Accommodating All Beings: Moving the Reverence Owed the Buddha onto Sentient Beings
7.10 Accommodating All Beings: Moving the Reverence Owed the Buddha onto Sentient Beings
The ninth vow, accommodating sentient beings.
The first eight vows kept the eyes on the Buddha. This vow turns them, all at once, from the Buddha onto sentient beings — and turns them all the way.
Samantabhadra first spreads out "sentient beings": throughout the realm of dharma and the seas of lands of the ten directions, beings of every distinction — egg-born, womb-born, moisture-born, transformation-born, of every kind of bodily form, shape, disposition, and desire — and toward all these beings, he says, I would:
bend and turn to follow them all, serving them in every way, providing for them in every way, as one reveres father and mother, as one serves a teacher or an elder, an arhat, even a Tathāgata — with no difference. To the sick I am a good physician; to those who have lost the road I show the right path; in the dark night I am a light; to the poor I make a hidden treasure found.
Toward all beings, accommodating, serving, providing, as one reveres father and mother, as one serves a teacher, down to as one reveres an arhat or a Tathāgata — "with no difference," not the least apart. When beings are sick, I am their good physician; when beings have lost the road, I show the right path; when beings are in the dark night, I am their light; when beings are poor, I make them find a hidden treasure.
Why Following Beings Is Making Offering to the Buddhas
To revere beings the same as the Buddha — is this not too far? Samantabhadra sets himself the question and answers it himself:
Why so? If a bodhisattva can accommodate sentient beings, this is to accommodate and make offering to all Buddhas; if he honors and serves beings, this is to honor and serve the Tathāgatas; if he makes beings rejoice, this is to make all Tathāgatas rejoice.
To follow beings is to follow and make offering to the Buddhas; to honor and serve beings is to honor and serve the Tathāgata; to make beings glad is to make all Tathāgatas glad. Why? Because —
all the Buddhas, the Tathāgatas, take the mind of great compassion as their very essence. Because of sentient beings, great compassion arises; because of great compassion, the awakening-mind is born; because of the awakening-mind, perfect awakening is accomplished.
The Buddha takes "the mind of great compassion" for His body. And this great compassion arises because of beings; with great compassion, the awakening-mind is born; with the awakening-mind, perfect awakening is accomplished. Beings are the starting point of this whole road to buddhahood. So to be good to beings is to follow the Buddha's heart of great compassion — is to have made offering to the Buddha.
One Great Tree: Beings Are the Root, the Buddhas the Flower and Fruit
Samantabhadra then offers a most famous figure:
It is like a great tree-king in a wilderness of sand: if its roots find water, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits all flourish. The tree-king of awakening in the wilderness of birth-and-death is just so: all sentient beings are its roots, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas its flowers and fruits. Watering the beings with the water of great compassion, one can accomplish the flowers and fruits of the Buddhas' and bodhisattvas' wisdom.
In the wilderness stands a great tree; let its roots find water, and branch, leaf, flower, and fruit all flourish. The great tree of awakening in the wilderness of birth-and-death is the same: all beings are the root; the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are the flower and fruit; only by watering the root that is beings with the water of great compassion can the flowers and fruits of the Buddhas' and bodhisattvas' wisdom be brought forth. And so Samantabhadra speaks the word that overturns everything:
Therefore, awakening belongs to sentient beings. Without sentient beings, no bodhisattva could ever accomplish unsurpassed perfect awakening.
Awakening belongs to beings. Without beings, no bodhisattva, in the end, can become a Buddha.
How One Who Recites the Buddha Accommodates Beings
This vow looks farthest of all from buddha-recollection — recollection gazes at the Buddha, accommodating beings gazes at people. Yet they are two branches off one root.
Recollected long, buddha-recollection grows two things. One is the loosening of self-grasping: that one Buddha-name pries open, inch by inch, the hand that clenches "me"; the hand loosened, the eye that looks on beings softens, no longer butting and contending with "me" at every turn. The other is great compassion: recollecting close upon the Buddha, and the Buddha "takes the mind of great compassion as His essence" — pressed there long, that compassion grows up in one's own heart too. Self-grasping loosened, compassion grown, "accommodating beings" is no teeth-gritted forbearance but a natural thing — you come to be like that tree, watering the people beside you, of itself, with the water of great compassion.
Deeper still: this vow of accommodating beings splices the one bow of "reverence to all Buddhas" onto beings. The first vow taught you to recollect the Buddhas into presence, as if before your eyes, and bow down; this vow tells you that the "Buddha" worth your "as if before the eyes" and your bowing down is also in sentient beings — the reverence of buddha-recollection in your heart is to move a portion over to the people beside you.
This vow's verse sings it thus:
I shall ever accommodate all beings, to the end of all kalpas to come, ever cultivating Samantabhadra's vast practice, perfecting unsurpassed great awakening.
The close, again, those eight words: "moment by moment continuous, without interruption; my actions of body, speech, and mind without weariness." Accommodating moment by moment — pouring that reverence and great compassion of buddha-recollection, thought after thought, onto the root that is sentient beings.
The nine vows are walked. The last vow, universal dedication: handing over every merit cultivated along this whole road, and this whole buddha-recollection with it — and its very last stroke falls back, precisely, upon the thing one who recites the Buddha cares for most.