The ninth Field of Zen Practice is Bodhisattva Activity, which is enacting vows to free all beings as well as yourself. The Bodhisattva Vows are an acknowledgment that you are interdependent with all beings and things, and such an aspiration can give a sense of purpose and direction to your whole life. Of course, it’s impossible to fulfill this vow literally, and when you try to put it into action it is no easy matter! It requires tangible engagement with the world, including other people. If you hide out in comfort, you’re unlikely to transcend self-centeredness. If you rely only on your own resources, you’re likely to exhaust yourself and limit your impact. How do you even decide what Bodhisattva Activity to undertake? There is much to be learned by practicing in this Field of Zen, which inoculates you against the delusion that you can attain true peace of mind by ignoring the suffering of others.
This episode is the ninth chapter of my book-in-progress, The Ten Fields of Zen: A Primer for Practitioners.
See all Ten Fields of Zen Practice
Quicklinks to Article Content:
Bodhisattva Activity as the Other Half of Practice
The Four Traditional Bodhisattva Vows
Expanding Your Capacity for Bodhisattva Activity
Balancing Three Ingredients: Bearing Witness, Taking Care, and Taking Action
The Bodhisattva and the Medicine of Emptiness
Bodhisattva Activity as the Other Half of Practice
Depending on what Buddhist teachings and practices you encounter, you could easily draw the conclusion that Buddhist practice is about self-cultivation aimed solely at peace and insight for the individual. Or you might conclude that the teachings imply we don’t need to alleviate tangible suffering or address injustice. After all, if you’ve realized everything is empty of inherent existence and precious just as it is, what reason do you have to work for positive change in the world? If a person can take refuge along the Independent Dimension no matter what’s happening in the Dependent Dimension, doesn’t that mean hunger, homelessness, and injustice are just opportunities for afflicted individuals to strengthen their spiritual practice? If all beings have Buddha-Nature and will eventually awaken, how is the spiritual welfare of other people any responsibility of yours?
Sadly, it is entirely possible to practice Buddhism to relieve some of your own suffering and then allow your practice to stagnate after you’ve achieved some peace of mind. Not only does this mean you might neglect opportunities to help others, it will also arrest your own spiritual development.
When you truly awaken to the Dharma, you recognize there is no separation between you and anyone or anything else. Freed from obsession with self, your heart opens, and you feel goodwill and compassion for all the baby Buddhas out there. You are naturally motivated to be generous and kind, because causing harm to anyone else is no different than causing harm to yourself. You see how beings are caught in suffering they generate for themselves, but you don’t judge them for this. Instead, there arises in you a determination to do whatever you can to help them awaken to the Dharma for themselves. This requires you to diligently continue your own practice so you can become wiser, more compassionate, and more skillful in your actions.
To encourage us to continue our practice and explore the profound implications of Interdependence, Mahayana Buddhists[i] focus on the ideal of the Bodhisattva. A Bodhisattva is someone who considers their own spiritual awakening as inseparable from that of other beings. According to traditional imagery, a Bodhisattva postpones their own entry into the bliss of complete liberation in order to help other beings awaken as well. They remain engaged in the world, helping however they possibly can. They might share the Dharma if that is appropriate but also fulfill their Bodhisattva Vows by being kind and generous. They contribute to the benefit of others in whatever role they find themselves in, such as parent, friend, teacher, bus driver, construction worker, or farmer. Bodhisattvas in Buddhist literature are described as sharing all manner of things, including material wealth, hope, beauty, discipline, and joy.
You might think of Bodhisattva Activity as half of Zen practice. Half of your practice is about working on yourself, including Zazen, Mindfulness, Ending Dukkha, moral behavior, and cultivating personal understanding of Reality-with-a-Capital-R. Even Opening Your Heart can be seen as internal work. All this self-oriented practice indirectly benefits others, of course, but the Field of Bodhisattva Activity asks more of you. The other half of your practice is, in some senses, about turning outward to focus on your actual interactions with other beings and the world as a whole. This is infinitely more profound than just trying to be a good person. All the Fields of Zen interact and support one another; Bodhisattva Activity can challenge your sense of self and your understanding of the Dharma.
You will have misunderstood the teachings if your practice remains limited to “navel gazing” – a pejorative term for only focusing inwards, on yourself, particularly through meditation. Of course, turning inward to study yourself and address your own Dukkha is an essential part of Zen; what’s important is a balance between inward and outward focus over time, whether that’s over the course of a day, a week, a year, or a lifetime of practice.
