Vow and Conduct Are Not Two

I. The Question: How Are Vow and Conduct Not Two?

The previous part carried Amitābha's primal vows as far as "the power of the vow made complete in both directions." Yet however far the vow is carried, it remains, in the end, a vow—a directedness not yet landed, waiting to be filled full by some "conduct." Between vow and conduct there seems to lie a seam: first a single thought of aspiration, and only afterward the action that cashes the aspiration out; vow within and prior, conduct without and posterior. Samantabhadra's vows of conduct mean to close this seam, and to let one see that vow and conduct are in fact not two.

The seam is no puzzle peculiar to Buddhism. Western philosophy of action long ago cast it into a default schema. In "Actions, Reasons, and Causes," Donald Davidson advanced a far-reaching claim: what makes a piece of bodily movement an action is that it is caused and rationalized by a "belief–desire" pair—the intention is the mental antecedent of the action, and the relation between it and the bodily event it produces is a causal one.¹ On this schema "vow" is just that intention which arises before the action and is hidden within the mind, and "conduct" is the outward result the intention causes; the two are separate events, strung together on a single causal link.

What Samantabhadra's vows of conduct mean to dissolve is exactly this "intention first, action after" seam. But they do not dissolve it by tightening the causal link, nor by gathering vow and conduct into "the inner unity of one self." They dissolve it by showing that, at the bodhisattva's station, vow and conduct are not two things at all, but the inner and outer faces of one matter. To see this we must first return to the scripture—and look closely at what, exactly, the scripture counts.

II. The Canonical Basis: "Conduct-Vow" Is a Single Unit of Enumeration

The point most easily overlooked, and the most decisive, is hidden in how the scripture counts. When the Chapter on Samantabhadra's Conduct-Vows sets out the ten gates, the text reads "should cultivate ten kinds of vast conduct-vows."² The unit being counted across the ten gates is the single compound "conduct-vow"—not "ten kinds of conduct," not "ten kinds of vow." When the closing passage gathers all ten gates into a single whole image, the text reads "the ocean of conduct-vows."³ And the momentum that runs through every one of the vows the text renders uniformly as "by the power of Samantabhadra's conduct-vow"⁴—"conduct-vow-power" is one phrase of three characters, not to be cut into a freestanding "vow-power" or "conduct-power."

In other words, from beginning to end the scripture's unit of enumeration is the single compound "conduct-vow." The ten gates are not a checklist of ten parallel good deeds but one body of "conduct-vow," spoken apart as ten aspects. The ten gates, in order, are: 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 universally dedicating all. The names are listed here for one purpose only: to attest that they are all gathered under a single unit of enumeration, "conduct-vow." How each gate unfolds in its own right—how homage is paid, how praise is given—belongs to the vow-by-vow exposition and falls outside this paper; what is to be established here is only that one structural layer: "conduct-vow as a single compound unit of enumeration."⁵

In his Commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter, Chengguan takes the compound apart with the greatest economy: "aspiration is the vow, undertaking is the conduct, lodged in the round number ten and so spoken as ten."⁶ The vow is the inner aspiration (the inward inclination of mind); the conduct is the undertaking on the plane of affairs (the doing-and-making in concrete fact); the two are two moments of one and the same action. And the clause "lodged in the round number ten and so spoken as ten" deserves close reading: "lodged" means borrowed, deposited—this one matter of "conduct-vow" is lodged in the round number "ten" and thereby spoken apart, the ten being not ten separable things. Glossing the chapter's title elsewhere, Chengguan adds: "undertaking and aspiring together are named conduct-vow."⁷ The two passages confirm one another: only undertaking (conduct) and aspiring (vow) taken together are called "conduct-vow."

Misread this point and the whole architecture collapses. To misread "ten kinds of conduct-vow" as "ten freestanding vows" is to overlook the word "lodged" in "lodged in the round number ten and so spoken as ten"—the ten is the apart-spoken, the aspect borrowed from the round number, while conduct-vow is the body that is being spoken apart. ⚠️ Here one must hold the line: the ten is aspect, conduct-vow is body; read the ten gates as ten parallel items of good conduct and the spine of "vow and conduct are not two" has nothing to stand on.

