Reverence to All Buddhas: Only When They Stand "As If Before My Very Eyes" Can the Bow Go Down

7.2 Reverence to All Buddhas: Only When They Stand "As If Before My Very Eyes" Can the Bow Go Down

Having praised the merits of the Tathāgata, Samantabhadra says to Sudhana: these merits are so deep and vast that even if all the Buddhas of the ten directions recounted them for kalpas as numerous as dust-motes, they could never be told to the end; one who wishes to accomplish this gateway of merit should cultivate ten kinds of vast and great practice-vows. The ten unfold one by one. The first: reverence to all Buddhas.

The opening sentence throws the whole scene wide to its uttermost edge:

Good son! To reverence all Buddhas is this: all the Buddhas, the World-Honored Ones, throughout the realm of dharma and the realm of empty space, in the ten directions and the three times, numerous as the dust-motes of all buddha-fields — by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vows I arouse deep faith and understanding, as if they stood before my very eyes, and with body, speech, and mind ever purified I constantly cultivate reverence.

The object of reverence is not one Buddha, not one image in one shrine. It is "throughout the realm of dharma and the realm of empty space" — exhausting the whole dharma-realm and all of space — "in the ten directions and the three times, numerous as the dust-motes of all buddha-fields." The ten directions are space; the three times are time; "dust-motes of all buddha-fields" means a number like every buddha-land ground to powder, each grain counted as one Buddha. So many Buddhas — and not one is to be left unreverenced.

How Does One Bow to a Buddha One Cannot See

Here a wholly concrete problem rises at once: of the Buddhas of the ten directions and three times, the fleshly eye sees not one. Unseen — how can this reverence stand?

The hinge is in those eight words: "I arouse deep faith and understanding, as if before my very eyes."

By the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vows, one raises a faith and understanding so deep that the unseen Buddhas of the ten directions and three times are believed and understood into presence — "as if before my very eyes," as if They were seated at this very moment before one. What bows down is not the eyes; it is this single thought of faith and understanding. The eyes see nothing, yet this one thought brings the Buddha into the present — and so this bow is made to a Buddha now made present.

Take a careful look at what this thought is — it is the very track this book has run along since Part One: recollection. Buddha-recollection, recollecting the Buddha's virtues and the Buddha's goodness, held thought upon thought, held until the Buddha seems to stand before one's eyes. The "recollecting the Tathāgata" that Mahānāma learned in the Banyan Park back in Part One has not changed here, with Samantabhadra in the Flower Ornament; it has only been spread wide: where once one recollected a single Buddha until He stood as if present, now that one thought is spread over all the Buddhas of the entire dharma-realm and realm of space.

So Samantabhadra's reverence is, at the root, an act of buddha-recollection. First recollect — recollect until the Buddhas stand as if present; once the recollection holds firm, the bow lands solid. Without this one thought, however diligently the body bows, it only bends toward empty air; once this thought stands up, the waist that bends down truly comes to rest before the seat of the Buddha.

One Body, Reverencing All Buddhas at Once

Once the Buddhas stand as if before one's eyes, Samantabhadra pushes this single bow into the scale only the Flower Ornament has:

Before each and every Buddha I manifest bodies as numerous as the dust-motes of unspeakable, unspeakable buddha-fields, and each body bows in full to Buddhas as numerous as the dust-motes of unspeakable, unspeakable buddha-fields.

Before each Buddha's seat one manifests bodies beyond all speaking; and each body in turn bows to Buddhas beyond all speaking. One body becomes measureless bodies, and measureless bodies reverence measureless Buddhas. This is no fairy tale — it says: when this one thought has truly fastened onto "all Buddhas throughout the dharma-realm," the object of this bow was never one Buddha at all, but the Buddhas of dust upon dust, land upon land, layer upon layer without end. As wide as the recollection, so wide the reverence.

Until When Does the Bowing Last

Samantabhadra seals this vow with an end that has no ending:

When the realm of empty space is exhausted, my reverencing shall be exhausted; but because the realm of empty space cannot be exhausted, this reverencing of mine has no end. So too when the realm of beings is exhausted, the karma of beings exhausted, the afflictions of beings exhausted, my reverencing shall be exhausted. But because the realm of beings, down to the afflictions, cannot be exhausted, this reverencing of mine has no end.

