Final Chapter · The Internal Steps of Buddha-Recollection: Placing This One Thing in the Palm of Your Hand

8.2 Final Chapter · The Internal Steps of Buddha-Recollection: Placing This One Thing in the Palm of Your Hand

This book has walked a long way. From the recollection of the Āgamas to the dharma-realm buddha-recollection of the Flower Ornament; from the nine epithets of the Pāli canon to the parting and rejoining of Chan and Pure Land; from more than a thousand years ago down to this age of ours, in which even the machines have learned to talk.

It has walked through so many sūtras, so many patriarchs, so much doctrine. And yet at the end, what there is to say to you is really only one sentence, the plainest of all:

Niàn is niàn.

It is not "attention," not the currently fashionable sort of "concentration training"; nor is it a piece of commerce — recite one phrase, bank one point of merit. It is an act of the mind — an act with its own internal structure, an act that can really and truly be done.

This final chapter adds nothing new. It does only one thing: it takes the inside of this act apart and shows it to you — taken apart into a few plain steps, and placed, one by one, into the palm of your hand. So that buddha-recollection is no longer a branch of learning you must go and "understand," but a thing you can "do" — today.

Buddha-Recollection Has Four Steps Inside

The act of buddha-recollection has four layers inside. These four layers are not four stages where you finish one and then begin the next; in every single act of recollection, they are happening at the same time. Only, taken apart, they are easier to see.

Step one: set the object standing.

The first step of buddha-recollection is not to open the mouth and recite. It is first to set the object of recollection standing in the mind.

This object is not the "sound" of the few characters of the name "Amitābha Buddha" — merely rolling those sounds across the lips does not count. The object is the "Buddha" that this buddha-name raises up in your mind — the Buddha's qualities, the Buddha's goodness.

Do you still remember the nine epithets from Part One? The Buddha's nine kinds of qualities — Worthy One, Rightly and Fully Enlightened, Perfect in Knowledge and Conduct... Each one of them is a door. If your mind is in turmoil today, then pick whichever door you can get through: think of the coolness of the Buddha who has "severed every defilement" (the Worthy One), or the completeness of the Buddha in whom "merit and wisdom are both perfect" (the Blessed One). Any door will do. What matters is this: that "Buddha" must be standing in your mind, clearly and distinctly.

If the object will not stand — if it stays blurred — then buddha-recollection truly does become a few sounds repeated on the lips. Once the object stands, you have truly entered the door of buddha-recollection.

Step two: maintain the link.

The object is standing; the next step is to maintain it — to let that Buddha stay alight in your mind, shining on.

Here lies the most common mistake of all: thinking that "maintaining" means staring hard and gripping hard. The moment you strain, you tire; buddha-recollection turns into drudgery, and before long you are sick of it.

It is not like that. To maintain is not to grip with force; it is "not to look away on purpose." A comparison: you light a lamp in the room. Once the lamp is burning, you do not have to keep pressing the switch — the lamp shines by itself. The maintaining of buddha-recollection is the same: that Buddha is shining in your mind, and all you need do is not deliberately turn your gaze away.

And its marker is not "not a single stray thought in the mind" — that is the standard of deeper meditative concentration, not the standard of buddha-recollection. The marker of buddha-recollection is this: even if it has dimmed a little, even if other thoughts pop up alongside it, you know, within, that the Buddha is still there. Still there — that is enough.

Step three: confidence will arise on its own.

When that Buddha has been maintained in your mind for a stretch, something will surface of its own accord: a little confidence, a little joy.

Please do not picture this as some remarkable "state" — it is not being moved to tears, not tingling all over the body, not seeing some light. It is usually very faint — so faint you almost fail to notice it. It is only this much: a small loosening, a small warming, a small settling, within.

This bit of confidence is not a reward you have earned; it is the fruit this act bears by itself. It is as when you watch a lamp for a long while: the lamp grows no brighter, yet light begins to flow in your eyes. That bit of confidence is that light.

Where does its importance lie? Here: it is the strength by which you go on recollecting. Buddha-recollection without this bit of confidence is a task; buddha-recollection with this bit of confidence is practice.

Step four: the clenched hand loosens by itself.

This is the deepest, most central step of buddha-recollection — and it is the place the first three steps, added together, arrive at naturally.

"Loosening the grasping" does not mean straining to "let go." You need do nothing at all — so long as you are steadily doing the first three steps, that clenched hand will loosen by itself.

The reason is this. This mind of ours ordinarily keeps a death-grip on three things: it clenches "me," it clenches the circumstances outside, it clenches its own emotions. But when you recollect the Buddha — when that Buddha is shining steadily in your mind — your mind will, for the moment, turn: turn toward that Buddha. And the instant it turns, the hand that was clenching "me" and clenching the outer world loses, of itself, one degree of its grip. It is not that "you are letting go"; it is that "the mind has loosened by itself."

A beginner may loosen for only a few seconds — and once those seconds pass, the hand clenches again. This does not count as failure. Those few seconds of loosening have already, quietly, shifted the structure of this mind of yours by just that little. A few seconds at a time, a few seconds at a time, accumulated — that is real and solid change.

So the purpose of buddha-recollection was never to "loosen once and stay loosened forever" (that cannot be done); it is, within every act of recollection, to run this work of loosening through once more. Loosening is a process, not a destination.

These, then, are the four steps inside buddha-recollection: establishing the object, maintaining the link, the arising of confidence, the loosening of grasping.

