The Last Turn

6.3 The Last Turn

Picture a person who has vowed for many years and practiced diligently every day. Homage, praise, offerings, confession, rejoicing, requesting the Dharma—nothing missing, and moment to moment continuous, never interrupted. The merit of all this practice he enters, sum by sum, under his own name; the more diligent he is, the thicker that ledger grows.

The problem is not that he does too little. The problem is whom that ledger faces.

Once merit is stored up as "mine," this seemingly endless line of good conduct takes a quiet bend at its far end—and flows back to oneself. The longer the line, the fatter the deposit; the fatter the deposit, the heavier the "I." A lifetime spent practicing the conduct of no-self has ended up fattening a "mine."

The last of Samantabhadra's ten royal vows stands exactly to cut off this backflow. Chapter one of this book named the three moments—the vow founds the direction, the pledge holds the reception, transference turns the fruit—and promised that transference would open out in full only when we reached Samantabhadra. We have reached him now.

From the First Homage Down to According with Beings

The tenth vow is named universal transference. Its opening words do something no other vow does:

"As for 'universal transference': from the first act of homage down to according with beings, all the merit accrued is wholly transferred to every sentient being throughout the Dharma-realm and the realm of space."

"From the first act of homage down to according with beings"—the first homage is the first vow, paying homage to all buddhas; according with beings is the ninth, ever according with sentient beings. The tenth vow opens by reaching back across the nine, taking the whole of the merit the nine have gathered and turning it out, wholesale, in transference to every being throughout the Dharma-realm and the realm of space.

And with that, the tenth vow's identity comes clear. It is not a tenth good deed set in line with the nine—in content it adds not a single new act; it does one thing only: it takes everything the first nine have accumulated and turns its facing over. The first nine accumulate; the tenth turns. The transference spoken, the text at once declares the ten great vows full and complete—the axle turns, and only then is the wheel whole; lacking that one turn, however thick the nine vows' gathering, it collapses back into oneself.

Turned where? The verse at the chapter's end that gathers the vows says it in one breath:

"The merit of all homage, praise, and offering, of requesting the Buddhas to abide and turn the wheel, of rejoicing and repenting, all roots of good—transferred to sentient beings and to the Buddha-path."

The first lines name the roots of good one by one—homage, praise, offering, requesting the buddhas to abide and to turn the wheel, rejoicing, repenting—and the last line turns them all away with one word, "transferred"—turned toward two places: beings, and the Buddha-path. Toward beings: the transforming below. Toward the Buddha-path: the seeking above. No merit kept in a private account; all of it poured toward these two.

To Turn, and to Orient

Of the two characters that make up the word "transference," Zongmi gives the plainest gloss:

"Hui means to turn; xiang means to orient."

To turn—a turning-over; to orient—a setting-toward. Together: first a turn, then a place the turn faces.

Notice what is absent from this gloss—no word for "move," no word for "hand over." Transference is not the moving of a thing called "merit" from my account into another's. Chapter one quoted the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra: the substance of the good cannot be given to another—a wholesome root grows in one's own heart, like strength grown in one's own body; it was never an object that could be passed across. What transference turns, first to last, is the facing: when these roots ripen, whom the fruit faces.

The text itself supplies the weightiest proof. The tenth vow says, of all the grievous and bitter fruits beings must undergo through the evil they have heaped up—

"I will undergo it all in their stead—that they may be wholly liberated and at last accomplish unsurpassed awakening."

I will undergo it all in their stead. If transference were the wiring of a merit-payment, the words "undergo their suffering in their stead" could not be spoken—suffering is no sum that can be booked, and undergoing it is no receipt of payment. "In their stead" can be said precisely because what transference turns is the practitioner's whole facing: turning oneself entire toward the suffering of beings, even to taking it on in their place. This is benefit done in earnest, not a transfer across the books. And the terminus of that taking-on the text still marks plainly—at last accomplish unsurpassed awakening. Toward beings and toward the Buddha-path become, in this one sentence, one thing.

What Is Set Down Is the Accountant

Here the chapter can be gathered.

Transference does not cancel merit. The merit is real and effective—the text nowhere teaches that wholesome roots be voided. Nor does transference hide merit, pretending nothing was done. Transference sets down one thing only: the facing called "entered under my name." By way of a figure: what it dismisses is not the grain in the storehouse, but the accountant seated at the ledger. The grain is still grain—only, from now on, it no longer bears the surname "mine."

In daily use, this is the true weight of the transference verse at the close of each day's practice. "May this merit adorn the Buddha's pure land; repay the four weighty kindnesses above, relieve the sufferings of the three lower realms below"—to recite these lines is not a closing formality but a mechanism: the line accumulated through this day is turned outward before it can flow back to oneself. The practitioner transfers daily—which is to open the ledger daily and pour it out, facing outward. Poured out day by day, the "mine" cannot pile up; and only when the "mine" cannot pile up does this endless line truly face where it should go.

Part Six, to This Point

With these three chapters, the vow-face of Samantabhadra's conduct-vows has been seen whole.

Chapter one saw the not-two: conduct-vow is a single word—the vow is what the conduct is oriented toward, the conduct is what fills the vow full, like a bird's two wings, a cart's two wheels; the bodhisattva's vow is already conduct. Chapter two saw the continuity: ten vows, one closing sentence—moment to moment it continues, without interruption, never wearying; what holds the line is the power of contemplative practice, not the I that wearies. Chapter three saw the turn: the first nine accumulate, the tenth turns—transference turns a facing, not a thing; what is set down is the accountant, not the merit.

Not-two, continuous, turned outward. Samantabhadra's vow stands here as one complete structure: it is conduct in the moment of its arousing; it walks by itself, moment to moment; and at its far end it faces wholly outward. The seam between vow and conduct is mended.

But the whole volume, arriving here, still owes one deepest question—a question for which the road has only ever set signposts, never met head-on.

Part Four said: though beings are like empty space, one vows to ferry beings-like-space. Part Five said: the substance of the good cannot be given to another. This part said: unweariness comes from the self's lightness. All along the way, that "I who vows" has grown thinner and thinner. And the prajñā scriptures say it to the very bottom: no wisdom and no attainment—even the one who can vow, the vow that is made, the fruit the vow would reach, seen by the real mark, cannot be apprehended at all.

Then on what ground can a mind with nothing to attain still make a vow? The vow and emptiness are about to meet face to face. The next part walks into that question.