Nāgārjuna and the Bodhisattva's Vow-Power

I. The Question: If Cause Recompenses Naturally, Why Vow at All?

Picture a practical-minded farmer standing at the edge of his field, putting the question to you. I plant melons, and melons come; I plant beans, and beans come. Good and evil run the same way—do a meritorious deed and the reward of merit follows of itself, commit a wrong and its retribution follows of itself. If cause and effect already turn over so fairly and so automatically, then what use is there in raising, alongside "doing merit," a further thought called "making a vow"? Does the vow add a measure to the reward, or does the merit already laid up get docked for want of one? It sounds like writing one extra line of imperative into the ledger of cause and effect—a thing done over again to no purpose.

This is not an objection I have invented and put in the farmer's mouth. It stands written plainly in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, voiced by Nāgārjuna himself in the questioner's part: "Question: if one makes no vow, does one then gain no merit?"¹ That a great treatise systematizing the bodhisattva path should pause to let a man who doubts "what use a vow could be" finish his question in full—this alone is worth dwelling on. For the question strikes the most vulnerable joint of any account of the vow. If "the good are recompensed with good" is a law of nature, the vow looks superfluous; yet if the vow really does something, has it not smuggled an extra weight onto the scales beyond cause and effect, demoting practice to a haggling session with one's future returns?

The earlier papers in this part have already set the vow's standing and its architecture in place: the vow deserves the name of perfection and takes the eighth seat among the ten perfections (P06);² entering the first of the ten grounds, the bodhisattva first raises the ten great vows, and the vow is the very skeleton of the whole course of cultivation (P07).³ Standing and skeleton are both fixed. One question remains—the plainest, and the most decisive—still unanswered: does the vow have any power at all? And if it has, what kind of thing is that power—does it add to merit, or is its office something else entirely? The present paper returns to the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra to watch how Nāgārjuna answers that farmer, and so to draw out the true weight of the term "vow-power" (praṇidhāna-bala).

The direction of the answer can be shown at the outset. Nāgārjuna's reply is not "a vow can make the reward larger" but "a vow can let merit know where it is going." Vow-power writes no extra line in the ledger of cause and effect; it does another thing altogether—it gives that ledger an orientation. And when this "orientation" is pursued to the end, its deepest work turns out to be the building of a bridge that ought not to exist: a bridge between the prajñā that "sees all dharmas as actionless" and the merit-conduct that "accumulates moment by moment."

II. The Canonical Basis: "Merit Is Like the Ox, the Vow Like the Driver"

2.1 The Vow as Driver: Merit without Vow "Sets Up No Aim"

Nāgārjuna's direct reply to the farmer, in its first sentence, pries "the vow" loose from "the same kind of thing as merit":

"Merit done without a vow sets up no aim; the vow is what steers and guides, and so something can be accomplished. It is like the melting of gold: it takes whatever form the craftsman gives it, for the gold of itself is fixed to nothing."⁴

The hinge of the passage is the phrase "sets up no aim." Merit done without raising a vow is like merit that has set up no target whatever—it is there, yet it does not know what it is for. The vow's office is to "steer and guide"; only so does merit "accomplish something." The simile of molten gold that follows fits exactly: once melted, the gold can be cast into any vessel the craftsman intends, for the material of gold does not of itself prescribe what it is to become. Merit is just this gold awaiting the mold; the vow is the decision as to what it is to be cast into. Without that decision, gold remains gold and merit remains merit—but blankly, without bearing.

Note that Nāgārjuna says nothing here about a vow "increasing the quantity of merit." He says that merit "sets up no aim"—the issue was never one of more or less, but of having a direction or lacking one.

