Moment to Moment, Without Weariness

6.2 Moment to Moment, Without Weariness

Those who have received the precepts and made their vows often carry a perplexity they cannot quite say aloud.

That vow—must it be made over again every morning? The one made yesterday—after a night, does it still count? If it counts, why does lifting it today find the heart gone half cold again, needing its courage pumped up once more? And if it does not count, then is vowing not ladling water into a bucket with a leaking bottom—one scoop in, one scoop out, until the ladler is worn to the ground?

This perplexity is no one's weakness. There is a structure that has not been made clear. The Chapter on Samantabhadra's Conduct-Vows makes it clear—hidden in the one sentence with which every one of the ten royal vows closes.

Ten Vows, One Closing Sentence

Look at the first vow. Samantabhadra says, as for paying homage to all buddhas—

"To all the Buddhas, World-Honored Ones, as many as the finest dust-motes in all the Buddha-fields throughout the whole Dharma-realm and realm of space, in the ten directions and three times, I—by the power of Samantabhadra's conduct-vow—give rise to deep faith and understanding, as though they stood before my eyes, and with pure deeds of body, speech, and mind I constantly practice reverence."

To all the buddhas of the whole Dharma-realm and realm of space: by the power of Samantabhadra's conduct-vow, deep faith as though they stood before the eyes, and with pure body, speech, and mind, constant reverence. And then, the closing:

"When the realm of space is exhausted, my reverence will be exhausted; but because the realm of space cannot be exhausted, this reverence of mine has no end… moment to moment it continues, without interruption; the deeds of body, speech, and mind never weary."

Should the realm of space have an end, my reverence would end; the realm of space cannot be exhausted, and so my reverence has no time of ending—moment to moment it continues, without interruption; body, speech, and mind never weary.

The nine vows that follow—praising, offering, confessing, rejoicing, all the way to universal transference—close, word for word, with this same sentence. Ten vows, ten appearances: this is the one note the whole chapter strikes again and again.

Inexhaustible, and Unbroken

Master Chengguan, reading this closing, divides it with great fineness. The passage, he says, has two parts: "first it shows the inexhaustibility, then it makes manifest the unbrokenness."

The first part—when the realm of space is exhausted, my reverence will be exhausted; but the realm of space cannot be exhausted—shows the inexhaustible: it answers how large the vow is, how far it reaches. The construction is one the reader knows by now: the condition of termination set where it can never come true—the ten exhaustion-clauses of the ten grounds are it; the "numberless" of the four great vows is it; here it is again.

The second part—moment to moment it continues, without interruption, never wearying—Chengguan marks off separately as "making manifest the unbrokenness": it answers another question—how the vow lives in time.

Two parts, two questions; not one statement said two ways. "Inexhaustible" speaks of the vow's scope; "unbroken" speaks of the vow's way of living—leaving no gap between one moment of mind and the next. "Moment to moment" is continuity at its smallest gradation: the vow is not a charter made once and left hanging; in each moment it becomes actual anew. And this line, joined moment to moment—drawn out, how long does it run? The verses at the chapter's end say it three times over:

"To all of them I raise vast offerings, to the end of all future aeons, never wearying."

And again, "practicing without tiring through oceans of aeons"; and again, "through future aeons forever untiring." The smallest gradation is one moment of mind; the largest span is the aeons of all future time—both ends strung on a single line. And the mark of that line, the verses also say three times: never wearying, untiring. Chengguan glosses it plainly: "weary" means fatigue; "satiety" means having had enough. Neither fatigued, nor ever having had enough.

And with that, the real question stands exposed. A line that can tire and have enough will not stretch to the end of future time. On what ground does this line not weary?

By What Does It Not Weary

In his sub-commentary, Zongmi cuts the answer out with a single counter-question:

"Without the power of Samantabhadra's contemplative practice, how could thought-moment after thought-moment go unbroken?"

If not by the power of Samantabhadra's contemplative practice—how could moment after moment possibly go unbroken?

The edge of this question lies in what it cuts apart: two utterly different kinds of continuity.

One kind is the grim hold. The grim hold relies on the rising-and-falling heart: today there is spirit, so a few more bows; tomorrow tired, so a little slack. Its capital is the "I" that goes cold, gets tired, and must pump its courage up again each morning. Hold a line meant for the end of future time with such a heart, and the ending is fixed in advance—a person's strength has its limit, the bucket's bottom keeps leaking, and the ladling stops when the arm gives out. The continuity of the grim hold is a tug-of-war against fatigue, and a war already lost.

The other kind: the vow walking by itself. The moving force is not in "I am holding on"; it is in the vow's own power—Zongmi names it the power of contemplative practice. Precisely because the moving force is not fastened to the self that wearies, the words "never wearying" become intelligible: not that this I is so strong it can outlast fatigue, but that there is no I standing there wrestling fatigue at all. Weariness cannot arise, for it has nowhere even to stand. Part Four said the uncontrived vow never holds completion out to itself as a reward—no hope laid up, no wearing-down when hope falls through. Here is the same principle, brought down onto each day's practice.

One Thing to See Clearly Here

"Never wearying"—on no account hear it as a line of encouragement, as though it taught one to be strong-willed and never admit tiredness. The direction is exactly opposite.

Unweariness comes not from the self's strength, but from the self's lightness. The tighter a person winds "I must persist," the more he is grinding on with the arising-and-perishing mind, and the wearier the grinding makes him. The vow's continuity is the slow shifting of the work's center of gravity—from "I am holding the vow up" to "the vow is walking by itself."

Daily life carries a plain touchstone for this. If a practice, carried on, grows more and more tiring, needing more and more self-encouragement, it is mostly still the grim hold. If, doing it and doing it, one does not particularly feel oneself to be "persisting" at anything, and weariness has hardly arisen—then that line is no longer being pulled wholly by "my" strength. Back, then, to the opening question: the vow need not be re-made each morning with freshly pumped courage; what wants changing is not the size of the strength but the source of it.

Walking On

The line continues now, and does not weary. But where, in the end, is it headed?

This question cannot go unasked. For an endless line that only accumulates forward, never turning, meets a subtle fate: the merit is entered, sum by sum, under one's own name; the more diligent, the thicker that ledger—and the thicker the ledger, the heavier the two words "mine" grow. The line is endless; its facing has quietly collapsed back into the self.

The last of the ten royal vows stands exactly for this. The next chapter tells the last turn.