Questioning the bodhisattva vow
Dedicating your life to benefiting all sentient beings: What does that mean?
One version of the bodhisattva vow:
From now, as long as space endures,
As long as there are sentient beings to be found,
May I continue also to remain here,
To drive away the sorrows of the world.
What can such a vow imply for us, here & now, practically speaking?
Pema Chödrön’s book Living Beautifully With Uncertainty and Change explains three levels of Buddhist vows: lay, bodhisattva, and tantric. Her presentation is extremely non-traditional. It’s simple, down-to-earth, and practical. But are any of these vows ones you personally might want to take?
Yé-tsal Khandro and I will facilitate a group discussion of the book for Evolving Ground members. We’ll have six monthly sessions, starting February 15th, a week from today.
Your relationship with the bodhisattva vow can only be personal and unique. Contemplating the questions below may help clarify that. I prepared them for an earlier Evolving Ground discussion. Perhaps they may be useful for others as well.
Do you know about the bodhisattva vow?
What do you understand it to be? (There are multiple versions and interpretations.)
Have you taken the vow?
If not, would you consider taking it? Why, or why not?
If you have taken it, are you glad you did? Or regret that you did?
Do you think about the implications of the vow (whether you took it or not)?
If you have taken it, what role does it now have in your life? (If any; maybe you’ve just left it behind?)
Do you relate to it differently now than when you took it?
How has it changed how you think, feel, or act?
Or, if you haven’t taken the vow, how do you imagine your life might be different if you did?
What aspects of your personality, upbringing, adult experiences, social and cultural context, and religious or spiritual path affect the way you relate to the vow personally?
How might taking the vow alter those factors, if you haven’t? Or, how have they altered them, if you have taken it?
Does the vow seem weak, saccharine, overly-nice, mere virtue signaling?
Does it seem extreme, unrealistic, absolutist, eternalist, morally dualizing?
If so, does that seem likely to be psychologically damaging?
For example, might it reinforce a tendency to over-responsibility, or to “compulsive rescuing syndrome”? What risks are there for you personally, and how might they be avoided?
Does the vow seem arrogant, aggressive, self-important?
Does it seem excessively masculine? Excessively feminine?
How do you think about the implications of the single-t bodhisatva (“awakened warrior”) spelling and interpretation?
Bodhisattvas are a Mahayana thing. If you hold a Vajrayana view rather than a Mahayana one, or both: how does that affect your understanding of the vow, and of the bodhisattva ideal?
Taking the bodhisattva vow is traditionally a prerequisite before any Vajrayana study or practice. Does that seem functional or realistic for us now? Why or why not?
Does it seem that the vow should be reinterpreted or reformulated for contemporary social, cultural, and psychological conditions? If so, how?
How might the vow be understood in the framework of adult developmental stages? Does the vow seem to accord with one stage in particular? Might it be understood differently from the points of view of different stages? (Consider the moral aspects of stage theory, as in Kohlberg’s version or Kegan’s; and the self-structure aspects, as in Loevinger’s or Kegan’s.)
How might the vow be understood in the framework of psychotherapeutic theory? For example, in terms of therapeutic understandings of the self; of the superego, or ego-ideal, or of splitting?
How might the vow be understood in terms of the Jungian tradition of depth psychology? What archetypes may engage here? (Consider, for instance: the hero; the shadow; the Wise Old Man or Wise Old Woman; what others, and how?)
I told a friend of mine recently that I didn't want to keep intensifying my meditation practice, because I felt like I'd disappear up my own ass if I further decreased my levels of stress and self-narrative. She said, "oh, isn't that like the Bodhisattva vow?" It's not, but I really liked that interpretation: the vow to engage with the world and remain capable of returning emails instead of choosing bliss states.
From David Loy's A New Buddhist Path - an interpretation of the vow that leads to eco-dharma:
'...the bodhisattva’s preoccupation with helping “others” is not a personal sacrifice but a further stage of personal development. Because awakening to my nonduality with the world does not automatically eliminate habitual self-centered ways of thinking and acting, following a bodhisattva
path becomes important for reorienting my relationship with the world. Instead of asking, “What can I get out of this situation?” one asks, “What can I contribute to this situation, to make it better?”
Thus the bodhisattva path is a way of emphasizing the important distinction between two basic ways of understanding the Buddhist path: do I follow the path only to end my own suffering, or to address the suffering of everyone?
That speaks directly to an important tension today between “self-help” Buddhism and socially engaged Buddhism.'