That "conduct-vow" is a compound is not an artifact of the Chinese translation joining two characters for the sake of smooth prose; in the title-structure of the Sanskrit original it was a compound from the start. In his Sub-commentary, Zongmi transcribes the phonetic-and-semantic correspondence of the Sanskrit title word by word: "cārī, here rendered 'conduct'; praṇidhāna, here rendered 'vow.'"⁸ Cārī (the Sanskrit answering to the sense "conduct") and praṇidhāna (the Sanskrit answering to the sense "vow") join into one title—the very "conduct–vow" compound on which the title Chapter on Samantabhadra's Conduct-Vows rests. This stroke of phonetic-and-semantic correspondence in the Sanskrit title plants Chengguan's gloss above on the bedrock of the original: it was not the Chinese commentators who, after the fact, first spoke "conduct" and "vow" together—the scripture's own title is named by this one compound, "conduct-vow." The non-duality of vow and conduct is carved into the title of the sūtra.

III. The Argument: Vow and Conduct, the Inner and Outer Faces of One Matter

With the canonical proof that "conduct-vow is a single compound unit of enumeration" in hand, the structure of "not two" can be erected head-on.

In the Sub-commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter, Zongmi gives this spine its most direct figure: "conduct and vow are like the two wings of a bird, the two wheels of a cart—complete in both, one can soar far through the sky."⁹ He then says that the cause of buddhahood "is comprised wholly within these two"—the measureless cultivated causes are gathered into the two poles, "conduct" and "vow."¹⁰ The force of the figure lies precisely in the two things it chooses: a bird's two wings, a cart's two wheels, are not two stages "one before the other" but two faces "co-present, neither dispensable." A bird missing one wing cannot fly; a cart missing one wheel cannot roll; it is not that the left wing comes first and the right is grown after, but that the two wings are one body, and only so is the bird a bird that can fly. The relation of vow and conduct is just this: not vow first and conduct after, but vow and conduct one body, and only so is the bodhisattva's conduct a "conduct-vow."

This lets the inner structure of "not two" be stated more precisely: the vow is that toward which the conduct is oriented; the conduct is that which fills the vow full. The vow gives the conduct a direction—without the vow, conduct is mere isolated, undirected making; the conduct gives the vow a landing—without the conduct, the vow is mere suspended, uncashed directedness. The vow does not "cause" the conduct from before it; the vow simply is the shape the conduct bears. The conduct does not "cash out" the vow from after it; the conduct simply is the body the vow takes on the plane of affairs. The two are mutually constituting: the vow leads the conduct (the vow is the root the conduct rests on), the conduct fills the vow (the conduct is the substance the vow takes on).

Zongmi states this to its furthest point: "this vow is already conduct—hence 'conduct-vow'—unlike the ordinary person's empty, vacant pledge."¹¹ The ordinary person's vow is an "empty pledge"—a date set in the mind alone, never filled with conduct, so that the vow stays forever empty; the bodhisattva's vow, by contrast, "is already conduct"—the vow itself is already conduct, and only so are the two together called "conduct-vow." Zongmi adds, "conduct arises in dependence on the vow":¹² the vow pervades the Dharma-realm, and conduct arises in dependence on it—the vow is not some other thing alongside the conduct, but the very directedness the conduct rests on. At the bodhisattva's station vow and conduct are one matter; their "not two" is not two things drawn very close, but their not being two things at all.

The "not two" can be turned once more: the vow is what the conduct is named by; the conduct is what fills the vow. Take first the vow that names what the conduct enacts. For a piece of making to become "homage," "praise," "offering," what does the work is not the physical pattern of the bodily movement itself—the same bowing of the body may be paying homage or it may be picking something up; what makes it the conduct "paying homage to all buddhas" is the vow toward which it is oriented. The vow gives the conduct its name; by the vow the conduct has what it is. Take next the conduct that fills what the vow names. A vow to "pay homage to all buddhas" that never once bows the body, never once joins the palms, is only a name, an uncashed empty cheque; it is the conduct that fills this name full into substance. So vow and conduct complete one another: apart from the vow, conduct has no name and is left mere undirected making; apart from the conduct, the vow has no substance and is left a suspended name. The reason a bird's two wings and a cart's two wheels are each indispensable is exactly this—vow and conduct are not generated one after the other, but of one body and mutually in need.

This also answers the question the previous part left open. Amitābha's primal vows were carried to "the power of the vow made complete in both directions," and even there the vow remained a "vow"; Samantabhadra's vows of conduct fill the vow with conduct, and let one see that a truly complete vow is never a suspended directedness but a vow that "is already conduct"—a vow that, in the very moment of its arising, is already conduct. For just this reason, Samantabhadra's vows do not begin from "first set up ten resolves, then carry them out one by one"; from the very start they are names of making—"homage," "praise"—each gate already a conduct-vow, not a vow first that waits for conduct to be supplied later.

