The Second Bodhisattva Vow
Photo by Saad Chaudhry
This talk explores the second Bodhisattva Vow: Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them.
Zuisei explains that this vow is not about suppressing what is pleasurable; rather, it asks us to look at how we cling to our desires and in turn create suffering for ourselves and others. This vow calls us to let go of conditioning that makes us feel separate, and instead to focus on our shared humanity so we can work toward building a just and equitable world.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is lightly edited for clarity.
Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them. This is the second bodhisattva vow. The original version of vows ties them to Four Noble Truths:
I vow to enable people to be released from the truth of suffering.
I vow to enable people to understand the truth of the origin of suffering.
I vow to enable people to peacefully settle down in the truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering.
I vow to enable people to enter the cessation of suffering, that is, nirvana.
The first noble truth of suffering is to be understood. The second noble truth of the root/origin of suffering is to be abandoned. The third noble truth of the cessation of suffering is to be realized. The fourth noble truth of path to cessation of suffering is to be developed.
The second noble truth of the root/origin of suffering is to be abandoned. But what does that mean? What does it mean to relinquish all desires? Put an end to them? Is that even possible? Is it desirable? Would I still be human, if I didn’t have desires? Or would I be like a machine, cold and unfeeling? Will I be indifferent, uncaring? What if, all your life you’ve been told desires are bad? Wanting what you want is bad? Is this vow just more of the same? Does it encourage you to suppress, to deny, to sublimate? The quick answer, the easy answer—in a sense—is “No, it doesn’t.” This vow is speaking about kleshas, afflictions. It’s speaking about ways we create our own suffering and is saying we can let go of this clinging.
But when you set about practicing these vows, it’s not so easy, is it? So clear? We have all felt sensual desire, for example, lust, desire for pleasure. Is it always to be avoided, is it always to be let go of? Another way of asking this is, is sensual desire an affliction, by definition? In the sutras it is, sutras which were written by and for celibate monastics. Even so, can we see and practice desire in such a way that it’s not an affliction?
Bread table, 4th piece: Watching a desire arise and fall away, some desires, is what I want, really what I want, or is it a stand-in for something else? Something I think I can’t want, or can’t have? Every once in a while desire matches reality, incredibly satisfying. But these are extremely rare, our desires are fickle, momentary, changing. Mahasi Sayadaw: noting, wanting, wanting, wanting. Slow down and get quiet.
I think we would all agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with desire per se, after all, there is the desire to awaken, to help, to serve. And it is a desire, but what about other desires? Aren’t they natural too? The desire to be loved, to be wanted, to love and to want in turn? Desire for well being, for health, for some comfort? Then what is the problem? How do they become afflictions? How do they become blinding? How do they become harmful, deadly even?
What leads someone to kill fifty people in cold blood? To say, in effect, to them: “What you want is wrong, what you are is wrong?—and I’m going to do something about it,” I’m simplifying it, actually; his motives were many and complex, but he was essentially saying, “You do not matter or rather, you matter only insofar as you’re a means to fulfillment of my desires, my desire for retribution, desire to make a statement and a mark, my desire to correct a wrong, what I perceive as a wrong.”
And we can see this as happening to someone else in one way, this is how we cope. If we felt intimately the suffering of all beings, we wouldn’t be able to bear it. Being able to distance ourselves protects us from the pain. But distance is a double-edged sword, that can lead to disregard, denial, apathy. Can let us say, “That’s not me, I would never do that.”
Not implying we’re all killers, but we do have the capacity to turn another into an object and therefore dispensable. We do this all the time, in small and large ways.
A student asked Dalai Lama’s views on homosexuality. He used to say it was plain wrong. Now he says it’s okay among individuals, but that in Buddhism it is still considered wrong, because it is not for procreation.
Aptly pointed out: gay people internalize a lot of homophobia. What if your identity is based on difference of desire? And you’re still being told it’s wrong, at best, at worst, you’re being wiped out.
How are we to understand abandoning the root of suffering in this context? How do not turn hatred and aggression into self-hatred, whether this is based on gender, sexual orientation, race or age? Which, like it or not, shape our identity.
And it’s not enough to say we’re all one, there’s no race, no class, no inequality. From an absolute perspective that’s true but we don’t live in the absolute.
How do we then not use this self-hatred, conditioned and internalized, to further deny our desires, or to even acknowledge that we have them?
Unfortunately, dealing with it through email, discussing whether we should discuss it, I was unintentionally dismissive. In my mind I was thinking, “Who cares what the Dalai Lama or the Pope or anyone else thinks? I have my life and I’m living it the way I think,” is not only best but also loving and affirming. (read back through the exchange) I was also preoccupied with something else I needed to tell the group, so I didn’t “see” the student or their concern at all, just thinking about me.
This is how we turn desire into suffering. All you see is yourself and your want, you can’t see the other. You don’t see them as a person, they become a tool, a tool to fulfill your own want. There is no other except in relationship to you, what they can give you. When I see that this is what I do, it’s painful, but not seeing it is worse, because then it’s easy to believe that there are others out there who are not you, pieces in the puzzle of your life. They’re there to fulfill your needs.
