The Precept Is Also a Gate

8.2 The Precept Is Also a Gate

The last chapter said the precept is the foundation. But a foundation, in the end, lies outside the gate—if the precept is forever only a foundation, it is forever not a gate. Precept-keeping, the thing itself: can it, or can it not, run directly through into samādhi?

This question the Śūraṅgama Sūtra had in fact already answered—just before the four pure and clear instructions. First, the order of the fascicles: the Twenty-Five Gateways of Perfect Penetration run from fascicle five into the first half of fascicle six; the four pure and clear instructions stand in the latter part of fascicle six. So this chapter is not reading on down the sūtra; it turns back to the earlier part of the same text—the latter part says plainly that the precept is the ground of concentration; the earlier part had already set the precept up as a gate. One sūtra, confirming itself in two places.

What sort of exchange was it? The Buddha asked the sages in the assembly: through which gate did you first enter and attain the Way? Twenty-five great bodhisattvas and arhats beyond study rose one by one to speak for themselves, each setting forth the skillful means of his first attainment of the Way, each closing with "this is foremost." The twenty-five having spoken, the Buddha pronounced a verdict:

You now behold these twenty-five who are beyond study, great bodhisattvas and arhats, each setting forth the first skillful means of his attainment of the Way; all of them speak of cultivating true perfect penetration, and in their cultivation there is, in truth, no superiority or inferiority, no before or after.

The verse that follows hard upon it says: "The nature one returns to is without a second; the skillful means are many doors." The nature returned to is one only; the skillful means of entry are many—and among these many doors there is no higher and lower, no before and after. That verdict is the lifeline of this chapter: so long as the precept holds a seat among these twenty-five gateways, it stands fully co-equal with the ear-faculty gateway and the Buddha-recollection gateway—a gate into concentration with complete qualification, not a preparation one rank below.

Is the precept in there? It is. And it holds more than one seat.

Upāli rose and spoke for himself. He had followed the Buddha in person over the city wall into homelessness; with his own eyes he had watched the Tathāgata's six years of ardent toil, seen the Tathāgata subdue the host of Māra; receiving the Buddha's instruction in the precepts, even to the three thousand deportments and the eighty thousand subtle points, all became pure in him—the Buddha sealed him as "the regulator of the assembly," in upholding precepts and disciplining the body acclaimed by the assembly as supreme. The gate he set forth is these few clauses: "by gripping the body I gained mastery of the body; in turn, by gripping the mind, the mind gained penetration; thereafter body and mind alike were freely penetrating." First the precept restrains the body; the body having gained mastery, that restraint passes "in turn" onto the mind, and the mind penetrates. Precept-keeping does not halt at the level of the body; of itself it walks all the way into the mind—this is the whole course of "gathering in the mind is the precept; from the precept concentration is born" in a single person. The precept does not pave the road for some other method; the precept itself runs through to the end.

Ucchuṣma rose and spoke for himself. He said that in a far-off kalpa long ago he was "by nature heavy with desire"; the Buddha Sovereign-of-Emptiness appeared in the world, told him that a person heavy with lust becomes a mass of raging fire, and taught him to contemplate throughout the hundred bones of his body the cold and warm breaths within—"the divine light gathered inward, and the lustful mind was transmuted into the fire of wisdom"—and from then on the Buddhas all called him "Fire-Head." By the samādhi of fire-light he became an arhat: "the outflows extinguished, a great jewel-flame arose." What most repays close reading in this passage is one word, "transmuted": the very defilement the precept is meant to treat was not, in him, pressed down—it was transmuted into the fire of wisdom. The defilement became the fuel of concentration. "The outflows extinguished"—the "leak" of the last chapter's leaking vessel is here extinguished.

Mahākāśyapa rose and spoke for himself. He cultivated dhutaṅga—the practice that carries the precept of few desires and contentment to its densest point: wearing rag-robes, always begging food, sitting beneath trees—contemplating the decay-and-change of the world's six objects, by emptiness-and-stillness alone cultivating toward cessation, so that "body and mind could pass through a hundred thousand kalpas as in the snap of a finger." The Buddha declared him "foremost in dhutaṅga." Contract desire to the densest point, and the contraction itself opens a gate.

Three sages, three precept-gateways, falling in three different families on the map of the twenty-five: Upāli in the six consciousnesses, Ucchuṣma in the seven elements, Kāśyapa in the six objects. The precept is not "gateway number such-and-such" among the twenty-five; it is a single thread running across several families. We may as well give the three doors each a name. Upāli is gathering-in—the precept grips the body, the gripping of the body turns into a gathering-in of the mind, and the gathering-in of the mind is itself entering concentration. Ucchuṣma is transmutation—the defilement under treatment turns, contrariwise, into the provision of concentration. Kāśyapa is contraction—few desires drawn in to the densest, dense until it breaks through. That the precept can open a door at points of entry so unlike is precisely because it has never had only one power of entering concentration.

One thing must be seen clearly here: at the chapter's close, for the temperament of the Sahā world, the single ear-faculty gateway is picked out as best fitted—that is suiting the faculty, the most ready-to-hand for the beings of this world, not a judgment that the ear-faculty stands above the rest; the verdict "no superiority or inferiority, no before or after" still governs everything. Just so, the three precept-gateways must not be read back onto the old road of "first keep the precept well, and only then is one fit to enter concentration"—to do that is to have failed to read the Buddha's verdict at all.

For the precept-keeper this is a liberation. There is no need to wait until the precept is "perfected in cultivation" before one is qualified to speak of concentration—precept-keeping gathers in the mind, and that, here and now, is a practice of entering concentration; the defilement presently under treatment can be fuel, and not only obstacle; the contraction of few desires and contentment is, in itself, the entry. The last chapter looked back at the precept from the side of concentration, and saw the precept bearing concentration up from below; this chapter looks out from the side of the precept, and sees the precept running through, of itself, into concentration. The two faces together: the precept is the foundation, and the precept is also a gate.

But the precept inside the gate—what form of precept is it? A list of "what not to do," or something else? This question the Śūraṅgama does not answer head-on. The answer is in another sūtra—at the Lotus assembly.