Mañjuśrī's Sword

5.2 Mañjuśrī's Sword

There is a sentence in the Sarvadharma-apravṛtti-nirdeśa—the sūtra of the no-practice of all dharmas—that at first reading sounds almost harsh:

To be attached to the Buddha-dharma is to be far from the Buddha-dharma.

We are taught from childhood to thirst for the Dharma, to hold the Dharma as our very life—yet this sentence says: to be greedily attached to the Buddha-dharma is, on the contrary, to be far from it. It is not advising slackness toward the Dharma. What it means to point out is a grasping of the utmost subtlety, the hardest of all to catch in oneself—a grasping that does not stand over on the side of the five desires, but hides precisely beneath the clothing of "wholesome dharmas," "the true Dharma," "high attainment."

The graspings the last chapter cut were coarse in their marks: craving sweetness is plainly craving; stagnating in quiescence still leaves a trail that can be followed. The grasping of this chapter is so fine that even the practitioner himself takes it for merit. In cleaning a room long left untended, what gets carried out first are the large things—that is the work of precept and merit; once they are gone the room looks clean, but the fine dust lying flat against the floor, hidden in the seams, is still there, and it calls for a finer cloth, a closer eye. This stroke of prajñā is that finest cloth. The question it asks is not "is there any large clutter left," but: has even this self-satisfaction at being "already clean" settled into a new layer of dust?

The Dazhidu lun gave this finest layer of dust a name—dharma-attachment (dharma-rāga). Recognize first: dharma-attachment is not sensual love. It does not crave wealth, does not crave forms; what it craves is wholesome dharmas, is nirvāṇa, is emptiness, is one's own realization. The treatise's author passes his verdict on it with great precision:

Dharma-attachment is exquisite within the human-and-deva range; it is a burden at the forbearance of the unborn dharmas.

At the level of human-and-deva wholesomeness, to love the wholesome dharmas is a good thing, is progress; but the moment the practitioner would advance to the utmost, even this love of wholesome dharmas becomes a burden. Attachment to good dharmas is harder to sever than attachment to bad—everyone knows the bad must be cut, while the good is clutched tight as a thing to be guarded; that is why its turn under the sword comes last. And what cuts it can only be prajñā: this grasping is parasitic upon the very attainments of precept and concentration, born with them, grown with them—the purer the precept, the likelier the self-satisfaction in that purity; the deeper the concentration, the likelier an "I have attained" grows out of that depth. Precept and concentration can subdue the coarse afflictions; they cannot subdue the grasping at precept and concentration themselves.

This sword has three targets.

The First Target: "I Have Attained Concentration"

The first is the pride of holding concentration. Its doctrinal name is the conceit of false attainment (abhimāna)—not ordinary pride; it has a precise structure: claiming as attained what is unattained, as realized what is unrealized. The sūtra digs its root out to the very bottom:

If one says that one has seen awakening to exist and so has grasped its realization, know that such a one is a person of the conceit of false attainment.

This cut goes deep. It is not saying "your realization is not high enough, hence the conceit"; it is saying: so long as one still takes awakening for an "obtainable thing," something that "I can seize and certify," the very posture of seizing is already the conceit of false attainment—because there is no slight dharma whatever that can be obtained. The root of the sickness is not in being satisfied with little; it is in "supposing there is something to obtain."

The Sarvadharma-apravṛtti-nirdeśa records one practitioner's end as a warning: in concentration he said to himself, "I have now gained liberation; my own person has gained the path of the arhat"—plainly still on the road, yet in his own heart he had issued himself the certificate; the sūtra judges that he "discriminated within the unborn dharma," and by this undid himself. He had broken no precept; he was not slack; he was, in fact, hard at his practice—his error was to force up a mark of "I have attained" upon the dharma that from the first admits no discrimination, holds nothing to obtain. The moment the certificate is taken in hand, the certificate becomes the shackle.

The most ordinary form of this conceit the Dazhidu lun observes down to the finest grain: within the absorption there may as yet be no clinging, but after rising from it there is "a lingering scent of attachment"—at the bottom of the heart, softly, one sentence: that was a fine sitting just now. No clamor; only a single thread. It is this thread that Mañjuśrī's sword must cut.

The Second Target: Even "the Markless" Can Become an Addiction

The second target lies a layer deeper. The first grasped at the "I"—I attain, I realize; this one grasps at the "dharma"—taking samādhi, the states of concentration, even prajñā itself, for things that can be obtained, owned, collected.

The Dazhidu lun traces out its mechanism, and its slyest point is that it disguises itself as liberation: the practitioner has at long last set down the marks of the world, only to turn around and breed fresh clinging upon "detachment," "quiescence," "the markless"—the very dharmas that were meant to cure clinging. He "within the markless gives rise to a clinging"; the treatise's author goes straight to the vein: "clinging where there is nothing to cling to, grasping where there is nothing to grasp." Like a man who resolves to give up sugar and then grows addicted to the labels "sugar-free, clean, healthy": the object of the addiction has changed; the structure of the addiction has not.

It is dangerous because it does not look like regress; it looks like progress. One who craves worldly pleasures knows it himself for a sickness; one who "clings to the markless" is outwardly diligent, outwardly leaving the stains behind, and even to himself this looks like the high ground of practice—and so this grasping is stored away, catalogued as fruit-realization.

