are infinite. What we don’t know vastly exceeds what we do. How could we possibly dream of framing, understanding, what is at its core ineffable?
Lastly, a buddha isn’t made. A buddha is realized. We cannot attain the way, the path, because it’s not something we lack. We don’t practice to become buddhas; we practice as the expression of our buddhahood. The buddha way is indeed unattainable; it’s impossible, inconceivable, unimaginable to think that we’d ever attain it.
But where does all of this leave these vows, then? Does this mean we Buddhists are well-meaning but quixotic? Benevolent, though wishful?
Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of the vows is quite different:
However innumerable beings are, I vow to meet them with kindness and interest.
However inexhaustible the states of suffering are, I vow to touch them with
patience and love.
However immeasurable the dharmas are, I vow to explore them deeply.
However incomparable the mystery of interbeing, I vow to surrender to it freely.
Grounded, feasible, and eminently doable. They’re a relief, almost, after encountering the extravagant first version. And yet, what the first lack in practicality, they make up for in aspiration. What the second lack in mystery, they make up in relatability. Two different views for the same realization.
When speaking of these vows, I think of these two views as the macro and micro versions. The first version—which, for ease of identification I’ll call the MRO (Mountains and Rivers Order) version—pushes you to get large, so large that you become boundless. If every being, every thing, every want, every truth, every path and every tool is contained in you (and it is), then there’s nothing to reach for outside. The turning is inward and therefore not frantic, not greedy. Simply said, we’ve already fulfilled these vows. We reach, in order to see and live that.
The second—Thich Nhat Hanh’s version—is moment-to-moment, day-to-day. If I’m not sure what it means to save someone, let me practice meeting them with kindness and interest. Let me be infinitely patient with my and others’ wants. Let me soften into that feeling of craving, of not having what I think is rightfully mine. Let me be willing to learn what I don’t yet know, and not assume even the familiar. Let me open to the mystery of this life and trust in its wisdom, which isn’t different from mine.
We could say that one version is aspirational, while the other is actionable. But that’s only half of the story. Because the MRO version is just as actionable, and the Thich Nhat Hanh version just as aspirational, as its counterpart. Like bifocal lenses, these two versions provide us with exactly the prescription we need to see most clearly. Each in their own way, they bring into focus a world that is both vast and microscopic, mysterious and precise, impossible and accessible.
Either way, they encapsulate the teaching that my first teacher always ended any mention of these vows with: “It’s impossible to fulfill these, yet we vow to do it! Our practice not about possibility—and it’s not about hope. A bodhisattva doesn’t need hope!” he’d say in his booming voice. “A bodhisattva has vow.” And if we have that, what do we not have?
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