Part Seven · Prajñā's Sign-less Precept · A Precept That Sets Up No Mark

Six parts of this book have made the precept ever more solid: a definition, a position, a Vinaya canon, three clusters, a precept-substance, a seed, conditions, a road home. Part Seven is going to do the opposite thing—take every one of these "marks," and set them down.

To set down is not to tear down. What this part walks is the full course of prajñā's single blade: the blade falls all the way, and the precept, far from toppling, comes to stand at its very steadiest.

Three chapters, three scenes. The first begins with a riddle—the Diamond Sūtra, the most widely circulated scripture in the Chinese world, uses the word "precept" exactly once in its whole length; the answer lies in the six hundred fascicles of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra: keeping and breaking are by their very nature empty—and true precept-keeping starts exactly there. The second watches the sign-less precept land on a living person—two monks who had broken the precept and were too ashamed to face the Buddha meet Vimalakīrti; the eight words "Remove it directly, do not perturb their minds" are the deepest sentence in the Buddhist learning of repentance. The third gathers in the three wheels—the one who keeps, the precept kept, the beings protected; the three wheels pure, and the keeping all the truer.

There is one sentence this part will press on you again and again; write it down before you start: sign-less does not mean precept-less. The more thoroughly emptied, the more strictly kept—read the three chapters through, and the sentence will stand up on its own.

We begin with that riddle.