Preface · Not a Higher Step
Anyone who reads the words "the bodhisattva's mastery" carries, mostly, a shadow of a thought: is the bodhisattva's mastery a step higher than the arhat's?
The shadow wears a thousand faces. The arhat only sees to himself; the bodhisattva can benefit others besides—so the bodhisattva is higher? The arhat, out of birth-and-death, comes to rest; the bodhisattva can still come and go freely within birth-and-death—so the bodhisattva is the stronger? Behind every variant stands the same picture: the two masteries set on one ladder, the arhat on the lower rung, the bodhisattva on the upper; the bodhisattva's mastery being "the arhat's mastery, plus a length more."
Few think to turn and ask: how does the canon itself set the relation of these two masteries?
This book points to the place where the canon sets it, exactly as the texts have it. And what it points to is, precisely, not a ladder.
One Freedom, Not a Rung Higher
The book is called The Bodhisattva's Mastery. Mastery is unobstructedness, freedom; the bodhisattva's mastery is the kind of freedom won, all along this road, by one who has aroused bodhicitta and walks the bodhisattva path.
The deepest seal of this freedom is a sentence that sounds paradoxical: able to take that final rest, and not taking it. The arhat's mastery is signed in "able to leave birth-and-death, and leaving"—the taints exhausted, the fetters severed, out of birth-and-death, all suffering forever quieted, no-more-becoming. The bodhisattva's mastery is signed in "able to leave birth-and-death, and not leaving"—plainly arrived at the door where he could take the realization, enter the cessation, yet by his original vow and great compassion not taking that rest within reach, choosing instead to stay in birth-and-death and deliver beings to the end of future time. One takes, one refuses—opposite in direction.
So this book has but one thesis, said in a sentence: the bodhisattva's mastery and the arhat's are two masteries different in kind, not two rungs higher and lower. One "able to leave, and leaving," one "able to leave, and not leaving"—like the swimming of a fish and the flying of a bird, each following its nature, each perfecting its power; you cannot ask "does the fish swim high enough, the bird fly deep enough"—they are not on one ruler at all. This "different in kind, not in height" the book holds, from its first page to its last, without loosening its grip.
The relation to the twin volume, The Arhat's Mastery, must be said plainly
On the "attainment" axis, this series has a twin volume, The Arhat's Mastery, which writes that very freedom of "able to leave, and leaving, all suffering forever quieted." Set the two side by side, and the readiest misreading is to take them for a lower and an upper volume—as if the arhat's mastery were the base model and the bodhisattva's the upgrade; become an arhat first, cultivate further, and so become a bodhisattva.
Just the opposite—and this is the picture the book means to dismantle. The two volumes write two masteries, two parallel kinds, not the low and high configurations of one mastery. So you need not read that volume first: this one begins from the bodhisattva's mastery's own gate (the arousing of the mind). One who has read that volume will recognize, at this book's close, a familiar contrast—the arhat "takes that final rest," the bodhisattva "refuses that final rest"; both true. That is the deepest place where the two volumes mirror each other, and the last part of the book tells it in full: two kinds of true, one called "no-more-becoming," one called "no abode."
The relation to the "walking" axis
The series has one larger context too, told here in passing. On the "walking" axis there is a volume, The Path to Buddhahood, which writes, position by position, how the bodhisattva path's fifty stations are walked—the Ten Faiths, Ten Abodes, Ten Practices, Ten Dedications, Ten Grounds. That volume writes the walking; this one writes the arrived-at: that one, how each stretch is walked; this one, what mastery is amassed along the walking.
Here is a structural difference to say plainly. That volume walks to the end of the tenth ground, to the threshold of the buddha-ranks; but the mastery this volume reads hangs on no single threshold—it is amassed: the mastery at the vow's arising, the mastery of amassing the two provisions, the mastery of the six perfections come to shape, the mastery of the forbearance of non-arising, the ten masteries, and at last the mastery of the nirvāṇa of no fixed abode, one after another, amassed all along this long road. So this book is not "reach which gate, and unlock which mastery," but reads, face by face, the mastery amassed along the way. At its close, The Path to Buddhahood already handed "the arrived-at scenery" to this volume; this volume takes it up, and tells that scenery in full.
How far this book goes
One thing, as ever, to set out plainly at the front.
What this book writes is the bodhisattva's causal-stage mastery—the mastery won from the arousing of the mind to the tenth ground. It deliberately does not touch several lines higher up: how this mastery is perfected at buddhahood (the canon says that fullness "only the buddha has"); whether the śrāvaka must "turn from the lesser toward the great," and how; whether the two-vehicle's nirvāṇa is ultimate. These "vertical" adjudications the book does not settle for you at all. They are tenets the author must weigh in person, and an edge for the tathāgata volume of this series to touch. The book does only one "horizontal" thing: to set the two masteries side by side, to see where they differ in kind, and why they should not be set on one ruler and ranked. To judge their difference, not their height—this is the measure the book keeps.
This book is written for you
This book is not written for the scholar. It does not argue, does not compare schools; it does one plain thing: to tell you, stretch by stretch, the two masteries the canon itself sets out—what each is, why they differ in kind, why they should not be ranked.
It is written above all for you: one who has aroused the great-vehicle mind, yet quietly feels in the heart "we of the great vehicle are higher, the two-vehicle lower," and so looks on the practitioners of the lesser with a touch of contempt; or one who has taken "the bodhisattva can benefit others" for a "higher liberation," supposing the bodhisattva road is for "rising a rung above the arhat." What this book most wants to put in your hands is the removal of that ladder—it will tell you that the road you have chosen is not a road "higher than the arhat," but a road "unalike from the arhat"; and that walking it is not for height (seeking height is conceit, not the awakening-mind), but for that one vow, "unwilling to take the rest and forsake beings."
You need not know Sanskrit, need not memorize the canon's numbers. The numbering and the romanizations are all kept in the appendices at the back; the main text only tells you, cleanly, of these two masteries.
Walk slowly
The book is six parts, like six stretches of road: mastery beginning in the vow, the six and ten perfections, the four embraces, the forbearance of non-arising, the ten masteries, and at last the "refused rest." Best to walk from start to finish—it is one continuous argument, each thing set up early used later; and that sentence "different in kind, not in height" is brought round only at the last part, the first five all laying the road for it.
In closing
To read this book is, in the end, to swap one question for another: from "is the bodhisattva's mastery higher than the arhat's" to "these two masteries—toward which direction is each a freedom?"
However long the book, it is only for that one swap. May you, reading on, set down the ruler of "ranking"; toward the arhat's mastery of "taking the rest, forever quieted," bring forth a true reverence; toward your own chosen direction of "refusing the rest to benefit beings," keep a clear vow. Two masteries, two kinds of true—may you see each as true, and walk each its own road.
Homage to the Original Teacher, Śākyamuni Buddha.