The Mañjuśrī Prajñā and One-Practice Samādhi: One Buddha-Name That Gathers In Ten Thousand Dharmas

5.8 The Mañjuśrī Prajñā and One-Practice Samādhi: One Buddha-Name That Gathers In Ten Thousand Dharmas

As for the principle, with the Ghanavyūha we reached the summit: to recollect the Buddha is to turn the pure gold of your own mind face-up.

But all along the way, what we have been speaking of is what buddha-recollection is. Now, in this last chapter of Part Five, we come back to the plainest question of all: how, in the end, should one recollect?

The answer lies in the Mañjuśrī Prajñā Sūtra, in a method called One-Practice Samādhi.

The Method: Tether the Mind to One Buddha, Devotedly Call the Name

Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva asked the Buddha: what practice leads most quickly to buddhahood? The Buddha said: there is a samādhi called One-Practice Samādhi. Mañjuśrī asked: what is One-Practice Samādhi?

The Buddha first gave its ground: "The dharmadhātu of one mark — binding one's conditioning to the dharmadhātu — this is called One-Practice Samādhi." Its final object is the one mark of the whole dharmadhātu — that markless ground, the emptiness of prajñā.

Then the Buddha gave the passage that later ages would quote more than any other, the instruction itself:

Wishing to enter One-Practice Samādhi, one should go to a place of quietude, discard all distracting intentions, not grasp at marks; tether the mind to one buddha, devotedly call the name. Following the direction of that buddha, body upright and facing straight, keep, with regard to one buddha, recollection-upon-recollection unbroken — then within such recollection the buddhas of past, future, and present are seen.

Find a quiet place. Set down the scattered mind. Do not go reaching after appearances. Tether the mind to one buddha, and with undivided focus call that buddha's name. Face the quarter where that buddha dwells, sit upright and straight, and on this one buddha let one recollection follow another without break. And as you recollect, within this very recollecting, you come to see all the buddhas of past, future, and present.

Recollect one buddha — how does that become seeing all the buddhas of the three times? The Buddha set himself the question and answered it:

Why so? The merit of recollecting one buddha is measureless and boundless, and it is not-two with the merit of measureless buddhas; the inconceivable buddha-dharma is equal and without distinction — all riding on a single suchness, accomplishing the highest perfect awakening.

The merit of recollecting a single buddha is measureless and boundless; and this measurelessness is "not-two" with the merit of all the buddhas of the ten directions — not the least bit apart. The inconceivable buddha-dharma of all the buddhas is, from the first, "equal and without distinction," riding one and the same suchness. So recollect one buddha all the way through, and you have gone through to all of them: this is no supernatural response, but the fact that they were one body from the beginning, and it is simply so.

Even Ānanda, Foremost in Hearing, Cannot Match It

How great is this power of "recollect one, reach all"? The sūtra next sets one person beside it for contrast — Ānanda. Among the Buddha's disciples, Ānanda was "foremost in hearing": he had heard the most teachings, held them most firmly, and was the most eloquent. Yet the Buddha says that even Ānanda's vast hearing, set beside One-Practice Samādhi —

The buddha-dharma Ānanda has heard, his retention of recollection, his eloquence and wisdom — though foremost among the śrāvakas — still abide within number and measure, and so are bounded and obstructed. But one who attains One-Practice Samādhi discerns each and every dharma-gate of all the sūtras, knows them all completely, with certainty and without obstruction.

However strong Ānanda's hearing, it still "abides within number and measure" — accumulated sūtra by sūtra, item by item; it is finite, and walled. But one who has gained One-Practice Samādhi does not hoard knowledge bit by bit like this; from the markless ground of "the one mark of the dharma-realm," he "discerns each and every" dharma-gate of all the sūtras and "knows them all completely." The Buddha carries the saying to its limit: set beside One-Practice Samādhi, Ānanda's hearing and eloquence "do not reach one part in a hundred thousand."

This lays bare something most essential about buddha-recollection: what it asks of you was never to memorize the buddha's merits and the buddha's dharma-gates whole, item by item, and pile them up; it is to tether the mind to one buddha, and through that one buddha-name to fasten onto the ground beneath — "all ride on a single suchness." Once that ground is gone through, the ten thousand dharmas are of themselves within it. To go through beats to amass; to fasten on beats to hoard.

Two Faces in a Single Saying

Now look at what is most wonderful about this One-Practice Samādhi: it is one method, and it wears two faces at once.

