Walking to the Other Pole: The Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance

6.3 Walking to the Other Pole: The Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance

For someone who has never had any contact with Buddhist repentance liturgy, the least strenuous door into the Chinese tradition of repentance may well be a story that has been told for more than a thousand years.

The story goes that the empress of Emperor Wu of Liang, Consort Chi, became a great serpent after her death, and one night took form and laid her plight before the emperor:

In life I was jealous of the women of the harem… for this sin I was condemned to the body of a serpent… and so, lodged in this ugly shape, I lay myself bare before His Majesty, begging one work of merit by which I might be delivered.

The emperor went to consult the eminent monk Zhigong, and Zhigong said: nothing will serve but to pay homage to the Buddhas and wash it clean by repentance. So the emperor gathered the words of the Buddhas, struck out the idle phrases, and composed this repentance text for her; and afterward the serpent, by the merit the emperor had made, was reborn in the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven.

(Provenance first, plainly: this story is legend, not sober history. The current ten-fascicle version bears the byline "compiled by the great dharma-masters of Liang," not Emperor Wu's own authorship; even the Account inside the story admits that "several hundred years" already stand between it and the Liang — so the version we have was enlarged and reworked by later hands, and is not the sixth-century original. Wherever the text below says "the Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance," then, it carries the sense of "by tradition." The rite's proper name is in fact the Repentance Rite of the Compassionate Ritual Arena — where "ritual arena" means the altar of repentance.)

Textual criticism aside, the story compresses nearly the whole doctrine of this chapter onto the body of a single serpent. What deserves attention is its grammar.

No one struck the serpent's sin off with a stroke of the pen. She had first to "lay it bare" — to speak out, before the emperor's face, the very thought of jealousy she had carried in life. That phrase, "laying bare," is exactly the "disclosure" parsed at this book's opening: spreading open what was concealed, carrying what was in the dark into the light. Even this most myth-like of stories runs, at its bones, on the same plainest grammar the Vinaya laid down — first disclose, then be cleansed.

And Consort Chi's sin was jealousy. Jealousy is a mind that sorts people into "my side" and "her side." It is precisely the "knot" that will be untied further on. So the story and the liturgy turn out to be two tellings of one thing: an empress who fell into a serpent's body through the discriminating mind, and a ten-fascicle repentance text whose whole labor, from first to last, is to dissolve that line of discrimination inch by inch.

Repentance Is the Untying of Bonds

Before entering its outward structure, look first at how this text defines "repentance." It has one sentence that could almost serve as the program of the whole book:

In the ordinary person it is called bondage; in the sage it is called release. Bondage is the evil arisen from the three kinds of action; release is the good that is without obstruction.

The definition is worth a pause. It does not cast repentance as "confessing to someone, begging someone's pardon," but as the untying of bondage — the loosening of the knots tied by the three actions of body, speech, and mind. Sin, here, is not a debt to be paid off but a knot that binds a person and leaves them unfree; repentance is the loosening of the binding.

This step moves repentance out of the grammar of "buying back" and into the grammar of "loosening" — and it is the key to the whole apparatus of deliverance and dedication to come: read the deliverance of the dead as "paying a debt to redeem a sin," and everything goes wrong from the start; it is to be read as "untying the bonds of beings."

And this text does one structurally decisive thing: it takes the one-time, spoken "disclosure" of the Vinaya and grows it into a piece of writing that can be bowed to and chanted aloud. The Lotus Samādhi of the last chapter gathers repentance back into one person's seated meditation; the Liang Emperor's Repentance of this chapter spreads repentance out into a homage a whole assembly may perform together. Both are descendants of disclosure — one walks inward into the state of concentration, one walks outward toward the altar.

The Outward Loss of Self

The spine of this chapter is a "loss of self" running in the opposite direction from the Lotus Samādhi's.

The Lotus Samādhi's loss of self is inward: the "I" is dissolved into the real mark contemplated in seated meditation. The Liang Emperor's loss of self is outward: the "I" is dissolved into the suffering and the rescue of the beings of the six paths. To see this outward road clearly, follow the ten fascicles' own order, in three steps.

First step: showing the karmic fruits — stretching the field of vision from "I" out to the six paths. The text first spends great stretches laying out the causes, effects, and forms of suffering across the six paths. This is not intimidation but an expansion of view: the practitioner first sees the sins of this one body, and is then led to see the measureless beings of the whole round of rebirth suffering alongside him. If the eye holds nothing but one body's gains and losses, no mind to repent for the six paths can arise.

Second step: untying enmity and loosening the knot — dissolving the foe-and-kin that springs from the "I." This is the pivot of the whole chapter. The text names the root of enmity:

Because of inequality, the I-and-mine mind arises; thoughts of foe and kin are born; and so enmity fills the six paths.

Look at the causal chain: first there is the view of "inequality"; only then does that "I" stand at the center, taking itself as the rule, measuring out who is near and who far, who lovable and who hateful — and only then do foe and kin stand up at all. So "untying enmity" is not "forgiving some particular enemy"; it is taking apart the measuring-rod itself. The remedy the text gives falls exactly here:

With a heart of compassion, holding no thought of foe or kin, equal to the heart of all Buddhas, one with the vow of all Buddhas.

