Commentary on The Sutra of the Compendium of Father and Son (215)

The Metaphor of the Lamp and the Raft

Bodhisattvas vow to become a source of illumination during the long night. In the dark, prolonged night of sentient beings’ birth and death, who will provide illumination? Bodhisattvas should resolve to become that illumination, to serve as a torch, igniting the minds of sentient beings, guiding them toward liberation and the path to Buddhahood.

Bodhisattvas vow to become a raft in the ocean of love. Ordinary sentient beings drown in the ocean of love within the cycle of birth and death. Beings in the desire realm cling to their families, relatives, the five desires, and the six dusts; beings in the form realm cling to the wondrous states of the heavenly realms and the physical forms of celestial beings; beings in the formless realm, lacking physical form, cling to the comfortable states of meditative absorption. All these attachments constitute greed. Because of such attachments, sentient beings cannot transcend the Three Realms; instead, they drift and transmigrate in the ocean of love within the Three Realms. Bodhisattvas must therefore vow not only to free themselves from this ocean of love but also to become a raft within it, ferrying sentient beings to liberation from the ocean of love.