Dharma Talk: Bodhisattva Vows - the heart that longs for the awakening of all

So I'd like to welcome you to this talk with Caspar, and I just wanted to say a few things about them that I appreciate as a way to start as well. I really appreciate Caspar's steadiness, their have something that is very grounded and that holds, that holds over time. I don't really know how else to describe that, which, which also helps to steady other people. And I really appreciate their ability to pull facts and wisdom from various places, from different books and different teachers and kind of bring them all together, and I really appreciate their passion for the Dharma. So I'm going to hand over to them, and they will— they would be displaying all of these qualities, if you're lucky, during this talk. So over to you.

Namaste. Thank you very much. So welcome everybody, welcome online, welcome if you're listening later on YouTube. But this is part of a series of talks on the liturgy, the things that we say in practice. If you want to listen to the talk on the refuges or the precepts, they're up on YouTube now. And this is the one on the Bodhisattva vows. And later in the year, we'll be giving a talk on the three active virtues. In June, I'm speaking about no blame, then Satya will speak about be kind and love everything. So 3 more after this. So the Bodhisattva vows: Innumerable are sentient beings, I vow to save them all. Inexhaustible are deluded passions, I vow to master them all. Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings— no, I've done that wrong. Inexhaustible are deluded passions, I vow to transform them all. Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings, I vow to master them all. Infinite is the Buddhist way, I vow to fulfill it completely. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what a bodhisattva is, where those vows come from, and how they can support us in our spiritual life. But I want to frame it by suggesting that with these vows, with all precepts really, you can take them in two ways. One is as a practice. I am going to try and do these things as a way of moving further along the spiritual path. And the other is as a description of Amida's heart, of Buddha nature, of of self-energy in IFS terms, of the deepest place of compassion in our own heart that already longs for the liberation of all beings. And the value of a description, because we can all describe stuff, right? The value of a description is that it increases our faith because these things are, this longing is a hidden longing in many beings and sometimes in us. When someone tells you that it's there, It can increase your faith. Bodhisattva. What is a bodhisattva? So the word bodhisattva, you've got body or bodhi, which means awake, awakened, awakening, and sattva, which means person. And a translation I saw recently that I liked was a person who is attached to awakening. Look, those two words smoosh together. I'm attached to awakening, like those two words that become one. Because we have the word Buddha that means awakened one, and the bodhisattva is not the same as a Buddha, even though you might think, well, awake person, surely that's a Buddha. Some of you will know the most original meaning of the word bodhisattva referred exclusively to Buddha Shakyamuni's previous lives. So Buddha Shakyamuni, human being, 2,600 years ago in India. A Buddha is someone— one definition of a Buddha is someone that easily and naturally enlightens others. When you go into the field around that Buddha, or pure land is another name for the field around the Buddha, you're more likely to become enlightened. The Buddha doesn't even need to do very much, just the energy of their presence brings other people naturally to enlightenment. And in the Pāli Canon, it suggests The reason the Buddha had this presence, that he was able to, to easily offer that to others, was because he had toiled for many, many lifetimes previously, perfecting each of the virtues. In the Pāli Canon, they have what's called the 10 Perfections, things like patience, loving kindness, compassion, energy. And the story goes that the Buddha spent many lifetimes working on each of those virtues. A whole bunch of lifetimes working on compassion, a whole bunch of lifetimes practicing renunciation, a whole bunch of lifetimes practicing, and so on and so forth, until eventually each one was perfect. And then he would become a Buddha. Now you also, as well as— and in each of those lifetimes he is described as the Bodhisattva until the moment he becomes the Buddha. So a Bodhisattva is somebody who is working to become a Buddha. You also have Arahats. An Arahant is also an enlightened being Arahant means one who has defeated the passions. But in the Theravada Buddhism, in the Pali Canon, they become enlightened, but they don't become Buddhas. There's a difference between a Buddha and an arahant. The Buddha had many disciples who became enlightened, but they didn't become Buddhas in that lifetime. And yet they've defeated the passions, you know, they weren't full of greed, hate, and delusion. But there's some quality of difference, and the difference it suggested is the sort