Two Kinds of True
6.2 Two Kinds of True
The last chapter set the two masteries side by side: the arhat's, signed in "taking that final rest" (the without-remainder · all suffering forever quieted · no-more-becoming); the bodhisattva's, signed in "refusing that final rest" (no abode · benefiting beings to the end of future time). One takes, one refuses—opposite in direction. So the last question the book cannot dodge: these two masteries—one higher and one lower, or something else?
This chapter's answer is the sentence the book set down on its first page and held all along: these two masteries are different in kind, not in height.
To judge them unalike is not to judge which is higher
First, "discrimination." What is to be done here is to discriminate them as "two heteromorphic kinds"—as one might tell "the swimming of a fish" and "the flying of a bird" apart as two different ways of going, not judge "flying" higher than "swimming" or "swimming" higher than "flying." The fish swims well and cannot fly; the bird flies well and cannot swim; each follows its own nature, each perfects its own power. To judge the fish's swimming and the bird's flying unalike is to let each be true in its own right (the fish is no lesser for the bird's flying, the bird no lesser for the fish's swimming), not to arrange a ranking. To ask "the fish swims not high enough, the bird flies not deep enough" is a question already wrong—they are not on one ruler at all.
The discrimination of the two masteries is just so. The arhat "takes the rest," the bodhisattva "refuses the rest"—two opposite directions, not two heights on one road. Below, three layers of how they differ in kind—and each layer is direction, not height.
First layer: the two nirvāṇas are heteromorphic
The first layer: the nirvāṇa each comes home to is unalike. The last chapter said that, of the Cheng weishi lun's four nirvāṇas, the third "without-remainder" and the fourth "no-abode" are just the two each of these masteries comes home to: the without-remainder, "the afflictions exhausted, the remaining basis also extinguished, all suffering forever quieted" (the rest the arhat takes); the no-abode, "freed of the cognitive obstruction · great compassion and wisdom · abiding in neither birth-and-death nor nirvāṇa · benefiting beings to the end of future time" (the place the bodhisattva, refusing the rest, settles). One is "all suffering forever quieted" (quiescence to the utmost, suffering spent and stopped), one is "functioning yet ever quiescent" (quiescent, yet ever raising the function of altruism, without end); one is "no-more-becoming" (never again entering birth-and-death), one is "to the end of future time" (forever between the banks, benefiting).
Here is the one line of canon that nails "in kind, not in height." The same Cheng weishi lun, speaking of how the station of the two-vehicle's entry into without-remainder nirvāṇa is both same as and different from the buddha, says:
In this station there is only the pure suchness, signless, limpid, the bliss of cessation; on this account it is said to be no different from the buddha; but, lacking the awakening and the work of benefiting others, it is also said to differ from the buddha.
Look closely at this judgment. The "pure suchness, signless, limpid, the bliss of cessation" that the two-vehicle realizes—as for that quiescence itself, it is "no different from the buddha": the quiescence the two-vehicle realizes and the quiescence the buddha realizes are no different, of no higher and lower. Then where do they differ from the buddha? "But, lacking the awakening and the work of benefiting others"—they differ in not having that function of "benefiting beings to the end of future time." See what this means: even in the Yogācāra judgment that most exalts the bodhisattva and most discriminates the two-vehicle, the quiescence the two-vehicle realizes is "no different" from the buddha's—so the difference between the two masteries is not in "the height of the quiescence" (the quiescence is the same, no different), but in "whether, beyond the quiescence, that function of benefiting beings to the end of time is raised." This is not depth-and-height; it is difference of direction: one stops at that no-different quiescence (takes the rest), one, beyond that no-different quiescence, further raises the function of great compassion and wisdom (refuses to stop at the quiescence, and functions). The quiescence being no different, whence a height? What differs is direction, only.
Second layer: the obstructions cut are unalike—a road's direction, not a power's height
The second layer: the obstruction each cuts is unalike. The Cheng weishi lun judges: "The two vehicles can cut only the afflictive obstruction; the bodhisattva cuts both." The two vehicles cut only the afflictive obstruction (the defilement that summons birth-and-death and harries body and mind); the bodhisattva cuts both the afflictive and the cognitive. And these two obstructions each obstruct one thing: the afflictive obstructs nirvāṇa (liberation), the cognitive obstructs awakening (the buddha's knowing).
This "cuts only one" and "cuts both" is most easily read as "a height of power"—as if the bodhisattva were the abler, cutting two, the two-vehicle the lesser, cutting only one. But this is a misreading. It is not a height of power; it is a difference of "the road's direction."