IV. Interdisciplinary Bridges: Non-Duality of Vow and Conduct and Western Philosophy of Action

Set "vow and conduct are not two" on the coordinates of Western philosophy of action, and one can see both what it is meant to remedy and where, in the end, it travels further than Western philosophy goes. The split the West draws between "intention (inner, mental)" and "action (outer, bodily)" is the philosophical underwriting of the very picture "vow before, conduct after"; and efforts to dissolve that split exist in Western philosophy too, only the place they dissolve to is not where vow and conduct are not two.

First set the default schema out plainly. Davidson has already been cited above: the intention is the mental antecedent of the action, joined to the bodily event by a causal relation—this is the most precise statement of "inner cause → outer effect," and exactly the picture that "vow and conduct are not two" rejects.¹ But it must be stated clearly before being dissolved, lest one beat a straw man: the non-duality of vow and conduct does not tie a tighter causal link between two relata; it says there are no "two relata" to be tied—the vow does not cause the conduct from after it, the vow is the shape the conduct bears.

Against this split, Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind offers the sharpest dissolution. He attacks the image of "the ghost in the machine": to treat a bodily action as the outward manifestation of some prior, private mental act of "volition" is a "category mistake." Intelligence does not consist in "first running a hidden mental engine, then acting"; intelligence lies in the manner of the doing itself—it is "knowing-how," not "knowing-that and then executing it."¹³ This cuts straight to what the non-duality of vow and conduct attacks: the vow is not a private mental antecedent that conduct afterward cashes out; the two are not two events. Here is the nearest Western counterpart.

Yet having dissolved the inner–outer dualism, Ryle gathers everything into "observable competent behaviour"—his target is still the dispositional performance of "an agent," and his frame is still this-worldly and descriptive. The non-duality of vow and conduct is not this behaviourist absorption: the vow is not another name for the disposition of "doing things skilfully," but a vow constitutively oriented toward unsurpassed awakening and toward all sentient beings, unchanging across measureless aeons; its not-two is a soteriologically structural not-two, not Ryle's clarification on the psychological-grammatical plane.

John MacMurray, in The Self as Agent, supplies a dimension nearer still. He inverts the starting point of modern philosophy: not "I think, therefore I am," but the self as first an "agent" rather than a spectator; the thinking self is a moment abstracted from the acting self, the person is constituted in action, and action is essentially "relational"—the self exists only in relation to others.¹⁴ This rarely echoes the outward turn of "conduct-vow": conduct-vow is oriented toward the deliverance of beings, not toward the self-realization of a private self.

But MacMurray's "unity" is still the unity of "a self"—he shifts the starting point from thought to action, yet does not dissolve the agent, and his telos is the communion of persons. The non-duality of vow and conduct is not "the unity of a self in its action," but the not-two of vow and conduct within a structure "whose furthest reach is the emptiness of the one who makes the vow": what this vow trends toward across aeons is a buddhahood in which the vow-maker has dissolved; the outward turn of Samantabhadra's vows is endless, not a field in which two persons realize one another.

The three may thus be ranged across a logical space (not a diachronic development): Davidson states the default split, Ryle dissolves it but only as far as competent behaviour, MacMurray supplies the relational and outward-turned dimension. All three presuppose a self that is "intention first, action after"; whereas the non-duality of vow and conduct is a structural not-two, oriented toward awakening and toward beings, and in its endless reach finally dissolving the vow-maker itself.

The last sentence must be made clear, for it is just where the non-duality of vow and conduct travels further than all three. On this Western line, dissolve as far as one will, an agent always remains: Ryle leaves a competent subject good at doing things, MacMurray leaves a person constituted in relation. The vow of "vow and conduct are not two," by contrast, is oriented toward a buddhahood in which "the vow-maker has dissolved"—the more the vow is filled full into conduct, the more endlessly the conduct turns outward, the thinner is worn that mark of subject-and-object, "I am making the vow, I am acting." At its furthest, the not-two of vow and conduct is not "a self made complete in its own action," but vow and conduct continuing on until the vow-maker too cannot be found; this is a dimension absent from the coordinates of Western philosophy of action. To read "vow and conduct are not two" as a "unity-of-knowing-and-doing" sort of personal unity is to shrink it—its not-two is a not-two oriented toward awakening and all sentient beings, and finally emptying out the vow-maker.

V. Corrections of the Middle Way

With the spine erected, three places where one most easily slides off must be corrected.

