Every Reason to Wake Up

Taixu pauses on the single word "how" (云何) before moving on, reading it as already bundling together several distinct questions at once — by what cause, by what means, and by what actual method does this arousal happen? He treats this as the deliberate hinge that opens the Buddha's long answer: not a request for a slogan, but an invitation to a layered explanation that will move from the crudest, most self-interested motives all the way up to genuine wisdom, without skipping any of the steps in between.

Taixu takes the opening pair seriously rather than dismissing it as crude self-interest: longevity and wealth are indeed what an ordinary person wants, he notes, yet it is only a Buddha who is genuinely and fully endowed with both blessing and lifespan without limit — so wanting them, even at this unrefined level, is already a first small gesture in the right direction. He reads the third pair against the background of the three-times law of cause and effect: once it is truly seen that endlessly creating karma and undergoing suffering brings no real benefit, and that even countless Buddhas cannot liberate a being who will not act on their own behalf, arousing the mind stops being optional.

On the fourth pair he adds an almost rueful observation: most people, by the time they have gathered enough knowledge and experience to actually be good at doing good, have simply grown old and are near death — so a wholesome deed is constantly being "lost" to time in this way. Arousing the bodhi mind, he says, is precisely what keeps a good deed from being lost like this. The sixth pair he reads as two sides of one investment: without real hardship, resolve never becomes firm; and only a benefit gained after arousing the mind escapes being casually lost again, the way every merely worldly gain eventually is.

Taixu reads the seventh pair as a kind of proof by precedent: the Buddhas of past and future, before they themselves first aroused the mind and practiced, were no different from anyone reading this text right now — and since bodhi is demonstrably attainable rather than empty fantasy, resolving to pursue it is simply reasonable. The eighth pair he glosses technically: a bodhisattva at the sixth of the ten abidings can still, in principle, backslide — true non-retrogression only arrives at the seventh — yet even at this unstable sixth stage such a person already surpasses any śrāvaka or pratyekabuddha, which is reason enough to press on diligently toward the higher fruit rather than settle for what has already been gained.

The tenth pair he reads as strict logical order rather than two independent wishes: a bodhisattva's great compassion must extend to inexhaustible beings, so the vow never to abandon any of them only becomes workable once the second vow — cutting off one's own afflictions first — has actually been kept, since only someone who has done that can go on to be of real use to anyone else. On the final pair he distinguishes the two obstructions precisely: the "obstruction to wisdom" is what specifically blocks a Buddha's own cognition — bare ignorance and not-knowing, technically the cognitive obstruction — while the "bodily obstruction" carried by ordinary beings is retribution generated by afflictive karma, the afflictive obstruction proper. The bodhi vow, he stresses, is aimed at severing both together, not one at the expense of the other.

On the first five, Taixu notes that "good friends" is meant broadly enough to include Buddhas and bodhisattvas themselves, not only human companions — and that the sequence, from approaching such friends through to sustained vigorous effort, is exactly what is needed to actually grow a bodhisattva's mind rather than merely wish for one. The second five, he points out, turn inward and guard against the specific ways practice curdles on itself: a bodhisattva's compassionate skillful means often cannot make another person let go of a fault quickly, so the discipline is not to become disgusted or give up on them even once the fault is plainly seen.

He is especially vivid on the third and fourth items: arrogance mixed into a genuinely wholesome attainment — a good meditative state, a favorable reputation — is, in his own image, like poison stirred into good food, turning what should be a pure deed into a defiled, "outflow"-tainted one; jealousy at another's success spoils a deed the same way. The fifth item he explains through ordinary family logic: favoritism only ever arises once there is more than one child to compare — hold every being as though it were one's only child, and there is nothing left to prefer. He closes by underscoring that everything covered so far, across both this milestone and the previous two, still falls short of true arousal of the bodhi mind; it is arousal by way of faith, understanding, and cultivation — real, but not yet the genuine article.

Taixu glosses Mount Sumeru simply as the tallest mountain in this world-system, standing here for karma at its most immovable — the point being that genuine bodhi mind is strong enough to break even that. He reads the three reasons as splitting into a downward-facing half and an upward-facing half: seeing beings caught in the five turbidities — of the kalpa, of view, of affliction, of being, and of lifespan — moves a great-compassion mind to want to save them, yet nothing short of unsurpassed bodhi actually makes that rescue possible, so this first reason works "downward," toward liberating others; seeing the Buddha's inconceivable spiritual power, and separately hearing the Buddha's voice — traditionally catalogued as eight distinct qualities: excellent, gentle, harmonious, dignified and wise, never false, far-reaching, unerring, and inexhaustible — both work "upward," drawing the practitioner toward Buddhahood itself. Taken together, the three combine an inward foundation of compassion and wisdom with an outward, superior condition: an actual encounter with the Buddha's power and voice.

On the closing pair, he draws a sharp line between what is shared and what is distinctly Mahāyāna: clearly knowing one's own suffering, he notes, is simply the truth of suffering common to all three vehicles — the three sufferings and eight sufferings familiar from śrāvaka teaching. But knowing the suffering of others exactly as intimately as one's own, and resolving to end it as though it were literally one's own, rests on the specifically Mahāyāna conviction that self and other share a single substance. It is this second reason alone, he stresses, that actually amounts to the Mahāyāna bodhi mind; the first is common ground shared with the lesser vehicles, not yet the distinguishing mark of a bodhisattva.

Taixu reads this closing line as the chapter's actual point of arrival, not a throwaway blessing tacked on at the end: the moment the bodhi mind is genuinely aroused, that very act already makes a person a bodhisattva — and a bodhisattva, he says, does truly increase lifespan and wealth, but now understood as the deeper wealth of merit and dharma, not merely the ordinary version named back at the chapter's opening. Because such a person is now actually capable of liberating beings and accomplishing the path to Buddhahood, this final statement functions as what the commentarial tradition calls "revealing the true, proper teaching" — drawing a hard line between the Buddha's own six-directions veneration and the version taught by non-Buddhist paths, which promises the identical increase in life and wealth but, lacking the bodhi mind behind it, has nothing real to actually deliver on that promise.