The Sixth Key

3.1 The Sixth Key

The canon never hushes up the arhat's powers. To see how openly it records them, go to a day of robe-making.

The Day of the Robes

The Madhyama-āgama records: the Blessed One was at Sāvatthī, in Jeta's Grove; the venerable Aniruddha was dwelling in the Sālalā rock-cave hills. Early one morning, Aniruddha entered the city for alms and met Ānanda on the road. He said: friend Ānanda, my three robes are coarse and worn to ruin — might you ask the monks to make robes for me? Ānanda consented in silence, and when the almsround was done he took the door-key in hand and went room to room, asking the monks. The Blessed One saw him, asked his errand, and said one thing: Ānanda, why did you not invite the Tathāgata to make Aniruddha's robes?

So the Blessed One went himself to the Sālalā hills. Eight hundred monks gathered. The Buddha said to Maudgalyāyana: I can stretch and lay out the cloth for Aniruddha, cut it, join and sew it. And the Blessed One stretched and laid out the cloth with his own hands; the monks together cut and stitched; and in that single day the three robes were finished. The robes done, the Buddha said: Aniruddha, teach the monks the kaṭhina discourse — my back pains me; I will rest a little.

The Blessed One lay down on his side, and Aniruddha began to speak. What he taught was his own road — telling the eight hundred, from the shaving of his head onward: the precepts kept, each one "purifying my mind of it"; then contentment learned — robes to cover the body, food to sustain it, going wherever he went with robe and bowl along, no backward glance, as a hawk travels with its two wings; then the guarding of the senses; then the solitary dwelling places; the five hindrances abandoned; the fourth meditation attained. And then, six times over, an identical opening — "having attained such purity of concentration, stainless, untroubled, soft and well-settled, the mind imperturbable, I trained to witness the such-and-such power in my own person" — the six powers, each one attested by his own mouth.

The power of psychic motion: becoming many from one and one from many; passing through stone walls as through open air; sinking into earth as into water, walking on water as on earth; touching the sun and moon with his hand, his body reaching to the Brahmā world. The divine ear: hearing the sounds of men and spirits, near and far. The knowledge of others' minds: knowing the desiring mind as desiring, the freed mind as freed, exactly as it is. The recollection of past lives: one life, a hundred, a thousand, aeons of formation and collapse. The knowledge of beings' passing and arising: with the purified divine eye, seeing beings die here and arise there, each according to their deeds. And then the sixth:

Friends! Having attained such purity of concentration, stainless, untroubled, soft and well-settled, the mind imperturbable, I trained to witness in my own person the power of the exhaustion of taints. Friends! I knew as it really is: this is suffering; this its arising; this its cessation; this the way to its cessation … Knowing thus, seeing thus, my mind was liberated from the taint of sensuality, from the taint of being, from the taint of ignorance; liberated, I knew it liberated: birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived, what was to be done is done, there is no further becoming — knowing it as it really is.

Six powers; five of them reach outward — the body lifted into flight, the ear hearing afar, the mind reading minds, memory running back through the ages, the eye watching beings pass and arise — each more dazzling than the last. Only the sixth turns inward; and where it lands is on the four sentences every reader of this book now knows by heart: birth exhausted, the holy life lived, the work done, no further becoming. The first five each set out for some far quarter; only the sixth comes home.

The Treatises' Adjudication: The Sixth Belongs to the Noble Alone

The line between the six, the treatises draw with one stroke. The Abhidharmakośa first lists the six powers by name — psychic motion, the divine eye, the divine ear, others' minds, past abodes, the exhaustion of taints — then passes judgment:

Although among the six powers the sixth belongs to the noble ones alone, the first five are attained by worldlings as well; speaking generally, they are shared with the worldling. … The power of the exhaustion of taints rests on every stage and takes every object; the first five powers rest on the four meditations.

"The sixth belongs to the noble alone" — only the power of exhaustion is restricted to the noble ones. "The first five are attained by worldlings as well" — psychic motion, the divine eye and ear, others' minds, past lives: the ordinary person, the meditator outside the path, can develop all five; concentration carried to the fourth meditation suffices to call them forth, and the exhaustion of taints is not required. Even their footing differs: the first five rest only on the four meditations; the power of exhaustion rests on every stage and takes every object.

The judgment carries weight. An ability that a worldling can gain by concentration cannot serve as the mark of a noble one — how could what the unfreed also possess certify freedom? Of the six powers, then, only the one "noble-only" key can be the arhat's seal. The figure: a ring of six keys, five opening the outer courts — hall, storehouse, garden — keys any locksmith elsewhere can cut; only the sixth opens the lock of the inner room, and only the master of the house carries it. To know the master, do not count his outer-court keys; look for the one inner key in his hand.

The three knowledges fall under the same stroke. The three are the fifth, the second, and the sixth of the powers — past lives, the divine eye of passing-and-arising, and exhaustion — under their names at the stage beyond training. And the treatise explains why these three alone are called "knowledges" (the word that means a darkness broken): each cures one delusion —

The power of past abodes cures the delusion of the prior bound; the power of passing-and-arising cures the delusion of the posterior bound; the power of the exhaustion of taints cures the delusion of the middle bound.

The knowledge of past lives cures the delusion about the past; the divine eye cures the delusion about the future; and the knowledge of exhaustion cures the delusion of the middle — the bound that is now. See the division of labor: the darkness the first two break lies at the two ends of time's axis; what the third breaks is the ignorance binding a person at this very instant. To remember a thousand lives is to know far; to see beings pass and arise is to see far — but the cord that is tightening on you now, only the knowledge of exhaustion can light through. Among the three knowledges, as among the six powers, the pivot is the same.

The Last Line of the Roll

This word "pivot" the canon writes one more way — at the end of a roll of honor.

In the chapter of foremost disciples in the Ekottarika-āgama, the Blessed One names his monks one by one: foremost among my disciples in boundless wisdom, such-a-one; in psychic motion, such-a-one; in the divine eye, such-a-one; in entering the fire-samādhi, such-a-one; in reading the stars, such-a-one — a hundred elders, each with his own "foremost," the marvels glittering down the list. And the final line of the whole roll closes like this:

Last to take realization, attaining the power of the exhaustion of taints: the monk Subhadra.

Subhadra, the last to arrive. And the citation the roll gives him is not any dazzling wonder; it is the power of exhaustion. A hundred kinds of "foremost" may each command its own field; but the line that closes the roll lands on the one power all the noble ones share. A roll may carry a hundred firsts; the seal is one.

Onward

With the pivot set, the next chapter comes easily. Since the first five powers can be developed by worldlings too, the world's oldest muddled account — powers taken for mastery — should now be cleared face to face. The canon has the two scenes ready: one with fire filling the sky, one with the divine eye dimmed. Go and look.