Borrowing a Day and a Night to Learn Leaving Home Once
2.3 Borrowing a Day and a Night to Learn Leaving Home Once
Sāvatthī, the Eastern Park, the Hall of Migāra's Mother.
This lecture hall was the offering of Visākhā, the famous laywoman of the city—people called her Migāra's Mother, and so the hall is called the Hall of Migāra's Mother. The Discourse on Keeping the Fast, in fascicle fifty-five of the Madhyama Āgama, records: on the morning of a fast day, Visākhā bathed at break of day, dressed in clean white garments, and came before the Buddha with her daughters-in-law and household. Seeing her, the Buddha first asked an everyday question:
Householder's wife! Have you bathed today?
Have you bathed today? She answered: World-Honored One! Today I keep the fast.
The Buddha took up that word—fast—and asked her a question she had likely never thought to ask: which kind of fast are you keeping? For there are three kinds of fast: first, the cowherd's fast; second, the Nigaṇṭha's fast; third, the noble eight-factor fast.
The same fast-day abstention—and it divides into three grades. The Buddha explained them to her one by one.
The Cowherd's Fast, the Nigaṇṭha's Fast
What is the cowherd's fast? The cowherd drives his cattle out to the marsh in the morning and brings them back to the village at dusk. On the road home, what he reckons in his mind is: today the herd grazed here, tomorrow it should graze over there; today they drank here, tomorrow they should drink over there. There is a kind of fast-keeper, the Buddha said, who is exactly so:
Today I eat such food as this; tomorrow I shall eat such food as that. Today I drink such drink as this; tomorrow I shall drink such drink as that.
The body keeps the fast while the mind circles tomorrow's food and drink—day and night, delighting in desire. The body has fasted; the mind has not. Keeping the fast this way, one "gains no great benefit, obtains no great fruit."
What is the Nigaṇṭha's fast? The Nigaṇṭhas were a school of renunciants outside the Dharma in those days. Their way of fasting was this: on the fifteenth day, to strip off their clothes, stand naked facing east, and declare: I have no father or mother, and to no father or mother do I belong; I have no wife or children, and to no wife or children do I belong. Yet the next day, seeing his father and mother, the heart still says "these are my father and mother"; seeing wife and children, still "these are my wife and children." The Buddha's verdict is a single sentence, but it falls very heavily:
Wishing to urge them on toward words of truth, it urges them instead toward speech that is false.
It meant to use the fast day for the saying of one true word, and it ends by teaching a man to say one empty one. The form of the fast is complete; the inside of it is false.
Set out before us, the two fasts are two mirrors: one shows the body fasting while the mind does not; the other shows the form true while the substance is false. The third kind of fast must clear exactly these two pits.
The Noble Eight-Factor Fast: By This Factor, Equal to the Arahants, No Different
The noble eight-factor fast has eight factors: keeping away from killing, from taking what is not given, from unchastity, from false speech, from intoxicants, from high and luxurious beds, from garlands, song, dance, and shows, from eating at the wrong time.
But what the Discourse on Keeping the Fast teaches is not to list the eight items and comply. Every factor is fitted with one and the same method of mind. Take the first factor; the text runs:
When a learned noble disciple keeps the fast, he reflects thus: "The arahā, the True Person, for the whole of his life keeps away from killing, cuts off killing; he has set aside rod and weapon; he has conscience and shame, has a mind of loving-kindness and compassion, and benefits all beings, down to the smallest crawling thing. He has purified his mind of killing. I too, for the whole of my life, keep away from killing, cut off killing… I now purify my mind of killing—by this factor, I am the equal of the arahā, no different." Therefore it is called the fast.
Read that closing line aloud: "By this factor, I am the equal of the arahā, no different." The arahā is the Arahant. The fast-keeper, with each factor he keeps, sets up in his mind this one comparison: the Arahant keeps it so for the whole of his life; today I too keep it so—and as far as this one factor goes, I and the Arahant are equal, no different.
Eight factors, eight comparisons. One day's fast kept through, and a householder has, in eight places, tuned his own day to the Arahant's day. This is what divides the noble eight-factor fast from the other two: the cowherd's fast loses because the mind is elsewhere; the Nigaṇṭha's fast loses because the words are not true; in the noble eight-factor fast, the mind is set upon the Arahant, and what is said and what is done are real. Later, the Sūtra of the Fast, in Zhi Qian's translation, gathered this method of mind into the line that opens each of its eight precepts—"For the full day and night, hold the mind like a True Person." True Person was precisely the name by which the Arahant was called in those days.
Four Factors for Life, Four for This Day and This Night
The structure of the eight factors hides in the text's own wording; it takes a magnifying glass to see.