2.2 The Keystone Simile: The Ox Has Strength, but Needs a Driver to Arrive

The treatise then gives the simile that sets the key for the whole paper. This image is the key to the two words "vow-power":

"The adorning of a buddha-world is a vast undertaking, and merit acting alone cannot accomplish it; vow-power is required. It is like the strength of an ox, which can indeed pull the cart, but needs a driver if it is to arrive somewhere. So too with the vow that purifies a world: merit is like the ox, the vow like the driver."⁵

To bring to completion an adorned and purified buddha-land is an undertaking of immense scale; the scattered, isolated heaping-up of merits ("merit acting alone") cannot bring it about—there must be vow-power to gather it under one head. Nāgārjuna uses a picture anyone has seen: an ox, however great its strength, can drag a heavy cart, but the ox itself does not know where the cart is to be dragged; only when a driver takes the whip and the reins does the cart "arrive somewhere"—reach a fixed destination. Merit is that strong ox; the vow is the driver who sets the course.

The simile is the key precisely because, at one stroke, it dissolves the farmer's confusion. The farmer supposed that if the vow were of any use, it would have to be "one more ox added beside the ox" (more merit piled on merit); Nāgārjuna's answer is: no, the vow is not a second ox, the vow is the driver. The driver himself does not pull the cart—the pulling is always the ox's work; but without a driver, the ox's strength only hauls the cart off toward nowhere in particular. The "power" in vow-power is not another traction of the same kind as merit's, but a different, orienting power: it prescribes a direction without adding any pull.

(One common misquotation should be nailed down in passing. A loose version sometimes circulates as "an ox without a driver does not know where to go"; but the text of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra contains no such sentence. Its actual wording is "merit is like the ox, the vow like the driver" and "the vow is what steers and guides." In the simile the driver is the party present and at work—the argument is not built on "what would happen if the driver were missing." This paper keeps throughout to the wording of the text and does not take up that spurious line.)

2.3 Receiving the Surpassing Fruit by the Vow

With the orienting power made plain, Nāgārjuna goes a step further: the bodhisattva's various surpassing fruits are received precisely by reason of the vow.

"…all these are gained by the power of the vow…. Therefore know: by the vow one receives the surpassing fruit."⁶

The treatise enumerates the various surpassing things the bodhisattva accomplishes, sums them up as "gained by the power of the vow," and so concludes "by the vow one receives the surpassing fruit." This line must be read with care, or it falls right back into the farmer's trap—as though the vow had become a token to be exchanged for a surpassing reward. But read together with §2.1 and §2.2, "by the vow one receives the surpassing fruit" says not "trade a vow for a surpassing fruit" but "the surpassing fruit is surpassing just because it is the kind of fruit that the vow has steered toward and brought to completion." The very same merit for purifying a buddha-world, when a vow steers it, accomplishes an adorned buddha-land; without a vow to "set up its aim," the merit may be present, yet it knows not into what it should coalesce. The fruit's surpassingness is its having a "thing accomplished" that the vow had fixed. The vow does not buy the fruit; the vow shapes it.

Here the farmer's question can be answered. Making a vow will not give you "one measure more" of reward, but it decides what that measure of reward will grow into. Merit without a vow is like a deposit whose purpose is unknown; merit with a vow is a check made out to a stated end. The sum of money is unchanged; the meaning is worlds apart.

III. The Argument: Vow-Power as the Hinge between Prajñā and Meritorious Conduct

What §II establishes is the first layer of vow-power's work—steering, orienting. But the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra mines a deeper layer still, and it is this layer that makes Nāgārjuna Nāgārjuna, the master of the prajñā treatises. It surfaces at the point of sharpest tension: when the contemplation of prajñā has ripened, when one has seen that all dharmas are from the first unconditioned and actionless—why does the bodhisattva still not pass into cessation?

3.1 The Pull of Prajñā: Seeing the Actionless, It Should Tend toward Cessation

The cutting edge of the perfection of wisdom is to break open the self-nature of all dharmas and see them as "unconditioned and actionless"—no real agent who acts, and no real thing acted upon. This seeing carries an inward pull: if all dharmas are from the first quiescent, from the first actionless, then the most natural terminus is to follow that quiescence into cessation—to incline toward nirvāṇa, to still everything. For one who cultivates prajñā alone, this is the path of least resistance, the downhill course.

