Vowing without a Vower

I. The Question: If Even the "I" Is Let Go, Who Is Left to Vow?

The previous part of this volume closed on transference. What transference does is to turn the whole of one's accumulated merit outward—and in the same motion to set down even the private ledger entry, "this merit is mine," refusing to hold it as one's own.¹ But it is precisely here that a sharper question surfaces. If even "my merit" is let go, then the "I" that has been vowing and transferring all along—is it still there at all?

The question cuts deep because the act of vowing seems, on its face, to presuppose three things at once: a subject who vows (the I), a goal not yet in hand and waiting to be reached (the vowed-for), and the act of vowing itself (the vow). Once the blade of prajñā falls and sees all three as empty—no self, no attainable goal, no substantial act of vowing—does the vow not collapse like a building with its foundation pulled out from under it? Many people's first reaction to "emptiness" runs exactly this way: if all is ultimately empty, then why vow at all? Emptiness seems to stand, by its very nature, on the side of "nothing more need be sought."

This is the deepest point at which vow and emptiness meet, and the tension this part of the volume must shoulder head-on. Let one distinction be stated at the outset, lest the path go wrong from the first step. The "vow" spoken of here is the vow in the sense of arousing bodhicitta (bodhicittotpāda)—the setting-out toward awakening and toward beings—not the manifestation-style craving that "places an order with the universe" to obtain some result the self happens to want. The latter presupposes a self bent on realizing its own desires, which is exactly what prajñā works to loosen; the former, by contrast, shows its purest face only after the self has been loosened. The whole argument of this paper rests on that distinction.

The claim can be put in a single line: the deepest vow is precisely one made in non-attainment—a supreme vow aroused in a mind of non-attainment, in which vower, vowed-for, and vow are all unattainable; there is no "I who vows," yet the vow does not therefore disintegrate but becomes, instead, inexhaustible. In other words, when prajñā sees the emptiness of the vow's nature, that seeing is not the erasure of the vow's force. It is the dismantling of the self that, behind the vow, was quietly bent on securing a result—returning the vow to its own state, which is supportless and yet, for that very reason, cannot be used up.

What follows lays out two scriptural witnesses—how the Vajracchedikā speaks of a "vow without a vower" (§2.1), and how Nāgārjuna's own hand blocks the path "empty, therefore abolish the vow" (§2.2). It then draws out the core argument: how the emptiness of the three spheres carries over onto the vow, and why non-attainment is the vow's depth rather than its cancellation (§III). It brings the matter into mutual light with contemporary discussions of self and commitment (§IV), corrects four misreadings easy to slip into (§V), and closes by setting a signpost (§VI).

II. The Canonical Basis

2.1 Vowing without a Vower: The Vow to Liberate Beings in the Vajracchedikā

"Vowing in non-attainment" is no paradox invented for this paper. It has a perfectly clear scriptural prototype, in the very passage of the Vajracchedikā on liberating beings. There the bodhisattva is to vow thus—

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. … Subhūti, there is in truth no dharma whatever that arouses the mind of supreme, perfect awakening.²

Look closely at the structure of these lines. The first half is a great vow through and through: "I should bring all beings to final liberation"—a vow to liberate beings that is supreme, boundless, leaving nothing out; there is no vow larger than this. But the half that immediately follows pulls out, one by one, the three supports on which that vow seemed to rest. After all beings have been liberated, "there is not a single being who has really been liberated"—the beings liberated are, in the ultimate sense, unattainable. And "there is no dharma whatever that arouses the mind of supreme awakening"—even the dharma of "arousing bodhicitta," even the subject that does the arousing, is unattainable.

So we witness something altogether strange: the vow here is not cancelled. "I should bring all beings to liberation" plainly still stands—indeed it is the heaviest sentence in the passage. What is cancelled is only the grasping behind the vow: the grip of "there is an I, liberating a really-existent being, doing a real thing called vowing." The bow is still at full draw; only the "archer" behind it is seen as empty. This is the literal source of the phrase that titles this paper: vowing without a vower—the supreme vow is made, yet no vower sits substantially behind it.

