Confession as Buddha-Recollection: The Golden Drum in a Dream

5.5 Confession as Buddha-Recollection: The Golden Drum in a Dream

In the last chapter, whether it was receiving the precepts or extinguishing offenses, everything leaned on confession. So what, exactly, is confession? And what does it have to do with buddha-recollection?

In the Golden Light Sūtra there is a chapter called the Chapter of Confession. It tells the whole matter of confession as a dream.

The Golden Drum in the Dream

The one who had this dream was the bodhisattva Ruciraketu. The day before, a doubt had risen in his mind: the Tathāgata Śākyamuni is of measureless merit—why, then, was His lifespan only a brief eighty years? For that one doubt, four Buddhas of the four quarters suddenly appeared in his room and spoke him verses, telling out the measurelessness of Śākyamuni's lifespan—"all the waters, their drops may be numbered; none can number the lifespan of the Honored Śākya." The doubt resolved, the four Buddhas suddenly were gone.

And that very night—the sūtra says, "that same night"—Ruciraketu had this dream:

He dreamed of a golden drum, immense in form, its brightness illumining all around, like the light of the sun. And within that light he saw the measureless, boundless Buddhas of the ten directions, seated on beryl thrones beneath jeweled trees, surrounded by hundreds of thousands in their retinue, teaching the Dharma. He saw one who seemed a brahmin, who with a drumstick struck the drum, bringing forth a great sound; and within that sound were proclaimed verses of confession.

An immense golden drum, its light flooding everywhere, bright as the sun; and within the light, the measureless Buddhas of the ten directions, seated on beryl thrones beneath jeweled trees, teaching. A figure like a brahmin raises the stick and strikes—and the moment the drum sounds, out of that sound a set of confession verses is proclaimed.

Day broke. Ruciraketu, "waking from the dream, held in mind with utmost sincerity the confession verses he had heard within it," left the city of Rājagṛha, and together with measureless hundreds of thousands of beings went up Vulture Peak to the Buddha. There he recounted to the Tathāgata, point by point, the golden drum he had seen and the confession verses he had heard in the dream—"what I dreamed last night, I have held in mind with utmost sincerity." In that long set of verses are the great vow of the drum-sound that extinguishes suffering, and the most earnest avowal of all: "the unwholesome, evil deeds I myself have done, I now confess."

Confession Is Received, Not Squeezed Out

Look carefully at the structure of this dream. A very deep principle is hidden in it.

The confession we ordinarily imagine goes like this: I make up my mind, dig out the wrong things I have done one by one, lay them before the Buddha or before someone, own them, admit them, and then ask to be forgiven. In that picture, the one who sets it all in motion is "I"; I summon my strength and squeeze the confession out of my own heart.

But the dream in the Golden Light Sūtra is nothing like this.

From beginning to end, the one who initiates the confession is never "I." It is the golden drum that appears—of itself, in a dream, a place where I am not in command. The stick is raised by that brahmin, not by me. And the confession verses—mark this—are not even spoken by the Buddhas: they are proclaimed out of the sound of the drum itself. "Within that sound were proclaimed verses of confession"—the one who speaks the verses is the drum-sound. Where, in this long chain of links, does the practitioner stand? I am only the one who—wakes, remembers, and recites it once again before the Buddha.

So the confession here is not something I squeeze out; it is something I receive. It comes first as a gift—handed to me from the dream, from the golden drum, from that drum-sound; what I do on waking is only to carry that gift before the Buddha and say it over again.

This is a different thing from the pattern we know: "I admit my sins to someone and ask his absolution." That is one person facing a judge enthroned high above, back and forth between the two. Here it is one whole chain—drum, dream, brahmin, light, the Buddhas within the light, the verses within the drum-sound, my holding-in-mind and recounting—link locked into link, with no single link the lone initiator.

Why Does This Extinguish the Karmic Obstruction?

This "not squeezed out by me" structure—where does its importance lie?

Here: it loosens the dead knot of "I, confessing my own offense."