The problem is exactly here. The bodhisattva, too, cultivates prajñā, too sees the actionless—so what force is it that holds him back from sliding down this pull into cessation? The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra's answer pushes the term "vow-power" to its deepest position.

3.2 "By the Power of the Original Vow It Does Not Cease": Vow-Power as the Counterforce

The treatise has a passage of great weight. The bodhisattva knows the dharmas as they are (prajñā has ripened), and by rights "should cease"—should follow that knowing into quiescence; and yet:

"If he knows in this way, he should cease; because the manifold merits are not yet complete he does not cease, and by great compassion and the power of the original vow he does not cease."⁷

"If he knows in this way, he should cease"—this is precisely the pull of prajñā named in §3.1, which the treatise concedes without flinching: seeing carried this far, the natural course is to enter cessation. But two reasons for "not ceasing" follow at once: first, "the manifold merits are not yet complete" (the work of liberating beings and purifying the land is not yet brought round); second, "great compassion and the power of the original vow." The three words "the power of the original vow" here play the part of a counterforce to the pull of prajñā—not denying the actionless that prajñā sees (the bodhisattva does indeed know it as it is), but, upon that very knowing, holding back the single step of "following the slope into cessation." Prajñā draws the bodhisattva toward the far shore of quiescence; vow-power steadies him on the near shore of liberating beings; where the two forces meet, the bodhisattva can "abide in the actionless without realizing cessation."

Feel the fineness of it. Vow-power does not argue with prajñā, does not say "the dharmas are in fact active after all." It accepts prajñā's insight entire—yes, all is actionless. It only refuses, upon that actionless ground and by the strength of the original vow and great compassion, to halt there. The "power" in vow-power shows here its deepest face: it is the tension that keeps "the insight into emptiness" from collapsing into "cessation as a terminus."

3.3 "Within the Actionless, by the Power of Effort, Liberating All": Conduct within Emptiness

If §3.2 is the negative face (vow-power holds the bodhisattva back from cessation), then the following passage is its positive face—vow-power not only checks the downward slide but, on that very clearing of the actionless, raises up afresh the conduct of liberating beings:

"Though he knows the true mark of dharmas to be unconditioned and actionless, because by the original vow and great compassion he wishes to liberate beings, within the actionless, by the power of effort, he liberates all."⁸

This sentence is almost the positive obverse of §3.2, and fuller still. "Though he knows the true mark of dharmas to be unconditioned and actionless"—prajñā's seeing, conceded intact; "because by the original vow and great compassion he wishes to liberate beings"—the original vow and great compassion are the moving cause; "within the actionless, by the power of effort, he liberates all"—and the hinge lies in those words, "within the actionless." The bodhisattva does not retreat to the naïve view that "dharmas are active" in order to liberate beings (that is the worldling's clinging to the real), nor does he let go of liberating because he has seen the actionless (that is the two-vehicle's lopsided emptiness); he liberates all beings, by the power of effort, in the very moment of knowing the actionless. Emptiness and conduct, in this sentence, are not before and after but at once.

This is the "vow-power" the paper truly means to draw out: it is the hinge that keeps prajñā's "seeing into emptiness" and great conduct's "liberating of beings" from cancelling each other, letting them instead converge. Without vow-power, prajñā swallows conduct (seeing the actionless, it tends to quiescence—no one to liberate, no liberating to speak of); without prajñā, conduct occludes emptiness (clinging to the real while liberating, it falls back into having-something-to-gain). Vow-power stands in the middle, with one hand not erasing prajñā's emptiness and the other not letting go of liberating beings, so that the two run side by side, without mutual ruin, within the paradox of "liberating all within the actionless."

3.4 The Two Layers Together: Direction and Convergence

Now §II and §III can be seen together. Vow-power has, in truth, two interpenetrating layers.