Another line of the same sūtra puts the same posture of mind positively—

One should not give rise to a mind that dwells on form; one should not give rise to a mind that dwells on sound, smell, taste, touch, or dharmas; one should give rise to the mind without dwelling anywhere.³

"Give rise to the mind" is arising, presence, the mind not absent; "without dwelling anywhere" is that this mind, as it arises, neither sticks to nor moors itself upon any object. Reading this line together with the former, the inner mechanism of "vowing without a vower" becomes clear: it is a mind that arises without dwelling—vow-power arises all the same (the mind is given rise to), yet it does not moor itself upon "the vow I have made" or "the beings I am liberating" (without dwelling). To arouse the mind without dwelling on signs is just another way of saying the vow without a vower.⁴

2.2 Emptiness Does Not Abolish the Vow: Nāgārjuna's Question-and-Answer

The most natural objection rises at once: since beings are unattainable and the one who arouses bodhicitta is unattainable, does this not just show that "once empty, there is no need to vow"? The objection is not a modern invention. Nāgārjuna had already raised it for us in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, and stopped it dead on the spot. He sets the challenge: if all dharmas are ultimately empty, then on what ground does one arouse the mind to become a Buddha? His answer is this—

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?⁵

The logic of this reply is exceptionally clean, and worth unfolding layer by layer. First layer: ultimate emptiness (atyanta-śūnyatā) means precisely "obstructs nothing." Since emptiness does not even establish "existence," how could it turn around and obstruct, stand in the way of, arousing the mind? If emptiness could really obstruct something, it would have become a "thing" with a function, a force, a power to block the road. Second layer—and this is the sharpest stroke: "if it could obstruct, it would be own-being." Suppose "emptiness" could in fact obstruct the arousing of the mind; then this obstructing "emptiness" would itself have become an entity possessed of self-nature, a real thing—which contradicts the very meaning of emptiness as "the nature of having-nothing-whatever." Put otherwise: the inference "because empty, therefore one cannot vow" smuggles emptiness in as a real obstacle to be used—and that smuggled emptiness is already no longer empty. The inference contradicts itself.

With this stroke Nāgārjuna pulls the ground out from under "empty, therefore abolish the vow." Far from obstructing the vow, it is because of emptiness that the vow can never be jammed, blocked, or used up by any "existence." Hence this paper's load-bearing judgment: seeing the emptiness of the vow's nature does not negate the vow's power. The structure of this judgment forms an exact mirror with one established at this project's repentance gate, that seeing the emptiness of sin's nature does not negate the workings of karma—there, seeing the own-nature of sin as empty while the dependently arisen working of karmic fruition stands undisturbed; here, seeing the own-nature of the vow as empty while the dependently arisen operation of vow-power stands undisturbed.⁶ In both places, emptiness is not an eraser that makes the thing vanish, but a clear mirror that keeps the thing from being reified and therefore from being exhausted.

III. Non-Attainment Is the Vow's Depth, Not Its Cancellation

3.1 The Three Empty Spheres, Projected onto the Vow

When the perfection of wisdom speaks of giving, it offers a famous contemplation, "the emptiness of the three spheres": when giving is brought to completion, one sees that giver, receiver, and gift are each unattainable, so that giving does not lapse into the grasping of "I have done a kindness to him." The prajñā source of this contemplation and Nāgārjuna's argument for it have a dedicated treatment in this project's giving gate and are not repeated here;⁷ its paradigm—taking "the emptiness of the three spheres" and applying it to one specific practice-gate (the apply-to-X paradigm)—has likewise been demonstrated for the precepts at the precept gate.⁸ What this paper does is to carry that same paradigm over onto the vow.

