ACI Course 7 — The Vows of the Bodhisattva · Class 2 · 道德的类型与特点

Reading Two: Types and Features of Morality

A. On the three sets of vows

The following selection is taken from the Highway for Bodhisattvas by Je Tsongkapa (1357-1419), folios 527-528.

Even when you die and move to your next birth, you do not lose your bodhisattva vows. Thus the texts speak of bodhisattva vows which you attain "naturally." It is, generally speaking, correct that these vows are had among all three types of beings, since they follow along with you even after you die and move on. Nonetheless when we split the vows into categories we divide them into one or another of only two types: those possessed by laypeople and those possessed by those who have left the home life. This division is made according to whether or not the particular bodhisattva has the vows of the five types of practitioners who have left the home life: novice monks and so on.

A division by basic nature for the morality had by people of both these categories can also be made, succinctly, into three further types: the morality of restraint, the morality of collecting goodness, and the morality of working for all living beings. This is because every sort of morality that any bodhisattva ever has to practice is included into these three.

"Why is it," one may ask, "that you make this division into three different types of morality?" Admittedly there are commentaries which explain that this division into three is meant to coincide with the division made in the way of the listeners, where the vows are described as three:

The activities of a bodhisattva though are limited to two: trying to ripen one's own mental stream, and trying to ripen the mental streams of other beings. To accomplish the former, there are only two types of activities, no more and no less: giving up improper behavior, and accumulating good behavior. These are represented by two kinds of morality: the morality of restraining oneself, and the morality of collecting goodness. For ripening the minds of others, you need then the morality of working for the good of all living beings. As such there are precisely three types of morality. This is an excellent way of explaining the point.

"Why," one may continue, "is the order of the three types of morality fixed that way?" The morality of giving up improper behavior, which is shared with those of the listener way, is a cause that leads into the latter two types. As for the types of morality which are not shared with this way, you could hardly work for the sake of all other beings if you hadn't yet accomplished collecting goodness for yourself; as the text says,

This is how the order is explained in the commentary said to have been authored by Samudra Megha, and the explanation is correct.

Here next is the basic nature of each of these three kinds of morality. The first is the morality of restraining oneself, and it consists of the seven different types of freedom vows. These are first of all the morality observed by a full monk or full nun, an intermediate nun, and a novice monk or novice nun for the category of those who have left the home life. For the layman category, there are the lifetime layman's vows of a man or woman.

There are actually eight different types of freedom vows. The reason that the one-day vow is not mentioned in this context can be understood as explained in the Commentary on the Difficult Points in the Twenty Verses on Vows, which says:

B. On the three kinds of morality

The following selection is taken from the Commentary to the Source of All My Good, an explanation by Pabongka Rinpoche (1878-1941) of the famed root verses of Je Tsongkapa, ff. 18A-18B.

Suppose you are able, as described above, to reach the Wish for enlightenment, where you truly hope to achieve the state of a Buddha in order to help every living being. This itself is not enough. Once you do reach the Wish, you must still take on the vows of these bodhisattva princes and princesses, these sons and daughters of the victorious Buddhas. And then you must train yourself in giving and the other five perfections. Otherwise there is no way you could ever come to enlightenment.

This fact explains why it is so very important when holy beings have said that all six perfections are covered in the three types of morality.

The first type is called the "morality of keeping oneself from committing wrong." Here you begin by being extremely careful to keep the morality of avoiding the ten bad deeds. This type of good behavior is common to everyone, whether they wear the robes or not, and must absolutely be maintained.

More specifically, with this first type of morality, you must in addition exert yourself to the fullest, so to assure that your life is never sullied in the least by overstepping the bounds of any of the vows you have agreed to keep. Here we refer to vows that belong to any of the three traditional sets: the freedom vows, the bodhisattva vows, and the secret vows.

The second type of morality is known as the "morality of collecting goodness." This is where you use a great variety of means to gather or collect extremely potent stores of virtue into your being; these are the virtues of amassing merit and wisdom.

The third type of morality is the "morality that acts for every sentient being." Here you take care to keep the different varieties of morality mentioned above that involve restraining yourself from wrong; but instead of doing so with a motivation which is infected with any self-interest, you act only out of an intention to reach total Buddhahood for the sake of all living kind.

You must find a sure kind of knowledge where you see clearly how—if you lack a total fluency in these three types of morality, if you are not well trained and completely accustomed to following them—then you cannot become one of those who has reached the fully enlightened state of a Buddha.

Once you have found this knowledge, you must take on the vows for the "children of the Victors" (that is, the bodhisattva vows), and then with a resolve of fierce intensity you must learn and master the three types of morality. What we are requesting of our Lama here, said our Lama, is that he or she grant us the ability to do so.

C. On the features of morality

The following selections are taken from the Highway for Bodhisattvas, ff. 521 and 524-6. The text is referring to specific passages from the Bodhisattva Levels of Master Asanga.

"What," you may ask, "is the very essence of this morality?" To put it briefly, it has four wonderful qualities:

Each one of these wonderful qualities has a specific function. The fact that vows are taken from other people gives you a sense of shame that allows you to avoid doing something wrong: when you are close to breaking one of the precepts, you stop, because you think of how this other person would reproach you.

