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The 2 Bodhisattva Vows
Theravada
legend has it that in a previous life the would-be-born-again-as Bodhisattva
Gautama vowed to become liberated from the unpleasantness (Pali: dukkha)
of death (Pali: mata, later mara, the Evil One). Liberation
(Pali: vimokkha) from death would happen by
ending life
= samsara (= life = the recurrence of emerged phenomena decaying to death), ending (i.e. extinction) meaning nirvana, meaning the deathless
( Pali:
amata, Sanskrit: amrita) Gautama
would achieve the
deathless
= nirvana by attaining
samma-sambodhi = complete awakening (deliberately mistranslated by Christian
interpreters - such as Rhys Davids - as ‘Perfect Enlightenment’). Gautama
attained samma-sambodhi by completely eliminating the defilements = the
drivers of life, the asavas* (= intoxicants or poisons). These, he claimed,
emerged from the false experience/interpretation of the transient (i.e. anicca),
hence unpleasant (i.e. dukkha), emerged (hence not original = not own,
i.e. anatta) interactions of the skandhas (Pali: khanda),
i.e. of the body, sensations, perceptions, ideation and consciousness. Therefore, the purpose of Bodhisattva endeavour - expressed and made real
by Gautama’s Bodhisattva vow - was (and is)
to end personal existence in order to attain the deathless = nirvana (to wit, extinction). The immediate
followers of the Tathagata emulated his ‘liberation from death (= life)’ mode
by eliminating the defilements that caused life resulting in death. However,
that was a brutally tough route to the deathless (see: The Rhinoceros Horn Sutta), with
few immediate personal (and social!) benefits, consequently suitable only for
professional dropouts.
In time, the sangha
(i.e. the collective of professional escapist from life = death) adapted
(life every species seeking fitness) to the realities of everyday existence,
both personal and interpersonal, and invented a second, albeit slower route
to the deathless = nirvana, namely the Noble Eightfold (in the earliest
Jataka stories ten-fold (perfections)) Path + relic (read: stupa) worship +
intentional merit transfer (as 3rd century b.c.e. inscriptions
found at Sanchi and elsewhere have now revealed). Idealised in later
Theravada doctrine, this route, and which would have been incomprehensible to
the Tathagata Gautama, offered immediate personal benefits (to wit, dukkha
reduction) and could be sold to and used by the laity who needed
encouragement to provide for the escapists’ life style.
In short,
whereas at first elimination of defilements (to wit, the asavas and/or
klesas) was the sole (indeed extreme) route to the
deathless =
nirvana, now (politically and/or dharma
‘correct’, called Middle Way) perfection of personal behaviour and thought
(note, how defilements (and all personal behaviour and
thought, because caused (Pali: samudayadhamman), is defilement) could
be perfected has never been fully explained by Theravadin speculation) became
the norm (i.e. dharma; note, the term dharma (Pali: dhamma) has 17
accepted meanings, therefore is practically meaningless). Round about
the beginning of the common era, the latter escape from death = life
variation was reinvented and upgraded into what would later be called the
Mahayana, the Great Vehicle serving as means to the attainment of the deathless = nirvana. The inventors of
Mahayana doctrine reinterpreted and elaborated the Bodhisattva vow to mean
that the would-be Bodhisattva (indeed, mahāsattva = great person (??))
needed to achieve 6 perfections (rather than merely dump his or her
defilements), create merit that had to be transferred to ‘all beings’
(thereby ‘bending’ the recipients person’s karma, a strange innovation
indeed), worship previous Bodhisattvas, build relic repositories, i.e. stupas
(i.e. for worship) and, most importantly, ‘sacrifice’ entry to the deathless = nirvana in order to hang around
helping ‘all beings’ (i.e. wit all emerged phenomena) achieve the
perfections, after which ‘all beings’ could depart this (life = death) for
not-this (i.e. the deathless),
possibly a that. Obviously the latter
speculation, ‘caused’ by the belief (here understood as dharma) that samsara ≠ nirvana, was rendered redundant with the invention of the notion
(possibly borrowed from Vedanta) of samsara = nirvana. In short,
whereas Gautama’s original Bodhisattva vow had been to eliminate personal
existence to attain the
deathless
= nirvana, accomplished by and for
the himself, therefore derided by Mahayanists as inferior (i.e. as Hinayana,
because seemingly egotistical), the new Superior Yana Bodhisattva vow version
appeared not only to be altruistic (i.e. ‘saving (i.e. liberating) oneself by
saving (i.e. liberating) ‘all beings’’) but offered a reorganised
‘perfections’ path that commended itself to everyone (not in a hurry to
attain the deathless), and especially to
politicians (willing to pay well for having the populace trained (indeed,
brainwashed) to be good = subservient) and to priests (hoping to get rich and
powerful), nowadays mostly Tibetan émigrés who only recently achieved the
supreme realization that in the U.S.A ‘There’s one born every minute’. All that remained of the original
Bodhisattva vow (to wit, the algorithm, later fractally elaborated as the sectarian
dharmas (dharma here meaning: mode of enchantment) of dozens of Buddhist
schools and hundreds of sects) was the clearly
stated intention of eliminating personal existence (i.e. either alone (as in
Hinayana) or together with ‘all beings’ (as in Mahayana). That’s it
(sans gloss)! The true Buddhist does not celebrate life. He celebrates the
deathless = lifeless. ü The asavas = poisons: the
desire for sensory experience (read: lust), the urge to existence and the
drive to mental speculation. Sometimes the ‘propensity to ignorance’ is
included in the list. ü The 6 perfections extolled
by the Maha Yana are: giving (dana), morality (sila), vigour and wisdom (all
originally Hinayana) + patience and meditation. 10 perfections are described
in the earliest Jataka tales transmitted in Pali. The Noble Path has 8
perfections. Patanjali’s Yoga has only 1 (see Yoga aphorism No 2). The true intent of the
Mahayana Bodhisattva vow |