A boundary of textual honesty must be nailed down at once, lest the reader misunderstand. In the prajñā sūtras and treatises, the verbatim formula of "the three empty spheres" speaks throughout of the giving face—giver, receiver, gift. As for the vow-side triad of "vower, vowed-for, vow," there is no verbatim scriptural text whatever. This paper will therefore never—and the reader must never—read it as some quotation that runs "the sūtra says: the vower is unattainable." That would be a fabricated pseudo-citation. What is done here is an explicit structural projection: by analogy with the giving triad (giver / receiver / gift), each unattainable, the vow too may be contemplated as a triad of "vower / vowed-for / vow." The legitimacy of this projection rests not on inventing scripture but precisely on the two hard canonical proofs of the previous section. The Vajracchedikā has already said plainly "no being is really liberated" (the object of the vow is unattainable) and "there is no dharma whatever that arouses bodhicitta" (the subject of the vow, and the act of vowing, are unattainable); so "the emptiness of the three spheres of the vow—vower, vowed-for, vow" is nothing more than a re-arrangement of doctrine already stated, set out in the mature format of the giving triad.

So contemplated, the three spheres of the vow correspond cleanly. The vower is the "I" that fancies itself making a vow and collecting the merit. The vowed-for is the "beings" and the "Buddhahood" taken as real goals waiting for me to reach them. The vow is "vowing" itself, taken as a real deed, a piece of merit that can be entered under my name. The emptiness of the three spheres in the vow is, then, this: at the very moment the vow stands at full draw, the three quietly reified supports are seen, one by one, as empty—not "do not vow," but vowing without the invisible ledger of "I am making a real vow to liberate real beings."

3.2 Non-Attainment: The Vow's Depth, Not a Subtraction from It

At this step, the one thing that matters most is to set the direction of the word "non-attainment" straight, or everything done so far is undone. "Non-attainment" (the unattainable, ultimate emptiness) is easily misheard as "nothing, don't, give up"—as though non-attainment subtracted the vow, zeroed it out. This is the exact reverse.

The prajñā teaching says the opposite. The Mahāyāna arouses bodhicitta by "taking non-attainment as skillful means": non-attainment is not an item to be deducted when one vows, but the very condition under which the vow stands at its deepest and travels its farthest. Set two kinds of vowing side by side. The first is the "attaining" vow: I vow because I want to obtain some result—rebirth, blessings, even the "I" that becomes a Buddha—and the vow is a contract drawn up between me and the future. Such a vow, once its goal is reached, has done its work and retires; once its goal is thwarted, it readily turns back, readily calculates, readily wearies at the thought "I have put in so much—why is there still no return?" The second is the "non-attaining" vow: I vow, yet hide no self behind the vow waiting to collect the harvest. Beings are boundless and I vow to liberate them, yet I grasp no real endpoint at which they are all liberated and done, and I hold no "I who has merit for liberating beings." The reason the latter can be inexhaustible is precisely that it is non-attaining—it is tied to no goal of the kind "now that it is got, one may stop," and to no self of the kind "that will weary, will calculate, will turn back." With no "vowing I," the vow has nothing that can use it up; with no "real fruit attained," the vow has no place at which to stop. Non-attainment, then, is not the thinning of the vow but its fullness, carried to the point where nothing can be taken from it.

3.3 Complementary to an Earlier Paper: Two Prajñā Refinements of the Vow

A word on how this paper divides labor with this volume's other paper, on the four great vows, lest the reader feel the ground is being covered twice.⁹ That paper treats the vow's incompletability—beings are boundless, afflictions inexhaustible, and this "boundless, inexhaustible" is not the vow's failure but the structural guarantee that the vow never exits the field, never finds itself terminated by a to-do list that could be checked off; it answers the question "why the vow never closes." This paper treats the vow's vowerlessness—there is no I sitting behind the vow, yet the vow is inexhaustible; it answers the question "with no one vowing, why the vow still stands." The former enters from "the inexhaustibility of the vowed-for," the latter from "the non-self of the vower"; the two are different refinements that prajñā works upon the vow, along different axes, neither eclipsing the other. Seen together: the vow has no completable endpoint (and so never closes) and no real maker (and so claims no merit)—and this is the full face of the vow made in non-attainment.

