Part Two · The Vow in the Āgamas · The Force Called Wanting

Part One set the vow's root: it is the arousing that turns the whole direction of a life around, and the arousing itself does not retreat. But that scene is far away, and high—measureless aeons ago, before Dīpaṃkara. This part comes back to nearby ground, back to what the Buddha said, while He was in the world, to ordinary disciples—to see the vow's root in ordinary days.

Where is that root? In the two words "I want." However high a vow stands, underneath it there is always a force of wanting that pushes. But does the Dharma not teach the putting down of wanting? Hidden here is a knot that many people practice for years without untying: which kind of wanting is the root of birth and death, to be cut; and which kind is the engine of the path, to be nourished. Leave the knot tied, and a person either indulges the craving, or pinches out the very strength of practice along with it.

This part has two chapters. Chapter one tells two kinds of wanting apart—there is a wanting that, having gotten, wants more, and is never exhausted; and there is another wanting that, on reaching the place it was going, goes out of itself. What the vow relies on is the latter. Chapter two watches a ladder of vows the Buddha laid with His own hand—from the wish that one's family be born in the heavens, rung by rung, up to the wish that every taint be forever exhausted; and then watches the marvelous fold the ladder makes at its top.

Read this part through, and the vow is no longer only a summit on a far mountain, but a road the feet can actually stand on—and every rung of that road, the Buddha owns.