The first layer (§II) is direction: at the level of merit, the vow gathers and steers the scattered "merit acting alone," making it tend toward a fixed "thing accomplished" (an adorned buddha-land, supreme awakening). Merit is like the ox, the vow like the driver—this is a horizontal integration, bringing the many under one heading.

The second layer (§III) is convergence: at the level of prajñā and great conduct, the vow holds "the wisdom that sees into emptiness" and "the conduct that liberates beings"—two forces that would otherwise cancel—on one and the same heading, without mutual destruction. Prajñā sees the actionless; vow-power liberates all within the actionless—this is a vertical integration, locking emptiness and existence, wisdom and compassion, onto one and the same arc bent toward awakening.

The two layers are in fact one matter unfolded at two levels: vow-power, throughout, does the single thing of "setting a direction." At the level of merit, the direction it sets is "toward what does merit accomplish itself"; at the level of prajñā, the direction it sets is "still moving toward beings, within emptiness." The driver holds the reins; his sole office is direction. The ox is merit—or it may be the fiercer horse of prajñā; whether ox or horse is driven, the driver's charge is one and the same: to make it arrive somewhere, not to give it more strength. Vow-power adds nothing to the quantity of wisdom and compassion; it only fixes their direction.

As for the question—once the actionless and the nothing-to-attain have been seen, how can such a mind still raise a vow without self-contradiction? Is a supreme vow raised with a mind of nothing-to-attain possible, and if so, how?—that question already presses to the deepest level of the dealings between vow and emptiness. This paper only sets its marker and lays its path; the full treatment is reserved for later in the volume (in the strand on the vow and emptiness, and on non-retreat).

IV. Interdisciplinary Bridges: The Directedness of Intention and "Conduct within Emptiness"

To set the thesis—"vow-power gives merit and prajñā a direction"—in still sharper relief, the discussion in contemporary philosophy of action of "the directedness of intention" offers a rather clean mirror. But it must be said first that this mirror catches the outline of the front half, and at the back half (the convergence of prajñā and vow) cannot reach in at all—and that unreachable place is exactly where the Buddhist vow-power makes its most distinctive contribution.

Where they converge: the driver as "the description under which" an action is understood. In her Intention (1957), G. E. M. Anscombe advanced a far-reaching analysis: an action is "intentional" in respect of its being "under a description"—the same bodily movement, met with the question "why are you doing that?", yields an answer that reveals the very direction the agent is oriented toward. Michael Bratman went further, understanding intention as a "conduct-controlling plan-state": intention is not a passing wish but a planning frame that can, across time, gather and coordinate many sub-actions. Set the two together and Nāgārjuna's "driver" finds an apt philosophical counterpart: the driver is "the description under which" merit is understood—the same pulling of the cart (doing merit), under the description "for the adorning of a buddha-land," is bodhisattva conduct; under "no aim set up," it is merely a heap of directionless force. The vow is just that intentional structure which confers a description, gathers a plan, and reveals a direction. The reverse of Anscombe's "sets up no aim" is exactly "the vow helps merit, keeps in constant mind what is being done, and merit grows"⁹—the vow keeps merit continuously placed under an end-description, and so "what is being done is kept in mind," and so it has direction, and so it grows.

A first fundamental difference: the scale across incalculable aeons. Yet what the philosophy of action describes is a human agent within a normal span of life—whose plans are scaled in years, at most in a lifetime. The bodhisattva's vow-power, by contrast, is a soteriological structure measured in incalculable aeons (asaṃkhyeya-kalpa): what it must gather is not a dinner or a career but the "adorning of a buddha-world," a thing spanning measureless aeons. When the scale of intention is stretched to this degree, the description "plan-state," though it still applies, has come near its boundary—it can describe directedness, but cannot describe the fruit of awakening toward which that direction tends, a fruit exceeding any individual life.

