Learn to Be Satisfied: The Second Bodhisattva Vow Redux
Photo by svklimkin
Mahayana Buddhists practice The Second Bodhisattva Vow, often translated as: Desires are numberless, I vow to put an end to them. Zuisei offers inspiration for taking up this vow in earnest and insight into the crux of this vow. What does a life lived simply look like?
This talk draws on teachings from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Italian concept of La Bella Figura, and the connection between the finitude of life and the importance of living simply.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
For the past few months we’ve been speaking about vow in general and about the Four Bodhisattva Vows in particular. And I had pending a talk on the second vow: desires are numberless, I vow to put an end to them. So this is that talk, which wraps up this cycle on the vows, although certainly not our study of them, nor our practice and realization.
In the past I’ve spoken about my dislike of the wording of this vow. Of my attempt to “correct” it by changing the second half of the vow to “I vow to liberate them.” And although in general I have no qualms about changing our liturgy if I feel it will bring something to the chant or to the teaching contained in the chant, I didn’t feel quite settled about this particular change. I still like “liberate” better than “put an end” but this is such an important chant in our tradition and this wording is iconic in that I associate it very strongly with my first teacher, Daido Roshi. I didn’t feel quite comfortable leaving on it such an obvious mark of my passing. I don’t know; this particular change felt presumptuous. So I switched it back to the original, and that’s the version that we chant every Wednesday: “Desires are numberless, I vow to put an end to them.”
Now, in Buddhism, desire is the engine of samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death. It’s what causes us to grasp for existence, to want to be, the strongest desire there is. If ignorance is the ground on which our lives are constructed (and by ignorance here we mean our misunderstanding of the way things are; the way things work; and it’s not just ignorance but also delusion—we actively construct a story to explain our misunderstanding. The perfect example of this is when we set out to get something: a promotion, for example. And when we don’t get it, we tell ourselves we didn’t really want it in the first place, how we’re much better off exactly where we are.). If ignorance is the ground, then desire is the topsoil, and in it, all sorts of plants and trees and shrubs grow, some healthy and abundant, some kind of twisted, even poisonous.
Ignorance and desire travel hand in hand. They’re partners in crime. At the same time, we can’t not want. Even the desire to be free of desires is a desire—a good one, but a desire nonetheless. But what we can do, as the Buddha taught in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, his last teaching according to the Mahayana sutras, is to have few desires and to learn how to be satisfied—a teaching I really love and that I’ve spoken of in the past. So tonight I thought I’d speak of it a bit differently.
When I was in Florence some years ago, I learned about La Bella Figura, “the beautiful figure,” a quintessentially Italian way of being and looking at self and world. On the surface it could seem to be about the surface. Italians care very much about how they look and how they appear to others, and la Bella Figura stands in contrast to la Brutta Figura, the ugly figure. The wrong dress, the wrong word, the wrong time or place. It’s a kind of social offense. La Bella Figura is the opposite of that. It’s elegant and graceful, pleasing.
When I was in college, I took Italian for a couple of years, and my professor was Giovanna Calvino, daughter of the writer, Italino Calvino. And Giovanna was doing a PhD in French literature at Penn while teaching Italian to first-year students five days a week. Our professor was always impeccably dressed, whereas the rest of us would go to class in sweats, coming to or from practice (meaning sports) of some kind. And for that first semester, Giovanna did not wear the same clothes twice—at least, that’s the way it seemed to us. On the surface, La Bella Figura could be superficial, elitist, catty even. But think of it more holistically, and then it becomes about living life gracefully, elegantly, and focused on what’s most important. Not unlike Zen
Now and then I do the following thought experiment: if I was told I have only six months to live, what would I tell myself so as not to waste this last little bit of time? The answer is always some version of: spend more time doing the things that you love with the people you love. It’s try something new, learn something you didn’t know, go somewhere you’ve never been. The world is vast and wide, where are you in the midst of this vastness? Are you vast and wide or are you hiding in your broom closet? And let me add that this vastness can be approached two ways—myriad ways, actually. But you can go wide or you can go deep.
There’s a Latvian painter called Vija Celmins who only paints ocean waves or the night sky—drawing after drawing and painting after painting of ocean waves and night sky, and the waves, especially, are so realistic you think she’s taken a photograph. There’s a short interview with her, hunched over an easel in her studio, meticulously scraping paint off a canvas in order to paint stars. A photograph next to her, a brush in her hand, a little bit of oil paint, and time. She’s been painting that one image—about this big [gestures]—for three years. And we get bored just following our breath! A whole universe in the in and out of air from lungs to environment, a whole ocean. A whole universe on that canvas. An entire ocean in her mind.