The motivation that you have as you take vows gives you a feeling of conscience that also helps you avoid doing something wrong: when you are close to breaking one of the precepts, you stop, because of your own sense of self-respect, for yourself and what you represent.

The two qualities of being able to recover if you fail, and of not failing in the first place, allow you to live without any regrets. Once you possess the sense of conscience and of shame that you get from taking the vows in an excellent way from others and from your pure original motivation, you will be able to maintain your morality, whether through avoiding any failure in the first place, or through recovering should you incur some failure. As you continue to maintain your morality in this way, you observe how free you are from any downfalls in morality, and can live without any regrets.

Here is how this process is described. Those who have taken the vows from others should constantly examine their own mental stream with a form of wisdom that functions in an accurate way. If they see then that they are free of any kind of downfall, subtle or gross, they can enjoy the feeling of having no regrets, of realizing that their mental stream is crystal clean.

Here you should make great efforts from the very beginning never to allow yourself to be sullied by any bad deed at all. If by some remote chance you forget yourself or something similar, and thus find yourself dirtied by such a deed, you should never just ignore what happened. You must undertake to purify yourself, and restrain yourself in the future, and so on.

For this to happen, you have to have the emotions of conscience and shame. For these to come, certain conditions must be there when you take your vows. The person you take them from must be a spiritual friend who possesses all the necessary qualifications. The motivation with which you take the vows must come from the depths of your heart; you mustn't take them just to follow the crowd, or for any reason like that. Nor should you take them with any kind of inferior motivation, such as a fear of death or the like—let your aspirations be the highest that there are. Put a lot of effort into making the first two causes right.

There are four kinds of greatness to the practice of morality: these are virtue, infinity, assistance, and great rewards and benefits. Here is a description of the first.

"What good quality," one may ask, "does morality have when it is taken on in an excellent way, and when it is followed after one has taken it on?" People like the listeners are only hoping to achieve a state where they can help themselves—where they use their knowledge of the truth to rid themselves of everything related to mental affliction, and every kind of suffering. Towards this end they limit themselves to a small number of activities, and try to reach a state where they themselves find some peace, and self-control.

Bodhisattvas, on the other hand, undertake to help themselves through gaining the two kinds of cessation and the two kinds of wisdom. But they also work to help others; when they reach the wish for enlightenment, they undertake to be of assistance to both those of a higher kind and those who are not of a higher kind.

What does it mean to help those who are not of a higher kind? The act of assisting many beings refers to helping beings to avoid developing non-virtues that they don't already have, and giving up those which they do; that is, it refers to protecting them, in the meantime, from the lower realms.

The act of bringing many beings to happiness refers to helping them develop those virtues which they don't already have, and increase those which they do; that is, it refers to leading them, in the meantime, to the higher realms.

The act of feeling compassion for the world refers to biding your time, and never giving up your hope to help certain beings among the ones who are not of a higher kind: those who are filled with anger, or who have none of the necessary virtuous fortune, or who would be a worthy vessel for the Dharma but have slipped into a wrong way, or who have already passed to the lower realms. You feel as though they are your guests, and you are waiting to be of assistance for them.

What does it mean to help those who are of a higher kind? This refers to those who are of a higher kind in the sense that they are powerful beings of pleasure, or humans; and you undertake to lead them in the way of the practice of virtue.

The idea of "assistance" refers to the paths that take you to the way of the practice of virtue, meaning the paths of accumulation and preparation. Reaching happiness refers to living in a state of happiness during this life; that is, enjoying good bodily feelings as you reach a high state of meditational fluency, and finally undergoing the great pleasure of liberation itself.

For all these reasons, morality is "virtue," which refers to the fact that it never fails. Other equivalent terms for this description are admittedly described in the various commentaries, but I will not list them all here.

"Infinity" refers to the fact that this morality incorporates an infinite number of points concerning the precepts of the bodhisattva.

"Assistance" refers to the fact that one is living to bring help and happiness to all living beings, both while one is practicing the morality, and once one has reached the goal of this morality.

"Great rewards and benefits" refers to the following. The "great reward" here is the total enlightenment that is the goal which morality is bringing to you at the point where you are still a bodhisattva. The "great benefit" is the goal which morality brings to others, at the point where you are already a Buddha.

These four kinds of greatness, virtue and the rest, do apply to the three trainings of those of the listener way at the outset. But it is only the morality of the bodhisattva which has all of them in the following way. At the beginning, once you have developed the wish for enlightenment, this morality is virtue from the outset, in being of help to oneself and others, and in being fully explained. The assistance that the morality gives to all living beings means that it is virtue during the interim. And it is virtue at the end as well, since it leads to great rewards and benefits.

D. Divisions of the bodhisattva vows

The following selection is taken from the Highway for Bodhisattvas, ff. 595-6.

One may ask the following: "What kind of person is it who can commit one of the downfalls? And what groups of downfalls are there to commit?" The major texts say the following about the person:

The point here is that, to commit a downfall, two conditions must apply to you. First you must be a person who has taken the vows and who has never lost them. Secondly you must be a person who is in his or her right mind.