One face turns outward, toward the act — "tether the mind to one buddha, devotedly call the name": settle, in all concreteness, on one buddha, and call that buddha's name, phrase by phrase. This is the Pure Land school's plain, down-to-earth niànfó of holding the name.

The other face turns inward, toward the principle — "the dharmadhātu of one mark, binding one's conditioning to the dharmadhātu": the ground of the object is the markless dharmadhātu, the emptiness of prajñā. This is the Chan school's seeing the mind, seeing the nature.

One buddha-name: one end joined to the plainest calling of the name, the other end joined to the deepest emptiness and seeing of the mind. Act and principle, Pure Land and Chan — within this one line, "tether the mind to one buddha, devotedly call the name, recollection-upon-recollection unbroken," they were one from the start.

It is exactly because of this that Daoxin, fourth patriarch of Chan in the seventh century, when he established his gate of buddha-recollection, leaned on two sūtras at once: the Laṅkāvatāra, which settled what to recollect — the hearts of all buddhas, the core of one's own mind; and the Mañjuśrī Prajñā, which settled how to recollect — tether the mind to one buddha, devotedly call the name. Put the two together, and you have his line: "The mind that recollects the Buddha is the Buddha."

You see — Chan and Pure Land were never two houses. Inside this one buddha-name, they are two faces of a single act. To call out the buddha-name (the act, the calling, Pure Land) is already to be seeing that mind (the principle, the seeing, Chan).

This Whole Part, Hidden in One Buddha-Name

Turn back now and look over the whole of Part Five, and you will see something very beautiful.

The deepest, greatest sūtras of Chinese Buddhism have each lit up one face of buddha-recollection:

The Śūraṅgama says buddha-recollection is "gathering in the six sense-roots" — drawing all six roots into this one recollection.

The Lotus says buddha-recollection is calling the name at the universal gate — one name, answering in a thousand places; and it is the bow-after-bow reverence of the bodhisattva Never Disparaging.

The Perfect Enlightenment says buddha-recollection should be done by binding a retreat term — circle off the days, and recollect steadily within them.

The Brahmā Net says keeping the precepts is itself buddha-recollection — a whole life kept in connection with the Buddha.

The Golden Light says confession too is buddha-recollection — a gift handed down and received.

The Laṅkāvatāra says buddha-recollection is in truth recollecting the mind — the buddha you recollect is your own deepest mind.

The Ghanavyūha says buddha-recollection can turn the mind over — from defiled to pure.

Great sūtra after great sūtra, face after face. And at the last, the Mañjuśrī Prajñā's One-Practice Samādhi gathers all these faces into a single buddha-name.

When you tether the mind to one buddha, devotedly call the name, recollection-upon-recollection unbroken — you need not understand everything; you need not have fathomed the depths of all these great sūtras. Yet the gathering of the six roots, the answering of the universal gate, the connection kept through precepts and confession, the turning back that sees the mind, the turning over of the storehouse — all of it is already hidden inside this one buddha-name, quietly, all together, at work.

This is what makes buddha-recollection so reassuring: the deepest truth hides in the simplest act. You need only keep on, plainly and steadily, one phrase after the next. And the whole expanse of the Mahāyāna stands open for you inside this one buddha-name.

One Buddha-Name, Parted into Two Rivers

Part Five has looked through the many faces of buddha-recollection in the great sūtras. And Daoxin has told us: Chan and Pure Land are one.

And yet what is originally one, once it enters history, will often divide into several currents, each running its own way.

This buddha-name of "tether the mind to one buddha, devotedly call the name, recollection-upon-recollection unbroken" later parted, on Chinese soil, into two great rivers.

One flowed onward along "devotedly call the name" — and became the Pure Land school: one phrase, "Namo Amitābha Buddha," holding the name plainly, seeking birth in the West. Tanluan, Daochuo, Shandao — generation after generation, they dredged this river wide and deep.

The other flowed inward along "seeing the mind, seeing the nature" — and became a counter-thesis within the Chan school: pressing the buddha-name back into the mind, until it pressed out a single question — "Who is recollecting the Buddha?"

Two rivers from one source, running their separate ways — yet again and again gazing across at each other, and meeting, at the crossing midway between them. That crossing is Tiantai; it is the later masters of the Chan–Pure Land confluence.

In the next part, Part Six, we follow these two great rivers and watch how, across China's thousand years, they part — and meet again.