of level of perfection that the Buddha has and the ease at which a Buddha brings other beings into enlightenment. So the arahant, at the end of the arahant's life, when they die, they go to nirvana. They don't have to be born anywhere again in any of the realms. That's the kind of classical view. They just disappear into oneness with the universe, perhaps something really lovely where there's no suffering. Their wisdom is complete, their compassion is complete. They don't need to come back. But the Buddha decided many, many lifetimes ago, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to keep coming back until I perfect all these things and I can help everybody else. And then in the Mahayana, the later traditions of Buddhism, everybody gets to become a bodhisattva. Everybody gets to put off their own enlightenment and come back many, many times to help other living beings. And often, particularly if you look at some of the early Mahayana rhetoric, you get this feeling of like, well, one, we're better than the Theravadans. They used to call them— they didn't use Theravādin, is their, is their own name for themselves. The Mahāyāna Buddhists called them Hinayāna, which means small vehicle. You're the small vehicle, Mahāyāna. We're the big vehicle, we're better. We don't do that anymore. We call them by their own name. And we're better because Partly because we have this bodhisattva ideal that, that all of our monks and nuns are working for the sake of all living beings. They're all putting off their own enlightenment to help everybody. And it's true that in the Mahayana, people do take the bodhisattva vows and enter upon that path where they say, I'm going to put off my enlightenment to help other beings. But is it true that that's more compassionate than the monks and nuns of the Theravada school? If you look at the earliest disciples of the Buddha, the Buddha was teaching compassion to everybody. He didn't say you should all become bodhisattvas, he just said you should all be kind, you should all be loving. The monks and nuns of the Buddha's time weren't cloistered in monasteries like some Christian orders. They would come together for retreats, then they would go out and teach for the sake of all sentient beings. So the flavor of that compassion is in both traditions, really. So I think there's just a little bit of sibling rivalry that happens when you think of how these two different Buddhist traditions speak about themselves. So the first meaning of the bodhisattva— the first meaning of the word bodhisattva is the Buddha's previous lives, and those are collected in something called the Jataka Tales, which are almost like folk stories. They sometimes sound like Aesop's Fables. Rudyard Kipling was inspired by them when he wrote the Just So Stories, like How the Giraffe Got very long necks. Some of them have a bit of that flavor. They're often recited or performed on full moon days or half moon days in Theravada Buddhist countries. Then there— and each of them these days is associated with one of the perfections that the Buddha was learning. So there's a famous story where the— not the Buddha, he's not the Buddha yet— the Bodhisattva jumps into a tiger's mouth to save the lives of of some other vulnerable animals. That's the ultimate act of compassion. And I don't know why you're all not doing that. There's another, and some of them like sound a bit odd to our ears, right? There's quite a well-known story where the Bodhisattva is born as a king. And this is in the age when kings lived for tens of thousands of years. So this king says to his barber, if you ever spot a gray hair, tell me straight away. And the barber's like, sure, I can do that. 84,000 years into this king's life, suddenly the barber spots a gray hair, and he says, my lord, my liege, the gray has begun. And the bodhisattva, the king, says, 'Thank you for telling me. Now I'm going to spend the next 84,000 years as a renunciant.' And he gives up his kingdom, he goes and becomes an ascetic and lives in the forest. And this is supposed to demonstrate the virtue of renunciation, how important it is when we begin to notice impermanence that we give our lives over to the spiritual path and that we give up worldly pleasures. It's supposed to show the importance of that for everybody, and also that the Buddha is a very special figure because the Buddha has completed the— has perfected renunciation. So one of the effects that these stories do have is, is they create, they help create the specialness of the Buddha. My enlightenment, like in some traditions we emphasize, my enlightenment is the same as the Buddha's enlightenment. But here in the very early days, what you see is my enlightenment is not the same as the Buddha's enlightenment. The Buddha is something really, really special. I might be enlightened, but I, I haven't perfected all of these qualities. I don't bring other beings easily to enlightenment myself, so I can't call myself a Buddha. If you're familiar with the Larger Pure Land Sutra, You might notice some echoes here. In the Large Pure Land Sutra, a king becomes a monk, meets a Buddha, and spends many, many lifetimes toiling to create