Whether the cognitive obstruction is cut hangs on "where this road is going," not on "whether the power suffices." The arhat's road goes to "realizing for oneself the cessation of suffering, leaving birth-and-death, no-more-becoming"—and for that end, cutting the afflictive obstruction (greed, hatred, delusion, the self-view) is enough (the afflictive cut, nirvāṇa is realized, birth-and-death left); the cognitive obstruction, which veils the buddha's knowing, is not one his road must cut (he does not take "benefiting beings to the end of time, accomplishing all-knowledge" for his end, and so need not cut the obstruction to that knowing). The bodhisattva's road goes to "no abode · great compassion and wisdom · benefiting beings to the end of time · all-knowledge"—and for that end, both obstructions must be cut (not only the afflictive, to be unbound by birth-and-death, but also the cognitive, so that the dharma-emptiness suchness is disclosed, great compassion and wisdom arise, and the benefiting runs to the end of time).
So "cuts both" and "cuts only one" is the two roads' differing ends forcing a difference in what is cut—not the bodhisattva being abler and the arhat less able. The arhat is not "unable to cut the cognitive obstruction"; his road simply "need not cut it"—as one going home need not lay in provisions for a journey of ten thousand miles; you cannot say his "provisioning power is less than the traveler's"—he simply need not lay in those provisions. The Saṃgraha's calling the śrāvaka's turning "one-pointedly turning the back on birth-and-death" (leaving birth-and-death in one direction, toward quiescence) and the bodhisattva's "for forsaking-and-not-forsaking" (both forsaking the afflictions and not forsaking birth-and-death to deliver beings) says the same: two directions, each fitting its own road, not "the one-directional lower and the two-directional higher." (The Saṃgraha names the śrāvaka's direction "the inferior turning" and the bodhisattva's "the vast turning," which sounds, in the names, like praise and dispraise; but the book takes the sense of "differing direction," not the height carried in the names—and whether it is "inferior" or not is just the matter, spoken of below, left to the author.)
Third layer: one comes no more, one comes forever
The third layer, most concrete: in "becoming"—the future birth-and-death body—one wants it, one does not. The arhat's mastery is signed in "no-more-becoming" (birth-and-death spent, no future birth-and-death body received—coming no more); the bodhisattva's, in "to the end of future time" (not abiding in nirvāṇa, manifesting a body to benefit beings to the end of time—coming forever). One cuts off becoming and enters quiescence; one keeps becoming and benefits beings. This is the two masteries' most concrete divide, and the one least open to ranking—"coming no more," on the arhat's road, is the ultimate stilling of suffering (a true fullness); "coming forever," on the bodhisattva's road, is the endless unfolding of altruism (a true fullness). Two fullnesses, each completing its own road.
Two kinds of true
The three layers together let the book's whole judgment come down: the bodhisattva's mastery and the arhat's are two heteromorphic kinds of mastery, differing at root in "the taking and the refusing of that final rest"—the arhat takes it (without-remainder · all suffering forever quieted · no-more-becoming), the bodhisattva refuses it (no abode · to the end of future time · great compassion and wisdom benefiting beings). And this difference is "in kind" (differing in direction, in end, in function), not "in height" (not superior-and-inferior on one ladder).
This is just the sentence set down in the very first chapter, now at last brought round. The first chapter said: "able to leave, and leaving" and "able to leave, and not leaving" are two masteries, opposite in direction, both true. All the way through—how the vow arises, how the provisions are amassed, how the six perfections and four embraces take shape, how the forbearance of non-arising makes the floor, how effortless non-regress shows, how the ten masteries are called out, how the no-abode settles—the bodhisattva's mastery, taken whole, is a mastery that "refuses its own final rest, and benefits beings to the end of future time." And the mastery the previous volume, The Arhat's Mastery, wrote—the kind that "takes its own final rest, all suffering forever quieted"—stands beside it as the other of two kinds, each true in its own right. The arhat's quiescence is true (no different from the buddha's); the bodhisattva's mooring at neither bank is true too. One crosses to the far shore and lands, at rest (takes the rest · true); one crosses and moors at neither bank, ferrying to the end of time (refuses the rest · true). Two kinds of true, opposite in direction—this is the whole meaning of "different in kind, not in height."
A measure of plainness: how far this ruler measures
Last, the book must set out plainly, for the reader, a few lines—and this chapter's measure is the finest of all.
