Before Dīpaṃkara, That Spread of Hair

1.2 Before Dīpaṃkara, That Spread of Hair

What this chapter tells, Śākyamuni Buddha told with His own mouth.

That day, the Buddha was at Śrāvastī, in the Jeta Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada's Park, teaching His disciples the eightfold fast—the eight precepts a householder receives and keeps on the six fast days of the month. The Buddha gave the instruction: having kept the fast, one must also make a vow. The disciple Upāli, hearing this, raised a question: if a good man or a good woman keeps the fast impeccably yet makes no vow, do they then gain no great merit?

The Buddha's answer was one short sentence:

"Though the blessing is gained, that blessing is not worth the telling."

The blessing is still there, but not worth the telling—not fit to be set out on the table. Keep the fast ever so strictly: without the vow, it is like seed fallen on a field that has no watercourse to set its direction. Grow it does; toward where, no one knows.

And then the Buddha did not argue a principle. He told a story—His own story, beginning from the most distant past.

A Lamp's Worth of Oil

In an age long past there was a king named Jewel Peak, who governed the land by the Dharma. In that time a Buddha appeared in the world, the Tathāgata Treasure-Store. The king had a daughter named Muni, of rare and striking beauty.

Under the Tathāgata Treasure-Store there was an old bhikkhu. He was advanced in years and dull of faculty; meditation would not come, and what he recited he could not hold. He thought: the practice of dhyāna is beyond me now—then let me do the thing I can still do. So he went into the city day after day to beg for lamp-oil, and brought it back to offer to the Tathāgata Treasure-Store, keeping the lamps before the Buddha burning day and night without break.

The princess Muni met this old bhikkhu in the street and asked what he was begging for. The old bhikkhu told her just as it was. Muni, hearing it, was glad, and said to him: you need not beg along the streets any longer; the oil and the wicks, from this day on, I will supply. From that day the old bhikkhu came daily for the oil, and daily offered the lamps.

After long offering, the old bhikkhu turned this merit toward the unsurpassed true way, saying: I am old and worn, my faculties dull; the practice of dhyāna is past me. By the merit of these offered lamps, may I never fall into the evil destinies, life after life; may I meet a holy one in time to come, even as the Tathāgata Treasure-Store of today. The Tathāgata Treasure-Store, knowing the thought in his heart, told him on the spot: in countless incalculable aeons to come, you shall become a Buddha, named the Tathāgata Lamplight.

Look closely at the order of this. The oil was given by Muni; the lamps were lit by the old bhikkhu—and the prediction fell to the old bhikkhu. The princess Muni, unsettled at heart, rode her carriage to the Buddha and asked: the oil was my offering—how is it the World-Honored One gave the prediction to him, and to me alone gave none? The Tathāgata Treasure-Store answered her in one sentence:

"To arouse the mind and seek in vow—that blessing is hard to measure; how much more, then, than a gift of mere wealth?"

It is the blessing of the mind aroused in vow that defies measuring—the giving of goods comes after it. The old bhikkhu lit lamps day upon day, and what he lit was not only lamps; he had made that lamp into a vow. Muni gave the oil; the old bhikkhu gave the direction. The difference lies exactly there.

Muni understood, and asked the Buddha then and there for a prediction of her own. The Tathāgata Treasure-Store told her: countless incalculable aeons from now, a Buddha will appear in the world who is your good and wise friend, and that Buddha will give you your prediction.

At this point in the story the Buddha paused, and said one sentence to Upāli:

"The princess Muni of that time—she is I today."

The princess who offered the oil, all those ages ago, was the Buddha Himself.

Let that sentence rest in the heart a moment. Śākyamuni Buddha, looking back down the farthest reach of His own road, points out its starting place—not some earth-shaking austerity, but a passing connection over lamp-oil, and a vow that at the time had not yet been spoken aloud. Even the very name "Śākyamuni" was set down by the Tathāgata Treasure-Store in that age. Everything began beside a lamp's worth of oil.

