Immovable for Having No Ground

7.2 Immovable for Having No Ground

The resolution made at new year is forgotten by February. The oaths sworn in one's prime are retreated from, clause by clause, a few years on. The world's imagination of "not retreating" has, in the end, only one picture: clench the teeth, grip hard, hold on one more stretch. Retreat is the hand loosening; non-retreat is the hand clamped tight enough—non-retreat imagined as a contest of strength.

But the Buddha's gate established a station called non-retreat—in the old transliteration, avaivartika. A bodhisattva once arrived there, his vow toward bodhi can no longer be snatched away, no longer run dry, never again fall back. And here the question comes: if this "non-retreat" is also merely the gripping-tightest kind, then it differs from an unusually stubborn worldling only in horsepower, not in kind—a bigger engine is still the same engine.

The non-retreat of the Buddha's gate runs another way. Its name is the patience of non-arising—the seeing that all dharmas are unarisen, accepted and rested in, unmoving. This chapter watches the two words "non-arising" turn the word "immovable" over to its other face.

To Retreat, There Must First Be Something to Retreat From

First take "retreat" apart.

Retreat is an act with an object: always a retreating from somewhere, a giving up of something. It presupposes three things: a person who can retreat, a vow that is lost, a passage from advance to retreat. And all three stand on one and the same ground—that the vow be a thing which really "arose": aroused at some moment (arising), held for a while (abiding), and then worn away in adverse conditions (ceasing). Without a real "arising," the "abiding" and "ceasing" that follow have nothing to stand on.

Exactly here the point of prajñā's pressure shows itself. It does not contend with the "ceasing" link—does not enter the strength-contest of "I can hold it, you cannot take it." It dismantles the "arising" link directly. If one sees that all dharmas are from the first unarisen—and the vow is among all dharmas: without own-being, without a real arising—then the thing that "once arose and can now be snatched away" never stood there as a real object at all. No real arising, no real ceasing left to happen; no thing has arisen that could be lost, and so no thing can make it turn back.

Retreat fails to happen not because a stronger force blocks it, but because the whole structure it needed in order to occur has come apart.

"If a Dharma Cannot Be Apprehended, Should That Dharma Arise?"

This principle, the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra carries to the root in an exchange between the Buddha and Subhūti. The Buddha asks: the dharma you do not see—can that dharma be apprehended? Subhūti answers: no, World-Honored One. The Buddha asks again:

"Subhūti! If a dharma cannot be apprehended, should that dharma arise?" "No, World-Honored One!" "Subhūti! This is called the bodhisattva-mahāsattva's patience of non-arising."

A dharma that cannot be apprehended—will it still "arise"? It will not. To accept this and rest in it is called the patience of non-arising. And the treatise then brings that resting down to the softest place in the human heart—fear:

"The ordinary person, because of the mind that clings to a self, has fear; this bodhisattva, because the mark of self is severed, is without fear. Know that this bodhisattva abides, at once, on the ground of avaivartika."

Why does the ordinary person fear? Because he clings to a self—and where there is a self, there hangs the worry "will my vow be taken from me, will my practice come to nothing." The bodhisattva's mark of self is severed; there is nowhere left for the worry to hang, and so nothing to fear. And the treatise-master rules: such a bodhisattva abides, that very moment, on the ground of non-retreat.

Look at the order. It is not that he first gritted his way into keeping the vow and so earned the name of non-retreat; it is that, seeing "the thing that could retreat never arose," non-retreat stands established on the spot. The anxiety of fearing the vow will be snatched away itself presupposes a real, snatchable vow—and the moment that presupposition loosens, the whole tension of "can I hold it or not" falls away.

Accomplishing This Patience, One Enters the Immovable

The Avataṃsaka Sūtra, reaching the eighth ground, states the matter as one clean equation. The bodhisattva contemplates deeply that all dharmas are from the first unarisen, without arising and without marks, and the text says:

"When a bodhisattva accomplishes this patience, that very instant he enters the Eighth Ground, the Immovable Ground."

Accomplishing the patience of non-arising, he enters the Immovable Ground "that very instant"—at once, with no interval: between the patience and the immovability there is no stretch of "now working further to make it immovable." Immovability is not a second thing cultivated after the patience; it is the patience's other name. And why is this ground called "Immovable"? The text hands over the reason for the name in full:

"Because he is able to obtain the dharma of non-regression, it is therefore said that he abides in the Immovable Ground."

Because the dharma of non-retreat is obtained, it is named Immovable. Join the two sentences: attain the patience of non-arising, and enter the Immovable Ground that instant; because the dharma of non-retreat is obtained, it is named Immovable. The root of non-retreat, traced all the way down, lands on the two words: non-arising.

Part Three told the eighth ground's other face, and it joins on exactly here. There it was the ship on the open sea, running before the wind, no human strength needed; and the text has one more sentence at this ground:

"Abiding in the Immovable Ground, he relinquishes all effortful activity and attains the dharma of effortlessness."

All strained and contrived exertion set down; the unforced, spontaneous working attained. This seals the chapter's principle from the reverse side: the immovability of the eighth ground is not the vow gripped at its tightest—on the contrary, it is exactly where the act of "straining to hold it" is set down that true immovability comes forth. Immovability is not the summit of effort; it is the falling away of effort.

And now the sentence in this chapter's title can be said. The immovability the world imagines is a tree rooted deep: the harder the wind, the deeper the roots must drive, the tighter the trunk must be bound—its immovability fastened to the firmness of its ground; and the day the ground itself is heaved up (the force of impermanence always has a larger one), the whole tree goes over, roots and all. A person who builds non-retreat on "gripping tightest" has a non-retreat that means only "the larger force has not arrived yet." The immovability of the patience of non-arising is of another kind: it does not drive roots, because it sees there is no plot of ground to root in—and so none that could be heaved up. The vow being without own-being, there is no real foothold anywhere to be pulled out from under it; standing on nothing that arises and ceases, it cannot be moved by any force of arising and ceasing.

Immovable for having no ground. Its very rootlessness is its unsnatchability.

One Thing to See Clearly Here

Two things to see clearly, lest this chapter be heard crooked.

First, the non-retreat here and the non-retreat of Part Five share a name and differ in road. Part Five said: riding Amitābha's original vow-power, one born in that land attains non-retreat—the guarantee on that road lies in the Buddha's vow-power upholding; it is the face of other-power. The non-retreat of this chapter is guaranteed by one's own seeing of non-arising—the face of prajñā. Each road is true in its own right; the name is shared, and the arguments must not be grafted across: do not use "non-arising" to explain the Pure Land's non-retreat, and do not bring "the Buddha's power" in to patch the argument here.

Second, the non-retreat of the patience of non-arising must not be quietly traded back for "an especially mighty will." The will's non-retreat lays its whole weight on the I that keeps the vow—I hold it better and better. What the patience of non-arising sees is that even the "I that could hold" is unarisen, unapprehendable. The mark of self severed, hence no fear; no fear, hence no retreat. It is not strength at saturation; it is the ground under the strength, set down entire.

Walking On

With this, the vow's two guarantees stand together: nothing to attain, hence inexhaustible; non-arising, hence non-retreating.

But an inexhaustible, unretreating vow—where, in the end, is it going? It walks on, and arrives at the terminus all practitioners share—nirvāṇa. Cessation present before him, the gate open, one step to enter, and never another suffering. And this bodhisattva is fully qualified to enter: prajñā complete, capacity complete.

At the gate, he turns away.

Why? The next chapter—the last doctrinal layer of the volume.