At the Moment of Reception, What Was Received
5.1 At the Moment of Reception, What Was Received
First, set the question itself straight.
A person receives the precepts. Whether before the three masters and seven witnesses, or by self-vow before the Buddha-image—the rite ends, and he rises to his feet. Now ask: between the man of this moment and the man of one stick of incense ago, where is the difference? What has been added to him?
That night he falls asleep, without dream or thought, keeping nothing, recollecting nothing—is his precept there, or not? The next day his mind wanders and an evil thought arises—has the precept broken off? If the precept were only the wholesome mind of the present thought, the mind that intends not to kill, then as thought streams on and every moment is exchanged for a new one, would the precept not be dropped the instant it was received? But if the precept is a "thing" that, once received, simply is—then what kind of thing is it?
This question, while the Buddha was in the world, no one asked in this way. In the earliest scriptures the precept is the conduct of "abstaining" itself—the Saṃyuktāgama, glossing right action, says only: "abstaining from killing, theft, and sexual misconduct." To keep the precepts is the living conduct of intending, thought by thought, not to kill and not to steal; no one set up, behind the conduct, a deposited "substance."
The ones who raised the question head-on were the treatise-masters who came after. And the vinaya learning of China gave it three answers.
The First School: The Precept-Substance Is Form
The Sarvāstivāda answers: what reception confers is a real form-dharma—avijñapti-rūpa, non-informative form.
At the moment of reception, the body bows and the mouth makes its three declarations; these visible, audible acts are called the informative act. The informative act at the same time gives rise to a form that cannot be seen yet really exists, called the non-informative—and from then on it continues in series with the person: there in sleep, there in distraction, guarding against evil day and night. They have an excellent simile for it. The Abhidharmakośa, citing scripture, says:
"The precepts of abstention from killing and the rest are called embankment-precepts, because they continue in series over long time and dam back the fault of transgression. There is no embankment without something that has substance."
The precept is like an embankment. Once the embankment is built, no one need stand watch over it hour by hour—day and night, it holds back the water by itself. But an embankment that can hold back water must really have its earth; a precept that can guard against evil must really have its precept-substance. The Kośa records their straightforward self-declaration:
"The Vaibhāṣika masters hold that there is a real thing called non-informative form—this is the tenet of our own school."
There is a solid, really existing thing, and its name is non-informative form—this is the tenet of our school. The first school: the precept-substance is form.
The Second School: Neither Form, Nor Mind
The Satyasiddhi-śāstra does not agree. It devotes a whole chapter, the "Chapter on the Non-Acting," to picking this thing gained at reception—it calls it "the non-acting"—out of both sides, form and mind alike.
Not form. The Satyasiddhi's reasoning runs thus: whatever is form bears the "character of distress-and-decay"—it can spoil, it can be damaged; but in this non-acting gained at reception, no character of distress-and-decay can be found anywhere, so it is judged not to enter the nature of form. Nor is it mind: mind is what cognizes, and the non-acting cognizes no object at all. Then what is it? This chapter settles it in a third compartment: neither form nor mind, belonging to the "factors dissociated from thought"—a real dharma that is neither matter nor a thought of the mind.
This school's tie to China runs deepest of all: the home position of the Sifenlü school rests precisely on it.
The Third School: Seed
The Yogācāra masters arrive, and first they pull the platform out from under the first school. The Cheng weishi lun asks: since the bodily and verbal informative acts, pressed to the bottom, are not really existent—"If the informative act is not really existent, how can the non-informative be real?"—if even the informative act is not real, how could the non-informative, set up in dependence on it, be real? Yet it dismantles without destroying:
"We do not deny it as non-existent; we only say it is not form."
It does not say the thing is not there—only that it is not form. Then what is it? The Yogācārabhūmi, in its fifty-third fascicle, gives an entirely new answer:
"This abstention-volition … perpetually operates together with its seed … and functions protectively in accordance with the restraint formerly received."
At the moment of reception there arises in the mind one thought of volition to abstain from evil dharmas; this one thought of volition perfumes into a seed; and from then on, wherever the mind goes, the seed goes with it—perpetually operating together with the mind—and, like the restraint received at the beginning, it functions protectively.
