The Field That Seeks Nothing

5.2 The Field That Seeks Nothing

Seven chapters, all spent inside the door: the substance of the liberation, the pivot of its knowing, the depth of its concentration, the closing of birth-and-death. One question is left standing outside — can the world see any of this? An inward freedom that left no trace in the world would be a private claim, beyond all confirming.

The answer has been in the most conspicuous place all along: inside the name.

The Standing Inside the Name

The name "arhat" itself carries a worldly standing. The Abhidharmakośa glosses the word:

Because he is the one to whom all who still have defilements should make offerings — on this sense the name "arhat" is established.

Worthy of the offerings of all who are still stained — "the worthy of offerings" is one of the very senses of the word "arhat." To call a person an arhat is already to call him the worthy; this is no honorific conferred on top of the liberation, but the worldly face the name carries of itself. And the suttas say it in plain text. The Ekottarika-āgama records: the Buddha, at Jeta's Grove in Sāvatthī, told the monks:

There are three persons whom the world should honor with offerings. Which three? The Tathāgata, the Worthy, the Fully Awakened One, the world should honor with offerings; the Tathāgata's disciple, the taint-exhausted arhat, the world should honor with offerings; the wheel-turning sage king, the world should honor with offerings.

Three whom the world should honor: the Tathāgata, the taint-exhausted arhat, the wheel-turning king. And when the text asks "for what reason," the reason it gives for the arhat is a causal chain:

The taint-exhausted arhat has crossed the source of birth-and-death, takes up no further becoming, has gained the unsurpassed Dharma; lust, hatred, and delusion exhausted … he is the world's field of merit. By this chain of cause, from root to tip, the taint-exhausted arhat is one the world should honor with offerings.

Take the chain apart, and every link is a chapter this book has walked. Crossed the source of birth-and-death — the exhaustion (Part One's seal). Takes up no further becoming — the last chapter. Lust, hatred, delusion exhausted — the three fires out (the far side of that discourse on the summit of Gayā). Because of these, he is the world's field of merit; because a field of merit, the world should make offerings. The worthy is no unaccountable reverence; it is the inner liberation argued outward, link by link, to a worldly conclusion. What the world sees is exactly the seal inside the door.

The Horse a King Would Ride

By what does the world recognize the seal? At the Bamboo Grove of Rājagṛha the Blessed One gave a run of fine-horse similes, sutta after sutta. One of them:

There is in the world a fine horse complete in four capacities — know that this is the fine horse a king would ride. Which four? Goodness, swiftness, endurance, gentleness. Even so, the good man accomplished in four virtues is honored by the world, served and offered to, an unsurpassed field of merit. Which four? The good man accomplished in the adept's body of virtue, the adept's body of concentration, the adept's body of wisdom, the adept's body of liberation.

Royal property again — Part Two counted the king's thirty possessions; here is the horse the king himself would mount. The horse's four capacities: goodness, swiftness, endurance, gentleness; the good man's four virtues: the beyond-training bodies of virtue, concentration, wisdom, liberation. The grounds on which the world reveres and serves him contain not one syllable of the marvelous; they are the virtues of liberation entire. The world reads the seal by virtue-concentration-wisdom-liberation — Part Three already ruled it: the dazzling competences cannot serve as the seal; what can serve as the seal, the world reveres of its own accord. It is written even into the layperson's daily practice. The Blessed One taught the white-robed noble disciple four recollections, and the third is the recollection of the Saṅgha:

The Tathāgata's community is accomplished in virtue, accomplished in concentration, accomplished in wisdom, accomplished in liberation, accomplished in the knowledge-and-vision of liberation: worthy of respect, worthy of honor, worthy of service, worthy of offerings — the world's good field of merit.

Virtue, concentration, wisdom, liberation, the knowledge-and-vision of liberation — the grounds of "worthy of service, worthy of offerings" are these five and nothing else. And when the householder Anāthapiṇḍada asked at Jeta's Grove how many field-of-merit persons there are in the world, the Buddha answered: eighteen trainees and nine adepts — the wisdom-liberated and the both-ways liberated side by side on the list (Part Two saw that roll). The donor's list and liberation's list are one list.

A Field Asks Nothing of the Sower

But inside the figure of the "field of merit" hides the book's last paradox, and it must be said out plainly here: the merit that grows in this field — who sought it?