IV. Cross-Disciplinary Reflection: Self, Narrative, and Commitment — Three Western Mirrors

The proposition "there is no vower, yet the vow is inexhaustible" is hardest for a reader steeped in Western thought to swallow at just this point: in the mainstream Western picture of action and commitment, there must first be a self before that self can be said to make and keep a commitment. This section borrows three contemporary Anglophone philosophers as mirrors, to throw light on one and the same matter: each has pressed close to "the self is not a ready-made thing prior to commitment," yet each stops at the final step, still needing to keep some bearer in reserve—whereas the vow of non-attainment walks that last step too, seeing even the bearer kept in reserve as unattainable, and the vow still does not collapse. The common reflection in all three mirrors is this: the groundlessness of the vow is the very thing that makes it inexhaustible.

Primary mirror — Marya Schechtman's narrative self-constitution. Schechtman holds that a person is not an entity standing ready, prior to all experience, but is constituted out of the self-narrative one tells of one's own life; on this picture, the commitments a person makes and carries through are the load-bearing beams that hold the narrative up. This is deeply congenial to the Dharma, and may be followed: the "I" is indeed not something already in existence before the vow; rather, "I" is constituted all along, in the course of holding and enacting the vow—which comes very close to dependent arising's "no own-nature, only dependently posited." But one layer further must be pressed. Schechtman's narrative, in the end, still requires a bearer who gathers the various fragments into one coherent life—a "narrative subject" that is constituted by the narrative yet must still serve as the narrative's home. The vow of non-attainment sees even that constituted narrative-self as unattainable: the vow needs no point of closure, need not come home to "one story of mine," and can still be made inexhaustibly. The narrative self is "the constituted I"; the vow of non-attainment is "the setting-down of even the constituted I."

Secondary mirror — Agnes Callard's account of aspiration. Callard analyzes with great care the peculiar agency of "aspiration": how a person acts toward a goal whose value he does not yet fully understand, does not yet fully possess a feeling for. The angle must be marked off here, to keep it from blurring with this volume's paper on the four great vows—that paper took aspiration's face of "self-remaking, the generation of value";¹⁰ this paper takes only one narrower question: the agent of aspiration—the subject of the sentence—who, exactly, is it? In Callard's frame, aspiration is always "someone" aspiring; the agent, though in the midst of transformation, is still presupposed as the subject. The reflection of the non-attaining vow here is this: there can be the directedness of aspiration without presupposing a fixed aspiring subject seated at the head of the sentence—the directedness is vivid, while the subject is empty and still.

Third mirror — Derek Parfit's reductionist non-self, and his refusal of nihilism. Parfit argues that personal identity can be reduced to a series of psychological continuity, with no need for an additional, substantial "self" to serve as its substrate; and this furnishes an excellent Western corroboration that "continuity is enough to carry the vow, with no need for a substantial self." What deserves special notice is one important warning of Parfit's own—he clearly refuses to slide from "identity is not what matters" to the nihilist conclusion "therefore nothing matters at all." That refusal answers exactly to this paper's red line, "emptiness does not abolish the vow": non-self does not amount to no-vow, just as a non-substantial self does not amount to the cancellation of all value. This point has a dedicated study at this project's repentance gate, where its bearing on the two truths is worked out in detail; this paper borrows only its "emptiness ≠ annihilation" face as a Western side-witness, and does not re-lay its two-truths scaffolding.¹¹

A statement of irreducibility. It must be said in earnest that all three mirrors are heuristic analogies only, not theoretical equivalences. The work of these three philosophers is a descriptive analysis of the structure of the human self and human commitment; it carries no soteriological or prajñā ontological commitment whatever. This paper borrows them only to show that "no fixed subject, yet the vow still stands" is not wholly without trace in contemporary thought. One must on no account reason in reverse and say that the Dharma's vow of non-attainment is equivalent to some narrative-self theory or reductionist position, still less reduce the bodhisattva's great vow to liberate beings to a theory of agency. A mirror can throw back a likeness of outline, but is in the end not the thing reflected—the Western models go at most to "the self is constituted, is reducible," and still must keep a bearer in reserve; the Dharma's vow stands at full draw even at the place where that bearer too is empty.

