Entering the Sutra by Way of Structure, Source, and Lineage
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Incense Invocation of the Three Bodhisattvas
This invocation honors Kṣitigarbha, Samantabhadra, and Vajrapāṇi — not as icons to venerate, but as living presences within the architecture of vow. Each figure enacts a distinct function of remaining, resonating with the sutra’s core structure. The triad speaks to descent, offering, and protection — movements that mirror the three seeds of vow, the counter-rhythms, and the refrain.
It is also a mudrā in words: the bow of incense is an ancient gesture of alignment. Here, it recognizes what persists beyond clarity, and calls forth the vow-body of these three bodhisattvas into the field of this sutra.
With this incense, we bow to Kṣitigarbha,
who descends into realms of forgetting and does not retreat.
Who remains when vow is no longer visible, and still does not release it.
Kṣitigarbha (Earth Store Bodhisattva) embodies the deep vow not to abandon beings, even in the most obscured realms (hell, grief, forgetfulness). This verse frames him as the archetype of staying-with: his presence in the invocation evokes the foundational vow to remain even when memory, clarity, and visible structure have collapsed.
• The phrase “does not retreat” echoes his primal Mahāyāna vow: “Until the hells are empty, I will not become a Buddha.” In the Holding Vow Sutra, this aligns with the third seed of vow: “I will not exit this field—not for reward, not even for peace.”
Kṣitigarbha is invoked first because he holds the root vow beneath recognition — when nothing confirms, and still, vow does not end. He sanctifies the field where no outcome can be guaranteed.
With this incense, we bow to Samantabhadra,
whose Ten Great Vows offer each moment again,
because bodhicitta awakens in the moment of need.
Who turns each breath into practice,
and each return into a beginning.
Samantabhadra (Universal Virtue) represents the activation of bodhicitta into lived conduct. His Ten Great Vows (from the Avataṃsaka Sutra) are not commandments, but patterns of devotional presence — they turn intention into embodied continuity. This verse captures this with: “turns each breath into practice.”
• “Because bodhicitta awakens in the moment of need” reframes bodhicitta not as a personal realization but as a field-sensitive emergence. It echoes the Yogācāra idea that vow and mind arise interdependently with suffering — as medicine arises with illness.
This part of the invocation blesses the middle layer of the sutra — the counter-rhythms and practices of remaining. Samantabhadra affirms that returning is not regression, but continuity re-entered through vow.
With this incense, we bow to Vajrapāṇi,
who guards the ground of what is real.
Who does not permit disappearance to be mistaken for peace,
or the rhythm of the three poisons to be mistaken for truth.
Vajrapāṇi (Holder of the Thunderbolt) is the protector of the Dharma. In Mahāyāna iconography, he defends clarity — not by violence, but by cutting through delusion. The verse speaks to this razor presence.
• “Does not permit disappearance to be mistaken for peace” speaks against the misreading of emptiness as nihilism, or of stillness as spiritual bypassing.
• “The rhythm of the three poisons” — craving, aversion, and ignorance — here refers not only to inner afflictions but to social rhythm itself: the compulsive worldly motions of performance, denial, and forgetting.
Vajrapāṇi blesses the sutra’s third movement: the Vows of Remaining. His role is to prevent vow from being sublimated into comfort, oblivion, or false resolution. He holds the edge where structure must not collapse into formlessness.
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Homage (Śūnyatā Lineage)
Homage to śūnyatā (emptiness — not nihilism, but interdependence without inherent existence) —
where all things arise and vanish without conclusion.
Homage to bodhicitta—
still breathing beneath forgetting.
Homage to the vow that moves without center—
held by no one, yet holding all.
Commentary:
This opening grounds the sutra in the Śūnyatā lineage, particularly Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka school which emphasizes the Middle Way. The first line echoes the non-origination of phenomena (anutpāda) and their dependent co-arising (pratītyasamutpāda), emphasizing process over entity.
• “Without conclusion” counters the tendency to reify cessation as finality. It is cessation without closure — consistent with Prajñāpāramitā: non-achievement and continuous unfolding.
