Reading Map · How to Read This Book
This book is a road, walked in eight stages—from one timid sentence of disclosure in the Vinaya, all the way to the moment of seeing that transgression is non-arising from the first. Below, let me first point out these eight stages to you—with a map in your heart, you can walk without alarm.
The Eight Stages
Part One · Pāli Roots · The First Laying-Open. Back to the very source. First, the sewn-together word "repentance" is taken apart—it was three things all along: remorse is the feeling within; disclosure is the saying before others; kṣama (a Sanskrit word: to bear with, to receive) is the being-received. Then we watch how the Vinaya prices hiding—the longer the hiding, the longer the road back to purity—and how the Saṅgha cast "not hiding" into a rhythm: the invitation (pavāraṇā) year by year, the uposatha (the observance day) month by month—where even the Buddha gives Himself up first.
Part Two · Remorse in the Āgamas · Where Does That Ache Go. The same word "remorse" is a double-edged blade: given an outlet, it is a door that spurs a person forward; denied one, it is a prison that binds. Then the blade is pushed to its very end—it falls upon a king who killed his father, and there we see the floor of phenomenal repentance: it can lessen, it can turn, it cannot erase.
Part Three · The Sevenfold Worship and Samantabhadra · Bringing Remorse Before the Buddhas. After the Buddha's nirvāṇa, the one to whom remorse is handed over changes—from the Saṅgha before one's eyes to the Buddhas of the ten directions. Repentance is lifted into worship: first it becomes the one subtractive limb among the seven, and then it rises into one of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra's ten great vows—a vow that continues moment after moment, without interruption, and has no exhaustion.
Part Four · The Death-and-Rebirth Bridge · Repentance, Between Death and Birth. In this part, repentance shows for the first time its place on the whole road of practice—giving puts the "I" to death, repentance clears the karma after that death, the precepts usher in the new birth. We watch how repentance catches the loss of self that giving hands over, and how it passes the cleansed person on to the precepts, to be stood up anew.
Part Five · The Three Repentances · A Ladder from Shallow to Deep. A map drawn by the patriarchs. The great master Zhiyi graded repentance into a ladder of three rungs—procedural repentance, sign-based repentance, and the repentance of non-arising—from phenomena into principle, each rung steadying the next. This part climbs the lower two, and leaves the highest, the repentance of non-arising, waiting at the door.
Part Six · The Chinese Repentance Liturgies · A Practice You Can Walk Into. How the contemplations scattered through the sūtras settled into repentance rites, one after another, each with its ritual arena and its ordered sequence. The Lotus Samādhi Repentance gathers inward into the real mark; the Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance lays itself outward into the suffering of beings—the two poles of the Chinese repentance liturgies, one inward, one outward, yet arriving at the same place: the loss of self.
Part Seven · The Repentance of Non-Arising: Transgression Has No Own-Being · Was the Self That Erred Ever Real. The deepest part of this book. At its deepest, repentance no longer asks "how do I clear away this one transgression," but turns back and asks: that transgression, that "I" who erred—were they ever real in themselves? This part lifts the veil, face on, from the word of the Heart Sūtra that the repentance gate answers to—"empty": seeing clearly that the nature of transgression is empty. It is also the hardest stretch of this road to speak of, and the one to walk most carefully.
Part Eight · The Modern Diagnosis, and Daily Use · Down the Mountain, Back into the Days. Placing this road back in the palm of your hand. Today, repentance is most easily read as three things it is not—emotion-management, begging absolution, self-abasement. First the three pairs of spectacles come off; then the question that matters most is answered: how, in the end, does repentance land in life, day after day? And at the last, the whole book closes on the one posture that has run through it from the start—laying what was hidden out into the light.
The Bridges Between the Stages
Between the eight parts lie seven short "transitions." They are brief—bridges between one stretch of road and the next: finish a stage, catch your breath, look back at the way you came, look ahead to where you are going, then set out on the next. Do not skip them; those few breaths are the breathing of this road.
Three Ways to Read—As You Please
First, walk it from beginning to end. This is best. Two thousand years of road, stage after stage; you will watch with your own eyes how repentance grows, step by step, from one sentence of disclosure into that illumination—transgression is non-arising from the first. And one thing matters above all: on this road from shallow to deep, the highest rung (the repentance of non-arising) must be climbed by way of the steps beneath it—one who has never concretely, earnestly repented on the plane of phenomena has no standing to say "transgression is empty." So do not rush ahead to Part Seven.
Second, read the final chapter first. If you are impatient and want something to do at once, turn first to "Returning to Daily Use" in Part Eight—the plainest few sentences are there. Read them, then come back and walk the whole road slowly.
Third, read whichever stage speaks to you. If a part's title stirs something in you, read that part first. Each chapter stands more or less on its own; read singly, it still reads through.
A Few Small Conventions
A few small conventions, made plain up front, so that nothing snags you as you read:
- When this book speaks of the Buddha, it writes He, His, Him with a capital, as a mark of reverence; for patriarchs, bodhisattvas, elders, and practitioners, the lowercase he.
- The homage to the Original Teacher is written in this book as "Homage to the Original Teacher Śākyamuni Buddha."
- The scriptures' own words are set off in indented quotation blocks, so that you can tell at a glance which lines are the sūtras speaking and which are my explanation to you.
- The catalog numbers of the scriptures, the romanized Sanskrit and Pāli, the academic footnotes—none of them are placed in the body text, lest they disturb your mind. Whatever you wish to look up is gathered in the two appendices at the back: the scriptural sources behind each chapter (Appendix A · Index of Academic Notes), and a table of names and terms (Appendix C · Glossary—the Pāli and Sanskrit spellings and their diacritics all live there). The body text does one thing only: cleanly and quietly, it tells you the road.
One Word, the Whole Way
Last, remember one word; it will keep you company through all eight stages of this road—lay open. Lay the hidden out into the light.
In Part One, a single fault is laid open—laid open to the Saṅgha. In Part Three, to the Buddhas of the ten directions. By Part Seven, what is laid open is the "I" that hid the fault all along. Laid open to the very end, you will see: there, from the very first, nothing ever arose.
The whole road walks this one act, laying it open deeper and deeper.
Setting Out
The map ends here.
A road is for walking, not for framing and hanging on a wall to look at. May you carry this map, and walk steadily, and walk gladly.
We set out from Part One, the Pāli roots—beginning with that sewn-together word, taking it apart to see.