Universal Dedication: The Ten Vows End in "Seeing Amitābha Buddha Face to Face"
7.11 Universal Dedication: The Ten Vows End in "Seeing Amitābha Buddha Face to Face"
The tenth vow, universal dedication. And the last stroke of the whole vow-king.
The first nine vows have cultivated measureless merit — the bowing, the praising, the offering, the repenting, the rejoicing, the requesting, the learning, the accommodating. This last vow, Samantabhadra says: hand it all over.
Further, good son! Universal dedication is this: all the merits, from the first prostration to the last accommodation, I dedicate wholly to all sentient beings throughout the realm of dharma and the realm of empty space — that beings may be ever at ease, free of all sickness and suffering …
From the prostration of the first vow to the accommodation of the ninth, all the merits of this whole road I dedicate wholly to all beings throughout the dharma-realm, that they be ever at ease, without sickness or suffering. And dedicating to its very depth, Samantabhadra speaks the heaviest sentence of all:
If sentient beings, because of the evil deeds they have amassed, incur the very heaviest fruits of suffering, I will take them all upon myself in their stead, that those beings may all be freed, and in the end accomplish unsurpassed awakening.
Whatever heaviest fruits of suffering beings draw upon themselves by their evil deeds — I bear them in their stead. Give all the merit away, take all the suffering on — this is the floor of dedication.
Dedication Is Loosing That One Thought from the Hand
Dedication looks like the last procedure of all; in fact it is the homing place of this whole buddha-recollection.
Buddha-recollection, from first to last, does one thing: loosen the hand that clenches "me." Reverence, praise, offering … vow upon vow, all are a loosening; and at dedication comes the last and most thorough loosening of all — not even the merit cultivated through this whole hard road kept clenched in one's own hand, but given away entire. "I will take them upon myself in their stead" reverses it further still: not only keeping no good for oneself, but gathering even others' suffering onto oneself. Self-grasping loosened to this degree, that "me" is all but lost. Dedication is the last step of losing the self.
This Vow Alone Does Not Leave You at Death
Samantabhadra then says a passage that, for one who recites the Buddha, is the most essential in the whole book. He says that one who holds this vow-king, at the approach of death —
in the final moment, when all the faculties scatter and fail, all kinsmen are left behind, all power and standing fall away … when none of these follows any longer — only this vow-king does not depart, but at all times leads the way before one. In a single instant one attains rebirth in the World of Utmost Bliss; arrived, one straightway sees Amitābha Buddha, Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva, Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, Maitreya Bodhisattva, and the rest … and sees oneself born within a lotus flower, receiving the Buddha's prophecy of awakening.
In the moment of death, the six faculties fail, kinsmen scatter, and of power and treasure not one thing can be carried away — "only this vow-king does not depart": this vow-king alone, not leaving, not forsaking, leads the way ahead. And so "in a single instant one attains rebirth in the World of Utmost Bliss," and arrived, straightway sees Amitābha Buddha.
See — Samantabhadra's ten vows have walked a vast circle, from reverence to all Buddhas to accommodating all beings, spread across the whole dharma-realm — and the place they at last come to rest is "attaining rebirth in the World of Utmost Bliss, and seeing Amitābha there." The boundless dharma-realm buddha-recollection of the Flower Ornament, come to its end, clasps hands with the one line "Namo Amitābha Buddha" of the Pure Land. The two lines this book has walked all along — the breadth of the Flower Ornament and the singleness of the Pure Land — here merge into one.
This Vow, the Verse Sings It Thus
I vow that when my life approaches its end, all obstructions will be swept away; I will see that Buddha, Amitābha, face to face, and be born at once in His Land of Peace and Bliss.
May I, when my life is ending, sweep away every obstruction, see Amitābha Buddha face to face, and be born in the Land of Peace and Bliss. These four lines are the verse of the Practices and Vows of Samantabhadra that one who recites the Buddha knows best and feels warmest toward — how many at the end have recited with their lips, and leaned on with their hearts, just this one line. Samantabhadra spread ten vows with the air of a whole Flower Ornament; and the last breath of those ten vows, breathed out, is precisely the thing one who recites the Buddha seeks day and night.
And in the very last line of the whole vow-king, Samantabhadra hands all beings, too, over together:
May all beings drowning in saṃsāra swiftly go to the land of the Buddha of Measureless Light.
May all the beings drowning in birth-and-death swiftly go to be born in the land of that Buddha of Measureless Light — Amitābha. The vows begin at "reverence to all Buddhas" and end at "swiftly go to the land of the Buddha of Measureless Light" — and between that beginning and that end is one whole buddha-recollection stretched to the entire dharma-realm.
This vow closes, again, on those eight words: "moment by moment continuous, without interruption; my actions of body, speech, and mind without weariness." Every one of the ten vows is sealed with "moment by moment continuous"; and these ten "moments," joined together, are exactly one buddha-recollection recited from this present life to the end of future time. Samantabhadra's ten great vows are, at bottom, the cultivating of this one matter — buddha-recollection — to the size of the dharma-realm, and the drawing of it home again to that one line at the moment of death. So vast, and yet so near.