❌ First, the ten gates must not be read as ten freestanding vows. The word "lodged" in "lodged in the round number ten and so spoken as ten" means borrowed, deposited—the ten is the aspect under which one matter of "conduct-vow" is lodged in the round number and spoken apart, not ten parallel items of good conduct. Once the ten gates are read as ten unrelated matters, the spine of "vow and conduct are not two" is hollowed out; how each gate unfolds one by one is a matter of another layer, and falls outside this paper.

⚠️ Second, the symbolic apportioning of vow to one figure and conduct to another must not be hardened into "vow and conduct are separable." In the Avataṃsaka symbolic tradition, the vow is sometimes assigned to Mañjuśrī and conduct sometimes to Samantabhadra, which can mislead one into thinking vow and conduct can be split into two camps. Zongmi himself supplies the line "conduct and vow mutually support one another," and notes that "in principle they wholly interpenetrate"—the symbolic apportioning is an expedient, while in principle vow and conduct interpenetrate and are originally inseparable.¹⁵ Mañjuśrī's line of development has its own proper home; here we take only the line "conduct and vow mutually support, in principle wholly interpenetrating," and do not branch off through it.

⚠️ Third, the non-duality of vow and conduct is not a behaviourist absorption. Ryle's gathering of volition into observable competent behaviour does indeed dissolve "the ghost in the machine"; but to follow that road and reduce "vow," too, to a disposition for "doing things skilfully" goes astray. The vow is not the name of a disposition of conduct, but the directedness constitutively oriented toward awakening and beings; its not-two is soteriological, not exhausted by this-worldly descriptive performance of ability.

As for how this "not-two" vow fills itself full without interruption through time—by what kind of "conduct" it is filled in unbroken succession—that is the question of "the manner of conduct's filling," reserved for a later paper in this part; and how the ten gates are finally gathered up and turned as a whole is the matter of another paper. Here only signposts are set, not unfolded.

VI. Conclusion

The essential. Samantabhadra's ten great vows are not a checklist of "ten good deeds" but a single compound of "conduct-vow," lodged in the round number ten and spoken apart. The vow (aspiration) and the conduct (undertaking) are not two matters, aspiration prior and action posterior, but the inner and outer faces of one matter: the vow is that toward which the conduct is oriented, the conduct is that which fills the vow full—like a bird's two wings, a cart's two wheels, each indispensable. The bodhisattva's vow "is already conduct," unlike the ordinary person's empty pledge that is made but not acted on; hence "conduct-vow"—this is the spine on which the volume of the vow turns from "vow" toward "conduct."

For practice. The reminder of "vow and conduct are not two," fallen upon the one who makes the vow, runs thus: there is no need first to brew the aspiration to completeness within the mind and then to go looking for some outward action to cash it out, as though the vow were a cheque waiting to be paid in cash. In the very moment of its arising, if it is a true vow, the vow is already conduct—a single homage, a single word of praise, a single offering, a single confession is, here and now, the body of the vow, not the consequence of the vow. See vow and conduct as one matter, and there is no gap of "having made the vow but slow to act" to slip through; the reason the ordinary person's vow is an empty pledge is precisely that vow and conduct were seen as two things.

An open question. If vow and conduct are not two, and the vow is the shape the conduct bears, then how can this one body of "conduct-vow" continue without interruption and without weariness throughout all future time? A single vow-making is a point, but what the non-duality of vow and conduct promises is a line stretching across all future time—by what does this line continue, by what power is it sustained, that it does not break partway from weariness? This question is reserved for a later paper in this part.

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References

I. Primary Buddhist Sources

• Avataṃsaka-sūtra · Chapter on Samantabhadra's Conduct-Vows of Entering the Inconceivable Realm of Liberation, fascicle 40, trans. Prajñā (Tang), Taishō vol. 10, no. 293.
• Chengguan (Tang), Commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Xuzangjing vol. 5, no. 227.
• Chengguan's separate commentary with Zongmi's accompanying sub-commentary (Tang), Sub-commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Xuzangjing vol. 5, no. 229.