The Four Traditional Bodhisattva Vows
There are countless ways to benefit living beings, so there an infinite number of forms a Bodhisattva Vow can take. However, if you feel drawn to Zen practice, you may want to take the four traditional Bodhisattva Vows, formally or informally. They are:
Beings are numberless, I vow to free them [all][ii]
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.
A famous Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra, says a Bodhisattva vows to free all beings 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.”[iii] So, as a Bodhisattva you are not only promising to care about the welfare of all humans, you are promising to care about any form of life – or even any form – you could conceive of “being.” The impossibility of this task is what gives the vow its power; it will never end but will orient your actions all your life. In summary, you might say that a Bodhisattva never witnesses any kind of suffering or senseless destruction anywhere and concludes, “Not my problem.”
The other three Bodhisattva Vows reflect the fact that you want to give your life energy over to a path of unending discovery and growth: A path that relieves suffering, benefits self and others, and enables you to Realize what you have never previously imagined. Delusions are the false views which cause Dukkha; although you will never get rid of all of them, you vow to keep moving toward the truth. Dharma gates are any opportunity to practice; such opportunities are infinite, but you vow never to embrace complacency by concluding, “good enough.” The Buddha Way is a term for this never-ending path; although you can never complete it, you don’t put limits on your aspirations.
Expanding Your Capacity for Bodhisattva Activity
A dedicated Bodhisattva is very ambitious. They are always looking to expand – or at least maintain – their ability to practice diligently and be of benefit to living beings. Ideally, Bodhisattva Activity brings joy and energy to your life. By enacting your Interdependence with all things, your current karmic manifestation finds a unique role in the unfolding of this world. You build relationships and experience the satisfaction of serving needs. Your creativity and flexibility are continually challenged, and over time you learn to be more effective in your efforts.
However, it is very easy for an aspiring Bodhisattva to get overwhelmed or discouraged. This is illustrated by a mythological tale of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the archetypal Bodhisattva of Compassion. It is said he made a vow to work tirelessly to free all beings from suffering, saying, “If I ever give up, may my head split into pieces.” After working for eons, the Bodhisattva decided to count the number of suffering beings left after all his work, and was heartbroken to find the number had not decreased at all. Despairing, it occurred to him to give up, and his head promptly split into a hundred pieces. The Buddhas put Avalokiteshvara back together and gave him some tools for coping with his task, including eleven heads for watching in every direction and a thousand arms for responding to need.[iv]
Like Avalokiteshvara, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of suffering in the world (or even in your own life), at a loss for what suffering you should address, feeling guilty about not doing more, or discouraged that your efforts have not made more of a difference. What can you do, other than give up? There are two answers to this question – one practical, and one profound.
Balancing Three Ingredients: Bearing Witness, Taking Care, and Taking Action
Practically speaking, you can make your Bodhisattva Activity sustainable by balancing three ingredients in your practice: Bearing Witness, Taking Care, and Taking Action.[v] As long as you have all three ingredients in your life, you are working to fulfill your Bodhisattva aspirations, but the ratios of the ingredients will vary greatly depending on your situation.
Bearing Witness is simply exposing yourself to suffering while trying to maintain stillness and an Open Heart. This means not turning away when you happen to encounter suffering in the course of your daily life but also exploring territory beyond your personal sphere where you are likely to encounter it. Of course, if your personal life is full of pain and misery, you don’t need to go looking for more! But if your life is relatively comfortable, it’s your responsibility to expand your circle of concern as wide as you can. There are many ways to do this, including by reading the news, informing yourself about situations of injustice through books or movies, volunteering, or listening to a friend in trouble.
While you Bear Witness, it’s your job simply to perceive – to listen deeply, to see clearly, to understand if possible. This requires dedication to stillness and an Open Heart, because your aversion to discomfort is likely to make you want to turn away, interfere by fixing things, or try to figure them out so you can assign blame. Any of these responses interfere with the practice of Bearing Witness.
Frankly, Bearing Witness can be uncomfortable, exhausting, even painful. If there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do to remedy a situation, why would you endure this? Because Bearing Witness is a complete practice unto itself. Your tolerance of discomfort while looking at the suffering of another is an act of profound generosity. If someone knows their suffering is witnessed with compassion and goodwill, they feel less alone – even if no one can help in a tangible way. The truth of this is reflected in the fact that the name of the archetypal Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, means “one who hears the cries of the world.” According to the myths, he will respond to need but he is primarily beloved because he (or she) is always listening. By Bearing Witness you soften your heart, remind yourself of Interdependence, experience humility, and open up the possibility for a compassionate response when the time is right.
