The Marks of Concentration Are Empty

5.1 The Marks of Concentration Are Empty

There is a passage in the Larger Prajñāpāramitā in which the Buddha recounts how He once practiced the four dhyānas. One who had carried dhyāna to its utmost, looking back at the way he practiced it—and what comes out is, astonishingly, negation after negation:

Among these dhyānas and their factors he grasped no mark, conceived no thought "this is a dhyāna," received no flavor of dhyāna, obtained no such dhyāna; undefiled, in purity he practiced the four dhyānas; and of these dhyānas he received no fruit-and-recompense.

Grasped no mark—not letting concentration congeal into a thing with a fixed face that can be picked out and claimed. Received no flavor of dhyāna—not taking in, not sticking to, that sweetness within the absorption. Obtained no such dhyāna—entering no line in the mind's ledger that says "I have obtained this dhyāna." He practiced the same four dhyānas, yet in the very moment of practicing He had already dismantled the mechanism by which concentration turns into an object of grasping.

What this chapter looks at is how that mechanism is dismantled. First see clearly what is to be dismantled: the grasping at concentration is of two kinds, opposite in direction.

The First Grasping: Stuck to the Sweetness

The first is craving the flavor of dhyāna—being stuck to the pleasure-and-joy within concentration.

This judgment is no new Mahāyāna invention. The Saṃyukta-Āgama, analyzing all feeling, set up the three terms long ago: "If a feeling, through conditions, gives rise to pleasure-and-joy, this is called the gratification of the feeling; if the feeling is impermanent and of the nature to change, this is called its danger; if with respect to the feeling one abandons and transcends desire-and-greed, this is called the escape from it." Gratification, danger, escape—the joy that arises in concentration has, from the earliest teaching on, been set at the position called "gratification": a thing that should be seen as it really is, and should not be held tight. What prajñā does is push this long-planted seed all the way to the end.

The sūtra describes how the bodhisattva handles this sweetness: "Toward dhyāna he does not savor, does not cling … nor is he reborn through dhyāna." The last part has already taken the measure of "not reborn by dhyāna"—not following concentration's karmic force to take rebirth in the form and formless realms. What must be seen clearly here is the real harm of craving the flavor: a person stuck to the bliss of concentration does not fall into the evil destinies; just the opposite—by the wholesome karma of deep absorption he rises to be born in the dhyāna heavens, enjoying a concentration-bliss exceedingly long and exceedingly fine. It looks like attainment; in fact it is a fork in the road—heavenly birth is not liberation; however long the lifespan, it comes to an end, and ended, one is still inside the round of rebirth. To take concentration as a place one can dwell in, and follow it into rebirth, is to bind oneself back into the three realms with a more refined rope.

Where is the measure? The bliss of concentration is like honey. The honey is truly sweet, and there is no fault in tasting it; the error is the hand stuck in the jar, unable to pull free. Prajñā does not teach a person not to touch the honey; it teaches one to taste the honey without the hand sticking. When the Buddha says He "received no flavor of dhyāna," it is not that He could not taste the sweetness—He tasted it, and was not stuck.

The Second Grasping: Stuck to the Quiescence

The second grasping runs the opposite way, and hides far better: sinking into emptiness, stagnating in quiescence—being stuck to the empty stillness within concentration, taking deep absorption's quiescence for the destination, and plunging into it headlong, too soon.

Part Four has already seen the bodhisattva's posture: "I am now in the time of training, not yet in the time of realization"—coming to the very door of nirvāṇa and not stepping through; arrow propping arrow, the foremost never falling. That chapter raised this capacity from the front; this chapter must look at its reverse: what one falls into the moment this capacity fails.

In the archer's simile, one phrase matters most: "sovereign at will." What is remarkable in the master archer is not how high the arrow flies, but his complete command over the arrow's going and staying—if he wills it not to fall, it does not fall. The loss in sinking into emptiness is lost exactly at this phrase: the one who plunges into quiescence is not without the ability to come out; the pull of that stillness has robbed him of the "at will." Once that sovereignty is lost, however deep the concentration, it is only another prison.