The way out the treatise's author gives is the familiar raft: the dharma is a raft for crossing the river; samādhi is a raft; prajñā too is a raft; the river crossed, no one walks on carrying the raft. The treatise even says that the Buddha, toward prajñā, "neither dwells on it nor leans upon it." The point is not to stop cultivating prajñā—just the opposite: it is to cultivate prajñā until even the thought "I possess prajñā" is carried across with all the rest. To cultivate without receiving, to realize without clinging.

The Third Target: "I Am Pure, Others Are Defiled"

The third target is handed over in person by the previous volume, The Precept. The precept volume established the precept and guarded it; walking to its deepest point, it noted that within precept-keeping there remains one stubbornly fine grasping—the conceit of the purely observant, "I am pure, others are defiled"—and it said plainly that this layer lies beyond what the precept can finish: it must wait for the prajñā inside the concentration gate to cut it. This section takes that hand-off, face on.

The Sarvadharma-apravṛtti-nirdeśa shaped a figure who acts this grasping out to its extreme—the monk Shèngyì ("Lofty Intent"). In the provisions of practice and attainment he is almost beyond reproach: he guarded and upheld the precepts, gained the four dhyānas and the four formless attainments, and practiced the twelve ascetic practices. The trouble lies at one point:

Toward keeping the precepts he produced a thought of gain, and toward breaking them a thought of obstruction … and, mad with precept-keeping, held others in contempt.

He reckoned precept-keeping as a profit that could be inventoried, and saw precept-breaking as an obstruction to be fenced against—keeping and breaking became, in his mind, a ledger open to calculation; and the ledger's next page is contempt for others. A scrupulously clean man despises others as dirty because he himself is clean—and that despising is itself already dirt, a dirt harder to wash out, because it wears the robe of purity. The sūtra's verdict is heavy: such a person "only sets himself up, dwelling within a view of something-to-be-obtained"—a whole body of merit nailed fast to the view "I have something obtained; I am purer than he." The greater the merit, the deeper the nail.

The division of labor here must be seen exactly, with not one word allowed to slip: this stroke of prajñā cuts the ledger that calculates keeping and breaking—it does not cut the precept. Shèngyì's sickness is not that he kept the precepts; it is that he kept them and stood tall upon them. After the cut, the precepts are kept as before, the ascetic practices walked as before—only there is no longer an "I" raised a head above others by the keeping. The precept volume establishes the precept; the concentration volume cuts the grasping; where the sword's edge passes, the precept-substance is unharmed—what is wounded is only the conceit.

Look closely at this man and you find the three targets gathered in one person: the four dhyānas and the four formless attainments complete—the soil of the pride of holding concentration; the thought of gain toward precept-keeping—the residue of clinging to rules-and-observances; the forced division, upon the unborn dharma, of this keeping from that breaking—dharma-grasping. Three sicknesses, one root—the "I" that has something to obtain. And so what cuts them can only be one and the same sword.

The Blade Is Itself Empty

Last, return to the sword itself. The Māyopama-samādhi-sūtra records a startling case.

At the assembly, five hundred bodhisattvas, their knowledge of past lives opened, each remembered grave transgressions committed in distant former lives; remorse and dread arose, and they could not rest at peace in the profound Dharma. At just that moment Mañjuśrī rose from his seat, bared his right shoulder, took a sword in his right hand—and strode straight toward the Buddha.

The Buddha said to Mañjuśrī: "Stop! Stop! Commit no transgression—you should kill skillfully. Why so? Because all arises from mind, and from mind the killing is born."

The Buddha first bars the way—Stop!—and then at once permits: you should kill skillfully; only the direction of the "killing" has been turned completely around. The reason stands in the words that follow: all arises from mind, and from mind the killing is born. Let this be said past all doubt: "kill skillfully" is never the literal harming of life, and the "sword" is never a weapon. On the spot the Buddha turned it into a sword of the mind, a sword of wisdom—the grasping in the five hundred bodhisattvas' hearts, "I have transgressed; the transgression is real; it cannot be dissolved," arises from mind, and what can cut it is likewise only this sword of prajñā upon the mind. The sūtra then records: at these words the five hundred bodhisattvas penetrated that the mark of transgression is originally empty, with nothing there to grasp, and attained the forbearance of the unborn dharmas. The reader of the repentance gate will recognize this news—the nature of transgression is originally empty: that is the road volume three walked; the sword here cuts the same "really existent."

And the deepest stroke of this case comes at its close. The sūtra says:

The Tathāgata, the True One, too is like the sharp sword; Mañjuśrī and Śāriputra thus … and all dharmas thus.

Look closely at this roster: that the dharmas being cut are "thus"—no surprise there; but the sūtra lists the Tathāgata, lists Mañjuśrī—the sword that does the cutting—right alongside them. The cutter and the cut: the same thusness, the same emptiness. This is the blade itself empty: when the sword has cut to the last, even the thoughts "there is a sword doing the cutting," "there is a prajñā able to cut," are cut away with the rest. Otherwise the practitioner has merely traded "grasping at self" for "I have a prajñā that can cut grasping"—the fourth and most hidden layer of grasping, harder to detect than the first three, because it is exactly what the practitioner takes for his most final refuge. The true sharpness of this sword lies not in all it has cut away, but in its turning around at the end and cutting away the thought "there is a sword that has cut away all dharmas."

Cut to this point, what remains? Not the abandonment of practice; not no-sitting, no-keeping, no-realizing. What the sword cuts is the single thought "I grasp my practice"; what remains is practice that does not grasp its practice—the sitting as before, the precepts as before, only the hand has loosened.

But a sword is, after all, still an action; the word "cut" still stands. More thorough than the sword is a silence. The next chapter walks into that ten-foot room in the city of Vaiśālī.