The Silence of the Diamond Sūtra

7.1 The Silence of the Diamond Sūtra

Begin with a fact that most people read past for a whole lifetime without noticing.

The Diamond Sūtra—of all the prajñā scriptures the most widely circulated and the most recited in the Chinese world—runs to some five thousand characters, and the word "precept" appears in it exactly once. Where? Speaking of the age when the Dharma runs toward its end, the Buddha says there will be "those who keep the precepts and cultivate merit, who toward these passages can give rise to a believing mind"—that one sighting, and no more; a single passing stroke, with not one word of development.

Now this is strange. A sūtra that carries "the sign-less" to its very limit takes giving head-on—giving while abiding nowhere; it takes patience head-on—the past-life episode of King Kali dismembering the body, set beside "no mark of self, no mark of person, no mark of being, no mark of life-span." Of the six perfections, toward the precept alone it says not a word. A tradition that gives the precept such weight—how can its best-loved sūtra be all but wordless on the precept?

An oversight? No. The answer is written into the canon's own catalog: the Diamond Sūtra is the ninth assembly of the six-hundred-fascicle Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra. Kumārajīva's free-standing translation circulated first; Xuanzang later translated the whole scripture, all six hundred fascicles—one and the same dharma-sea of prajñā, the Diamond Sūtra one assembly within it. And the sign-less teaching on the precept this great scripture did not set in the ninth assembly; it set it in the first division—spread thick across the first four hundred fascicles.

Not silence—a division of labor. To see how prajñā speaks of the precept, one must go into the great scripture.

Keeping and Breaking Are by Nature Empty

Fascicle forty-eight of the first division of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra speaks of the bodhisattva donning the "great-merit-armor" to cultivate the six perfections. When it comes to pure precepts, the passage runs:

When bodhisattva-mahāsattvas cultivate the perfection of pure precepts … taking non-apprehension as their skillful means … toward the dharma of pure precepts they hold the perception of it as a phantom, a dream, a reflection, an echo, a shadow, a sky-flower, a city of gandharvas, a thing conjured; toward pure precepts they neither rely nor cling, toward the evil of breakage they neither loathe nor seize—because keeping and breaking are by their very nature empty.

Read it word by word.

Toward pure precepts, neither relying nor clinging—toward the precept you yourself have kept purely, do not lean on it, do not cling to it. Do not make the precept your capital; do not make purity your identity.

Toward the evil of breakage, neither loathing nor seizing—toward the evil of a broken precept, no loathing, and no taking it up either. Not seizing it goes without saying; but not loathing it? Loathing too is a kind of grasping—the mind stuck fast to the mark "evil," only stuck from the other side.

By what right are both ends let go? The final clause gives the reason: "because keeping and breaking are by their very nature empty." The mark of keeping the precept, the mark of breaking it—pressed back to their very nature, neither can be found. Fascicle nine of the same scripture says the same thing in other words: bodhisattvas abide in the perfection of pure precepts "because by ultimate emptiness they do not raise a mind of keeping-or-breaking the precept"—even the thoughts "I am keeping the precept," "he is breaking the precept," never arise. And fascicle forty-eight has one more line to gather it in: when bodhisattvas cultivate prajñā, they "do not see keeping the precept or breaking it and the like, and with a mind free of clinging they cultivate pure precepts."

Please read the closing words more heavily than the rest: they cultivate pure precepts. Not seeing keeping or breaking—and cultivating pure precepts still. The mark set down; the practice unstopped. This is the first meaning of the sign-less precept: what is emptied is the mark, not the precept.

The Genuine, and the Counterfeit

To say "the mark empty, the practice unstopped" is not yet enough; the great scripture follows with one more cut, and a merciless one. It divides precept-keeping into two kinds—and the words it chooses are: the genuine perfection of pure precepts, and the counterfeit perfection of pure precepts.

The criterion is a single one. The scripture poses the question: what is it to speak a "counterfeit" perfection of pure precepts?—To speak it with apprehension: the I that keeps the precept really exists, the precept that is kept really exists, the merit of keeping really exists; one keeps it holding these marks in hand. And what is "genuine"?—To speak it with non-apprehension: own-being empty, unobtainable, kept without mark.

Weigh what this ruling weighs. Here is a man who keeps the precept with utmost rigor, never off by a hair—yet he clings hard to the marks "I keep the precept," "I am pure." The great scripture rules: counterfeit. A likeness, no more. Turned around: the keeping done within a mind of non-apprehension—that alone is genuine.

This one ruling knocks down head-on the suspicion that "sign-less" might mean a slackening. The sign-less is no demotion; it is a promotion: the sign-grasping keeping is only the shadow of precept-keeping; the sign-less keeping is the thing itself. Which is strict and which is slack, the scripture rules in the plainest terms—the genuine is stricter than the counterfeit.

"Is-Not, Is Named," Applied to the Precept As It Stands

Anyone who has read the Diamond Sūtra knows the sentence-form by heart: the Buddha speaks of such-and-such, which is not such-and-such, and is named such-and-such. This "is-not, is named" blade the Diamond Sūtra never used on the precept—but the first division of the great scripture did. In fascicle one hundred fifty-nine, Xuanzang's language runs:

This own-being of form is precisely not an own-being … and what is not an own-being is precisely the perfection of pure precepts.

The own-being of form is precisely not an own-being—and just because it is not an own-being, it is the perfection of pure precepts. The skeleton of the sentence is the Diamond Sūtra's exactly: set up, strip away, set up again. On the letter, the text here does not say "is-not the precept, is named the precept"—that is the Diamond Sūtra's phrasing, and Xuanzang's translation bureau had house rules of its own. But the logic is one and the same set: first the precept-sign is set up, then its own-being is stripped away, and on the very spot of the stripping the genuine precept is raised.

From here, the silence of the ninth assembly can be looked back on and understood. The Diamond Sūtra used this blade on giving and on patience, showing all the world the strokes; the cut that belongs to the precept, the great scripture had long since made, finely and completely, in the first division. In the King Kali episode, the sage of patience is dismembered joint by joint and has "no mark of self, no mark of person"; and at the end the Buddha enjoins: "He should give rise to a mind that abides nowhere." Abiding nowhere—exactly where the genuine pure precept abides.

Two Translation Strata, One Taste of Dharma

Last, a piece of family business among the names. In Part Four we read the Dazhidu lun (the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra), where Kumārajīva's term is "śīla-pāramitā" and the teaching is "transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable"; in this chapter we read the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra, where Xuanzang's term is "the perfection of pure precepts" and the teaching is "keeping and breaking are by their very nature empty." Two translation strata, set more than two hundred years apart, speaking of one and the same perfection, one taste of Dharma. You may still remember the poison-dragon of Part Four—"because I am holding the precepts, I will not take account of this body," paired with "transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable"; this chapter's "not seeing keeping the precept or breaking it, cultivating pure precepts with a mind free of clinging" is the same work, now spread out to the full breadth of doctrine.

The doctrine now stands whole. But doctrine shows its true measure only when it lands on a living person. One who has truly broken the precept—ashamed to the point of not daring to go before the Buddha—how does the sign-less precept receive him?

In Vimalakīrti's story there are exactly two such monks. In the next chapter, hear Upāli tell what happened, in his own words.