Five Flowers, a Spread of Hair

Countless incalculable aeons passed, and the Buddha Lamplight did indeed appear in the world, dwelling in the great country of Padumā. The king of that land, Tiboyanna, invited the Buddha and the assembly of bhikkhus into the palace to receive offerings. Early that morning, the Buddha Lamplight put on his robe, took up his bowl, and entered the city with his disciples.

In that city lived a young brahmin named Megha. He was fine of form and versed in the scriptures; of the heavens above and the earth beneath there was nothing he had not studied—and he was that princess of long ago, reborn here. He saw the Buddha Lamplight approaching from afar, the marks of his body noble and complete, his faculties stilled and settled, and something stirred in him first: the books say that the appearance of a Tathāgata in the world is supremely rare to meet, like the udumbara flower that blooms but once in an age. Let me go and see.

He had five flowers in his hand. He came before the Buddha, scattered the flowers over him first, and then looked, one by one, for the thirty-two marks of a great man. Look as he might, he saw only thirty; two he could not find, and doubt rose in him. The Buddha Lamplight, knowing his thought, showed him those two marks. Megha, seeing the thirty-two marks complete, leapt for joy beyond all containing, and said:

"May the World-Honored One look upon me: I now hold these five flowers and offer them up to the Tathāgata—and this body too I offer to the Holy One."

Five flowers offered up, and the body offered with them. The words once out of his mouth, the five flowers turned in mid-air into a jewelled terrace, four-pillared and four-gated, of surpassing beauty. Megha saw it, and on the spot gave rise to the vow:

"May I in a future age become a Buddha, even as the Buddha of Lamplight—with disciples in attendance, all just the same."

The Buddha Lamplight, knowing the thought of his heart, smiled. It is the constant way of the Buddhas that when a prediction is given, the Buddha smiles, and a five-colored light goes out from his mouth, shines through the world, and returns—and the place where it re-enters shows what prediction is being given: if it returns through the crown of the head, the prediction given is of Buddhahood. Megha watched that light come back, and saw it enter through the crown of the Buddha's head.

Then he did one thing. He loosed his own hair, spread it on the ground, and said:

"If the Tathāgata does not give me the prediction, then here, on this very spot, I will let this body break, and these faculties never again be whole."

If the World-Honored One will not give me the prediction, I do not rise. The Buddha Lamplight said to him:

"Rise, quickly. In an age to come you shall become a Buddha, named the Tathāgata Śākyamuni, the Worthy, the Perfectly and Completely Awakened."

The name in that old sūtra is written Shijiawen—simply Śākyamuni in its early Chinese dress. In that moment the name was spoken for the second time, and the road to Buddhahood formally set out. Megha, hearing the prediction, leapt in exultation, rose into the air, and joined his palms toward the Buddha.

This scene is recorded in other scriptures as well, the details differing here and there. In the Sūtra of the Collection of the Six Perfections, the practitioner bears the name Rutong—the Learned Youth; his five flowers were begged on the road from a girl who was gathering flowers; what he spread over the mud was not only his hair but the deerskin robe he took from his body; the Buddha's name is rendered Steady Light, and the words of the prediction run fuller. The names differ, the flowers' provenance differs—yet the thing at the center is one and the same: scattering the flowers, making the vow, spreading the hair upon the ground, asking the Buddha to walk across, receiving the prediction of Buddhahood. We need not labor to harmonize these differences—what has ever mattered is not how many flowers there were, but the one vow beneath the flowers.

The Moment a Vow Is Aroused, the Person Is Already Different

The hair spread over the mud is a deeply moving picture. But where it moves us must be seen aright.

There is a verse in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra that gives this matter its full weight:

"When first the mind is aroused and the vow is made to become a Buddha, one has already passed beyond all the worlds and is worthy to receive the worlds' offerings."