In ordinary confession, the more one confesses, the more solid that "I" and that "offense of mine" become—because the whole stance is the protagonist "I" straining against the object "my offense." But the Golden Light Sūtra moves "I" off the initiator's seat: the confession is not launched by me; it is received by me. The verses within the drum-sound say it themselves: this wondrous sound of the golden drum "can wholly extinguish the sufferings of the three times." And when that clenched "I," deadlocked against its own offense, loosens—the karmic obstruction loosens with it.

Understand this: "karmic obstruction" in the Buddha-Dharma is not something you are born carrying, fixed and unwashable, that must wait upon another's pardon. Karmic obstruction is dependently arisen—conditions gathered together, covering you for a time. So "extinguishing karmic obstruction" is not someone signing a pardon with a grand stroke of the pen. It is this: when that string of conditions—above all the condition "I, deadlocked against my offense"—loosens and comes apart, the obstruction loses the very ground it stood on.

Confession Is Itself Buddha-Recollection

Look once more at that dream: within the light of the golden drum, what stands manifest? The measureless, boundless Buddhas of the ten directions.

And what has this bodhisattva Ruciraketu been doing the whole way through—the night before, recollecting the Buddha with such sincerity that four Buddhas appeared in his room; within the dream, seeing the Buddhas of the ten directions inside the light; on waking, "holding in mind with utmost sincerity" the verses within the drum-sound; carrying them before the Buddha to recount? Is this not, the whole way, recollecting the Buddhas?

So the Golden Light Sūtra makes one thing plain: confession and buddha-recollection are not two things in sequence—not "first confess, then recollect the Buddha," and not "confession tucked in along the way." Confession, in itself, is a form of buddha-recollection. For at the far end of true confession stand the Buddhas, manifest and present; the whole course of your confessing is the course of your connecting with the Buddhas, recollecting the Buddhas.

The last chapter said that holding the precepts is buddha-recollection; this chapter says that confession too is buddha-recollection. See how this one practice keeps widening as it walks—it is not merely a buddha-name on the lips; it is the holding of precepts, it is confession, it is every act that turns your mind toward the Buddha and lays it close against Him.

It Really Happens, and Yet It Is All Empty

In the Song dynasty, Master Zhili divided this confession into two strata, and said the two must be practiced together.

One stratum is called phenomenal repentance—really and solidly doing it, according to the liturgy: prostrating, calling the name, reciting the sūtra, contemplating the image, bowing prostration after prostration through the appointed days. This stratum really happens: you really are bowing, and the karmic obstruction really is loosening.

The other stratum is called noumenal repentance—while bowing, the mind keeps watch: this offense I am confessing, this repentance-method I am relying on, and this very "I" who is doing the confessing—which of the three has an independent, unchanging substance of its own? None. All are dependently arisen; all are empty.

Zhili said these two strata must walk together; neither can be dropped.

Practice the phenomenal alone, without the noumenal, and it turns into going through the forms—supposing "I have confessed a hundred times, so a hundred portions of karma are erased," treating karma as an account to be tallied entry by entry. Practice the noumenal alone, without the phenomenal, and it turns into empty talk—"the nature of offense is originally empty anyway, so why confess at all?"—until one never bows a single bow, and lands in a stubborn emptiness.

It must be both at once: that confession really happens (the phenomenal); and yet every link within it is empty through and through (the noumenal). This, and only this, accords with the original intent of that golden drum in the dream.

The Gift You Receive, and the Hand That Holds It Out

By this point, the Golden Light Sūtra has spoken "how to confess" all the way through: it is a gift received, not an admission squeezed out.

But it leaves a deeper question unanswered.

Those Buddhas of the ten directions who appeared in the dream's light—what, finally, is their relation to this mind of yours? The "Buddhas" who hand you the gift: are they Buddhas outside your mind, standing apart? Or are they, in truth, reflections cast by this very mind of yours? The Buddha you recollect—is He outside you, or is He your mind?

This question the Golden Light Sūtra sets down and leaves.

The next great sūtra, the Laṅkāvatāra, takes it up face on. The answer it gives is a single sentence, and it lands like a thunderclap—"the hearts of all Buddhas stand first." To recollect the Buddha, it turns out, is to recollect the mind.

In the next chapter, we go to look at that mind.