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The call to awakening is sometimes rough and demanding. In Canada, I spoke to a woman who described her recent bout with cancer as her "wake-up call." It transformed her life and her entire way of being, in a wonderfully positive way. This "wake-up call" demands we begin to meet every manifestation of life, with un-biased love and interest. It forces us to let go of our small mindedness and continual concern for self-safety and security. It inspires us to open our hearts to embrace the fullness of life as it actually is, rather than as we wish it would be. In Mahayana Buddhism, this heart aspiration is expressed in the form of the Bodhisattva Vow. I first met with it in the following form.
However innumerable beings are,
I vow to save them. These vows were sometimes inspiring, but just as often, they provoked a lot of difficult questions. I wasn't sure what it meant to "save" someone, and could it even be done? The vision of sealing someone up in Saran Wrap and putting them in the fridge - saving them for a rainy day - didn't quite make sense. The vow to extinguish states of suffering, might lead people to hate their difficulties, thus encouraging a battle within themselves. It didn't seem like a recipe for the cessation of suffering. Mastering all the Dharmas seemed so vast, and frequently vulnerable to a lot of ego fantasy. And finally, when contemplating Buddha Truth, I often wondered how one could attain it. When everything is experienced as an expression of Buddha nature, what is there to attain? For many years, I found myself reformulating these four vows, trying to see and then express the real essence. There was something wonderful in the aspiration to awaken for the sake of others but could we express it in a way that joins together the view of vast universal unfolding with the experience of a "personal me," here in this room. Could these two dimensions of Being meet in a seamless natural experience? Recently, I have been finding great inspiration from the following formulation. It spontaneously arose at the Origin's Centre, Western Australia, while I was leading a Chenrezi retreat. Since then it has become a seed for repeated reflection both for me and for many others.
However innumerable beings are,
I vow to meet them with kindness and interest. May this sharing with you, inspire and spread something that is precious.
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