Part Eight · The Complete Precept · The Precept as the Ground of Concentration

Seven parts of this book have carried the precept up to the sign-less height. What Part Eight has to walk is the last scriptural stretch of the precept's road—three great sūtras: the Śūraṅgama, the Lotus, the Avataṃsaka.

What this stretch must answer is, in truth, the sentence laid down at the close of Part One: when the precept is pure, concentration comes of itself. Now we are to watch it made good.

Four chapters, four positions. Chapter one sits in the Śūraṅgama assembly, hearing the Buddha gather the whole of cultivation into three clauses—gathering in the mind is what I call the precept; from the precept concentration is born; from concentration wisdom is unveiled: the precept is the foundation of concentration. Chapter two turns back to the Gateways of Perfect Penetration earlier in the same sūtra, and sees that the precept is not only a foundation—precept-keeping itself, the thing itself, is a gate into concentration. Chapter three moves to the Lotus assembly, to see what form the precept inside that gate takes: not a list of don'ts, but a positive mode of abiding. Chapter four climbs the Avataṃsaka's ten grounds, to see how one and the same precept goes from needing effortful guarding all the way to natural conduct—held to the buddha-ground.

Foundation, gate, practice, stage-allocation—put the four positions together, and the precept is complete.

We go first to the Śūraṅgama assembly.