First Raise the Perimeter Wall, Then Build the House

5.2 First Raise the Perimeter Wall, Then Build the House

In the early Tang, in the Zhongnan Mountains, there lived a vinaya master—Daoxuan, whom the world called the Vinaya Master of Nanshan. His writings would stack as high as the man himself; among them, three commentaries are honored together as the "three great works of Nanshan," and the one standing foremost, and most widely transmitted, is the Sifenlü shanfan buque xingshichao—the Vinaya Compendium for Conducting Affairs.

The title itself is the method: cut the verbose, supply the deficient. Cut what? Supply what? In his preface Daoxuan states in his own words the occasion for writing—he had read through the surviving vinaya works of earlier generations, and one regret stayed always in his heart:

"I have ever lamented that the records left by the masters of former generations stop at the rise and fall of textual commentaries and at digests of questions and answers; as for manifesting conduct in actual affairs and laying down a track for those who come after—there is not one book in a hundred."

What the ancients left behind is all doctrinal analysis and question-and-answer on the wording; as for "what to do when the matter is upon you"—how a reception is to be conducted, how the rains retreat is to be settled, how a transgression is to be repented—of operating books fit to give later students a track to walk, there was not one in a hundred. The book he meant to write was exactly that one.

Part Three said it: the root text of the Sifenlü is a casebook grown out of precedents—where each rule first arose, who first transgressed, case after case set down. What Daoxuan did was to recompile this casebook into a manual: cutting the repeated karman-formulas and the layer upon layer of occasioning stories, supplying the general outline and the threads the root text never had. Casebook and manual—neither ranks above the other; they are two genres: one lets you look up where a thing came from, the other lets you get a thing done.

Unfolding Across Three Positions

The architecture of this manual Daoxuan delivers in a single sentence of his own:

"The text of this one work unfolds, in meaning, across three positions. The upper fascicle gathers the communal affairs of the saṅgha, giving their performance due form; the middle fascicle keeps to the precept-substance, establishing the keeping-and-transgressing of precepts and the rites of repentance; the lower fascicle treats the essential conduct that meets circumstances, arising as occasions require."

Thirty chapters, in three fascicles. The upper fascicle governs the communal business of the Saṅgha—establishing boundaries, conferring the precepts, the rains retreat, the recitation of the code, the things the assembly does together; the lower fascicle governs the miscellaneous conduct that meets circumstances—robes, food, medicine, and requisites, welcomings and farewells, the side that touches the worldly. And the middle fascicle, fewest in chapters, is the heart of the whole book: the precept-substance, keeping-and-transgressing, repentance—once a person has received the precepts, how the precept stands in him, how it is depleted, how it is repaired. The two ends are procedure; the middle is life itself.

At the head of the middle fascicle stand four headings, which later ages called the four categories: precept-dharma, precept-substance, precept-conduct, precept-characteristics. The precept-dharma is the dharma the Tathāgata established; the precept-substance is the substance received at the time of reception; the precept-conduct is the practice that arises after reception, "conforming to the originally received substance"; the precept-characteristics are the visible shape the keeping takes. Dharma, substance, conduct, characteristics—a single production line running from receiving to practice. The line from the last chapter—"what is received and retained in the mind is called the precept-substance"—is precisely the definition that fills the "precept-substance" slot on this line.

Receiving Is the Perimeter Wall; Following Is the House

But the true spine of the whole book is a pair of two words: receiving, and following. For it Daoxuan struck a simile that has been recited for a thousand years:

"And so: receiving is the vow framed in intention; following is the practice that fulfills the vow. It is like building a residence. First one raises the perimeter wall all around—this is the substance received at the ordination platform. Afterward one builds out as occasion allows, to the end of one's life—this is the following-conduct after receiving. If there is receiving but no following, it is a courtyard of empty vows, not spared the ills of an open roof. If there is following but no receiving, the conduct may drift with birth-and-death, cramped and incomplete—like rooms with no surrounding wall, not spared the thief who tunnels in. Receiving and following must sustain each other; only then is anything reached."

Receiving is a single act of reception—as in building a house one first raises the perimeter wall on all four sides: the precept-substance is received at the ordination platform, and the boundary is enclosed from that day. Following is the practice of the whole life after reception—inside the wall, building room after room, building until old age and death.

Receiving without following? An empty courtyard—the wall raised true and square, and inside it wind and rain, with no room to live in. Following without receiving? A few rooms built, and no wall on any side—"not spared the thief who tunnels in"; the burglar can climb over at any hour. Hence those eight characters: receiving and following must sustain each other; only then is anything reached.