II. Modern Scholarship

• Davidson, Donald. "Actions, Reasons, and Causes." The Journal of Philosophy 60, no. 23 (1963): 685–700. (Causal theory of action · the default "inner cause → outer effect" schema)
• MacMurray, John. The Self as Agent. London: Faber and Faber, 1957. (The self as first an agent · the relationality of action)
• Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson, 1949. (Dissolving "the ghost in the machine" · category mistake)

III. Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Taishō / Xuzangjing no.	Author / Translator
Conduct-Vow Chapter	Avataṃsaka-sūtra · Chapter on Samantabhadra's Conduct-Vows of Entering the Inconceivable Realm of Liberation (fasc. 40)	T0293《大方廣佛華嚴經》(四十華嚴)Gaṇḍavyūha (40-fascicle, including the Ten Vows)T10, No. 293Prajñā (Tang, 798 CE)Closes with Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows — the textual locus of NIAN Part VII.View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 10)	trans. Prajñā
Commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter	Commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra	X0227 (vol. 5)	Chengguan
Sub-commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter	Sub-commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra	X0229 (vol. 5)	Chengguan (separate commentary) · Zongmi (accompanying sub-commentary)

Cross-References

This is the opening paper of Part VI (Samantabhadra's Vows of Conduct). It takes up the question left at the close of Part V, Other-Power and the Grammar of Entrusting (P12)—"how are vow and conduct not two?"—and erects their non-duality on the pivot of the single compound "conduct-vow." The unfolding of each of the ten gates (how homage, praise … and the universal dedication are each cultivated), the offering-aspect of making vast offerings, and the confession-aspect of confessing karmic obstructions are treated in dedicated volumes elsewhere in this project; this paper cites them by reference rather than restating them, taking only the names of the ten gates to attest that "conduct-vow is a single compound unit of enumeration." The question "by what does conduct-vow continue without interruption and without weariness" carries over from this paper's open question and is reserved for the next paper in this part; "how the ten gates are finally gathered up and turned as a whole" is the matter of the third paper in this part.

Footnotes

1. Donald Davidson, "Actions, Reasons, and Causes," The Journal of Philosophy 60, no. 23 (1963): 685–700. Cited here only as a starting point of contrast in logical space (the default "inner cause → outer effect" schema), not as a diachronic source. ↩ ↩²

2. Avataṃsaka-sūtra · Chapter on Samantabhadra's Conduct-Vows of Entering the Inconceivable Realm of Liberation, fascicle 40, Taishō vol. 10, no. T0293《大方廣佛華嚴經》(四十華嚴)Gaṇḍavyūha (40-fascicle, including the Ten Vows)T10, No. 293Prajñā (Tang, 798 CE)Closes with Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows — the textual locus of NIAN Part VII.View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 844b. ↩

3. Ibid., p. 846b ("the ocean of conduct-vows"). ↩

4. Ibid., p. 844c ("by the power of Samantabhadra's conduct-vow," occurring twice). ↩

5. The unfolding of each of the ten gates (how each vow is cultivated) belongs to another layer of exposition and falls outside this paper; the names are listed here only to attest that "conduct-vow" is a single compound unit of enumeration. Of these, the offering-aspect of making vast offerings and the confession-aspect of confessing karmic obstructions are each treated elsewhere in this project and are not restated here. ↩

6. Tang, Chengguan, Commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Xuzangjing vol. 5, no. X0227, p. 192c: "aspiration is the vow, undertaking is the conduct, lodged in the round number ten and so spoken as ten." ↩

7. Ibid., p. 71a: "undertaking and aspiring are named conduct-vow." ↩

8. Tang, Chengguan's separate commentary with Zongmi's accompanying sub-commentary, Sub-commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Xuzangjing vol. 5, no. X0229, p. 221b: "cārī, here rendered 'conduct'; praṇidhāna, here rendered 'vow.'" ↩

9. Tang, Chengguan's separate commentary with Zongmi's accompanying sub-commentary, Sub-commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Xuzangjing vol. 5, no. X0229, p. 261c: "conduct and vow are like the two wings of a bird, the two wheels of a cart—complete in both, one can soar far through the sky." ↩

10. Ibid., p. 239c (the cause of buddhahood "is comprised wholly within these two"). ↩

11. Ibid., p. 310b: "this vow is already conduct—hence 'conduct-vow'—unlike the ordinary person's empty, vacant pledge." ↩

12. Ibid., p. 239b ("conduct arises in dependence on the vow"). ↩

13. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949). For "the ghost in the machine," "category mistake," and the "knowing-how / knowing-that" distinction, see chapters 1 and 2. ↩

14. John MacMurray, The Self as Agent (London: Faber and Faber, 1957). ↩

15. Zongmi, Sub-commentary on the Conduct-Vow Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Xuzangjing vol. 5, no. X0229, p. 322a ("conduct and vow mutually support one another"; "in principle they wholly interpenetrate"). ↩