Reading Map · How to Read This Book

This book reads one freedom to you—the bodhisattva's mastery. It is read in six stretches. Let the six be pointed out first—with a map in mind, even a long road reads without alarm.

Six Stretches

Part One · Mastery Begins in the Vow. Find the right ground. The bodhisattva's mastery is no layer built atop arhatship; it is sealed at the arousing of bodhicitta—entered in one thought, waiting on no prior fruit. Two chapters: the first watches how this mastery is sealed in the vow, not the fruit, and signed in "able to take the realization, and not taking it" (the ferryman not coming ashore); the second looks at its ruler—measured not by "how many fetters severed" but by "for whom, how much amassed, and amassed with or without a limit," the two provisions amassed without bound (no ceiling). The book's ground and ruler are both in this part.

Part Two · The Six and Ten Perfections. Mastery comes into shape. The two provisions of merit and wisdom, come to hand, are the six perfections—and prajñā gives these six hands a pair of eyes; apart from prajñā the five are blind, with prajñā guiding they cross to the far shore (hands and eyes). Above the six the set opens to ten; the added skillful means, vow, power, and knowledge are not new exercises but the turning-back use of subsequent wisdom won at entering the grounds, disclosed ground by ground (after the learning). The bodhisattva's ten grounds are named in full here.

Part Three · The Embrace. Mastery reaches toward others. The "hand reaching toward others" among the six, gathered into a fist, is the four embraces—giving, kind speech, beneficial conduct, shared work. "Shared work" uncovers a weighty sentence: mastery is not capital stored in the heart but something seen and verified within the relationship of "being in the same water with beings" (into the water). From this the book reads: altruism is mastery.

Part Four · The Forbearance of Non-Arising. From "doing" to "seeing." The first three parts read what the bodhisattva does; this part reads what lets him do it—a seeing settled into at entering the grounds: the forbearance of non-arising. It is not endurance but "trusting through" a counter-intuitive reality (all dharmas, from the first unarisen, like empty space), seen directly, not figured out; the earlier not-taking, returning, and not-drowning all rest on it (trusting it through). Once settled, the mastery shows two shapes: it goes by itself (effortless flow), it cannot slide back (non-regress) (it goes by itself).

Part Five · The Ten Masteries. Mastery called out item by item. The eighth-ground bodhisattva gains mastery over life, mind, wealth, karma, birth, vow, resolve, psychic power, knowledge, and the Dharma—undoing one by one the ten fears that fenced a person, and each "displayed toward beings" (the ten doors). This is the book's most concrete chapter on "mastery"—but it holds a line: this is the bodhisattva's causal-stage ten masteries, a place apart from the Tathāgata's.

Part Six · The Refused Rest. Where mastery finally rests. A person who will not stop even at nirvāṇa rests neither in birth-and-death (unbound) nor in the quiescence of nirvāṇa (not taking the cessation within reach)—this "mooring at neither bank" is the nirvāṇa of no fixed abode (mooring at neither bank). The last chapter brings round the sentence set on the book's first page: the bodhisattva's mastery and the arhat's are two kinds of true, different in kind, not in height (two kinds of true). Here the book closes.

Five Bridges

Between the six parts lie five "transitions." They are short—bridges between road and road, gathering the way behind and looking to the way ahead before climbing the next stretch. Do not skip them; each stretch's question is first asked on the bridge.

Three Ways to Read, as You Like

One, walk from start to finish. This is best. The book is one rising argument: Part One sets ground and ruler, Parts Two and Three let the mastery come into the shape of the six perfections and four embraces, Part Four digs down to the "seeing" that holds it all up, Part Five calls the mastery out item by item, Part Six gathers it to the "refused rest" and hands down the final discrimination. With no stretch missing, "different in kind, not in height" comes round whole.

Two, the hurried, read Part One first. The ground is delivered there. With its two chapters read, you hold the book's most essential thing—the pair "mastery sealed in the vow" and "measured by amassing, not severing"; whichever stretch then answers your heart, you can go there next.

Three, those who come with a question, read to the stretch. Doubting "is the bodhisattva path the higher one"—go to Part One and the last chapter of Part Six; wanting how everyday good becomes the bodhisattva's mastery—go to Parts Two and Three; holding the doubt "does the bodhisattva also sever defilement, also enter nirvāṇa—is he the same as the arhat?"—Parts Four and Six are written for you. But whichever you go to first, fill in Part One—without the ground in hand, every stretch's words go awry.

A Few Small Conventions

• For "the Buddha," this book uses "He" capitalized, in reverence; for the bodhisattva and the practitioner, "he." The Teacher's holy name is written "Homage to the Original Teacher, Śākyamuni Buddha."
• The canon's own words are set off in indented block quotations—so that at a glance you can tell which are the canon's words and which are the explanation given to you.
• Some comparisons in the book are the author's, not the canon's—like the ferryman not coming ashore, demolition versus raising a hall, nutrients and dishes, the swimming coach in the water, the acrophobe on the glass walkway, rowing versus a following current, ten keys for ten doors, the boatman mooring at neither bank, the fish swimming and the bird flying. Every such author's comparison the book marks plainly "this is a comparison, not scripture," lest you take it for the canon's own word.
• Canonical numbering, Sanskrit romanizations, and source details are kept entirely out of the main text, gathered in the appendices: the chapter-by-chapter sources in Appendix A (Index of Scholarly Notes); the plain-word and romanization glossary in Appendix C (Glossary of Terms).
• Names laid down by the later classifiers rather than the canon's verbatim text—the proper names of the "three non-regresses," exactly which ground the forbearance of non-arising hangs on, the pairing of the four added perfections with the four later grounds, even the reading "altruism is mastery"—are marked for their scope wherever used in the text (which are the canon's, which the classifiers', which the book's reading); Appendix A's per-chapter "Variances" records the detail. The book uses them remembering they are classification, or reading.
• A few larger questions the book, where it meets them, plainly marks "this book does not adjudicate," settling nothing for you—whether the two-vehicle's nirvāṇa is ultimate, whether the śrāvaka must turn from the lesser toward the great, what this mastery's perfection at buddhahood ("only the buddha has four") is like. These "vertical" adjudications belong to the author's tenet-choices and to this series' tathāgata volume; the book does only the "horizontal" discrimination, and does not cross the line.
• One sentence the book holds locked, never softened: different in kind, not in height. Wherever the two masteries are written, the book weights both evenly, never letting the scale of a scene hint at higher or lower.
• This book and its twin volume, The Arhat's Mastery, are two parallel masteries, not a lower and upper volume—you need not read that one first; read together, the two kinds of true mirror each other more clearly. And against the "walking" axis's The Path to Buddhahood: that volume writes the walking, this one the arrived-at—a seam of accumulation, hanging on no single threshold.

Setting Out

The map points this far. A road is read by reading.

We start from Part One, and find the ground.