Daoxuan presses the point harder still. Receiving is only an enabling condition—it "has not yet any merit of conduct"; the perimeter wall does not grow houses by itself. One must, through following-conduct, guard against wrong in the face of each situation—"it is by this following-conduct that the fruit of sagehood is reached." He goes so far as to say one fierce sentence:

"If there is only receiving and no following-conduct, the receiving turns into a deceit about the precepts, and one drifts into the sea of suffering—worse than not having received at all, for then there would be no precept to violate."

To receive the precepts and follow not at all is to be deceived by the precepts in turn, and to drift into the sea of suffering—better not to have received, for then at least there is no precept to violate. Spoken thirteen hundred years ago, the sentence still lands today as a blow of the staff, and still as an intimate reminder: reception is not graduation; it is breaking ground. The day the perimeter wall goes up, the construction has only begun; every day of building thereafter counts. Part One said "when the precept is pure, concentration comes of itself"; Part Two said that keeping sends forth the fragrance of virtue—the purity is in the following, and the fragrance is in the following too.

Partial Accord with the Greater Vehicle: A Judgment with Measure

Daoxuan also made a famous determination about the Sifenlü: partial accord with the Greater Vehicle. The Karman-Commentary adduces five pieces of evidence—transmitted in Yuanzhao's Zichiji as:

"The Commentary lists five senses in all: that the monks address one another as 'children of the Buddha'; that the merit is dedicated to beings, to accomplish the Buddha-path; that Dravya wearied of the fruit of the adept; that in relinquishing goods the use of mind is not the grave, graspingly calculating kind; and that sense-objects are cognized by consciousness, not by the faculty alone—these are all genuine instances."

In the text of the vinaya, the monks call one another "children of the Buddha"; at the recitation of the code the merit is dedicated—to beings, to accomplish the Buddha-path—turning the merit over to all beings, that they may become Buddhas; Dravya-Mallaputra, already an arhat, still found the adept's station wanting, and resolved to serve the Saṅgha as its steward for the good of others. Through the seams of a śrāvaka vinaya's letters, everywhere, breathes the air of the Greater Vehicle.

What is precious is the measure. In his day some said outright that "the Sifenlü simply is Mahāyāna"—Daoxuan declined this, finding the judgment too sweeping; he said only "partial accord": a śrāvaka vinaya by origin, whose pulse runs toward the Greater Vehicle. He neither demotes it as Lesser nor inflates it as Greater; the five senses are his evidence, and an inch is an inch. The clause in the last chapter's three-school judgment—"because its teaching harbors a meaning that partially opens onto the Greater Vehicle, it ultimately converges on the Perfect Vehicle"—has its ground exactly here.

One Book's Thousand Years

Beyond the Xingshichao, Daoxuan wrote the Jieshu, expounding the precept-clauses, and the Karman-Commentary—the Yeshu—expounding the formal acts: the three great works, standing like the legs of a tripod, each with its office. In the Song, Vinaya Master Yuanzhao of Lingzhi wrote a record on each of the three: the Zichiji on the Xingshichao, the Xingzongji on the Jieshu, the Jiyuanji on the Yeshu—the three-school judgment quoted in the last chapter, and the line "forms a wholesome seed," come down to us precisely through the Zichiji. And alongside Yuanzhao there was Vinaya Master Yunkan's "Huizheng" line of sub-commentary, running in parallel and in contest with the "Zichi" line.

Look at the phenomenon: what the Song vinaya masters contested was not whether to use this book, but how to read it. When a book reaches the point where everyone must use it and only its reading is contested—that is a canonical standard. In the Tianbao years, the monk Jianzhen—Ganjin—crossed east six times and carried the Nanshan vinaya to Japan; for the thousand years since, whoever in East Asia has lectured on the Sifenlü has had this Xingshichao on the desk.

One book held up a thousand years of vinaya learning, and not on the strength of fine prose—on that spine: receiving founds the root; following completes the conduct. And at the heart of the middle fascicle, the substance-received is judged to be "a seed perfumed into the store-consciousness"—a single wholesome seed in the storehouse of consciousness.

A seed. The word is homely to say, and deep to think on. How does a single seed live in the mind? In which layer is it stored? Who hinders it in the dark? And what, in the end, is it to grow into?

In the next chapter, we walk into the depths of this seed.