Preface · Laying the Hidden Out into the Light

The book in your hands is about something everyone knows how to do, and almost no one truly knows how to do—repentance.

Everyone knows how, because: when you have done something wrong, that ache in the chest, that "I'm sorry"—who has not had them? Remorse is close to the most instinctive of human responses; it needs no learning.

Almost no one truly knows how, because this "repentance" you thought you had known long since goes very deep. It was taught and practiced, rite by rite, in the Buddha's own Saṅgha; across more than two thousand years, generation after generation of patriarchs and great teachers turned it over, deepened it, pushed it to its furthest point—pushed it to a place you have probably never even imagined. Behind tonight's single sigh of regret stands a long, long road, walked for more than two thousand years.

This book takes you down that road, from its beginning to its end.

A Word Sewn Together

To walk this road, you must first take the word "repentance" apart.

Today we say "repentance" in one breath, as smoothly as if it had always been a single word. But it is in fact sewn together—kṣama and remorse, each with its own lineage. Remorse is that churning regret in the heart, the feeling that will not let you sit still. Kṣama is a Sanskrit word whose root sense is close to "to bear with, to forbear, to ask another to receive"—what it seeks is to be caught by someone. And in the earliest Vinaya, what truly holds up the whole practice of repentance is neither that remorse nor merely that "I'm sorry," but a third thing, the one most easily missed—disclosure: to say the fault you have committed, before others, plainly and clearly, out loud.

So repentance is in fact three things: remorse is the feeling within; disclosure is the saying before others; kṣama is the being-received.

And the true protagonist of this book is the act in the middle—disclosure. Laying what was hidden out into the light.

You will find that this plainest of acts is the one thread running through this book from beginning to end. In the Vinaya, a monk stands before the Saṅgha and says his fault aloud, word by word—that is disclosure. The bodhisattva Samantabhadra, facing the Buddhas of the ten directions, repents in one sweep the karmic obstacle heaped up since beginningless time—that is still disclosure; only the one who receives it has changed, from the Saṅgha before one's eyes to the Buddhas filling all of space. All the way to this book's deepest part, when repentance is pushed to its furthest point, what is to be "laid open" is no longer some single fault, but the "I" that has been hiding the fault all along, and has been bound by the fault all along—and only once it is laid open does one discover: there, from the very first, nothing ever arose; from the very first, nothing was ever bound.

From laying open a single fault to laying open that "I"—that is this road.

A Road from Saying It Aloud to Seeing It Clearly

The book's subtitle—"from the Vinaya's disclosure to the repentance of non-arising"—names exactly this long road from end to end.

In the Vinaya it set out for the first time—a monk saying aloud the fault he had hidden, not daring to conceal it. And the Saṅgha put a plain, posted price on hiding itself: the longer the hiding, the longer the road back to purity. The sickness it set out to treat was never, from the very start, "what you did wrong," but "how deep you hid it."

It walked into the Āgamas and met that remorse—the double-edged blade that can be medicine or poison: if it will take the road of "say it aloud, and guard against doing it again," remorse is the force that spurs a person forward; brooded over and chewed on in a shut heart, it hardens into a hindrance that shrouds the practice. It even sounded the floor of phenomenal repentance, in a king who had killed his father—repentance can lessen, can turn, but it cannot wipe away, out of thin air, the karma already made.

It was lifted into the worship of the Mahāyāna and rose into one of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra's great vows—repenting before the Buddhas of the ten directions, moment after moment, without interruption, with no exhaustion. Between giving and the precepts it raised a bridge of "death-and-rebirth"—giving loosens the hand that clenches "mine"; repentance clears the old karma upon that loosened self; and the precepts then usher in the new birth. The patriarchs graded it into three rising steps—procedural repentance, sign-based repentance—each step steadying the next, climbed one by one. It settled into liturgies you can walk into, one rite after another—the Lotus Samādhi Repentance gathering inward into the real mark, the Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance laying itself outward into the suffering of beings.

At the last, it reached the deepest step of all—the repentance of non-arising.

Here, repentance no longer asks "how do I clear away this one transgression," but turns back and asks a more fundamental question: that transgression, that "I" who erred—were they ever real in themselves? And the answer: transgression has no own-being that truly exists, and neither does the "I" who erred. The sun of wisdom shines once, and the host of transgressions, like frost and dew, dissolve of themselves—not because someone wiped the frost away for you, but because, under that light, the frost never had a substance in which it could stay.

From one timid sentence of disclosure to seeing that transgression is non-arising from the first—that is this road. One sentence says it all: Repentance is not a transaction of confessing and begging absolution, nor an emotional release to make yourself feel a little better; it is laying what was hidden out into the light, layer by layer—first laying open a single fault, and at the last laying open the "I" that hid the fault, laying it open until you see: there, from the very first, nothing ever arose.

The One Subtraction Among the Six Gates

This book is the third volume of the Six Practice Gates.