A second fundamental difference (where the mirror cannot reach in): the convergence of prajñā and vow. This is the most decisive point. The teleology of the philosophy of action—whether the Aristotelian "governing end orders the subordinate ends" (the architectonic telos), or the direction held by what Harry Frankfurt calls "care" and "the necessities of the will"—presupposes throughout a world of action in which something is done, something accomplished: there is always some end really "to be reached." But the very insight of prajñā is this: all dharmas are unconditioned and actionless, there is no real thing-accomplished to accomplish. On that premise, any Western teleology of action falls mute—for none of them has a slot in which to lodge an intention of the form "knowing full well that nothing is done, yet still moving with direction." Anscombe's "action under a description" presupposes that the action is real; Frankfurt's "care" presupposes that what is cared for is a real object. The Buddhist vow-power alone can, on the very ground that prajñā has emptied out as "all dharmas actionless," still raise up the conduct of "liberating all"—turning teleology wholly outward (seeking nothing for itself, oriented toward beings) and wholly mounting it upon emptiness (acting within the actionless). No Western frame can house at once both "the insight into emptiness" and "directed action" in their convergence; that convergence is the contribution proper to the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra's vow-power.

A statement of irreducibility. It must be said emphatically: the foregoing is only a heuristic analogy, not a theoretical equivalence. The intention-theories of Anscombe and Bratman are descriptive analyses of the structure of human action, carrying within them no soteriological ontology, still less any prajñā premise such as "all dharmas actionless"; this paper borrows them only to light up the front half—the single point that the vow is an intentional structure conferring direction. One may by no means infer in reverse that the bodhisattva's vow-power amounts to some theory of action-planning, or that "liberating beings within the actionless" can be reduced to a description of intention. The mirror has shown the outline of the vow's directedness, but cannot reach into its deepest convergence; and it is precisely there, where the mirror cannot reach, that vow-power shows an identity no worldly theory of action can absorb.

V. Corrections of the Middle Way

This section flags three readings into which it is easiest to slip (marking doctrinal deviations with ❌ and textual or jurisdictional traps with ⚠️), as boundary-stakes for holding to the Middle Way.

❌ Vow-power is not "placing an order with the buddhas and bodhisattvas in exchange for a reward." This is the misreading the farmer's question most readily backslides into when it is left half-answered—taking "by the vow one receives the surpassing fruit" to mean "trade a vow for a surpassing fruit," as though making a vow were a down payment handed to the cosmos or to the buddhas, with the reward delivered as goods to order. The whole argument of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra is built to block this road: the vow "steers and guides," gives merit "an aim set up"; what it does is give a direction, not pay a price. The driver does not buy strength from the ox; the driver only prescribes where the ox goes. The "power" in vow-power is the power to orient, not the power to purchase. The series has nailed down the same red line again and again in the gates of giving and of repentance—giving is not a transaction (DĀNA), receiving repentance is not the buying-off of guilt (KṢAMĀ); at the gate of the vow, that red line shifts over to: the vow is not a transaction. To read vow-power as a buying and selling of merit is to misplace it at its very root.

❌ Vow-power is not "one more deed of merit added beside merit." A second misreading imagines vow-power as another traction of the same kind as merit—as though one ox were added beside the ox. This has been distinguished in detail above: the vow is the driver, not a second ox. It is heterogeneous with merit: merit is the force that is steered, the vow is the direction that steers. To read vow-power as "an item of merit that can be summed in" is to fall back again into the idiom of "quantity," and to miss the whole point of vow-power, which lies entirely in "direction" and not in "amount." The vow does not increase the more-or-less of merit; it only fixes what merit accomplishes.

⚠️ "Vow-power," "the original vow," and "the resolve-vow" must be kept jurisdictionally distinct. The governing term of this paper is "vow-power" (praṇidhāna-bala), the vow as a functioning force. At several points the paper cites the treatise's "original vow" (as in "by the power of the original vow he does not cease," "the original vow and great compassion"); here "the original vow" denotes the bodhisattva's root vow as presently and continuously at work—it is the same referent as vow-power, the standing, operative vow. It must be distinguished from the originative "original vow" treated in Part II of the series at the prediction under Dīpaṃkara Buddha (a founding event that happened in the past): the former is standing (always at work), the latter is origin (a single founding). The reader must tell them apart as the text requires, and not, because the two words "original vow" coincide, run them together as one matter.

