I offer these words first to my self, suffering in samsara, so that these words might lead me back to the path of liberation.
I offer that liberation, and these words that helped to guide me, to immeasurable beings in the spirit of dāna (giving).
In great joy, I dedicate merit resulting from the perfection of giving to immeasurable beings in practice of the Bodhisattva vow in the spirit of śīla (discipline).
With a stainless mind, I dedicate merit resulting from the perfection of discipline to immeasurable beings without attachment to objects of desire or fear in the spirit of kṣānti (patience) .
With great equanimity, I dedicate the merit resulting from the perfection practice patience to immeasurable beings ….
So you wanna get enlightened?
Or, maybe you just want to be as enlightened as you possibly can be.
Perhaps you want to transform your consciousness toward enlightenment.
One practice which is, to my knowledge, the more foremost method of transforming consciousness in this way is the Bodhisattva Vow.
What is a vow?
If enlightenment were a battle, vows would be a weapons.
If enlightenment were a songs, vows would be an instruments.
If mind training is our craft, vows are our tools.
In our unenlightened state we see vows as abstention. Materially, they are abstention, but in developing and surrendering to a vow we release the minds attachment to material objects.
If you vow to abstain from eating meat you will initially experience this as “abstention from meat.” Your mind will expect to eat meat, you will tend to be in situations in which eating meat is more appealing than not, and you will have to expend a lot of additional effort to avoid eating meat.
But a vow is not “abstention from” it is “surrender to.”
The purpose of a vow is to release the mind’s clinging to objects of desire. By surrendering our choices and behavior to a vow we release the minds need to seek out objects of desire and fear.
In doing so, we train the mind to experience reality not by how things can be differentiated into objects of desire and fear. This gives way to an understanding of reality based on how things are the infinitely connected and ultimately the same.
All dharmas (things, ideas, phenomena) are empty.
Without an object of desire or fear, the “I” in the thought “I will” and “I will not” will also cease to arise, as it arises along with the differentiation of the subject of such a thought.
Due to the dependently originated nature of subject and object, of self and other, renunciation (surrendering to a vow) has the power to sever attachment to all dharmas.
Renunciation essentially means simplifying one's mind, one's words, and one's activities, by letting go of what obstructs inner freedom. Constraint creates frustration; renunciation produces a real sense of joy. Renunciation does not mean depriving oneself of what is truly good and useful in life but rather getting rid of unnecessary burdens.
By surrendering to a vow you transcend the material world (samsara) of pleasure and pain. In training the mind to no longer form objects of attachment, you leave nothing to be desired and nothing to be feared.
In other words, emptiness.
I really love this word “stainlessness.”
Think of the mind as a mirror, reflecting what our sense organs experience of true reality. Vowing is the craft of polishing that mirror.
How is the mind stained and how is it polished?
Our entire experience in every moment of our existence leaves impressions on the mind. Those impressions are a subtle form of programming, conditioning our mind to respond to future moments of experience.
Your mind, in this moment, is the accumulation of every moment of experience you’ve ever had. In fact, because you’ve been responding of phenomena this whole time, you mind in this moment is also shaped by the actions of immeasurable beings across space and time. This, to my understanding, is karma (action).
Every moment of experience is mind training, which means that every moment of your life is practice. To the extent that you are find yourself to be an active participant in your own life, you find yourself actively engaged in mind training.
You can’t control the mind. Your thoughts and physical responses to phenomena are conditioned, they are responses, so by the time you take the action to control
The Great Vow
The greatest vow, the inexhaustible vow, the vow that is foremost in the path to enlightenment is the Bodhisattva vow.
It’s how you get enlightened [insofar as there is a you, or enlightenment, or there is ever a getting of anything since there is no you that would be getting things.]
It is a vow used to sever all attachments causing all forms of differentiation in the mind, thus training the mind to be supported by suchness.
If the unenlightened reality we live in is an illusion, the Bodhisattva vow is a “diamond that cuts through all illusions.”
What is the Bodhisattva vow? There are many traditions, many translations, but one of my favorites is:
Beings are numberless; I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them. Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it.
Beautiful.
But for the purposes of mind training, we must learn to compress meaning to something we can call to like a mantra. Here’s some of my favorites:
We’ve got the Heart Sutra.
GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
The whole mantra, literally translated, comes out a bit like this: "Oh awakening that has gone, gone, gone to the further shore, gone completely to the further shore. Amen.”
We’ve got this gem from the Srimaladevi Sutra.
Acceptance of the True Dharma
Personally, I find these words most beautiful. What calls to my mind most gracefully is a single line.
May I Sincerely Practice the Supreme Dharma.
It’s part of a wonderful collection Way of the Bodhisattva currently being used in practice every Wednesday on Well of Being.
This single line comes to me in deep meditation and in the most dire mental states. I practice it as a mantra to strengthen it and keep it close.
May I sincerely practice the supreme dharamThis line also appears in
All of them translate to something like “to seek enlightenment for myself, and for all sentient beings.”
Strengthening the Great Vow
The more you understand a vow, the more it connects with all the relevant parts of life and experience, the stronger and more accessible the vow will be.
The great vow, the Bodhisattva vow, is limitless. I has no bounds, it can be applied to any element of mind in the pursuit of one’s practice.
We should first strengthen the vow through penetrated an understand of its meaning.
to seek enlightenment for myself, and for all sentient beings
How does one seek enlightenment?
The answer the Buddha gave was to practice the paramitas (perfections) in the spirit of the Bodhisattva vow. In other words, they should be practiced such that their results are put to the benefit of others and in a way that releases rather than strengthens attachment to objects.
The paramitas are virtues you practice in your everyday life. Through practicing these virtues we train the mind and transform our consciousness.
Our understanding of reality, the paramitas, and even of our vows transform along with this transformation of consciousness.
At first, we posses a mind supported by ignorance, in that we ignorantly believe what we fear and desire exists in things and ideas, when in truth these objects of fear and desire arise in our own minds. We seek out these objects, differentiating them from the infinite true reality of existence.
We can empty objects of their meaning by understanding each object as the accumulation of causes and conditions so vast that all objects can be understood as being dependently originated. This trains our mind to be supported by dependent origination rather than ignorance.
In the resulting transformation of consciousness we can see all dharmas are equally and universally empty of inherent meaning and the mind no longer has a strong need to differentiate.
In penetrating the emptiness of emptiness, that emptiness is the dualistic opposite of infinite and is therefor undifferentiated from it, you can train the mind to accept things as they are rather than being dependently originated. In this transformation you develop a mind supported by suchness (tathata).
This is the final transformation of consciousness, the “third turning of the Dharma wheel.” A being that abides in a mind supported by suchness is called a Tathagata, a “this come one,” a Buddha.