Into the Water

3.1 Into the Water

The corridor asked: when the lens turns from "how I practice" to "how I gather others in," what hands does the bodhisattva's mastery come to? This chapter answers that—and answers the weightier sentence too: altruism is mastery.

First set out the four by name. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, citing the Mahāprajñāpāramitā:

Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas embrace beings by four things. What four? Giving, kind speech, beneficial conduct, and shared work.

Giving, kind speech, beneficial conduct, shared work—by these four the bodhisattva draws beings in.

Four steps for bringing a person onto the path

These four are a complete procedure for "embracing beings." The Yogācārabhūmi says the whole way of embracing, taming, and ripening beings is contained in these four, with nothing over and nothing short:

Only the four embraces are called means … beyond this there is nothing further or greater … : drawing-in, embracing, leading-in, and accompanying.

Giving is "drawing-in"—first, by material and Dharma benefit, making a person willing to come near and be taught; kind speech is "embracing"—with good words dispelling his doubts and bringing him to understanding; beneficial conduct is "leading-in"—drawing him out of the unwholesome and settling him in the good; shared work is "accompanying"—practicing the right work together with him, walking it at his side. Four steps, in order, that take a person in and settle him; and their destination, the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra says, is to "settle beings in the ten courses of good":

The bodhisattva, by the four embraces, settles beings in the ten courses of good.

So the four are not four scattered good deeds, but one complete work of "leading a person from a distance up onto the path"—devised purely toward beings, with not one item that is private interior business.

Shared work: getting into the same water

Of the four, the one that shows "altruism is mastery" best is the fourth—shared work. The definition the Yogācārabhūmi gives it is the hinge of this whole chapter:

Whatever meaning, whatever root of good he exhorts another to take up and train in, in that very meaning, that very root of good he himself manifestly takes up and trains—equally or to a greater degree. Thus the bodhisattva is of the same undertaking as the other; hence "shared work."

That is: whatever good the bodhisattva exhorts a person to learn and do, he himself has first done—and done "equally or to a greater degree," no less than what he urges. Having himself first done the good he commends, he stands with the one he teaches on the same undertaking; this is "shared work."

The force of this structure lies in what follows. The Yogācārabhūmi goes on:

The being he matures, knowing that this bodhisattva practices shared work, becomes firm and settled in his own taking-up of the roots of good, without regress … nor can such a bodhisattva be met with the rebuke: you cannot train in the good yourself—how do you so earnestly exhort another?

The person being matured, seeing that this bodhisattva "is himself practicing it, right here on the same undertaking," becomes "firm and settled, without regress" in his own training—he has seen it with his own eyes, and so he trusts it, and so he does not fall back. Conversely, one who exhorts others to what he cannot do himself is exposed to his face: "You cannot do it yourself—on what ground do you so earnestly urge me?"—his exhorting is empty. Because the bodhisattva is "of the same undertaking" (having first perfected the good he commends), that rebuke cannot land on him.

It is like learning to swim. A coach who can truly swim, and a person who has only read swimming books and never gets in the water, may sound much alike explaining from the bank. But once in the water—the coach in the same pool with the learner, himself floating and swimming first—the learner, "knowing that this coach practices shared work," seeing him truly afloat in the same water, becomes "firm and settled, without regress" about his own ability to learn. The one who has only read is exposed the moment he enters: "You can't even float—how will you teach me?"—and his words go empty at once.

See one thing here: where is the coach's "mastery of the water" visible? Not in the explaining on the bank, but within the relationship of "being in the same water with the learner"—his own floating-first is a mastery seen, and verified, in that same water, and it is right there too that the effect of "keeping the learner from giving up" is produced. Apart from the relationship of getting into the water together, there is nowhere to point and say he can really swim. So with the bodhisattva's mastery: it is not a private interior state stored on the bank, in the heart; it is seen, verified, and made effective within the relationship of "shared work with beings." Mastery is legible within the relationship.

Altruism is mastery

Now the weighty sentence can be said: altruism is mastery. No single line of the canon states "altruism just is mastery" in those words; but set a few things side by side, and this is how this book reads them.

One: the four embraces come to predominate, ground by ground, as the grounds rise. The Avataṃsaka's Ten Grounds says that at the third, Radiant ground "among the four embraces, beneficial conduct is predominant," and at the fourth, Blazing ground "among the four embraces, shared work is predominant"—just as the ten perfections rose foremost ground by ground in the last part, the four embraces too, as the bodhisattva's realization rises, come to predominate one by one. This shows that altruism is not a fixed, added-on quota of good deeds (an added quota's amount has nothing to do with the depth of inner realization); the strength of altruism is bound precisely to the depth of realization—the deeper the realization, the fuller the altruism. Altruism is a function of mastery, growing as the mastery grows.

Two: this realm of altruism the śrāvaka cannot see. The Avataṃsaka's Entry into the Dharma-Realm says the great bodhisattvas "can embrace beings by the four embraces," and that this realm "the great śrāvakas cannot see." Why can the śrāvaka not see it? Because the śrāvaka's mastery is the mastery of "able to leave, and leaving"—taints exhausted, fetters severed, gone out from birth-and-death; his field of vision rests at his own deliverance and does not reach the matter of "returning into birth-and-death to embrace beings." So the bodhisattva's realm of "embracing beings by the four" simply is not within his sight—like a blind man who reaches the isle of jewels and sees no jewels. And just this, which "the śrāvaka cannot see," is exactly where the bodhisattva's mastery differs from the śrāvaka's—the bodhisattva's mastery, as the bodhisattva's, lies precisely in this realm of altruism, of "returning to deliver beings, embracing them by the four."

Set the two side by side: altruism grows with mastery, and altruism is just the mark by which the bodhisattva's mastery differs from the śrāvaka's—then altruism is not a good deed done apart from mastery; altruism is where the bodhisattva's mastery shows itself, becomes legible, becomes recognizable. This is "altruism is mastery."

Say it level, though: that the śrāvaka cannot see this realm does not mean the śrāvaka is low and the bodhisattva high. The previous volume said it—the arhat's mastery of "able to leave, and leaving" is real and not the least bit lesser. Here it is only that the two masteries differ in kind—one's mastery read off "departing cleanly," the other's read off "being in the same water with beings"; the śrāvaka's eye sees its own road truly, only it does not illumine this road of returning to deliver beings. How the two masteries are finally weighed side by side is matter for the last part of this book; here only this is touched: the relationship of altruism is just where the bodhisattva's mastery shows itself.

Onward

The first three parts have all read the bodhisattva by "what he does"—how the vow arises, how the two provisions are amassed, how the six perfections take shape, how the four embraces gather a person in. But a question underneath them all has been passed by: on what strength does he do these things? On what strength can he, at the door of nirvāṇa, not take the realization? On what strength can he return into the flood of birth-and-death and not be drowned? On what strength can he get into the same water as beings and not himself go under? What sustains all this lies not in "what he does," but in "what he has seen"—in a seeing, a patient settledness, won at the moment of entering the grounds. The next part turns from "doing" to "seeing," and looks at the cognition that holds all this up: the patience of the unborn.