The Three Wheels Are Pure

7.3 The Three Wheels Are Pure

The volume on giving, at its highest point, set up a name: the three wheels—giver, receiver, gift—all empty; all three unobtainable, and the giving all the truer for it. The precept gate has now walked up to that same height. The question asks itself: does the precept have three wheels of its own?

It does. And there is no need for later hands to lay the giving gate's grid over it—the scripture writes it out itself. The first division of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra, fascicle seventy-five:

When a bodhisattva-mahāsattva keeps the precepts, the three wheels are pure: first, he does not grasp at an "I" that keeps the precept; second, he does not grasp at the beings he protects; third, he does not cling to the precept or to its fruit—this is a bodhisattva-mahāsattva's three-wheel purity in the keeping of precepts.

The precept's three wheels, listed by the scripture's own hand: the I that keeps, the beings protected, the precept and its fruit. In the keeping of the precept, all three are set down together—this is named the three wheels pure. The name "the three wheels empty" was in origin a phrase crystallized for the giving gate by later generations annotating the Diamond Sūtra; when the scripture speaks of the precept, it uses words of its own house—"the three wheels are pure," "the three things are unobtainable." Two names; one matter.

Kumārajīva's translation bureau has it in plain words as well. The Larger Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra: "Practicing the śīla-pāramitā, one does not obtain the precept, does not obtain the precept-keeper, does not obtain the precept-breaker." The Dazhidu lun is briefer still: "Loving the precept, the precept-keeper, and the precept-breaker—these three things are unobtainable." Notice how Kumārajīva's line lists them: precept-keeper and precept-breaker side by side—the axis of keeping and the axis of breaking, both unobtainable at once. The last chapter watched Vimalakīrti empty the axis of breaking; here, even the "I" that keeps is set down with it.

A Bridge Nāgārjuna Built with His Own Hands

The three wheels of the giving gate, carried over to the precept gate—who built that bridge? Nāgārjuna himself. In fascicle fourteen of the Dazhidu lun, treating the precept against killing, he reasons:

Because the being is unobtainable, the transgression of killing too is unobtainable; because the transgression is unobtainable, the precept too is unobtainable … As was said above of giving—that there is no giver, no recipient, no gift—so it is here as well.

The last clause is the bridge: as was said above of giving—just as the chapter on giving said, no giver, no recipient, no gift—"so it is here as well." However the giving gate empties its three wheels, the precept gate empties them the same way.

Only watch Nāgārjuna's gait closely—it differs from fascicle seventy-five. He does not set three items side by side and let them go; he dissolves them in a single linked chain—the being unobtainable, therefore the transgression of killing unobtainable; the transgression unobtainable, therefore the precept unobtainable. "The beings protected" is the pivot, link locking into link. Xuanzang's scripture lays the three wheels out in parallel; Nāgārjuna's treatise moves in three chained steps—two forms that complement each other, arriving at the same place.

The Guardrail, This Time, Must Bear Weight

Part Four quoted one of Nāgārjuna's guardrails, and only passed it by; in this chapter it must carry the whole weight. Someone presses the objection: abandoning evil and doing good—that is keeping the precept; how can you say transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable? Nāgārjuna answers:

This is not the "unobtainable" of wrong views or a crude mind; it is by practicing the samādhi of emptiness and seeing with the eye of wisdom that the transgression is unobtainable.

The word "unobtainable" is not for people of wrong views and a crude mind to say. It is what one who practices the samādhi of emptiness, the eye of wisdom open before him, sees face to face—not a convenient phrase on the lips. Zhiyi, ruling on repentance, said of the dull that "a light mind cannot remove the offense of a heavy mind"; Nāgārjuna here rules along the same line: a crude mind mouthing emptiness is counterfeit emptiness.

And Nāgārjuna has one line more merciless still, which says down to the bone why the three wheels must be empty:

Seeing a precept-breaking, offending person one despises him; seeing a precept-keeping, good person one cherishes him—such precept-keeping is itself a cause that gives rise to offense.

One who keeps the precept with marks raises contempt at the sight of a breaker and fondness-and-aversion at the sight of a keeper—his "precept-keeping" is manufacturing offense on his behalf. Contempt is offense; fondness and aversion are bonds; the precept he keeps has become provisions for self-conceit. This is the price of three wheels left unemptied: the precept turns and bites its keeper. Turn it around: let the three wheels once be empty—no grasping at an I that keeps, no grasping at the protected, no clinging to the precept and its fruit—and contempt has nowhere to rise from, fondness and aversion nowhere to land, and only then is the precept kept thoroughly clean. The sign-less keeping is stricter than the sign-grasping keeping—by this point no longer a slogan, but an account that can be settled entry by entry.

Empty All the Way Down, and the Practice Is Still There

This principle the patriarchs of the Chinese land caught and held steady.

The sixth division of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra has a run through the six perfections in parallel, in which giving and the precept stand right next to each other: "giving yet relinquishing nothing; upholding pure precepts yet parting from the mark of the precept; bearing patiently yet with mind inexhaustible …" Upholding pure precepts, yet parting from the mark of the precept—the keeping, kept as ever; the mark, parted from entirely. The volume on giving and this volume were neighbors in the scripture all along.

Zhiyi, ruling on the six perfections of the Shared Teaching, gathers both gates in one sentence: "when giver, recipient, and gift—the three things—are all empty, this is called giving; when one does not see keeping or breaking, this is called the precept." Chengguan of Qingliang, annotating the Avataṃsaka, lists out the precept's three wheels—not grasping at the beings who keep the precept, not clinging to the practice performed, not abiding in the precept-dharma—and the name he gives this state is, of all things, "the mark of pure conduct." Emptied to the very bottom, and the name still says conduct, still says purity: the practice has not lost an inch. Zhiyi, annotating the bodhisattva precepts, cites "transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable" as the very body of the precept-perfection, yet insists in the same breath: there is besides a mind able to keep the precept, and that is the true precept. Emptiness does not break the precept-substance—that single seed in the storehouse-consciousness from Part Five lies safe and unharmed under prajñā's blade; what the blade pares away is only the marks wound around the outside of the seed.

Later, when the Sixth Patriarch of the Chan school opened the Dharma at Dafan Temple, the first thing he did was confer the "sign-less precept" on the whole assembly; and the Platform Sūtra carries the line "the mind-ground without wrong is the self-nature precept." The confidence behind that name and that line is exactly what these three chapters have laid out: sign-less has never meant precept-less—it is when the precept stands firm on the mind-ground that the mark dares to be set down.

Here Part Seven has walked its full length.

Prajñā's one blade, three chapters to finish the cut: the Diamond Sūtra's silence turned out to be a division of labor, and the great scripture's first division set up the teaching—keeping and breaking are by their very nature empty, and the genuine keeping is stricter than the counterfeit (chapter one); Vimalakīrti brought the sign-less to bear on repentance—remove it directly, do not perturb the mind, and principial repentance is the depth of phenomenal repentance (chapter two); the three wheels gathered in—the I that keeps, the beings protected, the precept and its fruit, set down all at once, and yet "upholding pure precepts yet parting from the mark of the precept": empty all the way down, and the practice is still there (chapter three).

One sentence to close Part Seven: the more thoroughly emptied, the more truly kept—the sign-less precept is the highest point of the precept's learning, not its exit.

But the sentence Part One of this whole book set up is still waiting for its close: when the precept is pure, concentration comes of itself. Now the precept has been spoken all the way to the sign-less—between the sign-less precept and the profound concentration, where is the seam?

That seam is at the Śūraṅgama assembly.