Transition ⑥ · From Samantabhadra's Conduct-Vows to the Vow and Emptiness

Part Six has walked up to "the last turn," and stopped. The page is about to turn.

This middle page is a breath.

With Part Six done, the seam between vow and conduct is mended. A 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; a true vow, in the moment of its arousing, is already conduct. A 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. A turn: the first nine accumulate, the tenth turns—transference sets down the accountant, not the merit; and the endless line, at last, faces wholly outward.

And yet a reader who has come this far may have long felt something gathering: this book, speaking of the vow, has spoken the "one who vows" thinner and thinner.

Count back. Part Four said: though beings are like empty space, one vows to ferry beings-like-space—the beings to be ferried, emptied by one layer. Part Six said: the substance of the good cannot be given to another; transference turns a facing, not a thing—the merit that could be handed over, emptied by another layer. And again: unweariness comes from the self's lightness—even the "I" holding the vow up, lightened by a layer. All along the road, the vow has been spoken larger and larger, and what stands behind the vow, less and less.

This is no stylistic preference of this book. It is the Dharma's own direction of travel. The prajñā scriptures say that direction to the very bottom. The Heart Sūtra, which everyone can recite: no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no form, sound, smell, taste, touch, dharmas—"no" all the way down, to the last of them: no wisdom and no attainment, because there is nothing to attain.

Nothing to attain. Even the wisdom that realizes, even the fruit realized—not to be apprehended.

Then take this blade and set it against what this book has spent six parts on: the vow. A vow must surely have someone who makes it—but there is no self. A vow must surely face a fruit to be reached—but there is no attainment. A vow is at least a real act of arousing—but all dharmas are empty. When this one stroke of prajñā falls, will everything the six parts have raised—the hair spread before Dīpaṃkara, Dharmākara's forty-eight clauses, Samantabhadra's ten royal vows—be cut down empty together?

On what ground can a mind with nothing to attain still make a vow?

This is the deepest question of the whole volume. Every part so far owes it something: the undirected concentration of Part Two owes it; Part Four's "within the nothing-whatsoever, I therefore seek it" owes it; and the closing words of Part Six—no wisdom and no attainment—have set it squarely at the crossroads. It can no longer be walked around.

Part Seven's three chapters walk straight in. Chapter one: how a mind with nothing to attain makes a vow—the Diamond Sūtra holds a ready exemplar. Chapter two: on what ground a vow without own-being does not retreat—the answer is called the patience of non-arising, and it turns the word "immovable" over to its other face. Chapter three: what this unwearying, unretreating vow does when it walks up to the gate of nirvāṇa—something no one expects.

Let one ray of the conclusion through first, so that no reader enters afraid: emptiness does not come to dismantle the vow. Walk these three chapters and you will see—emptiness is the vow's deepest ally. It relieves the vow of three things; and those three are exactly where a vow most easily goes bad.

We turn the page, and return to the Jeta Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada's Park, to hear Subhūti ask his question.