the pure land, perfecting all of the virtues, and then becomes enlightened as Amitābha. So just naming that there's some parallels here between the Buddha's story and all these lifetimes Buddha Shakyamuni had before he became enlightened, before he became a Buddha and created his sangha in this world. And Amida's story, Dharmakara toiling for all those lifetimes before creating his sangha of bodhisattvas in the Pure Land. As I say, in Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva— anyone can become a bodhisattva then and choose to take a vow formally with a teacher to put off their own enlightenment until all other beings are enlightened. That's normally the form that a bodhisattva vow takes. And for most of Buddhist history, right, people believed that they were actually going to be reborn somewhere else. That was taken literally. In the West, we're kind of a bit more vague about that, but that's the context that we're speaking about. And then you get all these stories of bodhisattvas that we know, like Kuan Yin, Manjushri, Taishi Chi, Vajrapāṇi, Vajrapāla. They all take specific versions of these vows. So Medicine Buddha vows to heal everybody before he becomes enlightened himself. You can kind of— that they take, my version of saving everybody is going to look like this. And when we become ordained in this tradition, we make a personal vow. We don't say it as a bodhisattva vow that I won't become enlightened unless I complete these things. But we do often speak about our personal engagement with the Dharma. This is going to be the way. If Medicine Buddha wants to heal everybody, if Kwan Im wants to hear all the cries in the world, if Manjushri wants to cut through delusion, what is my particular gift to the world? And again, you can take that through the window of a description or as a vow. So really tuning in and noticing What is it that I have to offer? What's the, the quality of being that I can offer to others that will help them in their spiritual practice? Because it's not the same for everybody. You know, Satya mentioned my steadiness, but for some people it would be like that they lead from the front and they're really enthusiastic and sort of beings fall in line behind them and, and are really joyful. And for some people it will be, uh, I'm going to offer my quietness and people can come to me and I'll really attend to them and receive them and tune into how they're doing. Some people might often— and you see this in, in Japanese Buddhism, right, the sort of Manjushri sword style of Buddhism— it's like, no, it's not like that, it's like this, uh, very disciplined. And that can be a real offering to the world as well. And each of you will have your own way of being, the, your own version of enlightenment that will help all other beings. Um, and we might like to pretend it's something else. If our gift is quietness, we might have parts that really want to be the one that stands at the front and, and is dramatic. But actually, uh, and there can be some benefit to trying that out, right? And growing a little bit.. But my sense is, you know, really let's tune into what is true for us. Medicine Buddha was a healer. Kwan Yin was moved by the cries of the world. Manjushri's sword cut through his delusion. Not what does part of me want to do, but what is really deeply true. What, what is my, what is the quality of my offering? That I can offer to the world, that I can help other beings find their own bodhisattva hearts? That's a little question for you. I want to say something about the words that we say in practice. Um, these were created by I won't say this right. Ji Yi, who was the founder of Tendai Buddhism, Tiantai Buddhism, which was a, a, a big school of Buddhism in China in the 6th century. And it, it was one of the Buddhist traditions that came to Japan when Buddhism came to Japan. And by the Middle Ages in Japan, it had become the most popular form of Buddhism. It's based on the lotus sutra. That's the thing that they really held up as the highest Buddhist text. It's the tradition that Honen was ordained in, it's the tradition that Shinran was ordained in, it's the tradition that Dogen and Nichiren were ordained in. Like, it was the, it was the most common school of Buddhism in Japan at that time. And so the idea of a bodhisattva vow existed already. Both with the Buddha's life story, but also with these mythical bodhisattvas that were around. You know, in the Lotus Sutra, there are stories of bodhisattvas. There's Kuan Yin's story, there's Gādgarbhasattva, the stuttering bodhisattva who makes a vow to appear in whatever form is needed to enlighten the other person. But Zhiyi said, oh, I'm going to formalize this, I'm going to write something that we can all take together, or say together, have as part of our practice. And he wrote two different versions down, and they're both based on the Four Noble Truths. That's the way that he came to it in his mind. Those who have not yet been ferried over to enlightenment, I will ferry over. And he said, this is— this comes from being moved by seeing how much suffering there is in the world. If I see how much suffering there is, naturally I want