Vowing with Nothing to Attain

7.1 Vowing with Nothing to Attain

In the Diamond Sūtra, Subhūti asks the Buddha a question that bears on this whole volume. A good man or good woman has aroused the mind of unsurpassed awakening—how should that mind abide?

The Buddha's answer is the exemplar, for all ages, of what it is to make a vow:

"One should give rise to such a mind: 'I should bring all beings to final liberation. Yet when I have brought all beings to liberation, there is not a single being who has in reality been liberated.'"

One should give rise to a mind like this: I will liberate all beings. And when all beings have been liberated—there is not one being who was, in reality, liberated.

Read the sentence twice. The front half is the largest vow in the world: the final liberation of all beings, not one left out—no vow is fuller. The back half pulls the ground out from under that vow's feet: the beings to be liberated, seen by the real mark, cannot be apprehended at all. Nor does the Buddha stop at that one layer. In the same passage, He goes on:

"There is in truth no dharma whatever that arouses the mind of supreme, perfect awakening."

Even the dharma of "arousing the mind of unsurpassed awakening," even the one who arouses it—not to be apprehended.

And so a strange picture stands before us: the vow has lost not a single word—"I should bring all beings to final liberation" is still there, the heaviest sentence in the passage; what has been withdrawn is only the three things behind the vow: a really existing I, a really existing multitude to be liberated, a really existing act called "making a vow." The bow is drawn full, the string taut—and look back: the archer is empty.

The vow at full draw, and the archer empty. How can that be?

Give Rise to the Mind, Dwelling Nowhere

In the same sūtra, the Buddha Himself gives this mind its likeness, in one line:

"One should give rise to the mind without dwelling anywhere."

Give rise to the mind—the mind must arise, the vow must be aroused: on this end, nothing is softened. Without dwelling anywhere—arising, it sticks to no place; it does not set up house on "the vow I have made," does not take up residence in "the people I am liberating." Arising, and not dwelling.

This is the inside of that strange picture. The vow-power arises as ever; only, having arisen, it does not moor on the thought "I am making a real vow, to liberate a real multitude." Arousing the mind, without dwelling on marks—the archer can be empty because this bow was never one that needed a clenched hand to be drawn.

Does Emptiness Obstruct the Vow?

Even so, a doubt is bound to rise at once, and it sounds well-grounded: if beings cannot be apprehended, and the one who arouses the mind cannot be apprehended—does that not show, precisely, that once things are empty, no vow need be made? If all is empty, what is there to seek, whom to liberate?

The doubt is not new. In the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, Nāgārjuna asked it aloud on others' behalf, and blocked it with his own hand. Someone asks: if all dharmas are ultimately empty, with nothing whatever, why still arouse the mind to become a Buddha? Nāgārjuna answers:

"Ultimate emptiness, having nothing whatever, obstructs nothing—how should it stand in the way of arousing the mind to become a Buddha? Further: if ultimate emptiness is said to extinguish all conceptual elaboration, how could it obstruct the arousing of the mind? If it could obstruct, it would itself possess own-being—how then could it be called the nature of having-nothing-whatever?"

The strokes of this blade ask to be watched slowly. First stroke: ultimate emptiness means, precisely, that nothing obstructs—emptiness does not even set up an "is"; with what would it block your arousing of the mind? Second stroke, the sharpest: "if it could obstruct, it would itself possess own-being." If "emptiness" could actually stand in the way of a vow, then this road-blocking emptiness would be a capable, forceful, really existing thing—which contradicts the very meaning of emptiness. In other words, the sentence "because all is empty, no vow need be made" is quietly using emptiness as a solid stone laid across the road—and that sentence has, by itself, already stopped being empty. It contradicts itself; it cannot stand.

Emptiness not only does not block the vow—it is because of emptiness that the vow can never be jammed, walled in, or used up by anything at all. The argument made, Nāgārjuna adds a simile. The bodhisattva knows full well that the nature of all dharmas is nothing-whatsoever, and yet—

"It is like a man who has obtained a fine medicine, while his kin and friends lie in the sufferings of sickness—how could he not give it?"

A man has a good medicine in hand, and his family and friends are sick and suffering—how could he not hand it over? The medicine's nature is ultimately empty; the marks of illness are ultimately empty; and the medicine is passed across all the same. Knowing it empty, therefore still giving—the very same "therefore" as Part Four's "within the nothing-whatsoever, I therefore seek it."

The Vow, Too, Has Its Three Wheels

When this series treated giving, it set up a famous contemplation: the three wheels empty—at giving's fullness, one sees that the giver, the receiver, and the gift are all three unapprehendable, so that the giving does not fall into the grasp of "I have done someone a kindness."

Carry that format over to the vow, and it fits seam to seam. The vow's three wheels are: the vower—the "I" that supposes itself making vows and laying up merit; the vowed—the "beings" and "Buddha-fruit" taken as really existing targets; and the vow—the act of vowing itself, taken as a real deed that can be entered in a ledger. The three wheels empty, applied to the vow, means: in the very moment the vow stands at full draw, the three props quietly taken for real are each seen through.

One thing must be stated in the open: for these three wheels—vower, vowed, vow—there is no word-for-word sentence in the scriptures; the canonical three-wheel formula is spoken of giving. What is done here is to take the two sentences the Diamond Sūtra has already spoken—"not a single being who has in reality been liberated" (the vowed, empty), "no dharma whatever that arouses the awakening-mind" (the vower, empty)—and set them in order after the pattern of giving's three wheels. The words are the sūtra's words; the format is borrowed. Keep the two distinct, and the footing stays honest.

And the use of this contemplation makes a mirror-pair with the one in the repentance volume. There, seeing that the nature of wrongdoing is originally empty does not erase the fruits of karma—emptiness is no eraser; it cannot rub out dependent arising. Just so here: seeing that the vow's nature is originally empty subtracts nothing from the vow's power—the vow's dependently-arisen working remains vivid and unlost. In both places emptiness does one and the same work: it will not let wrongdoing be taken for an unwashable substance, and it will not let the vow be taken for a graspable object.

One Thing to See Clearly Here

The words "nothing to attain" are most easily heard crooked—as "there is nothing, don't bother, let it go."

It is not a subtraction. Compare two ways of vowing and it shows. One is vowing with something to attain: I vow because I mean to take hold of a result—the vow a contract between me and the future; the goal in hand, the vow retires with its work done; the goal thwarted, the reckoning begins—the calculating, the retreating, the weariness at "all I have given, and still no return." The other is vowing with nothing to attain: vowing, without hiding behind the vow an I that waits for the harvest; liberating, without grasping a terminus called "all done, and credited." The latter is inexhaustible precisely because it has nothing to attain—tied to no goal at which one may stop, and to no self that tires and keeps accounts.

So "nothing to attain" does not teach one to vow less; it teaches one to vow more loosely—loose, until the vow no longer needs an I to prop it up. The less the vower enters the vow under his own name, the farther, the longer, the less grudgingly the vow goes.

Walking On

No vower—and the vow does not run dry. This layer stands.

But "does not run dry" and "does not retreat" are two different things. A spring may flow without end and still be dammed back by a single stone. This vow with no vower and no own-being—what guarantees that the years will not grind it back, that circumstances will not snatch it away? Can a thing without own-being even be spoken of as "non-retreating"?

It can. And precisely because it is without own-being, only then truly can it. The next chapter tells one of the deepest words in the Buddha's gate—the patience of non-arising.