Continuing comments on Acariya Dhammapala’s “A Treatise on the Paramis” (2)
In my previous post I left off noting how utterly impossible seeming Dhammapala’s “eight qualifications” for bodhisattvahood were–without actually telling you what those qualifications were! (I didn’t want to depress you any sooner than I had to.) Well, here they are. These are the qualities and characteristics you must possess if your bodhisattva vow has any hope of succeeding:
- A human being (manussatta): You have to be homo sapiens when you make the vow.
- Male sex (lingasampatti): Maybe you can chalk it up to patriarchy, but this is one of the traditional qualifications since, it is assumed, all buddha’s are male. (The Buddha himself is quoted as asserting just this in the Anguttara Nikaya 1.279, on p. 114 of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation.) However, the Tibetans–bless their hearts–have a different take on this. According to them there has been at least one female buddha–Lady Tsogyal, consort of Padmasambhava.
Human Dude
- Achievement of the necessary supporting conditions (hetu): Dhammapala does not elaborate on this point, but I think it’s safe to assume it refers to the requisites of enlightenment (bodhisambhara), among which, of course, we can count the paramis.
- Personal presence and sight of the Master (sattharadassana): Here we run into a real problem, since apparently you have to make your vow at the feet of a buddha. Since we know of only one buddha directly and he’s been dead 2,500 years, give or take a century, anyone wanting to make the bodhisattva vow for the first time has already missed their chance. There is still hope, however, and this applies whether you’re currently a man or woman: assuming the truth of rebirth (a big assumption, admittedly, and one I will have to repeatedly make for the purpose of this project) it is possible you did indeed make a vow before Shakyamuni and received his acknowledgment. Even if you are woman now, perhaps you were a man then when you made the vow. After all, the bodhisattva vow is one that must be taken and retaken throughout one’s existence, in succeeding lifetimes, and unless you’ve developed the ability to recall past lives you will not know under what circumstances you previously lived and made the vow. I should point out that while this explanation gets us around the apparent impossibility of this qualification, it does not minimize its difficulty or rarity. (A more optimistic interpretation might say that you could have made the vow at the feet of any buddha, including those previous to Gotama. In which case, with innumerable buddhas and innumerable opportunities, there may in fact be innumerable real McCoy bodhisattvas out there!)
Sumedha (the future Gotama) receiving affirmation at the feet of Dipankara Buddha
- The going forth (pabbajja): You have to be a homeless renunciate when you make the aspiration, though not necessarily as a bhikkhu in a buddha’s dispensation.
- The achievement of noble qualities (gunasampatti): Not only must you already be a renunciate, but your meditations must have born significant fruit, specifically in the form of jhanas and various psychic powers. The reason for this is that only such a person will have the ability to properly investigate the paramis and understand, on his own, their necessity and nature. So, if you are a bodhisattva and don’t currently manifest these powers, well….something’s gone wrong.
- Extreme dedication (adhikara): The necessity of this trait would seem obvious to the point of being redundant. Honestly, I do not know of any project, task or aim undertaken by persons for their own benefit or the benefit of the world, that is as vast in its stated scope, duration, or challenge as that of the bodhisattva. “World conquest”–the project of Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons–seems almost a timid affair by comparison.
- Strong desire (chandata): This, too, seems rather obvious. Without a kind of mono-maniacal obsession for spiritual development it hardly seems possible anyone could have a snowball’s chance in Avici hell to attain buddhahood. The aspirant must, as Dhammapala says, possess all the aforesaid qualities and “have strong desire, yearning, and longing to practice the qualities issuing in Buddhahood. Only then does his aspiration succeed, not otherwise.”
Hsuan-hua in his twenties
Feeling intimidated yet?
Of course, all of this is simply “by the book.” I don’t know where Dhammapala got his information (maybe the devas?) so there is no way to check the veracity of any of it. Also, none of this makes sense if one doesn’t buy into the notion of rebirth; everything is predicated upon the assumption that a vow can carry over from one life to the next.
Stepping back, it’s obvious that if we withhold judgment on whether or not rebirth is true and take the bodhisattva project at its face value, as a soteriology it represents a truly unique culture. There is no other ideology out there where altruism of such a scale is imagined, much less attempted. The fact that there really have been–and are–people who take this aspiration more seriously than anything else and orient their lives, their careers, even their deaths, with this and only this end in mind, is quite staggering if you try to wrap your head around it.
Among modern day practitioners the person whom I think most closely fits the self-consciously lived bodhisattva life is the Venerable Hsuan-hua, one of the two greatest Chinese Ch’an monks of the twentieth century. (The other was his mentor, the Venerable Hsu-yun.) See, here, for example, the vows Hsuan-hua made as a young renunciate. His life, from very early until his death, was marked by a frenzy of teaching activity and the establishment of monasteries, temples and educational and medical facilities, punctuated by sometimes extended periods of intense solitary retreat. Whether or not the intention behind this tremendous labor actually carries over to a new life is not for me to say, but clearly the man’s work and example has had significant ripple effects in the visible world.
Bodhisattva Road 