other people to become enlightened. I want them to become free from suffering just because I'm a human being. So that's based on the First Noble Truth. Those who have not yet understood, I will help them understand. That's the Second Noble— based on the Second Noble Truth, Samadaya, which tells us that when we encounter suffering, we have a reaction that leads to craving or to aversion that causes more suffering for us. Understanding that cycle, helping others to understand that cycle. Those who have settled themselves, those who have not settled themselves, I will cause them to be settled. This is about The third noble truth, Nirōdha. Oh, there is something you can do instead of craving. You can become mindful, or you can have faith in Amida, we would say. Those who have not attained nirvāṇa, I will cause them to attain nirvāṇa. That's based on the Eightfold Path. I will help beings step onto the Eightfold Path. And the second version is the version that we say in practice. 'Innumerable are sentient beings, I vow to save them all.' Or as it's translated here, 'Sentient beings limitless in number, I vow to ferry over.' And, and for me, I like knowing those little bits of history. Oh, it's this guy who created Tendai Buddhism, and he was thinking about the Four Noble Truths. But more broadly, we can see he was thinking about what If I'm a person who knows about the Buddhist path and I see somebody else suffering, naturally I want to help them out. And this is just a formulation, as I say, it's a description of our natural heart's longing for the liberation of all living beings. From a Pure Land point of view, we often talk about like the more deeply I see my own Bambu nature The more sympathy I have for other people's bongbu nature. That can also be seen as a version of the Bodhisattva vows, or a kind of a way into the Bodhisattva vows. I know that I'm suffering. This is the way that I suffer. I guess that you suffer in a similar way. I found faith in Amida. That's really transformed my life. I'd like you to find faith in the Buddha that works for you. Maybe not Amida, maybe, you know, Amoghasiddhi. But I want you to find enlightenment in the way that I know I will find enlightenment when I'm reborn in the Pure Land. So the reason we say these in practice is because we don't always feel that, right? Sometimes like, well, I know I'm suffering, but I don't care about your suffering, I just want to feel better. Or I can see you're suffering, but you're also really pissing me off because you're suffering in a way that is disturbing me and I just really need some quiet now. Or whatever it happens to be. Well, I'm suffering and you're suffering, but these two ways of suffering aren't compatible and we're making each other worse. My suffering involves me shouting a lot, you're shouting back at me. That's not, uh, that's not living from the bodhisattva vow, right? So we say them in practice to remind ourselves, oh, there is another possibility here, that you can, uh, there's another place in your heart that isn't just selfish, that is softer and kinder and more compassionate. And saying these words can help you Remember that. And maybe the next time I'm pissed off about somebody else's suffering, or I'm just wrapped up in my own suffering, I can remember, oh, this is how it is for others as well. And with that thought comes a softening. And then, oh, and actually I know something about— the Buddha said he taught suffering and an end to suffering. Like, oh, I've heard something about an end to suffering. Maybe there's a way I can help this person experience that as well. And that takes some skill, right? Which is why it took many, many lifetimes for the Buddha to become a Buddha. Because it isn't just that you go, have you tried meditating? You'll feel better. Why can't you put the things in the dishwasher away? I think probably you should just do some more meditation. There's some skill involved in helping others along the path. It's why we have the Ministry Training Program. But it comes from that heart of deep compassion. Just want to name some other places the bodhisattva shows up. Um, in the Larger Pure Land Sutra, when Dharmakara makes his vow that any being that calls on my name can be reborn in my pure land, that's a bodhisattva vow. Says I, because all of the vows in the Large Pure Land are framed, are framed as bodhisattva vows. I won't become enlightened unless these conditions are true. I won't become enlightened unless any being that calls on my name with faith in their heart can be reborn in my pure land. So Dharmakāra is putting off his own enlightenment until he knows that he's in a place to help all other sentient beings. So not only as pure land Buddhists, not only can we be moved to become bodhisattvas ourselves, But we also think of ourselves as the one on the receiving end of somebody else's bodhisattva vow. The Buddha's heart, moved by the compassion of the bodhisattva, moved by seeing our suffering— and not just our suffering, but our greed, our aversion, our delusion, the way that we hurt ourselves, the way that we hurt others— offers us something, offers us a path out of that suffering and into