V. Corrections toward the Middle Way

This section marks out the four misreadings most easily slipped into—using ❌ for a doctrinal deviation and ⚠️ for a textual or terminological trap—as boundary stakes for holding to the middle way.

❌ Non-attainment is not nihilism, not annihilation. The most dangerous misreading is to hear "vowing in non-attainment" as "since all is empty, then nothing is needed, nothing need be vowed." This mistakes "non-attainment" for "nothing, don't," and mistakes ultimate emptiness for annihilationist emptiness. Section II has already, following Nāgārjuna, closed this road: if emptiness could let one "not vow," then emptiness has become a functioning, real obstacle—a self-contradiction. Non-attainment is "the unattainable" (ultimate emptiness, no own-nature), not "non-existence"; the emptiness of the vow's nature is precisely the guarantee that the vow is not reified, and therefore not exhausted—not a pretext for abolishing it. Wherever a draft or a line of thought slips into the tone of "since it is empty, there is no need to vow," the direction has been reversed, and must be corrected on the spot.

❌ The vow-side three spheres are a structural projection, not a scriptural quotation. As this paper has repeatedly stressed: in the prajñā sūtras and treatises, the verbatim formula of "the emptiness of the three spheres" is found only on the giving face (giver / receiver / gift). The vow-side triad of "vower / vowed-for / vow" is an explicit projection this paper makes by analogy with the giving face, supported by the two hard canonical proofs of the Vajracchedikā—"no being is really liberated" and "no dharma whatever arouses bodhicitta." It is never a quotation that runs "the sūtra says the vower is unattainable." Readers, and those who cite this paper later, must not mis-transmit this contemplation as a scriptural proof that does not exist. A projection is a legitimate doctrinal extension; a pseudo-citation is a breach of scholarly integrity; the two must be kept strictly apart.

⚠️ Arousing the mind is not wishing, not manifestation. What this paper means by "arousing the mind to become a Buddha" and "arousing the supreme vow" is arousing bodhicitta (bodhicittotpāda)—the root setting-out toward awakening and all beings. It resembles, but is in fact unlike, the manifestation thinking fashionable today—"making a wish," the "vision board," "placing an order with the universe." That kind of thinking presupposes a self bent on realizing its own desires, a personal goal to be cashed in—exactly what prajñā works to loosen; whereas the deepest point of arousing bodhicitta is "non-attainment," the setting-down of even the self that would collect the harvest. In reading "vowing in non-attainment," one must never demote it to a more sophisticated technique for getting one's wishes fulfilled.

⚠️ The many faces of the Vajracchedikā. The Vajracchedikā is a sūtra drawn upon, again and again, by several gates of this project. The giving gate has taken its face on giving; the precept gate has taken its face on the sign-less precept;¹² this paper takes, strictly, only its face on "arousing bodhicitta / the vow to liberate beings"—that is, the bodhicitta-arousing context of the lines cited above, "liberating all beings yet no being really liberated" and "give rise to the mind without dwelling anywhere." Three gates take three different facets of one sūtra, each not restating the handling of the others; the reader must not, on seeing the Vajracchedikā cited in all three, suppose that the three are speaking of the same thing.

VI. Conclusion

A précis. The deepest vow is precisely one made in non-attainment. The Vajracchedikā gave its prototype long ago: the bodhisattva arouses the supreme vow to "bring all beings to final liberation," and yet "there is not a single being who has really been liberated," and "no dharma whatever arouses the mind of supreme, perfect awakening"—the vow stands at full draw, while vower, vowed-for, and vow are all unattainable. By analogy with the emptiness of the giving triad, the vow too may be contemplated as a triad; this contemplation does not hollow out the vow's force but dismantles the self that, behind the vow, was quietly bent on collecting the harvest. Nāgārjuna, for his part, pulled the ground out from under "empty, therefore abolish the vow": if emptiness could obstruct the arousing of the mind, emptiness would itself become own-being, a self-contradiction. So seeing the emptiness of the vow's nature does not negate its power—just as seeing the emptiness of sin's nature does not negate the workings of karma. In a single word: with no "vowing I," the vow is inexhaustible; non-attainment is the vow's deepest point, not its cancellation.

