Preface · The View Inside the Door

There is a book that stopped its pen at the door.

That is this volume's twin—The Four Fruits of the Renunciant's Path, on the axis of the walking. It writes a road: stream-enterer, once-returner, non-returner, arahant, station by station, how each is walked to. All along it measures progress with one ruler—not what you have gained, but what is gone: which of the ropes that bind the mind are now severed, never to grow back. At the fourth station, the instant the last fetter is cut, that book's pen comes to rest on the threshold. The view inside the door—what the freedom is, once the defilements are ended—it does not write a word of.

At its close it left one line: that one is waiting.

The volume in your hands is the inside of the door.

One Threshold, Opened from Two Faces

The walking writes the going; the attainment writes the arrival.

Two volumes, one threshold. That one writes from outside the door, counting wall after wall torn down until nothing is left to tear, the door opens, and the pen halts before it opens. This one writes from inside: after the door opens, what the person who has walked in is like.

So this volume no longer counts walls—the counting was the other volume's work. This one does a single thing: it carries the freedom of "after the arriving," whole and unaltered, and sets it before your eyes. In the night at the Deer Park, at the first turning of the wheel, the five monks heard the Dharma and the taints were exhausted—at that instant the other volume sets down its pen, and this volume takes one up. One instant, ink on two faces. If you have read that volume, you will know this threshold; if you have not, no matter—this volume begins from inside the door and stands on its own.

Mastery Is the Seal the Exhaustion Can Be Read By

This volume has a single thesis, said in one sentence: the arhat's mastery is not supernormal power, not a lofty state; it is the seal that the exhaustion of the taints itself can be read by.

The sentence matters, because "the arhat's mastery" is so easily imagined wrong. At the thought of an arhat, most people think of powers—flying, knowing past lives, reading minds; or else of deep absorption—concentration entered to great depth, states scaled to great heights. As though those dazzling capacities were the "mastery." From start to finish, this volume takes apart exactly that error.

The true mastery does not lie in those positive, displayable capacities. It is a negative freedom—nothing left that can bind you. The exhaustion of taints is the seal of that unboundness: in one whose three taints are forever spent, the mastery is "no rope remains that could tie him down." Supernormal powers and deep absorption, even where present, are only incidental competences turning about that seal—not the seal itself.

Five Faces, One Seal

This freedom, shown forth, has five faces. The volume's five parts look at one face each—

Substance: his liberation is the liberation of mind and of wisdom, deep down to "the unshakable" as its floor—nothing from which it could fall back. And of those whose taints are exhausted there are two kinds: liberated by wisdom, liberated both ways—differing in concentration, not in exhaustion.

Knowing: among his three knowledges and six powers, only the power of exhaustion is the pivot; the other five the worldling gains by concentration too, and cannot serve as the noble one's seal. A sky full of wonders could not move one taint; what unbinds is the Dharma.

Depth: he can enter the deepest attainment of cessation—perception and feeling both ceased, like death and yet not death. Able to sink, able to surface: at the very limit of stilling, a sovereignty remains.

Death: he attests "no further becoming." Yet this is not annihilation. Whether he exists after death the World-Honored One left wholly unanswered—not from not knowing, but because the question itself is misplaced. The fuel spent, the fire gone out, one cannot ask where the fire has gone.

World: he is the world's worthy of offerings, its unsurpassed field of merit. And the one most worthy to receive is precisely the one who wants nothing—exhausted, therefore without seeking; without seeking, therefore a clean field.

The five faces seen through, they gather into one sentence: there are five faces, but only one seal—the exhaustion of taints.

This Volume Is Written for You

This volume is not written for scholars. It does not debate, does not compare; it takes the teachings of the World-Honored One and the noble disciples and tells them to you, passage by passage.

It is written above all for this reader: one who perhaps carries an image of the arhat—cold, withered, like a motionless stone figure; or else, the reverse, imagines the arhat a wonder-worker laden with strange powers. What this volume means to do is set down both images, and let you see the real person in the canon: nothing 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 him, calls him by one name, "worthy of offerings." That name is what the world needs; the one who has arrived never needed it.

You need no Sanskrit or Pāli, and need not remember the numbers of the suttas. The numbers and the romanized terms are gathered in the appendices at the back; the body of the book keeps itself clean, and leads you to the view inside the door.

Look Slowly

Five parts, like five courtyards inside the door, each deeper than the last. Best is to look from the first to the end—this is a single running way of seeing, and the seal set up at the front ("mastery is the seal of exhaustion") is used at every face that follows. If you are in a hurry, finish Part One first: the seal is handed over there; the seal once recognized, you can read the four faces on your own.

At the Last

Looking inside the door, in the end, is also the exchanging of one thought: from "what remarkable powers has the arhat gained" to "in the arhat there is no longer one single thing that can bind him." Powers are addition; unboundness is subtraction—and mastery has always been on the side of subtraction.

The other volume, on the axis of the walking, has already brought you to the threshold. May you, reading this one, step across, and look upon that unbound person—and looking, set down every dazzling image of "mastery," and take up that freedom, plain all the way down.

Homage to our original teacher, Śākyamuni Buddha.