In the moment of first arousing the mind, of vowing to become a Buddha, this person has "already passed beyond all the worlds"—has already stepped past the stations of the world, and is worthy of the world's offerings. Not after the three incalculable aeons are filled out does it count; in the instant the vow is aroused, he is no longer the person he was. The last chapter's word—that a vow changes what I am—receives here its weightiest seal.

The treatise records a finer turn besides. The bodhisattva walks a road of three incalculable aeons, and in the second of them, the treatise says—

"the mind can know 'I shall surely become a Buddha,' yet the mouth does not declare it."

The heart already knows its Buddhahood is certain, and still the mouth does not say it. Only in the third incalculable aeon does "the mouth utter it of itself, without fear or hesitation: 'I, in a future age, shall become a Buddha.'"

Between knowing in the heart and saying with the mouth—how far is the distance? Very far. A thought held in the heart can be taken back—thought today, unthought tomorrow; no one knows of it, so no one witnesses it. Once the words leave the mouth, it is another matter entirely. To speak this vow out before the Buddha, before the assembly, is to stake the whole of oneself upon it, to cut off the road back. This is why "the mouth utters it of itself" is set up by the treatise's author as a great threshold: a vow is truly aroused in the moment it is said.

Now look back at Megha. What he did was precisely to say the vow—and not with the mouth alone. Scattering the flowers was saying it; offering up his body was saying it; spreading his hair on the muddy ground and swearing not to rise without the prediction was saying it with his whole body, to the point past all taking back. That is why the prediction could happen on the spot. What the Buddha Lamplight sealed was a vow fully aroused, with nothing held in reserve.

One Thing to See Clearly Here

The picture of the spread hair has one place that must be looked at straight.

The hair laid on the ground, the Buddha asked to walk across—the true sense of this act is not in the words "willing to give up." It is not a reckoning of "I would part even with my hair; is the sacrifice large enough?" Nor was the prediction ever bought with hair. Exchange of goods, the last chapter said, has no place in the structure of the vow; what the Buddha Lamplight sealed was the direction and the depth of this vow, not the price of this offering.

The true sense of the spread hair is the placing of oneself at the lowest. What Megha did in that moment was to lay the whole "I" flat upon the ground, and let awakening walk across it from above. The head bowed down, the hair in the mud, the Buddha's feet above—the posture speaks for itself: this road is not the road of "my" attainment; it is the road on which "I" am laid down, inch by inch.

Then think once more about the scale of the time. The prediction says "in an age to come"—from the Buddha Lamplight to Śākyamuni Buddha lie countless incalculable aeons. Incalculable—asaṃkhyeya—means precisely what cannot be counted. A person's plans for this life reach a few decades at the most; but the span this vow crosses, no "I" can last to the end of. The one who makes this vow knows from the very first: on the day of the harvest, the "I" of today will long since be gone. So this vow cannot possibly be a scheme laid for oneself. It is a handing-over of oneself—handed to a direction that will come to fullness only after the "I" has vanished.

Put the two layers together: the spread hair is the body laid low; the measureless aeons are the hands let go in time. From its first moment, the vow heads toward a place that will empty the very one who vows. This is exactly where it parts ways with every thought of asking for oneself.

Walking On

When Upāli had heard the story to its end, among the Buddha's final charges to him one sentence falls with full weight:

"The blessing of the vow cannot be reckoned or recorded."

And again: give rise to the vow—no vow is without its fruit. Even of that old bhikkhu who offered the lamps, the Buddha said: had he not given rise to the vow, he would never have completed the Buddha-way.

But a question is left standing here. If the vow must cross countless incalculable aeons—a road that long, by what is it walked to the end? A person's resolve grows weary; the will wears down with use. This vow—on what ground does it not retreat?

The clue is already buried inside the prediction. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, recalling this prediction before Dīpaṃkara, uses a particular word: what the Buddha gave was the prediction of avaivartika—the prediction of non-retreat. Non-retreat is not a hope held out for the future; it was sealed on the spot.

On what ground? The next chapter looks at exactly this—where that non-retreat comes from.