the Pure Land. So sometimes we're the bodhisattva, sometimes we're the person the bodhisattva is supporting. The other vow in the Larger Pure Land Sutra that's important for bodhisattvas is the 22nd vow. Which I'm going to read, if that's okay. If when I attain Buddhahood, bodhisattvas in the Buddha lands of other directions who visit my land should not ultimately and unfailingly reach the stage of becoming a Buddha after one more life, may I not attain perfect enlightenment apart from those who wish to teach and guide sentient beings in accordance with their original vows. They will wear the armor of great vows, accumulate merit, deliver all beings from birth and death. They will visit other Buddha lands to perform the bodhisattva practices, make offerings to Buddha Tathagata throughout the 10 directions, enlighten countless sentient beings as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, and establish them in highest perfect enlightenment. Such bodhisattvas transcend the practice of ordinary bodhisattvas, manifest the practices of all the bodhisattva sages, and cultivate the virtues of Samantabhadra. So what this speaks to is the idea that when you're born into the Pure Land, you might only have one more lifetime to go yourself before you reach nirvana. Then you don't have to come back, which for some beings is really attractive, right? They think, I don't want to be a human again, that sucked. Um, but the— but, but Amida Dharmakara is saying, when I become Amida, I will— anyone that wants to, I will support them to be bodhisattvas. So they will leave my pure land, they will go to other pure lands and make offerings to Buddhas, but they will also enlighten other beings wherever they go. So, so this speaks again to this kind of movement of, of sometimes like we start as a bambu being, maybe we take a bodhisattva vow, we're lifted by Amida into the Pure Land where we can become enlightened very quickly and never have to come back again. Or we can choose to remain bodhisattvas or become bodhisattvas and come back into the world carrying some of that quality of the pure land to help other beings. Now classically, as I said, for most of Buddhist history, Buddhists believed in rebirth after death, and that was a story that played out across many lifetimes. But we can also imagine that it plays out across a single lifetime, and sometimes even a single day, right? In the morning, I'm feeling really like a foolish being. I'm grumpy, I'm tired, I maybe I had bad dreams. I wake up, I'm going to have an argument with somebody. And then I perhaps I say my morning Nembutsu. I light a stick of incense, I light the candle, sit in front of the shrine, get my mala out. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. My heart opens, the presence of the Buddha appears, something softens in me. I feel like I'm in the Pure Land. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Maybe I move back into the world. I might not even be thinking Oh, I want to help other beings who are suffering. In fact, it's probably better if I'm not actively thinking that, cuz that's when the ego starts to get involved. I come back into the world and having had my taste of the pure land, rather than having an argument with somebody, some of that radiance spills off me into the space that I'm in. People around me maybe soften a little bit or smile or cheer up.. And there's just a little bit of reduction in everybody's suffering. Now I'm not saying from that experience that the next person I meet is going to become enlightened, or that I'm going to enlighten countless beings as countless as the sands in the Ganges. But I am saying there's a taste of becoming a bodhisattva after a taste of being in the pure land. And that's another reason these bodhisattva vows are helpful, because they remind us of that movement from the Bambu being to the bodhisattva being reborn in the Pure Land, to the bodhisattva being reborn into this world of suffering. That, that the ripples of our practice spread out into the world, whether we know it or not, affecting other living beings. And that's also true when we're, when we're just being our most bamboo, if you like. Those ripples also spread out into the world. So if we're really serious about reducing suffering in ourself and others, which we will become the more we practice, then naturally we want to practice more because we know the more trust I have in Amida, the more faith I have in the Pure Land, the more tastes I have of the Pure Land, the less suffering I have, the less suffering the people in my life have. The less suffering they have, the less suffering I have. The easier it is for me to see suffering in others and feel moved to support them. I go back into the Pure Land, I come back out, backwards, forwards, always dancing between these two or three positions. The foolish being, the bodhisattva in the pure land, the bodhisattva in this world. And maybe I'll— you can already get a taste of of how I'm approaching, you know, you already get a sense of how I'm approaching the Bodhisattva vows, but I wanna speak a little bit about the, the sort of more about the difference of like practicing them versus allowing them to move you. 