Reading Map · How to Read This Volume

The view inside the door is looked at in five courtyards. Here is the map, so the looking is unhurried.

The Five Courtyards

Part One · The Seal. Get the seal recognized. At the Deer Park, the first turning of the wheel, the instant the five monks' taints were exhausted—where the other volume sets down its pen, this one begins. See one thing clearly: the arhat's mastery lies not in powers, not in lofty states; it is the seal that the exhaustion of taints itself can be read by. The whole volume's thesis and way of seeing live in this part; the four faces after it stand on it. One chapter.

Part Two · Liberation of Mind and of Wisdom. The substance of the freedom. Two chapters, one deep and one wide: the deep reads "the unshakable"—of the king's thirty possessions, the one jewel that bears a name is assigned to the unshakable liberation of mind, because nothing can make it fall back; it is the name of liberation come to its floor. The wide reads "two kinds"—liberated by wisdom, liberated both ways, both noble ones whose taints are exhausted; on a full-moon night the count of five hundred, and the Buddha's one phrase "no twigs, no leaves," closes the door on rank: the two differ in concentration, not in exhaustion.

Part Three · The Three Knowledges and Six Powers. The most dazzling face, and the one most apt to dazzle the eye blind. One chapter finds the pivot: of the six powers, the first five the worldling and outside meditator gain too; only the sixth, the power of exhaustion, belongs to the noble ones—there is only one key to the inner room. One chapter settles the account: on the summit of Gayā, before a thousand who had once tended the fires, the Buddha first showed a sky of wonders and then spoke "all is burning"—what moves the eye is the wonder, what unbinds is the Dharma. Powers are not the mastery.

Part Four · The Attainment of Cessation. Freedom inside stillness. The deepest concentration—perception and feeling both ceased, like death and yet not death: vitality and warmth do not depart, the faculties stay unbroken. Two strikingly homely scenes (the question in the mango grove, the endorsement at Jeta's Grove) divide it from death and from the non-perception attainment. Able to sink, able to surface: at the very limit of stilling a sovereignty remains—this is the meditative mastery's deepest impression, and what it stamps is still the exhaustion. One chapter.

Part Five · No-More-Becoming and the Worthy. The last two faces, one facing death and one facing the world. Pull the arrow first: the arhat attests "no further becoming," and the world presses on to ask whether he exists after death—the World-Honored One leaves all four forms unanswered, yet not from not knowing; the arrow is already in the flesh, drawing it is what matters, not asking after its feathers. Then the field that seeks nothing: liberation is an inward attainment, and the world reads the seal by the virtue of liberation, calling him worthy, raising a stūpa for him; and the one most worthy to receive is precisely the one who wants nothing. The final chapter gathers the five faces to one seal, and the volume closes.

The Four Bridges

Between the five parts stand four "transitions." They are short—corridors between courtyards: gather what was seen, look at what lies ahead, then enter the next. Do not skip them; each face's question is first asked in the corridor.

Three Ways to Read

One. Look from beginning to end. This is best. The volume is one ascending way of seeing: Part One sets up the seal (mastery is exhaustion), Part Two looks at the substance, Part Three breaks the error of powers, Part Four looks at the limit of concentration, Part Five walks to the two poles of death and world, and at the last the five faces become one. Miss no courtyard, and the view inside is whole.

Two. In a hurry: look at Part One first. The seal is handed over there. With its one chapter read, the most necessary thing is in your hands; whichever later face calls to you can then be read on its own.

Three. Come with an image: go to its face. Imagining the arhat a withered stone figure—go to Part Two and see that "the unshakable" is not a dead stillness, and that the two kinds of noble one each have their own living way. Imagining the arhat a wonder-worker—go to Part Three and see why powers are not the mastery. At ease in deep absorption yet wondering "are my taints unexhausted, my mastery incomplete"—go to Part Four and see that cessation belongs to the face of concentration, not the face of taints. But whichever you visit first, make up Part One: without the seal in hand, each face's words will warp.

A Few Conventions

• Of the Buddha, this volume's Chinese original uses the reverent pronoun 祂; of noble disciples and practitioners, the ordinary 他. The English mirror capitalizes pronouns for the Buddha.
• Our original teacher is written in full: homage to Śākyamuni Buddha.
• The suttas' own words stand in indented quotation blocks—so the eye can always tell the canon's words from the teller's.
• Canonical numbers, romanized terms, and source details are kept out of the body text and gathered at the back: chapter-by-chapter sources in Appendix A (Academic Notes Index), and term romanizations in Appendix C (Glossary of Terms).
• This volume and The Four Fruits of the Renunciant's Path on the realization axis are twin volumes: that one is written to the threshold; the freedom inside the door is in this one. Each stands alone; together they are whole.

Entering

The map ends here. The view inside the door is looked at, not told.

We begin with Part One—getting that seal recognized.