Compassion in zen

How de we reconcile the bodhisattva precept of bringing all sentient beings to enlightenment with Buddha’s statement that: "no bodhisattva who is a real bodhisattva cherishes the idea of an ego entity, a personality, a being or a separated individuality"? [1] If there are no separate beings, who is there to bring to enlightenment. And on the road to enlightenment, which if either has primacy: wisdom or compassion? Or is this just semantics?

According to Master Han Shan, when a bodhisattva has the thought that there are innumerable living beings, the doubt will soon arise as to whether it is ever possible to bring all of them to enlightenment. As told in the Diamond Sutra, it is to cut off this doubt in Subhuti’s mind that Buddha teaches the apparently contradictory [2] :

“All living beings are led by me to the final nirvana. Although immeasurable, uncountable and unlimitable numbers of living beings are thus led to the final nirvana, it is true that not a living being is led there." [3]

In the course of a sentence or two, Buddha seems to be replacing one profound teaching with an even more subtle one.

Buddha is saying that the doubt arises because the bodhisattva, seeing so many living beings, does not realise that they are all already in the state of ‘suchness’ or - more easily grasped – that there is no such thing as an ego. Yes, in the mind there is, but not in reality. And as it is the idea of an ego that leads to the idea of a personality, a being and thence to the idea of a separate life, no one who hold these false ides should be called a bodhisattva.

So why introduce the bodhisattva precept in the first place?

My guess is that while decreased ego can lead to greater compassion for others, such as they are, compassion and seeing things from another's viewpoint can help to reduce ego, the more fundamental goal. Deepening an understanding that everything is one undermines the separation of self from other. And how can 'the one' not have compassion for itself, by which time the concepts of 'compassion' and 'one' are becoming redundant. There are as many paths to enlightenment as there are apparent individualities to be dissolved.

So a budding bodhisattva is introduced to the need to bring all beings to enlightenment, but only as a means to an end, the end being wisdom and enlightenment. But a more mature bodhisattva needs to see that in reality there are no such beings to enlighten. Everything points to wisdom rather than compassion as the essence of enlightenment, though all merge in the end.

Yasutani Roshi's instruction to a student seems to support this . "In the deepest sense, even the Bodhisattva Kannon might be said to be attached to compassion, otherwise he would be a Buddha, free of all attachments. ... A Buddha is compassionate, but he isn't obsessed by the desire to save others." [4]

So: teaching people to build compassion and the desire to bring all others to enlightenment is a means to an end, a provisional teaching like most other teachings.

[1] The Diamond Sutra, transl. Price & Wong, Shambala Classics, Boston, 2005, page 19
[2] The Diamond Cutter of Doubts - A Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, by Master Han Shan, reproduced in Ch'an and Zen Teaching, Volume 1, Lu K'uan Yu, published Samuel Weiser, 1993, pp. 161-163
[3] ibid, page 161, quote abbreviated
[4] 3PZ, page106