"Holding no thought of foe or kin" is not re-filing everyone under the single heading of "kin" — that is still discrimination, merely switched to the other side; it is to set down the whole pairing of "foe / kin" at once and return to the mind that does not discriminate. What is lost in that instant is exactly the "I" that stood in the middle taking the measure.

That is why this is a "loss of self," and an outward one: the Lotus Samādhi loses the self by drawing it into the real mark; the Liang Emperor's loses it by laying it out into beings. One tends toward emptiness, one toward universal deliverance; the landing places differ, but the self that is lost is one and the same.

Third step: dedication — and putting oneself last. After the loss of self, the most moving stroke of this rite is the order of its dedication. It makes plea, homage, and repentance for all beings of the six paths who have already suffered and who have not yet suffered, holding them as parents, teachers, and kin; and only at the very end does one's own turn come:

Universally, for those of the six paths who have already suffered and those who have not yet suffered, we make plea, homage, and repentance… and also for ourselves, we make plea, homage, and repentance.

That single word "also" is the key to the whole economy of dedication: the self is not excluded but placed behind the six paths, the parents, the kin. This is the exact reverse of a prayer that begins from "first let me be saved" — it puts the self at the very end of the line. At the last, the whole text closes on the making of the great vow: that by the merit of this repentance and arousing of the mind, all be dedicated universally to every being to the ends of empty space.

The merit of the repentance is not kept in reserve for oneself; it is pushed out entire. A single moment's repentance has here grown into a universal deliverance: it begins by repenting one's own sins and ends by vowing for all beings. This is the full reach of the ceremonial rite opening outward — not polishing the "I" up, but spending the "I" out.

One Thing to See Clearly Here

The ceremonial rite and the deliverance of the dead are this chapter's home ground — and for just that reason, the places where one most easily slips must be marked out plainly.

First — and the place of highest tension: the deliverance of the dead is not a transaction. A reader will all too easily read it as a purchase — burn one rite of repentance, make one quantum of merit, and the dead are delivered automatically. But the Liang Emperor's text does not permit that reading. The serpent's rebirth in the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven was the joint fruit of two conditions — her own laying-bare, and the sustaining grace of the emperor's merit; lacking the serpent's own laying-bare, the merit had nothing to take hold of. Deliverance is an occasion of sustaining grace, not a tradeable warrant of redemption. This carries forward the line the book has held all along: to receive is not to be absolved — no one can, on another's behalf, make a single thought of jealousy never to have happened. Repentance made on another's behalf can lend sustaining grace; it cannot strike the thing off.

Second: "repenting on another's behalf for the dead" is not merely a funeral service. The Liang Emperor's homage runs through both the living and the dead — it is for the dead "who have already suffered," for the living "who have not yet suffered," and "also for ourselves." To narrow it into a rite for ferrying the dead across is to miss its full reach as a repentance "for all beings of the six paths."

Third: "holding no thought of foe or kin" is not the emotional adjustment of "forgiveness will make you feel better." It is the direct contemplation of being "equal to the heart of all Buddhas"; what it sets out to take apart is the very "I" that gives rise to the foe-and-kin discrimination — not to soothe that "I's" feelings. The strongest counter-evidence is exactly that "also for ourselves": if the aim of untying enmity were self-interest, why would the practitioner place himself behind all beings? A structure that puts the self at the tail of the line is itself the proof that this is no scheme of self-consolation.

The Two Poles Meet

Gather this part into a sentence.

The Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance takes repentance from a single thought of disclosure and grows it into a rite thrown open to the outside: first it shows the karmic fruits of the six paths to stretch the field of vision; then, by untying enmity and loosening the knot, it dissolves the foe-and-kin that the "I" gives rise to; and at the last, with the "also for ourselves" dedication, it pushes the whole of the merit out to all beings.

Together with the last chapter's Lotus Samādhi Repentance Rite — the contemplative rite that presses inward toward the real mark — it forms the two poles of the Chinese repentance liturgies.

One inward, one outward — they look like roads turned back to back, yet they meet at the single point of the "loss of self": one draws the self into the real mark, one lays the self out into beings; one tends toward emptiness, one toward universal deliverance — and the self that is lost is one and the same.

And this answers the "death-and-rebirth bridge" laid down earlier: giving loosens "what is mine" and so the self is lost, and repentance cleanses karma upon that no-self ground — the Liang Emperor's outward loss of self is a window on that bridge, opening outward.

Walking On

Part Six seals here. Both poles of the Chinese repentance liturgies have now been walked: the Lotus Samādhi, gathering inward into the real mark; the Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance, laying outward into beings.

And yet, inward or outward, the "I" these two poles lose is still only "the I that repents"; the transgressions repented, item by item, remain all along vivid and real. The Lotus Samādhi leads a person to an inward door and says that once that door is pushed open, one "must discard the foregoing practice" — and behind the door is the real mark, in seated correct contemplation.

And once that door is pushed open — what, finally, is there?

When repentance reaches its deepest place, the question is no longer "how do I clear away this transgression?" but turns back to ask: that transgression, and the self that erred — were they ever real?

This deepest and hardest-to-speak of questions is the last stretch of the book's road. Walking to this point, all the steps before — disclosure, rehabilitation, the double edge of remorse, the seven limbs, Samantabhadra's vows, the death-and-rebirth bridge, the three repentances, the Chinese repentance liturgies — have already been laid.

That door, the next part pushes open.