Remember when Shugen Sensei said George Zimmerman, at the moment he was shooting Trayvon Martin, was not seeing Trayvon, he was seeing his mind? This is what prejudice thrives on: a selective blindness. More active than that, it’s an erasure of the other, a narrowing down of focus, a projection of me onto the environment. This is not what we mean by identity.
Bikkhu Nananda: “Taking the elements to be the self is misappropriation of public property.” Dongshan: “Wherever I look, I see it, but it is not me.” It is not me and it is not other either. Then what is it?
What makes someone like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, stand on the floor, talking for almost 15 hours straight to get both parties to agree to even consider legislation for more stringent gun control? Did he lose someone to violence himself? Or did he just care? Does he understand that when a group of children dies, when a group of young adults dies, when a group of adults who are in church dies, as happened yesterday a year ago in Charleston, we all die a little also, or a lot.
There’s a simile in Buddhism, of four horses that are like four kinds of students:
A horse that goes at shadow of whip is like someone who awakens to the question of life and death when they hear of death in another village.
A horse that moves only when the whip breaks skin is like someone who acts when they see death in their own village, own circle.
A horse that moves when whip touches bone is like someone who awakens when a family member dies.
A horse that goes only when whip breaks into the marrow is like someone who waits until they’re dying to wonder about life and death.
Daido: The fifth horse is just dead, they never really get it.
What does it take to get us to wake up to the truth of suffering? The Buddha said that not understanding the truth of suffering, its root, its cessation and the path is like a precipice, steep and frightful. It is like riding in a car, pedal to the floor, windshield facing the void and everyone in the car drinking soda, munching on chips, and watching a movie.
This is a question I’ve asked before, how do you see what you do not see?
Seeing and being seen is my story, regarding another, whether that’s a person or thing or both, because, like the monk in one of the koans, I recognize that “this is where I must apply effort,” but also because I think it’s the foundation for all of our work. We can’t be intimate with something we don’t see, it’s impossible, and we can’t see the other when all we have in front of our eyes is ourselves, so how do we see what we cannot see? I believe we have to be willing to get messy, get hurt. I believe we have to do what is very difficult to do, and that is to not protect ourselves because that shield is a cover for the arrows coming in, but is also an effective barrier which limits my vision outward. In brief, we have to be willing to meet and be met by another, which can be tender.
Thich Nhat Hanh says:
However inexhaustible the states of suffering are, I vow to touch them with patience and love.
However varied and unending my afflictions, I vow to meet them gently, patiently and lovingly, I vow to not turn away from them. I don’t know about you but I find this quite difficult to do. I would much rather dispatch them quickly. Thankfully I have someone helping me to slow down, to stay with what is difficult to stay with.
It’s also valid, important and necessary to get help along the way, to allow someone to help you witness what feels, at times, unbearable.
Before we can abandon anything, before we can let it go, we must take it up, examine it from all sides. We must know our desires in and out. We must allow ourselves to feel them, to have them, not be afraid of them. Please, I’m not saying, go out and do what you want, “Zuisei said…” I’m saying what the original wording of this vow says:
I vow to enable people to understand the truth of the origin of suffering.
I vow to understand my desire, so that I may be free of it. Not that I may not feel it, but that I may enlighten it, self-liberate it.
Let me humbly offer another version of this vow: Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to regard them fully and respectfully. Which is perhaps not different from saying, I vow to meet myself and I vow to meet you, fully and respectfully.
I vow to not turn people into categories.
I vow to not divide things into useful and disposable.
I vow to not let my life unfold at the cost of your life.
I vow to not use you…
I vow to not use you. See, most of us will not take a gun into a movie theater or a church or a school or a club or take a flying plane or a bomb and kill a group of people, but we have all, at one time or another, used someone for our purposes.
This second bodhisattva vow is saying, I will not do that anymore. “I will see you fully, as a being who never fails to fill the ground upon which it stands,” as Master Dogen said.
I will see you as a being worthy of my respect, my reverence, my regard.
I will see you as male or female, gay or straight, black or brown or white or any other shade.
I will see you as young or old, sick or ill.
I will see you with all your qualities, your properties, your karma, your appearance. And I will know that none of them are you.
And most importantly, that you are not a threat to my existence. That I don’t need to attack you or possess you or co-opt you or brainwash you. That I can let you be you and you can let me be me because I realize that we are the same and I accept that we are different.
In other words, I will not hide behind the dharma of oneness and pretend that if we work hard enough to realize it, one day we’ll all get along.
Parmenides: “Nothing comes from nothing. All things arise together or not at all.”
Not taking that fourth piece of bread may seem insignificant in the scheme of things. but not if you’re the CEO of Monsanto and your view is that you’ve earned everything you’ve got and too bad if others go without—that’s not your problem. Not if what you’re acquiring is the product of exploitation.
The practice of oryoki, just the right amount, is profound and it doesn’t just operate during sesshin or during a meal. Its application, its reach is vast. It would transform our world if we all practiced it.
What do I actually need? What do I want? How does this affect you? These are some of the questions we can ask. This is just a beginning, of course, but you can’t travel a path without taking that first step, can you? Easy to think, “I’m in a bubble here at the Monastery, so disconnected. What can I do?”
Someone said to me, best thing we can do for others is live our lives as well as we can. Well yes, but we can’t do that by ignoring others, pushing them out of the way. Whether here or somewhere else, we can always turn towards rather than away from, we can always do that.
Explore further