The Six Practice Gates—mindfulness, giving, repentance, precepts, concentration, vow—are six gates of practice, each answering to one word of the Heart Sūtra. What matters is this: the other five gates are all "adding"—mindfulness establishes a sustained awareness; giving loosens "mine"; the precepts receive the precept-substance; concentration gathers in the mind; the vow sets the great vow in motion. Each of them is "doing" something; each builds upward.

Repentance alone "subtracts."

It answers to the Heart Sūtra's word "empty"—"all dharmas are marked with emptiness, neither arising nor ceasing." It adds nothing; it turns back and empties out, one by one, the little graspings the other five gates pick up as they build: emptying the "I who is mindful," emptying the "I who gives," emptying the "I who keeps the precepts." Repentance is the one subtractive gate among the six.

This is also why repentance must come after giving and before the precepts. Giving loosens "mine," and loosened to the very end, even the "I" comes loose—something like a death of the self. Repentance takes over right after that death: upon the self that no longer clenches, it clears the old karma clean. Then the precepts take the baton—only when the clearing is done can the new precept-substance be received, like a rebirth. Death, and then birth. Repentance sits exactly between that death and that birth.

On a road where someone keeps building upward without pause, there must be one force that loosens, again and again, the grasping that sticks on as the building rises—otherwise the practice will quietly stiffen and crust over on that subtle self-satisfaction of "I am practicing." Repentance is the force that loosens the crust.

This Book Is Written for You

This book is not written for scholars.

It debates with no one, and it does not compare "Buddhist repentance" with this or that confession or contrition elsewhere. What it does is one plain and simple thing: it tells you, item by item, following the scriptures, what that "repentance" the Buddha and the patriarchs once taught really is—what it is, when it was taught, how it is practiced, what it means.

The book quotes many sūtras and many treatises, from the Pāli Vinaya and the Āgamas, to the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra, the Heart Sūtra, and the Huayan Sūtra, on to the works of patriarchs such as Zhiyi and Zhili. But set your mind at ease: the catalog numbers, the original Sanskrit and Pāli words, the scholars' textual notes are all gathered into the appendices at the back, not laid in the body text to trip your feet. In the body text there is only an old monk, following the scriptures, telling it to you slowly.

It is written for you—for someone willing, in the still of night, or when something sits heavy on the heart, to quietly take the one thing tucked away inside and lay it out for a look. You need not know Sanskrit. You need not remember catalog numbers. You need not first become a scholar. You need only be willing to loosen, a little, the hand that has all along been shading, covering, guarding the claim that "I'm fine."

One thing must be said up front, lest you set off askew from the very start.

When this book speaks of repentance, it is not telling you that the harder you berate yourself the better. To own a fault as it is, and to enshrine a fault—offering incense to it daily, whipping yourself before it daily—are two different things. The first is clarity: see it clearly and own it; own it and mend it; mend it and set it down. The second is self-flagellation, another kind of grasping—grasping at "I am a bad person who deserves to be punished." What this book means to teach you is the first, not the second. Repentance has been, from its first day, a forward-moving thing—not a machine that grinds inward.

Walk Slowly; There Is No Hurry

The book is divided into eight parts, like eight stages of a road. You may read from the first page straight through to the last, following the road slowly; or you may go first to whichever stage speaks to your heart.

Parts One through Three watch this act of "saying it aloud" grow up, step by step—in the Vinaya, the Āgamas, and the worship of the Mahāyāna—from one disclosure in the Saṅgha's hall to a great vow made before the Buddhas of the ten directions. Parts Four through Seven follow the road ever deeper—from the death-and-rebirth bridge, to the ladder of the three repentances, to the Chinese repentance liturgies, and at last to the deepest illumination: transgression is non-arising from the first. This is the scenery of the heights; when you look up at it, remember that it is still the same one act—laying what was hidden out into the light—only laid open deeper and deeper. Part Eight is the coda—bringing this road back to the world we live in today, back into your hand.

And if you are impatient—if all you want to know is "then how, right now, do I actually repent, and where do I begin?"—you might turn first to the final chapter, "Returning to Daily Use." That chapter gathers this whole road into a few of its plainest words and sets them in the palm of your hand. When you have read it, come back and walk slowly from Part One, and you will see: behind those few words in your hand stands a road this long, and this deep.

At the Last

Repentance, in the end, is very simple: the one thing tucked away in the heart—lay it out into the light.

However thick this book, however much it says, it is all for one thing only: that you may do that simplest thing with a more settled heart, and a clearer one—no more shading, no more covering; say it aloud. Once said, it grows light.

And at the deepest reach of the road, you will find: the "I" so busy covering, and the "transgression" that could never quite be covered, once laid open and looked at—were from the very first non-arising.

May there come a day, as you read, when the book can be set down; when the reasonings, the sūtras and treatises, can all be set down too. What remains is your heart—hiding nothing now, and light.

Homage to the Original Teacher Śākyamuni Buddha.