Transition ⑥ · From the Twelve Vows to the Sign-less Precept

Part Six has walked up to the foot of the ladder, and stopped. The page is about to turn.

This middle page is a breath.

With Part Six done, you hold a complete set of things in your hands. A list of vows: the fifth vow is the very body of the precept-vow—to complete the three clusters of pure precepts, with the transgressor's way home written into the Buddha's root vows; the other eleven guard the whole foundation on which precept-keeping stands—body, faculties, views, circumstance, food, clothing. A distinction: the twelve vows are not a ladder but a piece of level ground; the chain of the Heyi-jing is the business of the ladder, and Bhaiṣajyaguru's vows are the business beneath it—enabling precept-keeping, and the fruition that follows from keeping precepts: two stretches of road, joined into one. A way home: regaining purity upon hearing the name—yet that regained purity is rooted in the precept-good one once planted oneself; the name is like medicine, and what it awakens is one's own seed.

This set of things has spoken the outer protection of the precept to completion.

Is it enough?

In the language of road-paving, yes. From Part One to Part Six, the precept has been spoken all along as something solid: solid enough to have a definition, a position, articles, a Vinaya canon, three clusters, a law of reception, a precept-substance, a seed, conditions, a way home. A great edifice of precept-learning—foundation, beams and pillars, roof tiles, doors and windows, down to the handrail for the one who falls—lacks nothing.

But one blade has hung suspended for three parts of this book, and has not yet fallen to the bottom.

Part Four's prajñā blade: transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable.

At the time it only opened a first cut—the truer the emptiness, the steadier the keeping; the poison-dragon's one-day precepts stood witness. But as that blade goes deeper, questions are waiting: if the precept-substance is a seed in the store-consciousness, is the mark of the seed obtainable, or not? The "I" who keeps the precepts has been set down—what of the precept-sign that is kept? When a person keeps the precepts until there is no keeping left to keep, when the precept is pure until no precept can be seen there to purify—is that a fall, or is it the ultimate?

These questions the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras answer head-on. And the Chan gate of the Chinese land raised the answer into an astonishing name—not "no precept," but "the sign-less precept": a precept that sets up not a single mark, while the precept-substance shines perfect and bright. When the Sixth Patriarch opened the Dharma at Dafan Temple, the first thing he did was confer this very precept upon the assembly.

The long road of precept-learning is about to walk its last height.

We turn the page.