How Will You Live by Vow, Not by Transaction?
What is your life actually built on?
As we approach the end of the year, I find myself thinking about vow. In Zen communities, this is the traditional time to renew our commitments—not as New Year’s resolutions, but as something much more essential to how we live and who we are.
Some people vow to become sustaining members of their sangha, saying, ‘This place matters to me, and I will take care of it.’ Others make commitments to become a Zen student, vowing to actually be trained. But even those of us who have made these vows can get confused about what they actually mean. I know I have.
For years, I would sit in the zendo thinking: ‘How am I doing? Don’t you think I’m good? Can I get a gold star? An attaboy?’
When we practice and live like this, we are living by transaction, by mere cause and effect. It is as if we are saying, ‘I made a commitment, so don’t I get something for it? I’ve been practicing for twenty years, so shouldn’t I be seen a certain way? I came to sit zazen today, so shouldn’t I have a great experience?’
With transactional living, we evaluate everything. Was that a good meditation or a bad meditation? Was I concentrated or distracted? Then we decide if this practice is working for us or not. Ever do that?
There’s a koan that says: “How miserable, how miserable, transmigrating the three worlds.” When I’m caught in this transactional thinking, when I’m seeing everything as something I should get credit for, it is f@#%^&g miserable. Even spiritual practice becomes just another place where I want to be affirmed, recognized, and told that I’m good enough.
Vow is not like this, not a transaction. It is about the shape we give our life.
Living by vow is a place of practice.
Shakyamuni Buddha said that vow is the spine of practice. Without a vow, it collapses. Our bodhisattva vow comes from Bodhidharma, who said: ‘Vast is the suffering of beings, I vow to end it all. Though beings are numberless, I vow to save them all.’
In the Bloodstream Teaching, Bodhidharma said: ‘People who seek the way without a clear vow are like a house without a foundation.’
There is no sentimentality with Bodhidharma. That’s one of the reasons I love him. He is not letting us off the hook, saying, ‘Oh, well, never mind, it’s hard.’ Rather, he is saying, ‘Yes, it’s hard.’ And, ‘What is your life built on? What is at the true center?’
It’s not about me, or you. And it is also not about this particular time. We can vow to actually serve this world in the past, present, and future.
Dogen Zenji says in the Eihei Koroku that vows are the heart of practice. Without vow, there is no practice and no realization. If we’re not living our vow in every thought, word, and action, there is no practice and no real realization.
It is not so important what I say my vow is. Vow is not a promise to the world. It is the active shape we allow our life to have. Will it become clear to everyone around us?
Vow is not what we think in our heads. It is what we do with our bodies, in our lives. And it is not about being perfect.
My teacher said: ‘You are not asked to be perfect. You’re asked to be vowed.’
Perfection easily collapses. Vows are what stand upright.
Many of us have retrospective hesitation—’What have I been doing for decades?’
Doesn’t matter. What are you doing now?
Let’s practice together.
On this day, you have a rare opportunity to actually live by your vow.
Each morning this week, before you get out of bed, take a few deep breaths. Place your hand on your hara and say to yourself: ‘I will die tonight.’ Not as a morbid thought, but as an urgent and clarifying one.
Then ask yourself: ‘What is at the center of my life today? If this were my last day, how would I want to live it? What would I wrap my vow around?’
Throughout your day, notice when you are living transactionally—seeking affirmation, wanting recognition, checking if you’re getting credit. When you notice this, pause. Place your hand on your belly and return to your breath.
At the end of each day, take a moment to reflect. Did others around me recognize what my life is about? Not what we say it’s about, but what we actually did and how we did it.
Let’s have a dialogue.
I’m curious about your relationship with vow.
When have you noticed yourself living transactionally? What supports your return to living genuinely by vow instead?
Please share your experiences and insights in the comments below. Your generous words might be exactly what all of us need to hear.
May we find the strength to live by vow rather than by transaction and wrap our lives around what truly matters.
Koshin
P.S.
Here are three ways to support our practice in the new year:
Daily Meditation with the New York Zen Center sangha in person or online.
Commit to Sit: Becoming Your True Self begins January 14th—a 90-day guided meditation period with daily teachings, weekly dharma talks, and community practice. We’ll work with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s teachings on becoming yourself.
Continuous Practice: Dōgen’s Training for an Unsettled World starts January 21st—13 weeks studying Volume III of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō together. Wednesday evenings in person and online, followed by community meditation.
We do not have much time. Let’s live by vow together!
Today's New York Time obituary for the great dancer Carmen de Lavallade ended in way that seems relevant to Koshin's commentary: "Ms. de Lavallade continued to perform long past the time at which most dancers retire. She was 88 at her last performance. She reflected on how age affects a dancer’s body in her autobiographical piece, “As I Remember It.”
“You lose something and you gain something,” she said. “You learn that the body is changing and you have to accept, ‘OK, I’m 83.’ At this age it’s an experience.”
She added, “I think, How far can I go?”
I'm still digesting the word "vow", as it's a bit foreign to me.
Transactional living, let me count the ways! For one, it's not a brownie-point motive necessarily, but acting from a place a crisis, because I want out. I do this in many areas of my life. I can be scattered. So, committing to focus, discipline, steadfastness regardless of what's happening is something I have always aspired to. Use the dish, wash the dish...
I noticed when I tried the practice prompt these last 2 days, that I feel unmoved, unmotivated by conjuring up my own death. What moves me moreso, is imagining (if I die over time and not suddenly) what aura surrounds me during that transitional period. I have walked into the spaces of hundreds of dying people. I have a general sense of what is actually important and feel the manifestation of that in each space. Sometimes there is the golden glow of love and care and sometimes stark, cold, aloneness surrounding someone who actually does have people in their life. Some of those people haunt me pretty vividly 10 years later. That rattles me existentially. So that reference of sensing what those people were about and have built for themselves makes me think about my own life legacy and in which camp I'd want to be.