Pāli RootsThe Vow in the ĀgamasThe Vow as PerfectionThe Four Great VowsThe Original Vows of AmitābhaSamantabhadra's Conduct-VowsThe Vow and EmptinessAttaining Bodhi
62
Part 2 · The Vow in the Āgamas
Vow · 2 papers
Part One set the vow's root: it is the arousing that turns the whole direction of a life around, and the arousing itself does not retreat. But that scene is far away, and high—meas[ from the book's part intro ]
論Study the papersfootnotes · abstracts
04Chanda, Not TaṇhāEach year's turning, the world teaches us to "ignite your desire" and pin our wishes to a vision board. The Dharma does not ask whether one's aspiration is strong enough; it asks one thing: once this "wanting" reaches its object, does it go out, or does it generate the next wanting? This paper argues that the will on which the bodhisattva's vow rests is not craving (taṇhā) but wholesome desire (chanda); the two differ not in the intensity of the will but in the object toward which desire is turned. Taking as its ground the Saṃyuktāgama's discourse 561 (parallel to Saṃyutta Nikāya 51.15)—"in dependence on desire, craving is cut; once craving is cut, that desire too subsides"—the paper argues that wholesome desire is bounded: it takes its own cessation as its terminus, the only desire whose aim is desirelessness. Craving, by contrast, is boundless: it increases once gratified, propagates itself, and is never exhausted. Through fascicle 21 of the Yogācārabhūmi, which sets wholesome desire and the craving for existence (bhava-taṇhā) as two poles within a single fascicle, and through the discrimination of two desires in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, the paper establishes that the vow is not the projection of desire onto a future, but the structural arousing that turns the whole of the will toward awakening.05The Directed and the UndirectedAspiration (paṇidhi) is, in the Āgamas, not a grasping set against liberation but a continuous spectrum. Drawing principally on the Chinese Āgamas, with the Pāli Nikāyas as reference, this paper argues that "aspiration" names the mind's inclining-toward and resolving-upon some object: it rises from wishing kinfolk a good rebirth and aspiring to the heavens all the way up to aspiring for stream-entry and, finally, to the liberation of mind through the destruction of the taints. Throughout, the very mind that aspires—the recurring "may I…"—never changes; only the object aspired-to changes, and that object climbs rung by rung. When what is aspired-to rises to nibbāna, the structure of "seeking" begins to loosen of itself: the Saṃyuktāgama marks the turn with the line that for one who grasps nothing there is nothing sought, and for one who seeks nothing nibbāna reveals itself. The spectrum's highest rung is the "undirected" (appaṇihita) among the three doors of liberation (vimokkha-mukha): the mind no longer inclines toward any becoming. This paper holds that the undirected is neither the abandonment of aspiration nor a cold emptiness, but aspiration aspired all the way to where no further aspiring remains—taking "no longer inclining toward any becoming" as the very thing toward which it inclines. The paper closes by setting a signpost to one question—how the undirected and the original vow (praṇidhāna) can coexist—reserved for later in this volume.Same part, two ways in — papers keep the scholarly apparatus; the book is continuous prose for reading. Same source.