216 - The Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow Part 1: Freeing All Beings (2024)

In this episode I review the meaning of the Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow, and then explore the first of the vows in detail: Beings are numberless, I vow to free them. What does it mean to free beings, and what does it mean to our practice that we vow to free every last one of an infinite number of beings? In the next couple episodes I will similarly explore the second, third, and fourth vows.

Read/listen to The Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow Part 2: Ending All Delusions

Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow (or The Four Great Bodhisattva Vows)
Basic Morality Versus the Bodhisattva Vow
Being in the Same Boat with All Living Beings
Bodhisattva Vow as an Attitude
What Does It Mean to “Free” a Living Being?
Fulfilling the Other Three Bodhisattva Vows at the Same Time

The Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow (or The Four Great Bodhisattva Vows)

The Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow is taken by practitioners in many Mahayana Buddhist traditions. The translation we use at my Zen center goes like this:

Beings are numberless, I vow to free them

Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them

Dharma Gates are boundless, I vow to enter them

The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it

Also called the Four Great Bodhisattva Vows, it is understood that each vow ends with an assumed but unstated word that makes them infinite and all-inclusive, so it becomes:

Beings are numberless, I vow to free them [all]

Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them [all]

Dharma Gates are boundless, I vow to enter them [all]

The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it [completely]

In Mahayana Buddhism, the idea is for every one of us to aspire to be bodhisattvas. While there is no expectation that we’re all going to succeed in becoming otherworldly, selfless saints in this lifetime, our aspiration gives shape to our life. As aspiring bodhisattvas, we strive to make choices that decrease suffering, and which increase wisdom and compassion. No matter where we are along the journey from troubled sentient being to enlightened Buddha, a step forward along the bodhisattva path is a good thing.

In his wonderful book Living by Vow, Shohaku Okumura says, “The four bodhisattva vows are general vows that should be taken by all Mahayana Buddhist practitioners.” He explains:

“From the beginning… especially in Mahayana Buddhism, vow is essential for all bodhisattvas. In fact, part of the definition of a bodhisattva is a person who lives by vow instead of by karma. Karma means habit, preferences, or a ready-made system of values. As we grow up, we learn a system of values from the culture around us, which we use to evaluate the world and choose action. This is karma, and living by karma. In contrast, a bodhisattva lives by vow. Vow is like a magnet or compass that shows us the direction toward the Buddha.”[i]

I have discussed the role of vow in our practice several times on this podcast, including Episode 124 – The Buddhist Practice of Vow: Giving Shape to Our Lives and Episode 141 – The Practice of Vow 2: Choosing the Direction We Want Our Lives to Take. In this series of episodes, I want to focus specifically on the Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow, as it is so central to our practice, and also so grand.

According to my teachers, my Dharma grandmother, Roshi Jiyu Kennett, limited the recitation of the Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow to times when those reciting it would have full knowledge of its significance. She wanted to make sure people would be saying the vows consciously and by choice. In contrast, at many Zen centers you might end up reciting it if you join an open practice event. Don’t worry, no one is going to hunt you down and hold you to the promises you ended up making. However, I think there’s something valuable about the way Roshi Kennett, and my teachers after her, have held the recitation of the Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow as something serious and sacred.

On the other hand, the Four Bodhisattva Vows are phrased in a way that makes them impossible. They quite literally – and apparently deliberately – state that there are an infinite number of beings, but we vow to free all of them. Delusions are inexhaustible – they cannot be exhausted – yet nevertheless we vow to end them all. Dharma Gates are either numberless or have no definable boundaries, and yet we vow to enter them all. And the Buddha Way is the most amazing thing in the world, something that has never been surpassed, but we vow to embody or realize it completely.

It may seem like taking impossibly ambitious bodhisattva vows would be a source of stress or discouragement, but it’s actually better that these vows are impossible. They remain forever as a direction for us to go, no matter how long and hard we practice. The vows discourage pride in practice regardless of how much we’ve attained because, as Shohaku Okumura says, “When we compare our achievement with something infinite, absolute, and eternal, it’s like nothing.”[ii] On the other hand, it is difficult for us to make a meaningful evaluation of our practice and find it wanting, either. Imagine if the bodhisattva vow, instead, was to save 500 beings and end 1000 delusions. Now you’d have to keep a tally and worry about whether this or that being was really saved, or this or that delusion was really ended. When we vow to save all beings, though, we know we’re never going to get there. We just keep plugging along with as much sincerity as we can.