⚠️ The prajñā∩vow loci of this paper are kept separate from those of P05. A careful reader may notice that the doctrine "prajñā sees emptiness yet does not forsake liberating beings" was already touched on in Part II of the series, in the treatment of "the undirected" (P05). It must be said honestly: the two papers draw on different loci within the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra. P05 rests on the passages of fascicle 38 (the three doors of liberation) and fascicle 78 (practicing emptiness without realizing its verification), arguing how the Āgama-layer "undirected" can coexist with the original vow; the present paper rests on the passages of fascicle 42 ("by the power of the original vow it does not cease") and fascicle 16 ("liberating all within the actionless"), arguing how the Mahāyāna vow-power serves as the hinge of prajñā and merit-conduct. The one wall of "prajñā∩vow" doctrine is laid by the two papers upon different textual foundations, without overlap; for cross-reference, follow P05—this paper does not re-cite those passages here.

VI. Conclusion

The essential layer. What vow-power does is not "add a measure to merit" but "give merit a direction." The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra sets the key with the simile "merit is like the ox, the vow like the driver": the ox has strength but does not know where to go, and needs a driver if it is to arrive somewhere; merit done without a vow "sets up no aim," and though gained does not know what it builds. This is the first layer of vow-power—steering, orienting. Deeper still, just when prajñā has seen all dharmas as unconditioned and actionless and ought by rights to tend toward quiescence and cessation, it is "by the power of the original vow that it does not cease," it is "within the actionless, by the power of effort, that all are liberated"—vow-power becomes here the hinge between prajñā and great conduct, so that "the wisdom that sees into emptiness" and "the conduct that liberates beings" do not cancel but run side by side on one and the same arc bent toward awakening. The two layers are in fact one matter: vow-power throughout does only "the setting of direction"—at the level of merit it fixes what merit accomplishes, at the level of prajñā it fixes the direction of "still moving toward beings within emptiness." The driver's charge is direction, and direction alone.

The layer of practice. From this follows a plain but pressing hint. The work to be done upon the vow lies not in "how many vows one has raised" but in "where the vow steers your conduct." There is no need to fret over whether your ox of merit is strong enough; ask first whether the driver is there, and which way the reins are turned—a deposit of merit whose purpose is unknown, and a deposit of merit made out to a stated end, are equal in amount and worlds apart in meaning. Further: when practice deepens and one begins to see the empty quiescence of all dharmas, there is no need to worry that "seeing emptiness will leave me wanting to do nothing at all"; vow-power is set up for exactly this—it does not ask you to deny the emptiness you have seen, only to keep walking, upon that emptiness, toward beings, by the strength of the original vow and great compassion. To see emptiness without abandoning conduct, to act without being benighted as to emptiness—what holds all this together in the middle is the vow.

The layer of open questions. Yet this paper too leaves, at its deepest point, a question still unanswered. If vow-power can raise up the conduct of liberating beings upon "all dharmas actionless, nothing to attain," then how can a mind already without anything to attain still raise a vow without self-contradiction? Is a supreme vow raised with a mind of nothing-to-attain possible, and if so, how? This question reaches into a deeper engagement of vow and emptiness, and into how "conduct" and "the vow" are at last to be "non-dual"—conduct fills the vow, the vow steers conduct; are the two the cooperation of two things, or two faces of one thing? This paper only sets its marker and lays its path; the full treatment is reserved for later in the volume. With this, the three papers of Part III, "Vow as a Perfection," come to a close: P06 set the vow's standing (eighth among the ten perfections), P07 laid the vow's architecture (the ten vows of the ten grounds), and the present paper has shown the vow's power (merit like the ox, the vow like the driver). Standing, architecture, power—with all three in place, the vow is no longer merely a mental factor, a seat, a skeleton, but a force that really works, able to steer both merit and prajñā toward the one direction of awakening.

