Thank you, Ben. I feel that it is a lovely, lovely description and summary of the Bodhisattva Path.
I feel that these are ideals to guide us as human beings. Our Bodhisattva Vow recites ...
This means that the Bodhisattva knows that, while we live in the complicated world of Samsara (this ordinary life and world), we can never fix everything, master everything, help everyone ... until we bring forth the Buddha's Teachings of leaping beyond Samsara somehow, even as we are up to our necks in Samsara. As well, as we are imperfect bodhisattvas (you and me, with a small "b", who vow to "save all sentient beings" in ways that even the Big "B" Bodhisattvas like Kannon cannot easily do), we must do our mast to aim for the ideals in your essay, even if we may fall down again and again. Ideals are important to human beings because they give us direction and hope, even if we sometimes fall short. We just must choose to do our best with each moment, as you so beautifully say, "We need to fulfill the vow any moment…without an end."
There is also a "holistic" relationship in our Zen Practice; Sitting Zazen helps us be more gentle, compassionate, less violent and angry while, in turn, living in ways which are gentle, compassionate, less violent and angry helps uncloud the mind and heart, thus facilitating Zazen.
By the way, in my new book manuscript which I just finished ("ZEN of the FUTURE!") I say that future society, biologists, technology designers and the like might wish to code some of the Bodhisattva ideals into our DNA or the programming code of future AI to make a world that is a bit more lovely. I would like to live in a future world filled with beings (both human and electronic) who are more gentle, compassionate, not very violent and angry. (You will have to wait for the book to read more).
In the meantime, a few years ago, we had a series of short talks on the Bodhisattva Virtues and the Big Bodhisattvas, if you are interested ...
Bodhisattva-Basics: Whattsa Who'sa Bodhisattva? (A Sit-a-Long Series)
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...Long-Series%29
Gassho, J
STLah