This grasping is far harder to detect than craving the flavor. The mark of craving is sweetness, and a practitioner will sooner or later grow suspicious: am I craving? But the marks of sinking into emptiness are stillness, emptiness, nothing-to-attain—words that sound, every one of them, like the path's own attainments. A person stagnating in empty quiescence is the one most likely to believe he has stopped grasping at anything, not knowing that he is grasping precisely at "non-grasping" itself, holding garrison in that very place called "emptiness." The Dazhidu lun cuts one extremely sharp division here:

Practicing mere emptiness, one falls to the ground of the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha; practicing the ungraspable emptiness, in which emptiness too cannot be obtained, there is then no place to fall.

"Mere emptiness" takes emptiness as a place where one can plant one's feet—and so long as there is an "emptiness" to dwell in, it is still dwelling, and still falling. "The ungraspable emptiness": even emptiness itself cannot be obtained—emptiness is itself empty; since there is no thing to dwell in, there is no place to fall. The sickness of sinking into emptiness lies not in having seen emptiness, but in having made emptiness into a thing one can dwell in; and its medicine is not a retreat back into existence—it is to hold no position even upon emptiness.

One Stroke Dissolves Both: Search Everywhere, and It Cannot Be Found

Two graspings, opposite in direction, one root of sickness—both presuppose that there is something solidly real to grab. Prajñā's dissolving lands exactly on that presupposition. There is a passage in the Chapter of the Six Similes that carries this one stroke all the way to the bottom:

This bodhisattva does not see the two realms, does not see the dhyāna, does not see one who enters the dhyāna, does not see one who enters by means of any dharma, does not see a place of entering.

The four "does not see"s are one complete dismantling. When ordinary speech says "grasping at concentration," the mind has in fact presupposed a whole set of things: there is an "I," who enters a "concentration," at some "place," by some "dharma." The grasping stands upon that set. The sūtra pulls out the four pillars one by one: the one who enters concentration—not to be found; the concentration entered—not to be found; the place where the concentration sits—not to be found; even the dharma by which one enters—likewise ungraspable. The instant you reach out to grab, you find the palm held nothing from the first—the grasping is not pressed down; it has nowhere left to arise from.

And the sūtra adds a stroke that comes closer still to the body: the bodhisattva does not give rise even to the three thoughts "I shall enter this samādhi, I am now entering this samādhi, I have already entered this samādhi." About to enter, now entering, already entered—these are exactly the three thoughts most familiar to anyone who cultivates concentration. When the sūtra says they do not arise, it is not telling one to suppress these three as stray thoughts; rather: once the samādhi itself has been illumined as nothing-whatsoever, the three thoughts lose their object and of themselves do not arise. In the same chapter stands a sentence that gathers the whole chapter to its utmost: prajñāpāramitā is itself samādhi, and samādhi is itself prajñāpāramitā. Concentration cultivated to its ultimate is not two with prajñā, not different from it; and at this point "the marks of concentration are empty" is no longer a verdict prajñā passes on concentration from the outside—it is concentration's own original face at its deepest.

The Way Out: The Non-Abiding Samādhi

Two things must be recognized, lest this chapter be read askew. First: that the marks of concentration are empty is no denial of meditation. The bodhisattva enters dhyānas just as deep; it is exactly because concentration has real work to do that prajñā is needed to keep it from becoming a new bond. Second: ungraspable does not mean nonexistent, does not mean annihilated. To search everywhere for the one who enters dhyāna and find him nowhere says that no mark can be grasped—not that there is nothing at all within the concentration.

Nor does prajñā stop at negation. In the list of the hundred-and-eight samādhis, a positive name was set down long ago for this conclusion: "Dwelling in this samādhi, one does not see any resting-place of the samādhis: this is called the samādhi of not delighting in any dwelling-place." One still dwells in a samādhi—only the samādhi dwelt in has for its content precisely "not seeing any resting-place of the samādhis." The marks being ungraspable, dwelling has nothing left to stand on: no sweetness to savor, because what the savoring would take as its object cannot be found; no quiescence to stagnate in, because what the stagnating would hold to cannot be found either.

The coarse graspings are cut. But grasping has a finer layer still—so fine it wears the robe of wholesome dharmas and the face of merit, and even one strict in the precepts and deep in concentration may not recognize it. To cut that layer, a sharper sword must be drawn.

The next chapter, Mañjuśrī's Sword.