The next important ingredient in sustainable Bodhisattva Activity is Taking Care. This is straightforward: Taking care of yourself and your responsibilities so you have the strength to be a Bodhisattva, and so you and your loved ones are not excluded from your vows. In the moment Taking Care may appear to be a self-centered activity, but ultimately it benefits others because you will be better able to enact generosity if you do things like maintaining your physical health, getting enough sleep, meditating regularly, practicing with Sangha, enjoying your relationships, and engaging in restorative activities.
Setting boundaries also falls into the category of Taking Care. These are actions you take to conserve your resources, protect yourself as necessary, and avoid fruitless or harmful entanglement in someone else’s Karma. You are one of the countless beings a Bodhisattva vows to save, and you are uniquely positioned to impact your own wellbeing. Of course, most of us err on the side of self-concern and stinginess, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times to set boundaries. Learning to discern when this is the case is a fascinating practice challenge that can teach you a great deal about yourself.
Taking Action is the third important ingredient in Bodhisattva Activity. The Bodhisattva Vows are not metaphorical or theoretical. You enact them with your body. They are about engagement with the world. If you’re ultimately seeking to transcend self-concern, there’s no substitute for getting off your meditation seat, leaving your house, and really trying to put your deepest aspirations into action. Interacting with real people and real situations challenges your views and demands that you take your practice beyond the state of your own mind. There is a Zen saying, “It’s easy to be enlightened on a mountaintop.” If your insights don’t translate into your interactions with other living beings, they are incomplete insights or have not yet been fully integrated. The world has been called “the Bodhisattva’s playground,” not because Bodhisattvas take the suffering of beings lightly but because they delight in benefitting beings, deepening their Realization, and increasing their skillfulness.
What actions should you take as a Bodhisattva? You have limited time and resources, and the needs are infinite. Choosing what to devote yourself to is part of the Bodhisattva path. How can you serve? What are you uniquely positioned to care for? How are you already serving, and can you incorporate that service into your Bodhisattva Vows? It’s important to choose something while realizing whatever you do will only be a tiny contribution to the world. You can only do your part and rely on others to do theirs.
Balancing the three ingredients in your life – Bearing Witness, Taking Care, and Taking Action – is an ongoing process. It’s natural to long for a perfect formula that will always deliver a satisfying, sustainable practice, but such a formula will be elusive or only temporary. Life changes, gradually or suddenly. If you’re healthy and living in fortunate circumstances, you should be able to establish regular practices of Bearing Witness and commit to a couple of ways of Taking Action beyond the sphere of your own personal life. If your personal life involves considerable difficulty, most of your time will be spent on Taking Care of yourself and those you are responsible for. When this is the case, you might think of Bearing Witness and Taking Action within the sphere of your own life. This is still Bodhisattva work.
Bodhisattva Activity and the Medicine of Emptiness
The more subtle or profound way to make your Bodhisattva Activity sustainable is keep working on your Realization of Emptiness – or, if you prefer, boundarylessness.
The traditional Buddhist term for “Realization of Emptiness” is prajna paramita. “Prajna” means wisdom, and “paramita” means perfection. The “perfection of wisdom” means the deepest kind of wisdom, or insight into the largest perspective – like an understanding of the form and function of a whole hand as opposed to the limited perception of each finger as separate. When you awaken to Reality-with-a-Capital-R, you realize you and all beings and things do not exist the way you think they do. Usually, you see things as fundamentally separate from one another, but even our manifestation of separateness is part of a seamless whole.
In the Diamond Sutra – the same text which says a Bodhisattva cares for every last being you could possibly conceive of – says, “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? …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.”[vi] Obviously, a Bodhisattva functions based on the perception of a self and beings in a certain provisional sense. If this weren’t the case, the thought, “And though I thus liberate countless beings” would make no sense. You would not be able to function, much less be a Bodhisattva, if you didn’t recognize your own body and mind, or failed to appreciate that other beings have their own autonomy and experience separate from yours.
The Bodhisattva practicing prajna paramita doesn’t lack the basic ability to differentiate self from other, but they remain grounded in a larger perspective. Even as they respond with generosity and compassion, they do not forget that all manifestations are like waves in the ocean – ultimately all of the same essence, only temporarily appearing separate. They do not assume, as deluded beings do, that they or any other beings have inherently existing, independent, or enduring self-natures. This brings deep equanimity, increasing their capacity for service.
