On Failure, Despair, Our Times, and the 1,000 Arms of the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion

All of us today, but especially we Americans, face so many challenges as the “three poisons” of greed, hatred, and ignorance run shamelessly rampant in our country and in the world at large. It can be overwhelming. What to do? How do we move forward when every day brings new and awful challenges? It’s hard not to despair. But turning toward the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion might give us heart, and help us see that we are not alone.

But first—some words about the Buddha. Twenty-five hundred years ago, after some six years of dedicated effort, the ex-prince, Siddhartha Gautama, fully awoke to complete and perfect enlightenment. Known then as the Buddha, the Awakened One, legend says that at his enlightenment he spontaneously exclaimed: “Wonder of Wonders! All beings are already Buddha, fully endowed with wisdom and virtue. Only their unconscious habit of dualistic, self-centered thinking prevents the realization of this!” Then, so powerful was the experience, that for three weeks, it’s said that he continued to sit beneath the Bodhi tree, absorbed in and absorbing the depths of that realization. He wondered if the truth, so obvious now to him and yet so subtle, could even be communicated. But then, after some convincing by the gods themselves, he got up and set off along the dusty roads of India to begin a lifetime of teaching others how to also find and walk the liberating path he’d uncovered.

Why? Why after realizing true peace, take on the challenging path of helping others? A Buddhist parable says that the Buddha was once seated in a grove of trees when he asked his sangha, “Do many leaves litter the ground here or few?” The sangha answered, “Many leaves, World-Honored One.” He then held up a handful of leaves and asked, “Do I now hold many leaves or few?” “Very few leaves, World-Honored One.” The Buddha said, “What I have realized through enlightenment is like the many leaves. But what I teach is like this small handful. For what I teach is only what is conducive to the ending of suffering.” His fundamental aim, the outcome of his great enlightenment, was to benefit all beings. 

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The word “love” is used little in Buddhism and hardly mentioned in Zen. But if you lean in close, you’ll hear its soundless sound. William Blake—our wise old man of the West—hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). Avalokiteshvara, the 1,000-armed Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, is the active form of immense and totally selfless, nondual love. Such love is not mere sentiment. Each of the bodhisattva’s thousand arms ends in a hand with an open eye of awakened, transcendental, nondual wisdom in the palm. Without that open eye, who knows what damage a thousand sincere yet blindly groping arms might do? The bodhisattva has eleven heads, too, so he can see into every realm. How did that all happen? How did he, or she, or they get all those heads and arms and eyes? Was it a matter of wishing—or what?

Buddhist legend presents it like this: World ages ago, the great Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, (who is usually presented as male, though the Chinese Kwan Yin and Japanese Kannon tend to be female) looked down into the many hells, and saw them filled with suffering beings. A great vow arose: “I will liberate all beings from the sufferings of the lower realms.” Then, on through countless ages he labored, descending into hell after hell, emptying hell after hell. At last, the unimaginable task was done. The hells were empty. All living things had been freed from suffering.

Wiping the diamonds of sweat from his brow, the bodhisattva looked down into the now empty, silent hells with deep satisfaction. And smiled. It was done, finished, complete. Here and there a curling wisp of smoke still rose; now and then, in some vast cavern far below, faint echoes sounded as a brick toppled from a pile of rubble. But the raging fires had been quenched and the great bubbling iron cauldrons stilled. Sweet silence flowed through the dark halls. Even the raging demons were gone; the horse-headed, the tiger-headed, the horned and fanged ones. They too, in the end, had been released by the mighty efforts of the compassionate one.    

But suddenly, there came a wailing scream, then another. Flames leapt, smoke whirled, blood-filled cauldrons bubbled madly. Whips cracked, chains clanged, demons roared. The radiant smile faded from the bodhisattva’s face. In less than an instant, all was as it was before, the hells again entirely filled. The bodhisattva’s heart filled with deepest sorrow. His head broke into eleven heads. His arms shattered into a thousand arms. With eleven heads, the bodhisattva could see in every direction and find any suffering being that needed help. With a thousand arms he could reach into any realm to offer that help. Rolling up his one thousand sleeves, the great bodhisattva settled down again to the endless task.

Out of totally committed, hard-won failure, out of immense despair, came not withdrawal or negation or giving up but, rather, greater commitment, greater skill. As Wu-men in his Gateless Barrier (C. Wu-men kuan; J. Mumonkan) collection of koans says, in a somewhat different context: “The failure is wonderful indeed.”

Zen holds that the compassionate efforts of a bodhisattva are like the efforts of someone trying to fill a well with snow. Toss in endless shovelfuls of snow, and as each one hits the water, it immediately starts to melt. The task is hopeless, impossible. And yet here lies the essence of the Way of the Bodhisattva. As the Sanskrit word “bodhi” means “wisdom,” and “sattva” means “being,” a bodhisattva is literally “a wisdom being.” So a bodhisattva is a being who’s wisely chosen to mature beyond their own unconscious self-centeredness and become of benefit to all. Leonard Cohen wrote —“Now I greet you from the other side / Of sorrow and despair / With a love so vast and shattered / It will reach you everywhere” (“Heart with No Companion”). Isn’t this how it is? Isn’t this the voice of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, him or her or their self?

Buddhist tradition sums up the Buddha’s teaching in Three General Resolutions—“Avoid evil. Do good. Save the many beings.” In a well-known Zen dialogue, one of the great poets of Tang- era China, who was also a governor of a province, came to Bird’s Nest Roshi (so named because of his habit of doing zazen in a tree) and asked him for the highest teaching. Bird’s Nest answered, “Avoid evil, do good, save the many beings.” The sophisticated governor retorted, “Even a child of 3 knows that.” To which Bird’s Nest responded, “Yes. But a man of 70 still finds it hard to put into practice.”

Hard to put into practice, indeed. Difficulties will come. Failure may come, but challenges can lead to greater commitment and greater skill. This, after all, is how the Great Bodhisattva got all those hands and eyes and mouths, too, to speak up for what’s good, and speak out about what’s wrong. It’s how we beginner bodhisattvas will do it too. And then we’ll roll up our sleeves and once again get back to work filling a well with snow.