Transition ⑤ · From Amitābha's Original Vows to Samantabhadra's Conduct-Vows

Part Five has walked up to "other-power can be ridden," and stopped. The page is about to turn.

This middle page is a breath.

With Part Five done, the vow's power stands full in both directions. One face is accomplishment: the monk Dharmākara's forty-eight clauses of "if, when I attain buddhahood" staked Buddhahood on the benefit of beings, and through inconceivable aeons he filled the vow with deeds—the vow burned into a land, has now already become a Buddha, dwells at present in the West. One face is riding: the feeble man who cannot mount a donkey, following in the train of the wheel-turning king, rides through the air and roams the four continents—other-power is one vow upholding another, and what is entrusted is the carrying of the direction, not the direction itself.

But the end of Part Five left a sentence of its own standing: even here, the vow remains a "vow."

The gate of making the vow teaches "constantly make the vow"—constantly is a matter of every day. The returning aspect teaches: born into that land, return into birth and death—returning is a matter done deed by deed. What faces the person who has entrusted his direction is the most ordinary and the hardest thing of all: the days. The day's practice, one day after another; the bowing, one time after another; the heart lifted up and set down, over and over. The vow, in the moment of its arousing, is solemn; but the second morning after the arousing? The thirtieth year?

Here lies a seam, and everyone carries it: first vow, then act—the vow inside and before, a single thought in the heart; the deed outside and after, the motion that cashes that thought out. On this picture, vow and deed are forever two things, with a ditch between them called "whether one gets around to it"—and the person who vows and never acts has fallen into exactly that ditch.

In the Buddha's gate, the one who mended this seam without a trace is a bodhisattva. Before his name hang the words "Great Conduct"—Samantabhadra, the bodhisattva of Great Conduct.

In the last chapter of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Samantabhadra speaks ten vows to the youth Sudhana and the great assembly: paying homage to all buddhas, praising the Tathāgatas, making vast offerings, confessing karmic obstructions, rejoicing in merit, requesting the turning of the Dharma-wheel, requesting the buddhas to remain in the world, constantly following the buddhas in learning, ever according with sentient beings, and universal transference of all. Later ages came to call these ten the royal vows—the kings among vows; the verses recited in the evening liturgy of Chinese temples come from this very chapter. Many readers know it more closely than any passage of scripture this book has yet touched.

But familiar as they are, three questions hide inside these ten vows that few ever press. First, the text calls the ten "conduct-vows"—conduct and vow joined into a single word—why? Second, every one of the ten closes with the same sentence: moment to moment it continues, without interruption, never wearying—on what ground does it not weary? Third, why do the ten vows end with "universal transference"—that last turn: what does it turn?

One more layer of the occasion deserves to be pointed out in advance. All the way through this book, the vow's stage has grown larger—from one man's five flowers before Dīpaṃkara, to Dharmākara's forty-eight clauses, to Samantabhadra's whole Dharma-realm and realm of space. Yet the landing-point has drawn ever nearer: the ten royal vows are no preserve of the saints; they sit in the evening recitation book, in the hands of every ordinary person who can lift the two words "paying homage." When the vow reaches Samantabhadra, the vastest scope is handed into the most ordinary daily practice—and the great and the small, in this part, are to become one thing.

Three questions, three chapters. Answered, the seam between vow and conduct is mended.

We turn the page, and return to the Avataṃsaka assembly, to hear Samantabhadra speak.