A seed. Not form like the earth of an embankment, not the "two negations" of the third compartment—a living capacity perfumed into the depths of the mind.
Daoxuan's Judgment
Three schools stand like the legs of a tripod; the judge of China was Vinaya Master Daoxuan of the Tang.
First, a transmitted error to set right: later generations often say that "Daoxuan established a material precept-substance"—the transmission is wrong. The form-dharma is the tenet of the Sarvāstivāda; Daoxuan himself, in the Xingshichao, refuted it in his own hand:
"To point to form as the substance of karma is wrong: the fourteen kinds of form are all morally indeterminate, not of the nature of merit or demerit."
Forms are one and all indeterminate, neither good nor evil—to take an indeterminate thing as the substance of merit and demerit cannot stand. His own definition is eight characters:
"What is received and retained in the mind is called the precept-substance."
At reception, with the utterly sincere, resolute mind of the vow, one corresponds with the excellent dharma of the dharma-realm—what the mind receives and retains in that moment is the precept-substance. The substance is in the mind, not in form.
Then, in his Karman-Commentary, Daoxuan framed the famous three-school judgment. The passage as we read it today is transmitted by the Song vinaya master Yuanzhao in his Zichiji:
"First, the Realist school—that is, the Sarvāstivāda. That school, in clarifying the substance, returns it to the form-cluster … this is teaching that is wholly within the Lesser Vehicle. Second, the Nominalist school—that is, the Dharmagupta lineage we now inherit. This school, in discussing the substance, strains to name it 'the two negations' … this is named teaching that goes beyond the Lesser Vehicle. Third, the Perfect-Teaching school … here, examining the substance-received, it is a seed perfumed into the store-consciousness … this is named the teaching that exhausts the Greater Vehicle. Now the Sifenlü falls squarely within the Nominalist school. Having the depth that can also take in the shallower, it annexes the Sarvāstivāda alongside; and because its teaching harbors a meaning that partially opens onto the Greater Vehicle, it ultimately converges on the Perfect Vehicle."
Each of the three schools goes to its place: form is judged to the Realist school (the Sarvāstivāda); neither-form-nor-mind is judged to the Nominalist school (the Satyasiddhi—the home school of the Sifenlü); and the highest school, the Perfect-Teaching school: the substance-received is "a seed perfumed into the store-consciousness"—a seed perfumed up within the storehouse of consciousness. In its operation the Sifenlü belongs to the Nominalist school; at its ultimate reach it converges on the Perfect Teaching. Daoxuan's final sentence—Yuanzhao quotes the Karman-Commentary's own words:
"Thus the formal act of reception perfumes the deluded mind, and within the underlying store-consciousness forms a wholesome seed—this is the precept-substance."
The formal act of reception perfumes the mind, and in the deepest store-consciousness forms a single wholesome seed—this, precisely, is the precept-substance. Among the three schools' dispute, Daoxuan's judgment goes to the seed.
Zhiyi's Opening and Gathering
The same question, and Master Zhiyi of Tiantai has another way of gathering it in. In his Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts he sets the two schools side by side—"The Satyasiddhi has a 'Chapter on the Non-Acting' which says it is a neither-form-nor-mind cluster; the vinaya masters, in applying the doctrine, also follow this. On the Abhidharma reading, the precept is a form-cluster"—and then, taking no side, opens the two gates of the provisional and the real:
"To say there is none accords with principle; to say there is one accords with the teaching. Principle is the real; teaching is the provisional. At the level of the real there is none, yet at the gate of teaching there is."
At the level of the real, of principle, no single thing called precept-substance can be found—Part Four's prajñā blade, "transgression unobtainable," works here unchanged; at the level of the provisional, of teaching, the precept-substance stands solid and true—it can be received, it can be guarded, and it can be wounded. At the place of the real, not one mote is set up; at the place of the provisional, not one dharma is missing. One master judges the question home to the seed; the other opens it into the provisional and the real—and between them, the two masters of China have delivered both the depth of this question and its measure.
The name Daoxuan has come up several times by now. Who, exactly, was this vinaya master? And on the strength of what kind of book did he hold this whole edifice of learning up for thirteen hundred years?
In the next chapter, we meet that book.