A turn for practice. From this follows a loosening of direction. To vow, one need not first shore up, confirm, or thicken the "vowing I," and still less manage the vow into an inner contract of "I pay out, I claim a return." On the contrary: it is precisely after the thought "I am vowing, I am piling up merit" has been gently set down that the vow slips free of the gravity of self-acquisition and returns to its own state—supportless, and yet for that reason inexhaustible. The less the vower keeps the vow on his own ledger, the farther, the longer, and the less calculatingly the vow is made. This is not a call to vow less, but to vow more loosely—loose enough that the vow no longer needs a vowing-self standing behind it to prop it up.

An open question. Yet this paper leaves, at its close, a question not yet answered. We have said: there is no vower, and the vow is inexhaustible. But "inexhaustible" and "non-turning-back" are not the same thing—a stream may run on without end and still be cut off somewhere, seized, or worn back. So this vow, both vowerless and inexhaustible, on what ground can it still not turn back, not be seized by any state or any span of time? If the vow truly has no own-nature, how can a thing without own-nature be spoken of as "non-retrogressing" (avaivartika) at all? This question carries us from "the non-attainment of the vow" toward "the non-turning-back of the vow"—and its working-out must wait for a later paper in this volume, taken up along the thread of the patient acceptance that dharmas are unarising (anutpattika-dharma-kṣānti). Here the signpost only is planted, the road only marked; it is not yet opened.

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References

Primary Buddhist Sources

• Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra (Diamond Sūtra); trans. Kumārajīva (Later Qin), Taishō vol. 8, No. 235.
• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (Commentary on the Great Perfection of Wisdom), by Nāgārjuna; trans. Kumārajīva (Later Qin), Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509.
• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra (passages on arousing the mind and non-attainment); trans. Xuanzang (Tang), Taishō vols. 5–7, No. 220. (The formula "taking non-attainment as skillful means" for arousing bodhicitta is drawn upon by sense, not embedded verbatim.)

Modern Scholarship

• Schechtman, Marya. The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. (Narrative self-constitution.)
• Callard, Agnes. Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. (Aspiration as agency; this paper takes only its agent / subject question.)
• Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. (Reductionist personal identity; non-self yet refusing nihilism.)

Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Taishō no.	Compiler / Translator
Vajracchedikā	Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra	T0235《金剛般若波羅蜜經》Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitāT8, No. 235Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 402 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 8)	trans. Kumārajīva
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 25)	Nāgārjuna; trans. Kumārajīva
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra	T0220《大般若波羅蜜多經(第1卷-第200卷)》T5, No. 220View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vols. 5–7)	trans. Xuanzang

Cross-References

This paper opens Part VII (Vow and Emptiness) of this volume, taking up the close of the preceding part on transference: once even "my merit" has been let go, the question follows—is the "vowing I" still there? It takes the prajñā face of "non-attainment" to argue "vowing without a vower": a supreme vow aroused in a mind of non-attainment, with vower, vowed-for, and vow all empty—no vowing I, and yet the vow inexhaustible. The prajñā source of the three empty spheres and its giving face are treated in this project's giving gate; the apply-to-X paradigm in the precept gate (mirrored in structure, not in precept content); the argument that "emptiness ≠ annihilation / seeing emptiness does not negate dependent arising" in the repentance gate's treatment of non-arising and the Heart Sūtra's emptiness (this paper takes its inverse: seeing the emptiness of the vow's nature does not negate vow-power); and the vow's "incompletability" face in this volume's paper on the four great vows (this paper takes the complementary "vowerlessness" face, not restated). At its close this paper plants a signpost forward: if the vow without a vower is inexhaustible, why does it not turn back?—the difference between "inexhaustible" and "non-turning-back" is left to a later paper in this volume, taken up along the thread of the patient acceptance that dharmas are unarising. Matters of the attainment of bodhi and the alignment of the six gates belong to this series' concluding volume and are not touched here.

