Explore/The Bodhisattva Vow

The Bodhisattva Vow

Key Concepts

Key Concepts

• Buddha-Nature
• Compassion
• Defining Bodhicitta
• Emptiness
• Equalizing & Exchanging Self and Others
• Equanimity
• History of Bodhicitta Teachings
• How to Develop Bodhicitta
• Interdependent Origination
• Lineage of the Profound View
• Lineage of the Vast Conduct
• Mahāyāna
• Mind Training
• Non-Self
• Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect
• The Bodhisattva Ideal
• The Bodhisattva Path
• The Bodhisattva Vow
• The Bodhisattva's Goal
• The Four Immeasurables
• The Six Perfections
• The Three Higher Trainings
• The Two Accumulations
• The Two Truths
• Tonglen: The Practice of Sending and Receiving
• Types of Bodhicitta

Listen to this page

The bodhisattva vow is a personal commitment to the altruistic ideal of bodhicitta. It involves wholeheartedly giving rise to and maintaining a benevolent attitude that wishes to free all beings from suffering and help them along the path to enlightenment, as well as the responsibilities associated with dedicating this, and all future lives, to attaining buddhahood for the sake of oneself and others. The vow is traditionally bestowed in a formal ceremony that typically involves a qualified preceptor, one who has themself received the vow and maintained it accordingly, and a suitable recipient, an individual or group that is intent upon following the bodhisattva path and has prepared themselves to take up this commitment.

Media

Featured books

Featured articles

Featured dissertations

Featured source texts

This article needs to be written or reviewed / rewritten BEFORE LAUNCH!

The bodhisattva who is aspiring to [attain] enlightenment formulates the following thought and states the following words: “Oh, how I wish to attain unsurpassed true and complete enlightenment! May I be one who accomplishes the welfare of all sentient beings, and may I establish them in the [form of] nirvana that is an absolute termination and in the knowledge of a tathāgata.” In this way, he or she generates [enlightenment] mind by being one who desires both [to achieve] enlightenment and [to accomplish] the welfare of [all] sentient beings.

~ The Bodhisattva Path to Unsurpassed Enlightenment (21)

vow of individual liberation

In the Mūlasarvāstivāda vinaya that was preserved in Tibet, this refers to a set of seven types of vows of individual liberation that constitute formal ordination according to the precepts of the vinaya, or disciplinary code, of the fundamental vehicle.

term page

The bodhisattva vow is essentially a type of precept, comparable to the sets of monastic and lay precepts found in the vinaya that are concerned with the regulation of behavior and adherence to well-defined codes of conduct. However, unlike those vows, which are correlated with individual liberation (prātimokṣa) and tend to restrict outward behavior, the bodhisattva precepts are more focused on inward motivation. In the Mahāyāna traditions, it is common for both types of vows to be observed, though they are typically presented as hierarchical, in that the vows of individual liberation are superseded by, or in some cases subsumed within, the bodhisattva vows. As Professor Dorji Wangchuk puts it,

The gist of Buddhist axiological principles seems to be that according to the prātimokṣa vow, one tries to refrain from inflicting injury on other sentient beings; according the bodhisattva vow, one tries to benefit sentient beings, which presupposes that one has already refrained from inflicting injury on them. . . .

~ The Resolve to Become a Buddha (54-55)

Therefore, another way to view these two, is that the first level of precepts is primarily concerned with the avoidance of harm to others and the subsequent detrimental effects of nonvirtuous actions for oneself, while the second level of vows is primarily concerned with the performance of virtuous deeds for the benefit of others and the associated accumulation of merit (puṇya) for oneself.

The difference between the observance of these two types of vows is illustrated in the classical story of a monk who is sitting alone in the forest when a deer happens to run past him while escaping from a hunter. When the hunter in pursuit of the deer comes upon the monk, he asks him which way the deer went. If the monk were to strictly follow the monastic precepts, which prohibit lying, he would be obligated to point the hunter in the correct direction of the deer. However, if that same monk was also a bodhisattva that had vowed to benefit all beings, then he would be obligated to lie to the hunter and send him off in the wrong direction in order to protect the life of the deer.