Basic Morality Versus the Bodhisattva Vow

So, let’s explore the first bodhisattva vow in more detail: Beings are numberless, I vow to free them [all].

There are many other places in Mahayana texts and teachings where this aspiration is described very explicitly, so the vow to free all beings can be seen as a very concise summary of the intentions of Mahayana practice. For example, in the moral precepts of my Zen lineage, we have three pure precepts:

Cease from harm – release all self­-attachment.

Do only good – take selfless action.

Do good for others – embrace all things and conditions.

The explanatory sentence for the third precept is this: “Leap beyond the holy and the unholy. Let us rescue ourselves together with all beings.”

Our third pure precept and its explanatory statement encapsulates the difference between Mahayana Buddhism and the traditions that have focused on staying true to Buddhism as originally taught by Shakyamuni Buddha. (For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call these traditions “original Buddhism,” even though that’s an oversimplification of the historical evolution of Buddhist traditions.) Original Buddhism contains no teachings about how practice requires a bodhisattva vow. Bodhisattvas were seen as rare, unusually dedicated and capable practitioners who were aiming at complete Buddhahood as opposed to the individual salvation of the arhat. (See Episode 118 – Buddha’s Teachings 15: Nibbana (Nirvana) as the Ultimate Goal.) Buddhas are skilled teachers of the Buddhist path, but no one faulted you if you aimed instead at achieving Nirvana as soon as possible. That goal was hard enough!

Although it doesn’t require bodhisattva aspirations, original Buddhism is deeply moral – Right Action, Right Speech, and Right Livelihood are three out of eight parts of the Eightfold Path – but this morality is pragmatic. Buddha observed that selfishness, negative emotions, and harmful behaviors caused suffering for self and other. Immoral or harmful thoughts, emotions, and behavior agitated the mind and disturbed your life, making spiritual progress impossible. Therefore, moral behavior and basic generosity (that is, non-attachment to your belongings or advantage) were an essential prerequisite for Buddhist practice.

The original Buddhists – and the traditions like Theravada which stay true to the original teachings – refrained from the kind of metaphysical philosophizing about interdependence and radical nonduality that inspires Mahayana Buddhists to make crazy vows about saving every last living being before they retire into the bliss of Nirvana. For non-Mahayana Buddhists, there is no shame in pursuing enlightenment and full liberation as an individual, because an enlightened individual is naturally of benefit to others. He or she can share the Buddhist path with others and will not engage in harmful behaviors. He or she will be at peace and not contribute to the suffering in the world.

Being in the Same Boat with All Living Beings

In contrast, in the Mahayana, we see our fate as inextricably tied to the fate of all beings – or, more accurately, all being. Because we are dependently co-arisen with everything else in the universe, our very being is a reflection of our relationships – our relationship to the sun, gravity, evolution, the choices of our ancestors… the list goes on infinitely. We only exist as we do in relation to everything else. As I describe in Episode 213 – Deconstructing Self: Which Aspects Are Fine, and Which Cause Suffering, we labor under the delusion that we have an inherent, enduring, independent self-nature, but in reality that’s just something we dream up and add to our experience. Awakening entails recognizing our self-delusion and seeing in what way we are not separate from the rest of the universe.

Zen master Dogen describes the Mahayana point of view beautifully in his explanation of the bodhisattva virtue DOJI, or “Identity Action” in the essay “Bodaisatta Shishobo,” or what I call the “Four Ways Bodhisattvas Embrace Living Beings” (see Episode 120 – Dogen’s Four Ways Bodhisattvas Embrace Living Beings – Part 5 – Identity Action):”

“Identity action” means nondifference. It is nondifference from self, nondifference from others… When we know identity action, self and others are one.[iii]

The translators Nishijima and Cross say “DO” means same, and “JI” means “thing,” “matter,” or “task.” They suggest a number of different translations of DOJI, saying it literally means “identity of task,” but could be translated as “identity of purpose,” “sharing the same aim,” or even the colloquial expression “being in the same boat.”[iv]

I particularly like the phrase “being in the same boat” as a way to describe the Mahayana bodhisattva attitude. From our point of view, true liberation is impossible for the individual in isolation. Even if we were able to achieve great spiritual insight and equanimity, if we essentially turned our backs on other suffering beings, our spiritual development would not be complete. Our equanimity would require a sense of separation from other beings, which would be based on a delusion.

