Speaking Fire Amid Fire

3.2 Speaking Fire Amid Fire

At the first look inside the door, a sentence was set down: the name of the mastery is tied to the exhaustion of taints, not to any power. The note has been held to now; it falls due. The canon itself staged two scenes in which the line between powers and liberation is acted out to the letter.

The Summit of Gayā: Fire Before a Thousand

The first scene, the Saṃyukta-āgama records: the Buddha was dwelling at the shrine of Gayāsīsa — the summit of Gayā — with a thousand monks; and these thousand were all "former matted-hair brahmins": before their ordination, ascetics of the coiled topknot who had tended the sacred fires year-round. Fire was the thing they had served half their lives.

For these thousand, the Blessed One performed three kinds of demonstration: the demonstration of psychic transformation, the demonstration of others' minds, and the demonstration of instruction.

First the psychic wonders. The text records: the Blessed One entered the attainment of concentration, rose into the air toward the east, and there moved through the four postures — walking, standing, sitting, lying; he entered the fire-samādhi, and lights of every color streamed from his body, blue, yellow, red, white; water poured from his upper body while fire blazed from his lower, fire from the upper while water poured from the lower, and so around all four quarters. Mark the staging — before a thousand men who had served fire half their lives, the Blessed One brought forth, from his own body, the very fire they had worshiped. The display ended; he returned to his seat among them. And the sutta's entire verdict on the scene is a single clause: "this is called the demonstration of psychic power."

Then others' minds: knowing each man's mind, thought, and consciousness exactly, pointing out to each — you should think thus, you should not think thus. The sutta's verdict, again one clause: "this is called the demonstration of others' minds."

Then the instruction. The Blessed One spoke:

Monks! All is burning. And what is the all that is burning? The eye is burning; forms, eye-consciousness, eye-contact, and the feeling that arises conditioned by eye-contact — painful, pleasant, neither — that too is burning. … Burning with what? Burning with the fire of greed, the fire of hatred, the fire of delusion; burning with birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, anguish, and despair.

Everything is on fire. The eye is on fire; ear, nose, tongue, body, mind are on fire — with what fire? With greed, hatred, and delusion; with birth, aging, and death. To a thousand men who had bowed to fire for half a lifetime, the Buddha did not outshine their fire with a greater blaze; he spoke the fire through: what has been burning you was never the heap on the altar — it is the heap of greed, hatred, and delusion. And when this discourse was done, the sutta sets down the true event of that day:

Then the thousand monks, hearing what the Buddha had said, gave rise to no more taints, and their minds were liberated.

Read the three verdicts side by side. The wonders performed — "this is called the demonstration of psychic power." The minds read — "this is called the demonstration of others' minds." The instruction spoken — "the thousand monks gave rise to no more taints, and their minds were liberated." A sky full of transformations, and the text grants it only its name; one discourse, and a thousand taints are exhausted. What astonishes and what liberates are two different things: wonders move the eye; they cannot cut the taints. What unbinds is the Dharma.

Kuśinagara: The Foremost Divine Eye, on the Divine Eye

The second scene belongs to the very elder of the last chapter's robe-day — Aniruddha, foremost among the Buddha's disciples in the divine eye.

The Ekottarika-āgama records: the venerable Aniruddha was at Kuśinagara, dwelling at the place of his own birth. One day Śakra, Brahmā, and the four heavenly kings, with five hundred devas and the twenty-eight great yakṣa generals, came to the elder, bowed their heads to his feet, praised him in verse, and departed. Soon after came a brahmin named Jaṭila — a disciple of Brahmāyu. He asked at once: I was born in a king's palace and have never smelled such a fragrance — who has been here? A deva? A nāga? A spirit?

Aniruddha told him plainly: Śakra, Brahmā, the four kings, and five hundred devas were here just now; they bowed, praised, and left. The brahmin asked: then why did I see no trace of them? — Because you have no divine eye. — And if I cultivated the divine eye, would I see them? — You would.

At this point an ordinary telling would urge him on to the divine eye. But the man foremost in the divine eye said next:

And yet, brahmin — this divine eye, what wonder is it! There is a Brahmā called Thousand-Eyes, who sees this thousandfold world … and yet that Brahmā does not see the clothes on his own body.

The divine eye — no wonder at all! There is a Brahmā styled Thousand-Eyes who surveys a thousand worlds as a sighted man views the jeweled crown in his own palm — and that Brahmā cannot see the robe he is wearing. Why not?

Because that deva has no supreme eye of wisdom; therefore he does not see the garments on his own body.

Because he lacks the supreme eye of wisdom. The figure cuts to the bone. The divine eye's seeing is an outward breadth: it sees far, sees much, sees other realms and other men. The wisdom eye's seeing is an inward light: it sees oneself — one's own bonds, one's own "I." An eye that can sweep a thousand worlds yet cannot light on the robe on its own back, on the knot in its own heart, is of no use at all toward liberation.

The brahmin understood, and asked: teach me, venerable one, the subtle Dharma by which I may gain that supreme eye of wisdom. Aniruddha asked him: have you virtue? — What is virtue? — To do no evil, to transgress no law. The brahmin said: such virtue I can undertake. Then Aniruddha taught him: keep the precepts without a hair's breadth of loss; and further, remove the knot of conceit — do not reckon "I" and "mine" and the stained clinging of self. What is the "I"? What is the "mine"? Where, amid body and consciousness, the thought arises "this is me" — that is the knot of conceit.

The brahmin made his bow and left. The sutta's next sentence is the finest close this chapter could ask:

Before he reached his destination, pondering this meaning on the road, all the dust and stain fell away, and he attained the purified eye of the Dharma.

He had not reached home; midway, turning the words over, the dust dropped and the Dharma-eye opened. A deva of his old acquaintance saw it and flew to Aniruddha with the news in verse: the brahmin, not yet home, gained the path's footing on the road.

Look the scene over from the start. The man arrived asking about the divine eye — he wanted to see the invisible devas. He left with the Dharma-eye. And what gave it to him was not any wonder — the devas had been right there in the room, and what good were they to him — but a few sentences on virtue and the knot of "I." He asked for the eye that sees more; he was given the eye that sees himself. What he sought fell empty; what he received was real.

The Account, Settled

With the two scenes seen, the account can be totaled.

The first entry: the first five powers are gained by worldlings and outside meditators too (the last chapter's adjudication) — a competence shared with the unfreed cannot be the seal of freedom. The second: the summit of Gayā — what liberates is the instruction, not the transformation; fire filled the sky and a thousand only marveled; "all is burning" was spoken and a thousand were freed of the taints. The third: Kuśinagara — to see ever more is not to see one's own bonds; the foremost divine eye himself said it: the divine eye is no wonder; the unsurpassed is the eye of wisdom alone.

Three entries, one sum: the powers are not the mastery. They cannot serve as its seal (the worldling has them too); they cannot open its lock (they do not liberate); and they are not the ultimate (an outward breadth, not an inward light). The powers have their own place in the Dharma — psychic motion in guiding beings, the knowledge of minds in reading an occasion; the suttas record these plainly, and they are means for the good of others. What this chapter has cleared is only the debt they ran up impersonating the mastery. And one place the practitioner should shine the light inward: the heart that longs for powers is, at bottom, often the unrested wish to outdo others — and that wish is itself a bond, not a freedom. If powers come of themselves, as they may with deep concentration, regard them as scenery passed on the road, not as the destination; the self-witnessed liberation of exhaustion — that is the destination.

The sentence at the door now has its settlement: the name of the mastery is tied to the exhaustion of taints, not to any power.