Bodhisattva Vows - Asanga's Bodhisattvabhumi

Asanga's Bodhisattvabhumi

Asanga (circa 300 AD) delineated 18 major vows and forty-six minor vows. These Bodhisattva vows are still used in all four major traditions of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. The eighteen major vows (as actions to be abandoned) are as follows:

1. Praising oneself or belittling others due to attachment to receiving material offerings, praise and respect.
2. Not giving material aid or (due to miserliness) not teaching the Dharma to those who are suffering and without a protector.
3. Not listening to others' apologies or striking others
4. Abandoning the Mahayana by saying that Mahayana texts are not the words of Buddha or teaching what appears to be the Dharma but is not.
5. Taking things belonging to Buddha, Dharma or Sangha.
6. Abandoning the holy Dharma by saying that texts which teach the three vehicles are not the Buddha's word.
7. With anger depriving ordained ones of their robes, beating and imprisoning them or causing them to lose their ordination even if they have impure morality, for example, by saying that being ordained is useless.
8. Committing any of the five extremely negative actions: (1) killing one's mother, (2) killing one's father, (3) killing an arhat, (4) intentionally drawing blood from a Buddha or (5) causing schism in the Sangha community by supporting and spreading sectarian views.
9. Holding distorted views (which are contrary to the teaching of Buddha, such as denying the existence of the Three Jewels or the law of cause and effect etc.)
10. Destroying towns, villages, cities or large areas by means such as fire, bombs, pollution or black magic.
11. Teaching emptiness to those whose minds are unprepared.
12. Causing those who have entered the Mahayana to turn away from working for the full enlightenment of Buddhahood and encouraging them to work merely for their own liberation from suffering.
13. Causing others to abandon their Pratimoksha vows.
14. Belittling the Śrāvaka or Pratyekabuddha vehicle (by holding and causing others to hold the view that these vehicles do not abandon attachment and other delusions).
15. Falsely stating that oneself has realised profound emptiness and that if others meditate as one has, they will realize emptiness and become as great and as highly realized as oneself.
16. Taking gifts from others who were encouraged to give you things originally intended as offerings to the Three Jewels. Not giving things to the Three Jewels that others have given you to give to them, or accepting property stolen from the Three Jewels.
17. Causing those engaged in calm-abiding meditation to give it up by giving their belongings to those who are merely reciting texts or making bad disciplinary rules which cause a spiritual community not to be harmonious.
18. Abandoning either of the two types of Bodhicitta (aspiring and engaging).

According to Atisha the Pratimoksha vows are the basis for the Bodhisattva vows. Without keeping one of the different sets of Pratimoksha vows (in one of existing Vinaya schools), there is no Bodhisattva vow.