In the Mahayana view, bodhisattva virtues – like generosity, kind speech, beneficial action, and being in the same boat with other beings – arise naturally when we see the emptiness of self and all things. Our kindness to another living being becomes a spontaneous act exactly like looking after the well-being of our own hand. There is nothing virtuous or special about it – we are simply enacting the truth of universal interdependence. A sense of inherent separateness is what leads to dukkha and harmful behavior, so acting without that sense of separateness is enlightenment itself. As Dogen says, in “Bodaisatta Shishobo” when discussing the bodhisattva virtue of RIGYO, or Beneficial Action:

“Foolish people think that if they help others first, their own benefit will be lost, but this is not so. Beneficial action is an act of oneness, benefiting self and others together.”[v]

In the translation of this Dogen essay by Nishijima and Cross, instead of saying RIGYO is an “act of oneness,” it says “Helpful conduct is the whole Dharma.”[vi] This is quite the statement, reflecting the way in which Mahayana Buddhism regards bodhisattva activity not as a moral prerequisite for spiritual training but as enlightened activity itself.

Bodhisattva Vow as an Attitude

It’s all well and good to say that, as people walking the bodhisattva path, we recognize we’re in the same boat with all living beings. It’s quite another to take a vow that says, “Beings are numberless, I vow to free them all.” What does this vow actually require of us?

Personally, I think the essence of the bodhisattva vow to free all beings is an attitude. This attitude is even more expansive than a sense of being in the same boat with all other living beings. When we regard those beings, or when we regard all being, as aspiring bodhisattva we never, ever say, “Not my problem.”

Think about this. Even if there does not appear to be anything we can do to help, as aspiring bodhisattvas we do not turn away from suffering anywhere, anytime, concluding that it has nothing to do with us – that we’re not responsible, or that the suffering beings deserve it. We don’t shut down our natural empathy even if there’s nothing we can do to help. And we sincerely consider whether there is anything we can do to help.

Spiritual perfection in the Mahayana involves extending our sphere of concern as wide as possible. This isn’t easy. First, we try to extend our sense of caring beyond our immediate family to our community, to strangers we meet, and then to more challenging people. We also try to extend it beyond human beings, to all forms of life. We do this, as Dogen says, not just for the sake of the other, but because it simultaneously benefits us.

The Diamond Sutra famously describes the scope of responsibility of the bodhisattva (translation by Red Pine):

The Buddha said to [Subhuti], “Subhuti, those who would now set forth on the bodhisattva path should thus give birth to this thought: ‘However many beings there are in whatever realms of being might exist, whether they are born from an egg or born from a womb, born from the water or born from the air, whether they have form of no form, whether they have perception or no perception… in whatever conceivable realm of being one might conceive of beings, in the realm of complete nirvana I shall liberate them all.’[vii]

Clearly, this Diamond Sutra passage is meant to communicate that the bodhisattva never concludes, “Not my problem.” Our sense of connection and concern extends even to “whatever conceivable realm of being one might conceive of beings.” It extends, I believe, to microscopic beings in a drop of water, to forests as ecosystems, to alien life. The bodhisattva attitude is one of reverence for all life.

What Does It Mean to “Free” a Living Being?

What exactly does the bodhisattva vow mean by “freeing” or “liberating” beings? Unsurprisingly, this Buddhist vow means that we aim to facilitate a being’s liberation from suffering. Ultimately, that means spiritual awakening as we conceive of it in Buddhism – liberation not so much from worldly woes and worries, but from dukkha, the unnecessary suffering and angst we add to things because of our lack of understanding about the nature of reality.

However, the bodhisattva is not limited to teaching people Buddhism, because that’s not always what is appropriate or needed. In fact, given the variety of living beings, explicitly teaching Buddhism it is almost never what’s most appropriate or needed. The microscopic being in a drop a water can’t do spiritual practice (at least not that we know!), but we may be able to liberate it from pollution. A person who lacks sufficient food and water needs those needs met in order to do spiritual practice. Someone who has suffered trauma needs support and healing as well as the opportunity to practice. Some beings are on a different spiritual journey and don’t need Buddhism, and others aren’t ready to begin such a journey. These people may simply need affection and acceptance from us, or help moving house, facing an illness, or celebrating a milestone.

The bodhisattva does not decide ahead of time what kind of assistance a being might need. That would be very unskillful, and chances are the beings who are the object of the helping behavior are going to feel condescended to rather than benefited. Instead, as aspiring bodhisattvas we aim to facilitate a being’s movement away from suffering, toward greater wisdom and compassion, if any opportunity to do so arises. It may be a very small thing we offer. We may not know what the being’s long-term journey is going to look like. That’s okay; our offering is not contingent on knowing its result.