As for how many groups of these downfalls there are, we can say that there are only two, no more and no less. The older commentary to the Twenty Verses on Vows, for example, states that

It is moreover the case that the newer commentary, as well as the Jewel of the True Thought of the Able Ones, specifically state that there are only two "corpuses," meaning groups, of bodhisattva vows. The principal text concurs on this point as well.

As such the explanation found in a number of Tibetan commentaries, and in the Commentary on the Difficult Points by Nakpopa, which describes the groups of bodhisattva vows as being three, is incorrect. These say that there are three distinct categories including failures, serious offenses, and wrong deeds. If this were true though then in cases when you had a lesser or medium instance of impurity the deed would have to become a serious offense, whereas the original text here specifically states that such deeds are classified as actions which are similar to a failure, or as secondary offenses. Therefore the nature of downfalls involving either lesser or medium instances of impurity is that of a secondary offense, whereas by category or group they belong to the group of moral failures. This is similar to the way in which, when we are dealing with serious offenses and wrong deeds in the part of the monk's vows which treats the moral failures, we categorize them in the group of the failures.

E. Relationship between the bodhisattva vows and the other two sets of vows

The following selections are taken from the Highway for Bodhisattvas, ff. 518-519, 533, and 536.

Someone might think the following:

This is an immense misconception, for the following is found in the glorious Tantra of Sambhuti, and in the Tantra of the Angel of Diamond, and in the Peak of Diamond:

The point being made here is that, when you take vows of the diamond way, you must also take the vows of the five Buddha classes, and in conjunction with these you must agree to develop the wish for enlightenment and then practice the three different types of morality.

A great many authoritative texts on the ritual for entering various secret worlds also state that one must take on two separate sets of vows: the ones that are shared and the ones that are not. The ones that are shared are none other than the bodhisattva vows.

Moreover, you do when you commit yourself to the wish for enlightenment also agree to keep the various precepts of the bodhisattva. And there is no path in the great way, the way of the perfections, which is anything else than the training in the three types of morality, in the six perfections.

Moreover, it doesn't matter which of the four different groups of the teachings of the secret word which you use to enter the secret path: in every case you will need the path of the wish for enlightenment, and the six perfections. This path is common then to both the diamond way and the way of the perfections; it would be totally wrong for anyone following the way of the secret word ever to disregard it.

When the text of the Bodhisattva Levels is covering the morality of restraint and says that there are seven different categories of freedom vows, here is what it means. You should understand this statement as referring both to the actual seven different categories of these vows, and also to the act of giving up the natural misdeeds which are common to both these vows and the vows of the bodhisattva. It does not mean to imply that we are restricted here only to the seven categories of the freedom vows.

We should clarify this act of giving up the natural misdeeds which are shared with the vows of freedom. It occurs within you at the same time that you take on the vows of the bodhisattva. The point here is not so much that these two should be considered a basis and something resting upon that basis. Rather, if we are considering the actual seven categories of freedom vows, it is true that the bodhisattva vows will form within one even if he has never taken these freedom vows before. Nonetheless, if one is a kind of person who could properly take on these freedom vows, one should before accepting the bodhisattva vows take on either one of the sets of freedom vows for layman, or else those for ordained people. Otherwise you would transgress the proper order of the teachings of the Victors; it would be like becoming a full monk without ever having taken on the vows of a novice: although it is quite true that the vows would form within one, it is not something that would be entirely appropriate.

Some with no proper basis say the following:

This viewpoint is a blunder where the person expressing it has failed to make a distinction between the freedom vows and the motivation of the lower way. Although it is the case that one must give up the motivation of the lower way in order for the vows of the bodhisattva to form within him or her, it is not true that one must give up the vows of freedom. It is equally true with someone who possesses the bodhisattva vows that if they develop the motivation of the lower way they slip away from greater way, but it is not the case that they lose their freedom vows.

It is moreover the case that the freedom vows are shared by both of the two ways, and that developing the motivation mentioned could not be something that makes you lose your freedom vows, and that the very highest and most excellent form of life is when someone who possesses the vows of freedom then takes on the higher types of vows.

Therefore the idea that those who are keeping the higher vows must give up the lower vows is much like a fierce rain of hail, which descends to destroy the very root of the teachings of the victorious Buddhas, and chops down the rich crops of all the goodness and happiness that could come to every living creature. It is the totally blind idea of a person who has absolutely no understanding of the essential points of the important scriptures of the entire range of Buddhist schools. As such you must carry this idea far away from you, and throw it out like rubbish.

The texts describe it extensively, in quotations like the following:

We see moreover in many sutras descriptions of those beings who had reached the level of the Emperor of the World, and who were people living the home life—great bodhisattvas who had spent many years practicing the activities of the bodhisattvas. As a result, a great number of them gained a great desire to leave the home life and take ordination, and this is what they did. Given all these facts, those who are living the life of the supreme way should in fact cherish deeply the vows of freedom in general, and especially the vows for those who have left the home life.