What Vow Is the Right Vow?

Yesterday a student of the Dharma, overflowing with great compassion, made a wish in front of a large crowd: wishing that all sentient beings in the great thousand worlds could have their wishes fulfilled… Was this wish good, and what would the result be? If one's personal cultivation is high, then all wishes will come true—whatever the mind intends is accomplished, and the moment a thought arises it is fulfilled. But if this person's wish enabled an evil person to fulfill an evil wish, or enabled afflicted people to fulfill their greed, hatred, and delusion, this would be aiding the tyrant in his tyranny, and the wish would become a wish of folly and delusion. I too have suffered from the illness of folly—misplaced compassion—and even now I have not completely corrected it. Small compassion may look wholesome, pleasing to everyone, but in reality it is folly and evil. Great compassion, ultimate compassion, appears on the surface to be heartless and is disliked by ordinary people, but in truth it is genuine wisdom.

He Qianxing: The intention behind this wish is quite good but not perfect, which shows insufficient wisdom. A perfect wish should be: "May all wholesome dharmas that are practiced all be accomplished; may all unwholesome dharmas that are intended all fail to come to fruition." But each person must work out their own karma; for all the sentient beings whom this person blessed, their wishes cannot be fulfilled—the karma and karmic power will still operate according to the rules. For the person who made this wish, it counts as issuing an imperfect compassionate mind. The magnitude and level of the energy of a compassionate mind depends on whether the person making the vow is sincere or acting on a momentary impulse; and whether one is sincere or acting on a momentary impulse depends on whether it issues from the manas or from the mind consciousness. If it is sincerely issued from the manas, it is extremely helpful for advancing one's own path of cultivation, and the root of bodhi will grow. If it is a momentary impulse of the mind consciousness, it belongs to manifest activities perfuming seeds, which intensively perfumes and cultivates the manas.

If one's personal cultivation is high, many Dharma-protecting deities will surround one, and their level will be relatively high. Yet even though the Dharma-protecting deities are of a high level, their wisdom is uneven, so situations may arise where, due to insufficient wisdom, they help someone fulfill a wish. Moreover, if one's personal cultivation is high, one's power of merit is great, and the manas has a strong ability to gather the mind at one point, then the manas can use powerful meditative concentration (samādhi) to transmit the wish to the tathāgatagarbha; combined with the blessing of one's own power of merit, the tathāgatagarbha can transcend karma and transform reality. Because the power of vows is stronger than the power of karma, the wish can be fulfilled. But for ordinary practitioners this is very difficult, since they possess neither of these two conditions.

Jiren Tianxiang: The wishes of ordinary people are mostly greed, hatred, and delusion—deluded thoughts and wandering ideas; the more one craves, the more one desires, sinking ever deeper, so that sentient beings become ever more entangled with one another and afflictions grow ever heavier. Only by making pure great vows can one hope to extinguish the fire of desire; this is also the good medicine for solving all problems. If one cannot achieve this, one should still make many wholesome wishes, think more of others, and even make many wishes to benefit sentient beings. If everyone did so, then the world of afflictions would become a land of bliss (sukhāvatī)!

A practitioner transmits the true Dharma to the world and serves as the teacher of the wisdom-life of worldly people, and is therefore honored with the title Dharma Master. Viewed from the standpoint of a Dharma Master, one naturally cannot be a spineless people-pleaser; one may even have a heart of iron and stone, always prioritizing the student's learning. Only when sentient beings have achieved success in their studies can they understand the compassionate realm of their master. The wise can only be lonely, just like the sun in the sky that shines ceaselessly, offering only silent, wordless love, indifferent to whether anyone likes it or not.

Changzhu: The wishes of sentient beings include pure wishes (also called bodhi vows), and also impure wishes containing all kinds of greed, hatred, delusion, and inverted delusions. When we wish that sentient beings' wishes be fulfilled, this wish must absolutely not include the latter; otherwise it is aiding the tyrant in his tyranny, and the retribution for this is very serious. Spreading the Dharma to benefit beings does not rely on learning, financial resources, ability, influence, or power, but on a pure mind of intention and vast power of vows. Without vast power of vows and a pure mind of intention, one cannot liberate sentient beings. The broader the power of vows, the broader the mind's capacity; the greater the power of vows, the greater the mind's strength. The broader the mind's capacity, the more widely embracing and harmonious the spreading of the Dharma and delivering of beings; the greater the mind's strength, the greater the power to attract and gather beings when spreading the Dharma and delivering beings. All Buddhas have general vows and specific vows; the Four Great Vows are the general vows, and all bodhisattvas, at the time of their initial arising of bodhicitta, must make these vows.