Why, though, does a Bodhisattva care so much about the welfare of beings if they see them as temporary manifestations like waves in the ocean? Because true compassion doesn’t work the way we usually think it does. We think of compassion as arising in one individual on behalf of another. The compassionate individual may then be motivated to give something on behalf of the other, such as time, energy, or money. The giver sacrifices something, while the receiver benefits. Certainly, this conventional kind of compassion is not a bad thing.
The boundless compassion of a Bodhisattva, however, is described in Buddhism as being like a hand reaching for a pillow in the night.[vii] Think of yourself lying asleep. Your body is experiencing some discomfort. Would you say that, out of compassion, your mind decides you need your pillow, even though you’re unconscious? And then, out of compassion, your arm sacrifices some of its own comfort to reach for the pillow on behalf of your head and shoulders? Should your head and shoulders feel grateful to your arm? Should your arm feel virtuous? Of course not – any sacrifice or benefit is ultimately experienced by your whole body. It doesn’t make any sense to differentiate parts of your body, as if one part is doing another part a favor. Although there is benefit, it is the result of a natural response.
Similarly, you aren’t separate from other beings, or from Being itself. When your heart is open, you perceive suffering and respond to it because it is also your suffering. It may appear that you are doing someone a favor, but ultimately you also benefit. This connection is something you will undoubtedly have experienced when you’ve wholeheartedly and spontaneously done something generous, without stopping to calculate the cost to yourself. You feel joy, and the act of giving may be so rewarding that you wonder who is doing a favor for who. In his essay on the Four Ways Bodhisattvas Embrace Living Beings, Dogen says:
“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.”[viii]
The Bodhisattva practicing prajna paramita also can rely on their larger perspective to avoid overwhelm and burnout, and help answer the question, “What beneficial action should I take?” Anything you have to contribute does not originate with you but is the result of an infinite number of supportive causes and conditions. When you enact your Bodhisattva Vows, you are simply allowing benefit to flow through your life. You can’t meet every need, but you give what you can without dwelling on either pride at your generosity or judgment about your inadequacy. Only you know the state of your own mind, body, and heart, and whether you are constricting the flow of benefit through your life out of selfishness or fear.
It can be helpful when engaged in Bodhisattva Activity to think beyond the most concrete and typical forms of giving. Naturally, Bodhisattvas should be working to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and fight injustice, but most of your activity will be beneficial in a subtler way. Freeing yourself from Dukkha benefits others, as does Bearing Witness. If you have severe health issues or a disability, maintaining as much independence as you can is a gift to others. Sharing joy, optimism, or cooking a good meal for someone can be Bodhisattva Activity. In his essay on the Four Ways Bodhisattvas Embrace Living Beings, Dogen invites us transcend our usual concepts of generosity, saying:
To launch a boat or build a bridge is an act of giving. If you study giving closely, you see that to accept a body and to give up the body are both giving. Making a living and producing things can be nothing other than giving. To leave flowers to the wind, to leave birds to the seasons, are also acts of giving.[ix]
Dogen points to the generosity of spirit to which the Bodhisattva aspires. Practicing in the Field of Bodhisattva Activity is not about doing as many good deeds as you can and then calculating their benefit in order to judge your merit, it’s about expanding your circle of concern as wide as you can and allowing the benefits of the universe to flow freely through you.
See all Ten Fields of Zen Practice
Endnotes
[i] Zen is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition.
[ii] The “all” at the end of the first three Bodhisattva Vows are implied and usually left off of translations. The Four Bodhisattva Vows are chanted aloud regularly at Zen monasteries and practice centers.
[iii] Pine, Red. Zen Roots: The First Thousand Years. Anacortes, Washington: Empty Bowl Press, 2020.
[iv] Story from Tibetan Buddhist scripture Mani Kabum (retelling by Venerable Shangpa Rinpoche, https://www.dhagpo.org/en/index.php/multimedia/teachings/205-arya-avalokitesvara-and-the-six-syllable-mantra)
[v] I want to acknowledge the similarity of this list of three ingredients to the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers Order (Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Taking Action). I did not mean to copy, adapt, or improve on those tenets. Rather, “bearing witness” and “taking action” are widely used terms which are the most appropriate for my formulation as well.
[vi] Pine, Red. Zen Roots: The First Thousand Years. Anacortes, Washington: Empty Bowl Press, 2020.
[vii] Wick, Gerry Shishin. The Book of Equanimity: Illuminating Classic Zen Koans. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2005. (Case 54: Ungan’s Great Compassionate One)
[viii] Tanahashi, Kazuaki, trans., ed. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 2010.
[ix] Ibid