'Cause there can be, there is a benefit in just practicing them. Years ago, I, after I finished uni, I spent some time in a Tibetan Buddhist center because it was, the only one I could get to. I didn't drive at the time, and it was within walking distance of where I lived. And I went and stayed there for a week, a sort of personal— which there wasn't like a formal retreat, but it was a personal retreat. So I went to all the, uh, pujas in the morning and the evening. I went to all the public classes, and I also built their website for them that week, uh, and just helped out around the house. And lots of study and lots of silence. And I thought to myself, this week I'm going to practice the bodhisattva vows. It's manageable for a week. It was manageable for a week when I wasn't seeing many people. So, so I would ask myself, before I do this, whatever, whatever I'm about to do, I'm Am I doing this for myself? Am I doing it for the sake of all living beings? And if I felt like I was doing it for myself, I would just adjust, which might mean not doing the thing, or it might mean doing the thing for all living beings. I'm having my soup for the sake of all living beings, cuz if I'm nourished, I can nourish others. I'm building the website for all living beings, not so— not for me to feel good or have all the monks praise me for having built their website. And it was a really lovely week, and it was sustainable for that week because it was just a week and I didn't see many people, and the people I saw were all really lovely. It made it very easy to feel like I was doing things for all living beings. To do it out of that retreat context is a hard practice. It's still a valuable practice, but it's a harder practice. Am I doing things for the sake of all living beings, or am I doing things for myself? Is, is a really good question to work with. And what you find, it's not exactly faking it to make it, but as, as you keep pulling yourself back into doing things for the sake of all living beings, Probably what you find— if you don't find this, then you're a Buddha and you should be— we should swap places. What you'll find is that you fail many times. Even when you're trying to do things for all living beings, you will do something that is selfish, that is greedy or aversive, or you would just fall into blankness or old habits. And then two things can happen in that moment. One is like, you go, oh, I'm such a terrible Buddhist, I failed, look how awful I am, I should be doing these bodhisattva vows, but I can't even, you know, you know, whatever it is, get through lunchtime without being rude to somebody. And another is, oh, look what a terrible person I am. I can't really get through lunchtime without being rude to somebody. But oh, the Buddha is also here. I'm a— Amida made their vows for someone like me who fails in keeping mine. I can be received by the Buddha as somebody fails in keeping the bodhisattva vows. And that can increase my faith in the Buddha. It can increase my faith in the Buddhist path. And actually, in the long run, it means I'm less likely to be rude at lunchtime in the future. I mean, I'm sure I will be again, right? But I'm fractionally— each time I remember the Buddha, you know, as Shinran says, we say in the Statement of Faith, the ice melts a little bit into water. The ice of greed, hate, and delusion melts into the water of enlightenment, I'm a little bit less likely to be rude at lunchtime in the future. So that's the value in trying. And you might not want to do that all day, every day, but, but actually to give yourself a week of going, oh, I'm just going to really no, no, frame my life through this window of the Bodhisattva vows and see what happened. That can be a good practice to do. And the other way, the kind of, um, the, the taking them as a description is an invitation, as I said right at the beginning, to pay attention to, okay, how does the feeling— where does the feeling of a bodhisattva arise in me? Both with that question I asked you, like, well, what is my particular offering that I can make at this time? But also just what is it that moves me, noticing when I'm moved by the suffering of myself or others, and noticing when that isn't true. And when it isn't true, knowing that it could be true, that there is this deeper bodhisattva heart underneath there. Because, you know, we all have a karmic affinity for Buddhist practice. We all have a karmic affinity to the Pure Land. That's why we're here. We're all We may not think of ourselves as bodhisattvas or of having taken bodhisattva vows formally, but to go back to the meaning, that lovely translation of the world, we are all now attached to awakening. We've all said the Nembutsu. So we know that whether we can clock it or not, the heart of the bodhisattva is in there somewhere, the longing to save all sentient beings is in there somewhere. And, and just knowing that can help bring it to the surface. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I'm going to stop there. Thank you, everybody. Uh, so I'm going to stop the recording, and then there's time if anybody has any comments or questions.