Not the arhat. The taint-exhausted has ended greed, hatred, delusion, takes up no further becoming — there is nothing in the world left for him to want. He does not display virtue for the sake of offerings, does not practice for the title of a field. And precisely because he seeks nothing, the field is clean: a field never demands anything of the sower, yet the sower reaps from it. Turn it around and it is obvious — a field that demanded of its sowers, what kind of field is that? To seek is to crave; to crave is a taint; with taints unexhausted he would be no arhat and no unsurpassed field at all. So "seeking nothing" is not the field's deficiency; it is exactly why the field is unsurpassed: exhausted, therefore wanting nothing; wanting nothing, therefore clean. An offering laid before one who wants nothing at all is seed dropped into the richest of soils.

How far this wantlessness is carried, the treatises record in one profound discipline — non-contention. The Abhidharmakośa:

The arhat contemplates that the suffering of beings is born of the defilements, and knows that he himself is supreme among fields of merit; fearing that another's defilements might arise with himself as their object, he therefore resolves to call forth the knowledge of such signs.

Read it slowly. The arhat knows himself supreme among the fields of merit — he knows he is the best field there is. And what that knowledge calls forth is not complacency in receiving, still less self-regard, but a care: beings suffer by their defilements — let no one's defilement arise on my account. So he cultivates the knowledge of non-contention, guarding, in his every bearing, against others' afflictions taking him for their object. Supreme among fields, and cultivating non-contention — the field that seeks nothing has thought even of those who would seek it.

Raising a Stūpa

The seal is pressed one last time — in stone.

The scene at Part Four's close belongs to the Ekottarika-āgama: Śāriputra has passed away; Mahāmaudgalyāyana, on the day of his leave-taking, has twice entered and emerged from the attainment of cessation and passed away from the fourth meditation. The Blessed One, holding Śāriputra's relics in his hand, said to the monks: the Tathāgata is a great tree, and Śāriputra's passing is as if the tree had lost a limb. Then, leading five hundred monks to the village of Nālada, he said: I look upon this assembly and it is greatly diminished — there is no Śāriputra in it, no Maudgalyāyana. Ānanda asked: how should the relics of the two venerables be honored? The Buddha taught that stūpas be raised at the crossroads, and said:

Four kinds should have a stūpa raised: for a wheel-turning sage king a stūpa should be raised; for a taint-exhausted arhat a stūpa should be raised; for a pratyekabuddha a stūpa should be raised; for a Tathāgata a stūpa should be raised.

Ānanda asked again: for the taint-exhausted arhat, on what ground a stūpa? The answer:

The taint-exhausted arhat monk has ended craving, removed hatred and delusion, crossed from becoming to the unconditioned: he is the world's good and blessing-bestowing field of merit. On this ground, for the taint-exhausted arhat a stūpa should be raised.

The ground is the same single ground, not a word exchanged: craving ended, hatred and delusion removed, crossed from becoming to the unconditioned — the world's good field of merit. A stūpa is this sentence written by the world in stone: here once walked one who wanted nothing of the world; and what he did not want, the world remembers.

Closing the Book: Five Faces, One Seal

The whole book can now be held in one view.

In the night at the Deer Park, at the scene of the first turning, the moment the five monks attained — the seal was two words: taints exhausted (Part One). The faces in which that seal shows itself are five —

Substance: the liberations of mind and of wisdom, down to the unshakable as floor — the king's named jewel, with nothing from which to fall; and the two kinds of arhat, no twigs and no leaves, apart in concentration, never in exhaustion (Part Two). Knowing: the three knowledges and six powers turning about one pivot — only the sixth key opens the inner room; a sky of fire could not move one taint, and "all is burning," once spoken, freed a thousand (Part Three). Depth: the attainment of cessation, stilling's limit and not death — able to sink, able to surface: the deepest impression of the meditative mastery (Part Four). Death: no further becoming — fuel spent, the event ended, neither ditch touched; pull the arrow first (this part's first chapter). World: the worthy — the field that seeks nothing, the seal-script the world can read, the name stone remembers (this chapter).

Five faces; one seal: the exhaustion of taints.

The volume on the walking measured, mile by mile, what was gone; at the fourth fruit the last stroke fell, and the door opened. This volume has written the arrival — what the one inside the door is like: nothing left that can bind him, no condition he must wait on, no question that can corner him, no want that can move him. And the world, catching sight of such a person, calls him by one name: the worthy of offerings.

The one who has arrived never needed the name. The name is what the world needed.