First, the terms used above to discriminate—freed of the cognitive or the afflictive obstruction, cutting both or only one, the vast turning or the inferior—are all the way of judging of the Mahāyāna Yogācāra and Saṃgraha tradition, a map drawn of the two masteries from the Mahāyāna side. It is not the arhat's own tradition's (the Āgama's, the Kośa's) understanding of itself. In the Āgama's own tradition, the arhat's "exhaustion of the taints" (greed, hatred, delusion forever spent) is the ultimate liberation, and "no-more-becoming" is the ultimate stilling of suffering; the Āgama does not take "the cognitive obstruction not yet cut" for any lack in the arhat ("the cognitive obstruction" is a category the Mahāyāna Yogācāra set up; the Āgama has no such notion). And on questions like "what the nirvāṇa-realm actually is, whether the tathāgata exists after death," the Āgama holds throughout to "no-comment"—not answering, not adjudicating (a measure the previous volume kept very tightly). So were the book to take the Yogācāra's "you have cut one obstruction fewer" and turn it round to judge the arhat "less than" the bodhisattva, that would be to take the Mahāyāna's ruler and measure the Āgama's own tradition by it—and rank it short. This is neither fair (the Āgama's own tradition does not grant this ruler) nor in keeping with the book's word that "the arhat's mastery is real and not inferior." So these terms the book uses only to mark "the two masteries differ in kind," and there it stays its hand; as for taking this ruler to judge the height of the arhat's own tradition, the book does not judge—the Āgama's "no-comment" measure it goes on honoring and keeping.
Second, a few larger questions the book does not adjudicate in this chapter, leaving them to the author. Is the two-vehicle's without-remainder nirvāṇa "ultimate" (or must one turn the heart toward the great vehicle, enter the buddha-path, to arrive)? Must the śrāvaka "turn from the lesser toward the great," and how? These have been disputed in the Mahāyāna for centuries (one side holding "the five lineages each distinct"—a fixed-lineage śrāvaka who enters without-remainder is ultimate, need not turn; one side holding "the three gathered into one"—the two-vehicle must in the end turn into the one buddha-vehicle, the without-remainder not ultimate). This is a root choice of doctrinal classification; to choose a side is a tenet the author (Shi Huijing) must weigh in person, not something this book settles for you. What the book does is the "horizontal" discrimination—setting the two masteries side by side, judging them unalike in kind, each true in its own right; the "vertical" adjudication—who is ultimate, who must turn back, how the buddha's perfected mastery joins—the book leaves entirely alone, not crossing the line. That earlier line too—"the nirvāṇa of no abode in its fruit-stage fullness, only the buddha has it," how the bodhisattva's causal stage joins the buddha's fruit—belongs to this same class, left to the tathāgata part and the author.
Close of the book
Walking to the book's end, three words for one who walks this road.
Put away a pride. Let the one who studies the great vehicle not, because "the bodhisattva benefits others while the two-vehicle only sees to itself," breed the pride of "the great vehicle high, the lesser low." The two masteries differ in kind and each is true in its own right; one who looks down on the two-vehicle has forgotten both the plain judgment that "what the two-vehicle realizes is no different from the buddha" and the middle way that "things unalike in kind have no common ruler to rank them"—growing only conceit.
Bring forth a reverence. Toward the arhat's mastery—the mastery of "taking the final rest, all suffering forever quieted, no-more-becoming"—bring forth a true reverence. His "one-pointedly turning the back on birth-and-death, forever cutting off becoming," on his road, is the ultimate stilling of suffering, the perfect close of the way, real and not inferior (his quiescence, no different from the buddha's). Reverence it, and one does not fall into the bias of exalting oneself and belittling others.
Make clear a direction. Let one who walks the bodhisattva road understand that the direction he has chosen—"refusing the final rest, benefiting beings to the end of future time"—is not a direction "higher than the arhat," but a direction "unalike from the arhat." Understand this, and walking the bodhisattva road is not for "seeking to be higher than the two-vehicle" (seeking height is conceit, not the awakening-mind), but for the sake of that "original vow and great compassion, unwilling to take the rest and forsake beings"—the very nature of the direction of benefiting beings to the end of time.
What is the bodhisattva's mastery? Walked now to this last page, it can be answered: it is a freedom unalike from the arhat's mastery, not a freedom higher than it. It is signed in "able to take that final rest, and not taking it"—able to go ashore and mooring at neither bank, able to rest and unwilling to rest, ferrying, to the end of future time, in the water of birth-and-death, those not yet across. This is the whole of its power, and its willing choice. Two masteries, two kinds of true; and this one's truth is called: no abode.