• The second homage invokes bodhicitta as that which survives even cognitive or karmic rupture. In Mahāyāna, bodhicitta is said to be “subtle, difficult to perceive, never destroyed” (Bodhisattvabhūmi: the progressive levels of a Bodhisattva’s development whose journey begins with bodhicitta). It is framed here not as will but as breath — the animating residue of vow even when clarity is lost.
• The third line evokes non-self (anātman) and vow as dharmic movement — not emanating from an ego-agent, a grasping force, but functioning structurally, like gravity, through our whole body and mind. Aligning with Dōgen’s framing of vow as something that “uses the self,” not vice versa.
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I. Origin Conditions (The Three Seeds of Vow)
1. Contact that Does Not Dissolve
I have been touched.
And I remain.
2. Recognition that Cannot Be Unseen
I have seen.
And I cannot pretend otherwise.
3. Relationship that Refuses to Vanish
I will not exit this field.
Not for reward.
Not even for peace.
Commentary:
This section names the origin conditions of vow, not as conceptual decisions but as non-reversible thresholds. Each one corresponds with one or more skandhas — the aggregates through which experience arises: feeling, perception, and so on:
• Contact refers to vedanā (the second skandha of feeling-tone: not emotion, but pre-conceptual affect), but preceding reaction. It invokes the moment before fabrication begins — when contact is simply registered and one chooses to remain.
• Recognition refers to saṃjñā — the moment of naming, perceiving, or distinguishing. It echoes Yogācāra epistemology, where perception, once arisen, activates karmic seeds in the ālayavijñāna and becomes karmically potent unless met with clarity. “Cannot pretend otherwise” resists the habitual suppression of perception, which is itself a root of avidyā (ignorance).
• Relationship is the threshold where contact and recognition have been made relational — but the agent chooses not to exit. This is the opposite of parinirvāṇa-by-escape; it recalls the Bodhisattva’s vow: “I will not enter final peace until all beings are freed.”
This third seed distinguishes vow from personal intention — it frames non-abandonment as a position taken even when letting go or understanding seem sufficient. Vow is not governed by what feels complete or what can be explained. Non-abandonment is therefore not reactive, but an orientation of care that persists without necessity.
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II. The Four Counter-Rhythms of Vow (Where the World Pulls Away from Vow)
1. Four Pressures of the World
Conditions urge us to fix.
Consensus urges us to explain.
Fear urges us to harden.
Time urges us to vanish.
2. Four Tendencies of the Untrained Heart
To grasp what is pleasant.
To flee what is painful.
To drift from what is neutral.
To turn from what is unresolved.
3. Four Turnings Toward Vow
To feel without forming.
To notice without dividing.
To remain without enclosing.
To care without centering.
4. Four Practices of Remaining
I move gently, against urgency.
I touch what others erase.
I breathe where others rush.
I remain in what preceded the story.
Commentary:
This section echoes several canonical quartets—the Four Noble Truths, Four Right Efforts, and Four Reliances — but reorients them. Rather than liberation through transcendence of contact, this is a liberation through fidelity to contact, even when it is unresolved.
1. Four Pressures of the World
These are external, culturally reinforced samsaric demands — functioning like Māras in the Pāli Canon: urgent, plausible, and interruptive.
They arise from living in a world that:
• Prizes control → urges us to fix.
• Demands narratable clarity → urges us to explain.
• Rewards defensiveness or righteousness → urges us to harden.
• Assumes the benefit of forgetfulness → urges us to vanish.
Each of these is a rhythm that conceals suffering by masking it with utility, presenting conditioned reactions as necessary adaptations.
2. Four Tendencies of the Untrained Heart
These name the habitual responses to vedanā (feeling) and map directly to taṇhā (craving) and upādāna (clinging) in the middle links of Dependent Origination:
• Grasping the pleasant
• Fleeing the painful
• Drifting from the neutral
• Turning from the unresolved
This is the inner mirroring of the outer pressures. Where the first quartet addresses societal force, this quartet reveals emotional habit.
