Hands and Eyes

2.1 Hands and Eyes

The corridor left a question: how are the six perfections the shape of the bodhisattva's mastery, and not just six good things? This chapter answers it.

First set out the six by name. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra lists them in order: the perfection of giving (dāna), of morality (śīla), of patience (kṣānti), of vigour (vīrya), of meditation (dhyāna), and of wisdom (prajñā). These are the frame of the six.

The six are the shape of the two provisions

Part One said what the bodhisattva's mastery amasses: the two provisions, merit and wisdom. But that is the what—its quality and quantity—not yet the shape in which it is amassed. The six perfections are just those two provisions come to hand. The Yogācārabhūmi sorts the six into a portion of merit and a portion of wisdom:

In brief, merit is three of the perfections [giving, morality, patience]; … wisdom is one perfection alone [the perfection of wisdom]; … vigour and meditation, it should be known, run through both portions.

Giving, morality, and patience amass on the side of merit; wisdom amasses on the side of insight; vigour and meditation amass on both. Set this beside Part One and it fits without a seam: what Part One called the "provision of merit," done with the hands, is the shape of giving, morality, and patience; the "provision of wisdom," done, is the shape of prajñā. So the six are not something set up apart from the two provisions—the six are the two provisions come into the shape of practice.

It is like nutrients and dishes. To be strong, a person needs two kinds of nutrient, "protein and vitamins"; but "protein, vitamins" is the abstract speech of nutrition—brought to the table, it appears as dish after concrete dish. You do not, beside the fish and greens, eat a separate helping of "protein"—protein appears in the shape of fish, vitamins in the shape of greens. The two provisions and the six perfections stand just so: to ask "where, apart from the six, does one amass the two provisions" is to ask "where, apart from the dishes, does one take in nutrients"—nowhere else, for the amassing is in the shape of the six.

Prajñā gives them eyes

But this far, the six still cannot be told apart from worldly good. As acts, the bodhisattva's giving and the world's generosity are no different—worldly people also give, also keep precepts, also bear wrongs. So what makes the six "perfections"—the mastery of crossing over—and not merely "goods of this shore"? The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra answers in an image:

[The five perfections,] apart from the perfection of wisdom, are like the blind without a guide, unable to reach the path … with the perfection of wisdom leading the way, the five are then said to have eyes … and gain the name "pāramitā."

Giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation—the first five, apart from prajñā, are "like the blind without a guide": like five blind men with no one to lead them, never reaching the path, never arriving; or if they walk, they walk as bounded worldly goods—doing good while clinging to the good, after a reward, falling back among gods and men. Only with prajñā "leading the way" do the five come to "have eyes," and win the name "pāramitā"—pāramitā, the crossing to the far shore.

So in the shape of the six, the first five are like five working hands, and prajñā is a pair of eyes. The hands can act—giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, each a hand of merit; but a hand without eyes is a blind man feeling out the road. This pair of eyes does one thing: it lets each thing the five hands do be done without abiding. The same giving: given with clinging—keeping count of I who give, he who receives, how much given, waiting on return—is blind, a good of this shore; given with prajñā as guide, where giver, receiver, and gift are all seen as unattainable and yet the giving goes right on—given without abiding in the giving—now it "has eyes," and is a giving that crosses over. What changes is not the act of giving, but whether it has prajñā's eyes.

These eyes are the very eyes on which Part One's "not taking realization" relied. What let the bodhisattva, at the door of nirvāṇa, not take it and not fall to the śrāvaka ground was the wisdom of the unattainable emptiness; that same eye, set into the six, becomes the prajñā that guides the five hands to "not abide," to "cross over." Apart from it, giving is only giving, a bounded merit; with it, giving becomes "the perfection of giving," the shape of the mastery that crosses over. And just here prajñā has a singular standing among the six: it is one of the six (the sixth, ranged with the other five) and the eyes of the other five (what makes them perfections). One office in two roles—ranged as a perfection, by its station as "wisdom"; guiding the five, by its function within the six. No contradiction; this is just what is special about these eyes.

Six hands, all reaching toward others

One more thing makes the six a shape of mastery: these six hands, from the first, are not curled in upon oneself but reaching out to beings. The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha sets each of the six against "beings":

By the perfection of giving he benefits beings; by the perfection of morality he does not harm them; by the perfection of patience he bears their abuse and raises no vengeful mind; by the perfection of vigour he grows their roots of good and ends their roots of evil.

Giving benefits beings; morality does not harm them; patience bears their abuse without a mind to repay; vigour grows their good and stills their evil—each, one by one, a shape turned "toward beings." This is not a layer of "altruistic motive" added onto the six; it is that the shape of the six faces beings to begin with. Which follows: Part One said the bodhisattva's mastery is bound for the deliverance of beings, and measured by amassing "without a fixed limit of so many beings"—since the mastery faces others from the start, its shape, come to hand, is naturally a set of hands reaching out.

So the bodhisattva's mastery has a legible mark: how it benefits and settles beings. A "mastery" used only on oneself, never reaching others, is—by the very definition of the bodhisattva's mastery (toward others, no limit set, not taking realization)—not a shape of the bodhisattva's mastery at all. As with a good physician's art: the art is, in its very meaning, turned toward the sick; you would not say "his medicine is masterly, he simply never treats anyone"—that is no mastery of medicine. The mastery of the art is read in the healing of patients, and matured in it.

Onward

Gather it into a sentence: the six perfections are the shape of the bodhisattva's mastery—the shape of the two provisions (merit and wisdom both), the shape made into "crossing over" only once prajñā gives it eyes, the shape of six hands all reaching toward others. Mastery is not apart from the six; mastery appears as the six.

But in the treatises the bodhisattva's "perfections" are often not six but ten—after the six, skillful means, vow, power, and knowledge are added. Are these four added items four new exercises? The six already gather merit and wisdom whole—why add more? The next chapter looks at what these four are, and at how the ten disclose themselves, ground by ground, along the ten grounds.