Only when empty space has an exhausting day will my reverencing stop; but space has no ending ever, and so this reverencing too has no end ever. The realm of beings, the karma of beings, the afflictions of beings — were these to be exhausted, I would rest my hand; but they too are without end, and so this bow is bowed forever.

This is not meant to frighten anyone off; it is meant to splice reverence from "a moment's respect" onto "a labor reaching to the end of future time." A stick of incense, a single bow in the morning service, is one dipperful from this endless long river; yet so long as that one thought of faith and understanding is there, this dipperful and the reverence reaching to the end of future time are one and the same water.

This Vow, Too, Was Sung into a Verse

Having finished the prose of the ten vows, Samantabhadra sang each one into verse — and those passages of verse are exactly the verses of the Practices and Vows of Samantabhadra that later ages would chant in the morning and evening liturgy, that everyone can recite by heart and recites daily. For reverence, the verse sings it thus:

In all the worlds of the ten directions, the lions among men of the three times — with body, speech, and mind made pure, I reverence them all, leaving none out. By the awesome spiritual power of Samantabhadra's vows, I appear before all Tathāgatas at once; one body manifesting bodies as the dust of lands, each bowing in full to Buddhas as the dust of lands.

In the worlds of the ten directions, all the Buddhas of the three times (the "lions among men" is a title of the Buddha's virtue) — with pure body, speech, and mind, I have reverenced them all, not one left out. The means is "the awesome spiritual power of Samantabhadra's vows": by the power of this vow, all Tathāgatas "appear before" me; and so my one body becomes bodies numerous as dust-motes, each bowing in full to Buddhas numerous as dust-motes.

The verse has one more line that marks the underlying "recollection" more plainly still:

Within a single dust-mote, Buddhas as the dust, each amid an assembly of bodhisattvas; the inexhaustible dharma-realm, its dust the same — deeply do I believe the Buddhas fill it all.

Within a single dust-mote are Buddhas numerous as dust, and the inexhaustible dharma-realm, dust upon dust, is the same; and the root that can so reverence, so see, is "deeply do I believe the Buddhas fill it all." Deep belief is that one thought — believe the Buddhas to fill the space before one, and only then does this bow across the dharma-realm spread open. The prose says "I arouse deep faith and understanding, as if before my very eyes"; the verse says "deeply do I believe the Buddhas fill it all": front and back, one meaning — first set up that one thought of deep faith, and after it comes this bow.

Every Vow Closes on "Moment by Moment Continuous"

The most essential thing is the eight words that close this vow — and not the first vow only; the nine that follow all close with them too:

Moment by moment continuous, without interruption; my actions of body, speech, and mind without weariness.

Thought joining thought, without interruption. Look — the seal Samantabhadra stamps on every vow is "recollection": one thought after another, continuous, unbroken, leaving no gap between. This lays bare the floor of the ten great vows: ten vows that look like ten great undertakings, yet every one is sealed shut with "moment by moment continuous." In other words, Samantabhadra's ten vows are, from first to last, one long buddha-recollection stretched to the whole dharma-realm and to the end of future time; reverence is the first posture of that recollection — turning the one thought into a bow.

"My actions of body, speech, and mind without weariness" — the body bowing, the mouth praising, the mind recollecting, the three karmas firing together, and no weariness arising. The ground of that tirelessness is exactly "recollection": this is no teeth-gritted toil, but the reverence that wells up of itself once the one thought has fastened onto the Buddha. Where the recollection stands firm, the bowing does not tire.

Reverence to all Buddhas — at bottom, it is letting that "recollect until present as if before the eyes" skill of Part One come to rest in a single act of the body. Recollection first, the bow after; the recollection standing, the bow lands solid.

The body's reverence has bowed down. But reverence has another road still — the mouth. The next vow, praising the Tathāgatas: that Buddha-name in the heart as the bow goes down is now to be voiced aloud.