The Four Bodhisattva Vows: An Impossible Dream
Note: This article appears in Tricycle online. For additional instruction on the Four Bodhisattva Vows, you are encouraged to reach out to Zuisei for a Private Teaching. You can also explore Zuisei’s dharma talk The Four Bodhisattva Vows as well as Zuisei’s five-part series of dharma talks on the vows beginning with The First Bodhisattva Vow.
Many years ago, I was discussing the Four Bodhisattva Vows with a fellow dharma practitioner, and feeling a little put upon by whatever conflict we were having at the monastery where I lived, I said something along the lines of: “I’m not quite sure how I ended up as a monk. I so often don’t want to deal with people.”
“But, you make those vows every night…” she said, frowning. “How did you think you were going to save all beings without dealing with them?”
“Well,” I answered, “I didn’t think that part through.”
We laughed, but in a sense it was true. I’d chanted the Four Bodhisattva Vows every night for years, but when I’d first heard them—and for a good long while after that—I didn’t consider them with the careful attention they deserved. If I’d had, I might have run for my life—just as a newcomer to the monastery had done when she’d first heard them. She’d joined us for our morning program one Sunday, and after listening to the dharma discourse, sat open-mouthed as we chanted:
Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them.
Desires are inexhaustible; I vow to put an end to them.
The dharmas are boundless; I vow to master them.
The buddha way is unattainable; I vow to attain it.
Do these people hear what they’re saying?! she thought, and as soon as we were done, she ran to her car and drove away, not to return to the monastery for another twenty years.
What prompts anyone to make vows that are essentially impossible? Are we Buddhists well-meaning but quixotic, benevolent though wishful? Daido Roshi, my first teacher, felt it was the very impossibility of the vows that made them so powerful.
“Sentient beings are numberless—it’s impossible to save them all!” he’d yell from the teacher’s high seat, the long sleeve of his pale green robe billowing as he gestured with his teaching stick.
There are eight billion people on the planet and trillions more sentient beings demanding our care and respect. How can we hope to save them all? What does it even mean to save them? We can’t protect ourselves or others from sickness, old age, or death. We cannot take away others’ suffering. What are we vowing to do, therefore, when we make this vow?
“Desires are inexhaustible—we can’t possibly put an end to them,” Roshi would say, his voice getting louder and more insistent as he revved up.
Desire feeds desire. There’s no end to unexamined, unchecked, uncurbed want. But even if we’re able to temper our craving, what do we do with wholesome desires like the wish for nourishment, for love, for awakening? Are all desires created equal? And what does it mean to put an end to them? Is that even a desirable goal?
“You can’t put a frame around the dharma,” my teacher would continue, leaning forward in his seat and glaring at us over the top of his glasses. “Can’t do it.”
All the many teachings that describe all the many ways in which phenomena (also called dharmas) behave and interact are only scratching the surface of reality. What we don’t know vastly exceeds what we do. How can we possibly dream of framing, understanding, what is by nature ineffable?
“The Buddha Way is unattainable—by definition,” here, Roshi’s voice would drop a notch, anticipating his talk’s crescendo. Many of us had heard the exact same speech before, but it was still thrilling. Roshi knew how to put on a show to make a point.
A buddha isn’t made, this vow says. A buddha is realized, which means we don’t practice to become buddhas; we practice as the expression of our buddhahood. The Buddha Way is indeed unattainable because it isn’t something we lack. It’s impossible, inconceivable, unimaginable to think that we’d ever get anything out of the path.
“I can’t possibly attain the way!” Roshi would now bellow, “and yet, I vow to do it—impossible as it is! An impossible dream!” Cut to: the first stanza of “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha, Roshi’s baritone filling the zendo.
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go…
“This is impossible!” he’d say in conclusion. “So if you’re hanging on to any sense of hope, forget about it! There is no hope! But a bodhisattva doesn’t need hope—a bodhisattva has vow!”
The measurable, the attainable or containable is not where we’ll find liberation. We need the vows to be this vast, this limitless, so we can aspire and practice limitlessly. I call this the macro version of the Four Bodhisattva Vows, which expands our view and then asks us to catch up to it in our living.
If every being, every thing, every want, every truth, every path and every means is contained in us (and it is), then there’s nothing to reach for, nothing to attain. Instead of turning outward for validation or accomplishment, we turn inward, recognizing that we’ll never find what we seek. Why? Because it’s our seeking that prevents us from seeing that we already are and have what we need.
On the other hand, it’s helpful to have a more focused view of the bodhisattva path to guide our day-to-day actions. This is the micro version of the vows, which presents us with clear instructions for practice in real time.
However innumerable beings are, I vow to meet them with kindness
and interest.
However inexhaustible the states of suffering are, I vow to touch them
with patience and love.
However immeasurable the dharmas are, I vow to explore them deeply.
However incomparable the mystery of interbeing, I vow to surrender
to it freely.
This translation is Thich Nhat Hanh’s, and it’s both grounded and feasible—a relief, almost, after the extravagant first rendering. But what the first version lacks in practicality, it makes up for in aspiration. What the second lacks in mystery, it balances with functionalism. The macro version pushes us to get large—so large that we realize that we are boundless. It’s aspirational. The micro version offers us direction for the path. It’s actionable. We may not know what it means to save someone, but we can certainly meet them with kindness. We can practice patience and love in the face of our wants. We can be willing to learn what we don’t yet know, and not assume even what we think is given. We can open to the mystery of this life and trust in its wisdom, which isn’t different from our own. Macro and micro: two different views for one realization of a life well and wisely lived.
Like progressive lenses, these two versions of the vows provide us with the optical power that we need to see and act most clearly and skillfully. Together, they bring into focus a world that is both vast and minute, mysterious and ordinary, inconceivable and accessible.
To wake up from the dream of samsara is indeed a daunting task and still, every day, millions of people vow to do it. So maybe there is a little of the quixotic in us Buddhists, a little of the extravagant and impractical. But given that reason hasn’t helped us solve the persistent question of how to live well together, I say let’s put our money on idealism.
*Photo by Forrest Cavale