Fulfilling the Other Three Bodhisattva Vows at the Same Time

The bodhisattva’s ability to be truly beneficial to beings is dependent on her simultaneously practicing the other three vows of the Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow: To end delusions, enter all Dharma gates, and embody the Buddha Way. If we fixate on only the first vow – to free all beings – and neglect the rest of our practice, we are liable to become troublesome “do-gooders” who end up doing more harm than good and exhaust ourselves in the process.

In particular, we have to cultivate an understanding of the emptiness in order to approach our vow to help other beings with the proper perspective. In the Diamond Sutra, after the Buddha tells Subhuti about how the bodhisattva vows to liberate every conceivable kind of being, he says:

[“Subhuti, those who would now set forth on the bodhisattva path should thus give birth to this thought] ‘And though I thus liberate countless beings, not a single being is liberated.’ And why not? Subhuti, a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a being cannot be called a ‘bodhisattva.’ And why not? Subhuti, no one can be called a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a self or who creates the perception of a being, a life, or a soul.”[viii]

It is only through practice – through meditation, study, self-reflection, moral training, the support of Sangha, the guidance of teachers, etc. – that we decrease our sense of self and open up to the intimacy that allows compassion and generosity to flow freely and naturally.

That isn’t to say, of course, that we don’t try to be compassionate and generous from the start, to benefit others to whatever extent we can manage, and to challenge our own self-absorption. But there’s a limit to what we can offer when we’re still attached to ideas about who is trying to help who, what would be helpful, and what the goal of all this helping ought to be. This self-centered activity is a far cry from the natural manifestation of interdependence, which is sometimes described in Buddhism as being like a hand reaching back for a pillow in the night.[ix] Just as the hand doesn’t conceive of a compassionate act it’s going to do for the head, our bodhisattva activity flows best when we are responding to need without self-consciousness.

When the Buddha, in the Diamond Sutra (a Mahayana Sutra) says a bodhisattva shouldn’t create the perception of being, he is not saying beings don’t exist, and therefore we don’t have to worry about their welfare. You might be surprised at how often this Buddhist teaching of emptiness is used to suggest that we aren’t obligated to make actual, tangible efforts to free all living beings, or even just a few of them. Beings don’t really exist, the reasoning goes, so even though they might feel some suffering at the moment, it’s all delusion on their part anyway.

However, what the Buddha is saying in the Diamond Sutra is that beings (and ourselves, and all things) don’t really exist the way we THINK they do. They definitely exist. Obviously. But we project something extra on them – notions which are unnecessary, and which tend to restrict the flow of generosity and the manifestation of wisdom, and to cause suffering. Despite the truth of emptiness, the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines says that bodhisattvas “engender in themselves the great compassion.”[x]

Much more can be said about the bodhisattva vow to free all beings, of course. In conclusion, though, I want to make the point that fulfilling this vow, like all Buddhist practices, functions as both a practice we can apply ourselves to, and as a sign that our practice is on course. Self and other benefits from any attempt we make to expand our sphere of concern, extending our generosity, good will, kindness, kind speech, compassion, and beneficial action as far as we can. Trying to act like a bodhisattva, even when we don’t feel like one, challenges our attachment to self and teaches us about the truth of interdependence. Then, over time, we know our practice is on course when we feel, more and more, as if we and all beings are in the same boat. When beneficial action arises in us spontaneously, without prolonged consideration about what it’s going to cost us, or whether our offering will be worth it.

Read/listen to The Fourfold Bodhisattva Vow Part 2: Ending All Delusions

Endnotes

[i] Okumura, Shohaku. Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2012. Page 15.

[ii] Ibid, Page 19.

[iii] Tanahashi, Kazuaki, trans., ed. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 2010.

[iv] Nishijima, Gudo and Chodo Cross. Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo (in four volumes). London: Windbell Publications, 1994

[v] Tanahashi, Kazuaki, trans., ed. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 2010.

[vi] Nishijima, Gudo and Chodo Cross. Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo (in four volumes). London: Windbell Publications, 1994

[vii] Pine, Red.Zen Roots: The First Thousand Years. Anacortes, Washington: Empty Bowl Press, 2020.

[viii] Ibid

[ix] Blofeld, John. Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 1988. pg 86

[x] Conze, Edward. The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and Its Verse Summary. San Francisco, CA: Four Seasons Foundation, 1973. Page 11

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Image by Lynn Greyling from Pixabay