Footnotes

1. The immediately preceding paper of this volume, on transference (pariṇāmanā) as the hinge of Samantabhadra's tenth vow. That paper treats transference as the mechanism by which the vow is turned—merit not held as one's own but turned toward beings and toward awakening—and is the direct antecedent of this paper's "setting down even the vowing self." ↩

2. Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra, Taishō vol. 8, No. 235, p. 751a. The passage is taken for its treatment of arousing bodhicitta and the vow to liberate beings—a different face from the giving and precept faces drawn upon elsewhere in this project. ↩

3. Ibid., p. 749c (the passage on adorning Buddha-fields). The line "give rise to the mind without dwelling anywhere" is taken in contrast to "arousing the mind while dwelling on signs," to bring out the sense of a mind aroused yet not moored to its object. ↩

4. The reading "arising without dwelling" is obtained by taking ² and ³ together: the former shows "vowerlessness" (vower, vowed-for, and vow unattainable), the latter shows "giving rise to the mind without dwelling" (vow-power arises, yet does not moor). The two interpret each other, and together form the inner mechanism of "vowing without a vower." ↩

5. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 61, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 668c. Nāgārjuna sets his own challenge—"if all dharmas are ultimately empty, how does one arouse the mind to become a Buddha?"—and answers it with "ultimate emptiness, having nothing whatever, obstructs nothing; how should it stand in the way of arousing the mind to become a Buddha?", sealing the inference "empty, therefore abolish the vow" with the single stroke "if it could obstruct, it would be own-being." This is the load-bearing sentence for the present paper's "emptiness does not abolish the vow." ↩

6. The mirroring of "seeing the emptiness of the vow's nature does not negate its power" with "seeing the emptiness of sin's nature does not negate the workings of karma" is set here as the inverse of this project's repentance-gate treatment of non-arising and the Heart Sūtra's "emptiness." There the key point is "emptiness ≠ annihilation": the own-nature of sin is seen as empty while the dependently arisen working of karmic fruition stands undisturbed; here it is projected as: the own-nature of the vow is seen as empty while the dependently arisen operation of vow-power stands undisturbed. ↩

7. The prajñā source and Nāgārjuna's establishment of the three empty spheres (the giving face: giver / receiver / gift) are set out in detail in this project's giving-gate paper on "from the three spheres as substantial to the three empty spheres"; not restated here, with only its paradigm borrowed for projection onto the vow. ↩

8. The apply-to-X paradigm—carrying "the emptiness of the three spheres" over to one specific practice-gate—is demonstrated for the precepts in the precept-gate paper on "the three empty spheres in the precepts"; this paper mirrors its structure, not its content. ↩

9. See this volume's paper on the four great vows and the incompletability of "beings are boundless." That paper takes "the inexhaustibility of the vowed-for" (the vow never closes); this paper takes "the non-self of the vower" (no one vows, yet the vow still stands); two complementary axes that do not eclipse each other. ↩

10. Agnes Callard's account of "aspiration" was drawn upon, in an earlier paper of this volume, for its face of "self-remaking, the generation of value"; this paper takes a different, narrower angle—aspiration's "agent / subject problem"—marking the difference of angle explicitly and not restating the earlier use. ↩

11. The "non-self yet refusing nihilism" face of Derek Parfit's reductionism is studied in detail, in its bearing on the two truths, in a dedicated paper at this project's repentance gate; this paper borrows only its refusal of the slide from "identity is not what matters" to "therefore nothing matters," as a Western side-witness for "emptiness ≠ annihilation," and does not re-lay its two-truths scaffolding. ↩

12. The Vajracchedikā's giving face is taken in this project's giving-gate paper on the sūtra, and its sign-less-precept face in the precept-gate paper on the sign-less precept; this paper takes its arousing-bodhicitta / vow-to-liberate-beings face—three faces with a division of labor, none restating the others. ↩