At Dawn
Charles Hermans, 1875

My dear friends,

In Romans 13:8-14, Paul speaks with the urgency of a spiritual elder who sees that the hour of awakening is already upon us. His counsel gathers the whole path into love: a love disciplined enough to restrain harm, awake enough to recognize the fleetingness of this life, and courageous enough to clothe itself in the mind of Christ. From the Bodhisattva path, we may hear in these verses a call to bodhicitta, the Awakening Mind that seeks freedom from suffering for ourselves and all beings. The law is fulfilled when our lives become vessels of this compassionate wisdom.

To “owe no one anything, except to love one another” is to recognize a debt that can never be exhausted. Every being has, across the vast web of interdependence, contributed to the conditions that sustain our life. Lojong trains us to remember this kindness and to answer it with the resolve to cherish others. Paul’s summary of the commandments echoes the Bodhisattva precepts: refrain from harming, stealing, exploiting, deceiving, or grasping, because these actions arise from self-centered fixation and deepen suffering. Love fulfills the law when it becomes more than sentiment: it becomes ethical discipline shaped by the sincere wish that our neighbor be free from suffering and established in lasting happiness.

“Wake from sleep” is a summons to spiritual vigilance. In Buddhist language, ordinary life is dreamlike because we move through it under the spell of ignorance, treating impermanent things as lasting and the self as solid and independent. Paul’s approaching day likewise points toward awakening from this confusion. Each day brings death nearer, and each day also brings the possibility of liberation nearer when it is used well. Lam rim's contemplation of impermanence gives the same urgency: the precious human life is brief, the time of death is uncertain, and only the qualities cultivated in the mind can accompany us. The nearness of salvation is therefore also the nearness of this very moment, in which compassion and wisdom may be chosen.

The “works of darkness” may be understood as actions governed by ignorance, craving, and aversion. Reveling, intoxication, sexual misconduct, quarrelling, and jealousy scatter the mind and bind it more tightly to grasping. To “put on the armor of light” is to cultivate the protections of mindfulness, ethical restraint, patience, and compassion. The Bodhisattva does not meet darkness with hatred for the people caught in it; the practice is to recognize the afflictions themselves as the enemy. Guarding the mind in this way allows us to walk “as in the day,” with conduct that can bear the clear light of awareness and the scrutiny of love.

To “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” is to let the mind of Christ become the pattern of one’s own mind. From the Bodhisattva perspective, this is the training of bodhicitta: taking up the suffering of beings with compassion and dedicating body, speech, and mind to their awakening. “Make no provision for the flesh” need not be heard as contempt for the body. The body is a precious basis for practice; the warning concerns the endless feeding of craving and self-indulgence. We care for the body wisely while refusing to make its appetites our master. In this way, Christ’s self-giving love and the Bodhisattva’s vow converge as a life offered for the welfare of all.

Dear friends, the night is far gone. We do not need to wait for another life, another season, or a more favorable world before beginning to awaken. Each encounter gives us the opportunity to fulfill the law of love; each irritation gives us the opportunity to practice patience; each desire gives us the opportunity to loosen grasping; each suffering being gives us the opportunity to awaken bodhicitta. May we therefore cast off what darkens the mind, put on the armor of compassionate wisdom, and clothe ourselves in the mind of Christ, until love becomes the spontaneous way we meet every being.