Part Five · Prajñā and Concentration · The Sword Leaves Its Sheath

The transition page has said it: what prajñā severs was never concentration—it is the "obtainable." Part Five is the whole course of that one severing: three chapters, three steps, each step deeper than the last.

The first chapter cuts its flavor. The grasping at concentration is of two kinds, opposite in direction: one is stuck to the sweetness within concentration, the other stuck to the quiescence within it. Prajñā dissolves both graspings with a single stroke—turn back and look for the very thing being grasped, and search everywhere: it cannot be found at all. The second chapter cuts its love. The coarse graspings cut, there remains the finest layer of all, wearing the robe of wholesome dharmas: "I have attained concentration," "I am pure," "I have seen emptiness." What cuts this layer is Mañjuśrī's sword—and in the end that sword cuts even itself. The third chapter returns to silence. A sword is still an action; more thorough than the sword is that silence in Vimalakīrti's ten-foot room. Concentration sets down even its own mark of sitting—sets down even the sentence that says "it is markless"—all of it, together.

Walk the three chapters through, and one thing will come clear: prajñā loosens concentration all the way to the markless and the wordless, and concentration is not one inch the less—the only thing less is the hand that was gripping it.

The sword is at the mouth of the sheath. The first cut goes to the word "obtainable."