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References

I. Primary Buddhist Sources

• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, attributed to Nāgārjuna, translated by Kumārajīva (Later Qin), Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509.

II. Modern Scholarship

• Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957.
• Bratman, Michael E. Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
• Frankfurt, Harry G. The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Terence Irwin, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999.

III. Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Fascicle	Taishō no.	Author / Translator
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (Commentary on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra)	7, 16, 42	T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 25)	Nāgārjuna / Kumārajīva

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Cross-References to Other Papers in the Series

• P05 (The Directed and the Undirected: Paṇidhi in the Nikāyas): on prajñā seeing emptiness without forsaking the liberating of beings, P05 builds its argument on Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra fascicles 38 and 78 (the Āgama-layer "undirected" coexisting with the original vow); the present paper builds on fascicles 42 and 16 (the Mahāyāna vow-power as the prajñā∩vow hinge). The loci are kept separate and do not overlap.
• P06 (The Vow as the Eighth Perfection): established the vow's standing; the present paper carries that standing forward and asks after the vow's power.
• P07 (The Vow as the Skeleton of the Path): established the vow's architecture; the present paper carries that architecture forward and shows the vow's steering.
• The "vow ≠ transaction" red line is carried over from DĀNA (giving ≠ transaction) and KṢAMĀ (receiving repentance ≠ buying-off of guilt), shifted here to vow-power's sense of orientation (not purchase).
• The two questions "the non-duality of conduct and vow" and "raising a vow with a mind of nothing-to-attain" are signposts set by this paper, reserved for later in the volume (in the strand on the vow and emptiness, and on non-retreat).

Footnotes

1. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 7: "Question: if one makes no vow, does one then gain no merit? Answer: one does gain it, but not as when there is a vow; the vow helps merit, keeps in constant mind what is being done, and merit grows." Composed by Nāgārjuna, translated by Kumārajīva (Later Qin), Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 108c. ↩

2. See the earlier paper in this part of the series, The Vow as the Eighth Perfection (Part III · P06). That paper argued that the vow passes the threefold pāramitā test of the Yogācārabhūmi and so deserves the name of perfection rather than being a mere appendage to the first six, and read pāramitā as "going to the far shore" (not "completion"), laying the ground in standing for the present paper's "power of the vow." ↩

3. See the earlier paper in this part of the series, The Vow as the Skeleton of the Path (Part III · P07). That paper argued that the ten great vows of the Ground of Joy are the architectural skeleton of cultivation across the ten grounds (the vow preceding conduct, steering conduct and wisdom, the tenth vow locking the frame open forever by "inexhaustibility"), laying the ground in architecture for the present paper's sense of the vow as "steering and guiding." ↩

4. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 7: "Merit done without a vow sets up no aim; the vow is what steers and guides, and so something can be accomplished. It is like the melting of gold: it takes whatever form the craftsman gives it, for the gold of itself is fixed to nothing." (The Chinese 摽 is the same as 標, "to set up as a target.") Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 108b. ↩

5. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 7: "The adorning of a buddha-world is a vast undertaking, and merit acting alone cannot accomplish it; vow-power is required. It is like the strength of an ox, which can indeed pull the cart, but needs a driver if it is to arrive somewhere. So too with the vow that purifies a world: merit is like the ox, the vow like the driver." Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 108b. ↩

6. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 7: "…all these are gained by the power of the vow…. Therefore know: by the vow one receives the surpassing fruit." Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 108b. ↩

7. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 42: "If he knows in this way, he should cease; because the manifold merits are not yet complete he does not cease, and by great compassion and the power of the original vow he does not cease." Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 369b. ↩

8. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 16: "Though he knows the true mark of dharmas to be unconditioned and actionless, because by the original vow and great compassion he wishes to liberate beings, within the actionless, by the power of effort, he liberates all." Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 175a. ↩

9. Same as note 1. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 7: "the vow helps merit, keeps in constant mind what is being done, and merit grows." Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 108c. ↩