And to test whether your recollection is right, there is no need to count "how many thousand times I recited today." Only turn back and ask yourself one question: at this moment, am I calculating and discriminating in my mind — "I am recollecting the Buddha; the Buddha is the object of my recollection" — or has the whole of me sunk into this one buddha-name, until even the "I who is recollecting" has grown faint? In the former, the clenched hand is still clenching. In the latter, for that moment, the hand has loosened.

A Thousand Years Walked, and Niàn Has Not Changed

Look back across this whole book, and you will find one thing: the "inside" of the act of buddha-recollection, from beginning to end, has never changed.

From the nine epithets of the Āgamas, to the Pure Land's holding the name, to the Śūraṅgama's "gathering in the six sense-roots, with pure recollection uninterrupted," to the ten great vows of Samantabhadra in the Flower Ornament — across a thousand-odd years, what changed is that the "object" of recollection spread wider and wider: from one quality of the Buddha, to nine; from one Buddha, to all the Buddhas of the ten directions; from one Buddha, to all the Buddhas, all the sentient beings, all the affairs of the entire dharma-realm.

But the four steps inside — not one of them changed.

Those eight characters of the Śūraṅgama, "gathering in the six sense-roots, with pure recollection uninterrupted," say precisely the essence of these four steps: "gathering in the six sense-roots" is the first step, setting the object standing, carried to its utmost (all six sense-roots gathered into this one recollection); "pure recollection uninterrupted" is the second step, maintaining the link, spoken through to the bottom (recollection following recollection, pure and unbroken).

And Samantabhadra's ten great vows are not ten further things added on outside buddha-recollection; they are the "complete edition" of these four steps — reverence, praise, offerings (body, speech, and mind); repentance, rejoicing (the turning of karma); requesting the dharma-wheel, requesting the Buddhas to abide (keeping the Dharma in the world); constantly following the Buddha in study, accommodating sentient beings, universal dedication (receiving upward, transforming downward) — every one of the vows is a complete buddha-recollection; only the "object" has been stretched, from one Buddha, to the whole dharma-realm.

However vast the object grows, those four steps are the same; and the mind that is to be changed is the same.

Buddha-Recollection Is Not a Transaction

Here there is one thing that must be made plain.

Buddha-recollection in the Chinese world came, in time, to be reckoned as a "transaction": recite one buddha-name, bank so much merit; recite so many times, trade it for such-and-such a grade of rebirth. This is not what buddha-recollection is really doing inside; it is an external "merit ledger."

I am not saying this ledger is of no use at all. For someone just entering the gate, it is a good framework; for a temple, for a community practicing together, it is a good rule. But its usefulness lies on the outside of buddha-recollection, not on the inside.

Because inside buddha-recollection, only one thing is really being done: changing the structure of this mind of yours.

Not banking merit. Not erasing karmic obstructions. Not storing up blessings. It is this — letting the mind that ordinarily clenches with a death-grip loosen, and turn toward the Buddha. And this thing cannot be measured in "how many times." A man recites three thousand times a day, yet has never once tasted the flavor of those four steps — he is handing in homework. A man recites only ten times a day, yet every single time walks solidly through the four steps — that, and that alone, is practice.

The one ruler of buddha-recollection is not in that ledger outside; it is in your own mind: this mind of yours — has it loosened? Has it turned? That ruler no one else can see, no one else can measure. Only you can read it.

Niàn Is Niàn

This book has walked from its first page to this, its last.

It has taken you through the Pāli roots, the earliest Chinese translations, the early Mahāyāna, the Three Pure Land Sūtras, the great sūtras of the Mahāyāna, the parting and rejoining of Chan and Pure Land, the ten vows of the Flower Ornament — a thousand-odd years, one whole map, spread fully open.

Yet this entire map — all those sūtras, all those patriarchs, all that doctrine — exists, in the end, only to let you see clearly one simplest fact:

Niàn is niàn.

It is not the patent of any one sūtra, not the family treasure of any one patriarch, not the exclusive secret of any one school. It is a function this mind of yours has had all along — you have only to operate it squarely, by those four steps, and it will bear the fruit it was always meant to bear.

As for the form, choose whatever you please: if you love reciting sūtras, then recollect within the reciting; if you love sitting in stillness, then recollect within the sitting; if you love bowing to the Buddha, then recollect within the bowing; and if all you want, in a spare moment, is to say one soft "Namo Amitābha Buddha" — that will do as well. Form is the garment on the outside, and may be changed; the four steps within — establishing the object, maintaining the link, the arising of confidence, the loosening of grasping — do not change.

What matters was never which garment you chose; it is whether, while you wore it and went about your work, that act inside took place.

So what this book lays into the palm of your hand, at the very end, is not a branch of learning. It is one thing to do.

It is very small — so small that this moment, setting this book down, you can do it: turn the mind gently over, set that one Buddha standing, keep watch over Him, let that bit of warmth arise, and let the clenched hand loosen — just that one degree.

And it is very large — so large that this one loosening joins you to the one same act of everyone who has recollected the Buddha across a thousand-odd years: Vaidehī in her prison cell; the dying man of the lower-grade lower-birth; the practitioner seeing the Buddha within the pratyutpanna-samādhi; the Chan monk pressing the question "Who is recollecting the Buddha?"; Samantabhadra making the ten great vows — what they did, and what you are about to do, is one and the same thing.

From early Buddhist recollection to the Flower Ornament vision — this long road has been walked to its end. And it returns, precisely, to its beginning: to you, at this moment, and this one plain, unadorned utterance —

Namo Amitābha Buddha.

Homage to the Original Teacher Śākyamuni Buddha.