Furthermore, taking the bodhisattva vow can also be treated as a contemplative practice. In fact, it is for the most part compulsory in the Tibetan traditions to begin any formal liturgical practice by going for refuge and arousing bodhicitta, not to mention instances where a practitioner might be required to focus solely upon generating this mind for extended periods, such as in the accumulation of the preliminary practices (sngon 'gro). Although, these instances are, by and large, regarded as arousing or generating the mind (cittotpāda or sems bskyed pa), there is also the practice of repeatedly taking the actual vow (saṃvara). John Strong explains this shift from the initial generation of bodhicitta to the disciplined maintenance of bodhicitta, stating,

This event marks the start of one's aspiration to Buddhahood, and it can be understood as the initial experience of embarking on the path, akin to the step taken by the Buddha Gautama, in his previous life long ago. . . . What was legendary and biographical in the case of Gautama, however, became ritual and meditational in the Mahāyāna and extended to everyone. This is significant, for though the arousing of bodhicitta was theoretically something to be done once at the start of the bodhisattva path, in fact, ritually, it became something to be repeated often, the repetition serving to renew one's dedication.

~ Śāntideva on Developing the Thought of Awakening (176)

For a detailed explanation of the intricacies of the ceremonial procedures for taking the vow in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, see The Bestowal of the Bodhisattva Vow in the Middle Way and the Mind Only Traditions.

Notes

Media

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche: Explanation on Taking Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows

Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa: Granting the Bodhisattva Vow

Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche: Bodhicitta and the Bodhisattva Vow

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo: Bodhisattva Vow Ceremony

Mingyur Rinpoche: Taking the Bodhisattva Vow

Khenpo Sherab Sangpo: Taking the Bodhisattva Vows

Khenpo Sherab Sangpo: Bodhisattva Vows Part 1

Featured books

Featured articles

Featured dissertations

Featured texts

Bibliography: Works on The Bodhisattva Vow

Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Bodhisattva'

Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Bodhisattva'

Bodhicitta - The altruistic thought to seek enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. It is said to have two aspects: compassion aimed at sentient beings and their problems and the wisdom of enlightenment as the solution. Skt बोधिचित्त  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས།  Ch 菩提心  

Go to the page with the definition of 'bodhicitta'

Bodhicitta - The altruistic thought to seek enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. It is said to have two aspects: compassion aimed at sentient beings and their problems and the wisdom of enlightenment as the solution. Skt बोधिचित्त  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས།  Ch 菩提心  

Go to the page with the definition of 'bodhicitta'

Bodhicitta - The altruistic thought to seek enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. It is said to have two aspects: compassion aimed at sentient beings and their problems and the wisdom of enlightenment as the solution. Skt बोधिचित्त  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས།  Ch 菩提心  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Bodhicitta'

Bodhicitta - The altruistic thought to seek enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. It is said to have two aspects: compassion aimed at sentient beings and their problems and the wisdom of enlightenment as the solution. Skt बोधिचित्त  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས།  Ch 菩提心  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Bodhicitta'

Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

Go to the page with the definition of 'bodhisattva'

Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

Go to the page with the definition of 'bodhisattva'

Vinaya - Vinaya refers to the corpus of Buddhist teachings on moral discipline and precepts and is one of the three canonical sets of teachings alongside Sūtra and Abhidharma. It also refers to the monastic tradition which has been passed down since the Buddha's time until our time. Skt विनय  Tib འདུལ་བ།  Ch 毘奈耶  

Go to the page with the definition of 'vinaya'

Mahāyāna - Mahāyāna, or the Great Vehicle, refers to the system of Buddhist thought and practice which developed around the beginning of the Common Era, focusing on the pursuit of the state of full enlightenment of the Buddha through the realization of the wisdom of emptiness and the cultivation of compassion. Skt महायान  Tib ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོ།  Ch 大乘  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Mahāyāna'

Puṇya - The positive energy or potential created through performing good deeds, such as generosity or kindness. In Buddhism, accumulating this positive force is seen as essential for finding happiness in future lives, and crucial as a foundation for following the spiritual path. Skt पुण्य  Tib བསོད་ནམས་  Ch 福;功德  

Go to the page with the definition of 'merit'

Puṇya - The positive energy or potential created through performing good deeds, such as generosity or kindness. In Buddhism, accumulating this positive force is seen as essential for finding happiness in future lives, and crucial as a foundation for following the spiritual path. Skt पुण्य  Tib བསོད་ནམས་  Ch 福;功德  

Go to the page with the definition of 'puṇya'

Śaraṇagamana - The foundational act of entering the Buddhist path by formally seeking protection and guidance from the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṅgha. Skt शरणगमन  Tib སྐྱབས་འགྲོ་  Ch 皈依  

Go to the page with the definition of 'going for refuge'

Pariṇāmanā - The Buddhist practice of 'dedicating' or giving away the positive energy from one's good deeds for the benefit of others. It ensures that the goodness created is shared with all beings and directed toward the ultimate goal of enlightenment, preventing it from being exhausted. Skt परिणामना  Tib བསྔོ་བ་  Ch 迴向  

Go to the page with the definition of 'dedication'