3. Four Turnings Toward Vow
Each line in this section resists reification and preserves contact without distortion:
• “Feel without forming” counters conceptual proliferation (papañca)
• “Notice without dividing” resists dualism
• “Remain without enclosing” opens toward śūnyatā (emptiness)
• “Care without centering” enacts non-self compassion (anattā-karuṇā)
This is where vow becomes practice — a steady refusal to convert presence into product.
4. Four Practices of Remaining
The final quartet grounds the vow in physical and perceptual action.
It is micro-political (as in the Buddha's teaching “Hatred never ceases by hatred. Hatred ceases only by love. This is an eternal law.”), dharmic, and intimate.
Each line is an act of quiet disobedience against internalized conditioning.
The final line — “I remain in what preceded the story” — is both dharma and meta-dharma:
• A gesture toward pre-conceptual awareness (like rigpa in Dzogchen)
• A holding of space that is prior to narration, justification, or erasure
• A place where contact is not made meaningful, but allowed to be real
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III. Vows of Remaining
I vow not to grasp what is empty of self.
I vow not to flee what is marked by dukkha.
I vow not to mistake the reflection for substance.
I vow not to vanish into the hush of cessation.
I remain; in contact.
I remain; without retreat.
I remain; even when unseen.
I remain; until no vow is needed.
Commentary:
This section most closely echoes bodhisattva vow language. Each first line is a refusal to exit, precisely where most paths would permit release. These are not just renunciations, but structural refusals to abandon presence.
• First vow rejects clinging to ātman (selfhood).
• Second vow accepts the first mark of existence (dukkha) without recoil.
• Third vow draws directly from the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra: illusions are mistaken for enduring substance.
• Fourth vow is the most profound — it rejects the pursuit of cessation (nirodha) as escape. It recalls Shantideva: “I shall not give up awakening, even for my own peace.”
The repetition of “I remain” here becomes mantric — not as ego, but as dharmic orientation. The final line, “until no vow is needed,” reflects the paradox of vow: it is provisional but real. When vow becomes the field itself, there is no remaining or leaving — only presence.
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IV. Vow Dedication
May this vow be sufficient when clarity fails.
May this vow be intact when rhythm forgets.
May this vow be soft enough to stay,
and strong enough to return.
Commentary:
This closing gāthā functions like the sharing of merit (pariṇāmanā) which is a protective force in Mahāyāna practice, but it shares not merit — but continuity. It is not addressed to “all beings,” but to vow itself, asking it to hold steady when cognition, clarity, or rhythm falter.
The language recalls the Lotus Sutra’s poetic closures and the quiet depth of Zen death poems — jisei (辞世) — which often seek not transcendence but fidelity — to remain with what is, until even form and formlessness lose contrast.
Each line in this dedication draws on Buddhist temporality and epistemology:
• “When clarity fails” acknowledges that prajñā (insight) is not always accessible. It names the truth that insight fluctuates — and asks vow to persist through those intervals, becoming its own source of knowing.
• “When rhythm forgets” evokes samsāric momentum — the way we are pulled back into karmic tides, forgetting what we once knew in stillness, back into the mundane worldly existence that cycles us through suffering. Here, vow is entrusted with memory — not conceptual, but structural memory that remembers how to reorient.
• “Soft enough to stay” and “strong enough to return” are paired to avoid the extremes of clinging or collapse. The former resonates with mahākaruṇā (great compassion) — the ability to stay near suffering without needing to fix it. The latter echoes virya-pāramitā (perfection of tireless energy/effort) — not striving, but joyful resilient return.
Together, this gāthā functions as a seal, not a summary. It does not restate the sutra — it protects it. Like the closing chant of many liturgies, it holds the intention in the field even after the words dissolve.
~ End ~
Explore the arc of the
Holding Vow Sutra (Orientation) :
•
Holding Vow Sutra ⧉
•
Commentary: Holding Vow Sutra ⧉
•
What Remains (Poem) ⧉
For orientation beyond this page, you may enter through:
•
The Vibrating Thread: From the Field of Redibility
•
Naikan in Four Movements
•
Threadwork (or begin with
Threshold to Threadwork ⧉ for a gentler entry)
•
The Holding Vow Sutra (drawn from the arc of
Naikan: The Rhythm of Vow ⧉ , but arriving later)
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