Meditation and Poetics – (Bodhisattva Vows – 4)

“..the Buddha path is endless, I vow to follow through”

AG: And the last of them (Bodhisattva vows is “Buddha path is endless, I vow to follow through”. Or, “wakened mind” (“Buddha” just means wakefulness) – “Wakefulness is infinite, (or the path of wakefulness is endless), I vow to go right through to the end”

Same thing as “Sentient beings are endless..numberless, I vow to enlighten all.” So it’s a statement of vastness, you realize, it’s a statement of vastness. It’s also a statement of your occupation of this vastness, your… the vastness is our kingdom. We don’t have to shrink from the vast. We are the vast actually. So it’s a statement of endlessness. And nothing could be more…from a poetic point of view, nothing could be more romantic, nothing could be more delightful, nothing could be more poetical, nothing could be more Wordsworthian-vast, nothing could be more Shelley-an, Blake would cream!  In other words, it satisfies everything, it satisfies every poetic ambition, except its basis is cold, clear, dis-illusioned materialistic no-mind, no soul, no ego, no self, nothing but phenomena at once real and empty (simultaneously real and empty).

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-one-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-three-and-three-quarters minutes in] 

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