The contemplation formulas of the eight factors look, at first glance, like one single format; looked at closely, they differ in one place. For keeping away from killing, from taking what is not given, from false speech, from intoxicants—these four—the practitioner says: "I too, for the whole of my life, keep away from…"—like the Arahant, away from it for the rest of this life. But at keeping away from unchastity, from high and luxurious beds, from garlands, song, and dance, from eating at the wrong time—these four—the wording changes: "I, for this day and this night, keep away from…"—away from it for this one day and night only.
Four factors for the whole of a life; four for this day and this night. The text has kept its own ledger straight: the first four are nothing other than the householder's lifelong five precepts (killing, stealing, lying, drink); the latter four are borrowed from the life of one gone forth—the complete chaste-life, no sitting or lying on high broad beds, no song, dance, or adornment, no food after midday—borrowed for a day, returned at dawn.
The third factor repays the closest savoring. The third of the householder's five precepts is keeping away from sexual misconduct—guard the household, and it is kept. The third factor of the eight-factor fast is keeping away from unchastity—for this one day and one night, even one's own spouse is set aside, and what is kept is the renunciant's complete chaste-life. The same position, and the precept has risen a grade. So the eight-precept uposatha is not the arithmetic of "the five precepts plus three"; it is a short borrowing of an identity: the householder borrows the identity of one gone forth, dwells in it for one day and one night, and lives one round of a life of desirelessness, simplicity, and a single meal before noon. Eating, lodging, and traffic with the world—the three weightiest faces of the renunciant's day; of the latter four factors, each takes charge of one face.
A Mirror Polished Bright
With the eight factors set standing, the Discourse on Keeping the Fast adds one more story on top: on this fast day, one should cultivate five recollections—recollect the Tathāgata, recollect the Dharma, recollect the Assembly, recollect one's own precepts, recollect the devas. To each recollection the Buddha fitted a simile. The one fitted to recollecting one's own precepts is the most beautiful:
Like a mirror grown dull with grime: ground bright on the polishing stone, worked by human hands, it comes out clear and clean.
Like a mirror filmed over with grime, taken to the whetstone and finely ground—bright again. To recollect one's own precepts on the fast day—"without lack, without rent, without stain, without blemish"—is to polish this mirror bright once more. The recollection of the precepts from Part One's third chapter returns here: the Buddha, it turns out, had long since written it into the fast day's schedule of lessons, and had fitted it with this mirror. The everyday precepts, used day after day, cannot help gathering dust; the few fast days in each month are precisely the mirror-polishing days.
What is this one day worth? The Buddha did the accounting for Visākhā: the sixteen great kingdoms of that world—Aṅga, Magadha, Kāsi, Kosala…—all the wealth and treasure of the sixteen, the gold and silver, the maṇi gems and the pearls: suppose a man were made king over it all, the whole of it his to use; set beside one person keeping the noble eight-factor fast, it "is not worth one sixteenth part." The kingship of sixteen kingdoms does not come up to a sixteenth of this one day and one night.
Why Borrow Only One Day and One Night
One last question. The Upāsaka-śīla-sūtra, in Chinese translation, asked it on behalf of all who came after: "For what reason are the five precepts received for the duration of life, but the eight-precept fast for one day and one night?" Why are the five precepts received for a lifetime, and the eight-precept fast for one day and one night only?
The answer is not "householders cannot hold out for long; let them make do." One day and one night is deliberate design. The sūtra's own answer to this question is a positive one: "The Tathāgata, knowing well the marks of dharmas and penetrating them without obstruction, teaches it thus"—it is something the Tathāgata, having penetrated the marks of all things, deliberately set up just so. The five precepts are the lay ground; the eight-factor fast is the renunciant's house. You cannot tell a man to move into the house in a single step; you can invite him to come and stay a night. And one who has stayed carries in his body the memory of that night's purity. At daybreak, the moment dawn appears, the fast releases of itself, and the person returns to the daily round of the five precepts—but that window has been opened, and the breath of air that came through it, the heart remembers.
This window, the vinaya masters of later times opened wider still. Daoxuan says: if on a fast day there happens to be no one from whom to receive it, the householder may, by "mental-utterance"—reciting in the mind, uttering with the mouth—confer this one day's fast upon himself. No monastery, no preceptor at his side—a person alone in his own room can still reach this one day and one night.
That day in the Hall of Migāra's Mother, when Visākhā had heard it all, she joined her palms toward the Buddha and made a vow: World-Honored One, from this day forward, for the whole of my life, I will keep the noble eight-factor fast. A teaching of one day and one night—and the vow she made was for the whole of a life: borrowed month after month, borrowed for a lifetime.
The five precepts, the eight-factor fast—all of it is kept out, line by line, by householders in the churning world. And the precept so kept—can others feel it? Is there, about a person pure in the precepts, something that others sense from far away?
That question Ānanda has asked for us. In the next chapter, we listen to the Buddha tell of a thing that travels even against the wind.