And she acknowledges that some would find the process tedious, but for her, “It’s kind of like being there,” she says. She is that night sky. She’s not painting stars—she’s painting her heart. She’s painting the sea inside. And in order to do this, in order to do anything worth doing, we have to slow down, we have to be silent and alone for a little while. We have to work with our minds simply yet gracefully. Do you understand? A cluttered mind can’t settle, can’t see what it has. A rushing mind goes from one place to another. It wants to settle but it doesn’t know how. Enter la Bella Figura.
There’s a well-known Roman saying: Mangia bene, ridi spesso, ama molto. Eat well, laugh often, love much. The Zen version could be: Live simply, laugh often, love much. La Sveglia Figura, sveglia being smart or sharp but also awake. So here we come back around to that teaching of the Buddha. Have few desires and Know how to be satisfied. I said “learn how to be satisfied” on purpose. I think the verb needs to be active and ongoing, it needs to be deliberate. The problem isn’t that we have desires but that they run away from us, creating harm inside and outside. To live simply doesn’t mean to have nothing. It means to know what you have and why. It means to know where it came from and where it will go.
I mentioned how keenly aware I was of this as I was putting my possessions into a number of bags that I would need to lug from my apartment, down five flights of stairs, into a car, the airport, another car, and my new place—thankfully with an elevator. Every single one of those things came from somewhere and will end up somewhere—and during its life and mine, we’re intertwined. Well, we’re entwined before and after too, but right now it’s very obvious and therefore my responsibility. How many kitchen implements do I need, how many mugs, how many socks or running shorts or dog toys or books? All the books, of course, all the books. What do we need and how much do we need to live well and gracefully and lovingly? At what point does what we have become a burden instead of a joy?
Of course, not all of life is joyful or elegant or graceful or beautiful. But much of it is, if we know where to look, how to look. It’s not a matter of money—that’s the story we swallow to our and the earth’s detriment. It’s a matter of time and space. It’s a matter of looking and seeing—really seeing—what we stand to lose as we rush by, or as we fight one another. It’s a matter of wanting to see—wanting that more than we want anything we could ever buy, even the most exquisite thing we could dream up for ourselves.
There was once a woman who dreamed she was spinning. She woke up within the dream, spinning at the center of a circle of whirling dervishes. She spun with her arms wide, dervishes flanking her on either side, and with each turn she celebrated her embodiment. She wasn’t nothing, you see, she was something, someone, fully clothed in form and that, my dear friends, is something to be celebrated every moment of every day. And so she did. She spun and spun and she cried as she whirled around, until she caught the eye of a man standing on the edge of the circle. He was smiling and when their eyes locked, he called her over.
The woman stopped her spinning and approached the man, who was suddenly standing next to an endless rack of suits. They were each a different color, and all of them were translucent, like gossamer.
“What are these?” the woman asked.
“They’re beliefs,” the man answered. “Want to try them on?”
And the woman did.
One by one, she put on each suit, and the heaviest of all was the suit of “I am not enough.” She took it off in a hurry and put it back on the rail—what a relief to not be wrapped in that shroud. How wonderful to realize she didn’t have to wear a suit that never fit well. Another suit: “You’re always late” also didn’t fit well but was not as heavy. “Words are gifts” she tried and loved, but she also loved “do what you love on purpose.” On she went, trying on suits, until she got to “Everything is sacred,” and that suit fit so well, so perfectly, that she decided to keep it. She returned to the whirling circle, besuited in sacredness, and eventually spun herself awake, the suit still fitting her perfectly (because it wasn’t a suit, of course, but her own skin, the very fabric of her being).
What if, this same woman asked (her name is Chloe Hope, and she’s a writer who writes about death and birds, together, exquisitely), what if life wants to be seen and loved just as we do? And what if, the more we love it, the more it shows of itself—just as we do?
“When I die,” she says, “I hope to do so having stretched my heart to its very limit. I want my heart to drag itself over the finish line bloodied and battle-worn from having refused nothing—and with its final beat to say, ‘Yes, Death. I will love you, too.’” Which is the same as saying, “Life, I love you completely. Utterly. Holding nothing back.”
Explore further
01 : Nesting by Chloe Hope
02 : Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha translated by Sister Vajira & Francis Story
03 : The Four Bodhisattva Bows: An Impossible Dream by Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
04 : The Second Bodhisattva Vow with Zuisei Goddard