Transition ⑧ · From the Ground of Concentration to the Precept as Teacher

Part Eight has walked up to the buddha-ground, and stopped. The page is about to turn.

This middle page is a breath.

With eight parts read, the precept in your hands is already complete. It is a foundation: gathering in the mind is the precept; from the precept concentration is born—and if even one of the instructions is missing, the accumulation of concentration is water poured into a leaking vessel. It is a gate: Upāli gripped the body and then gripped the mind, and the precept stands equal in rank with the ear-faculty, with mindfulness of the Buddha, with all the other gateways—no superior or inferior, no before or after. It is a gate of practice: to abide in, not to keep away from—restriction settled into the posture in which "one is able to preach in peace." And it has stage-allocations: one and the same ten courses of good action, from the guard of deliberation to performance by one's very nature, from the śrāvaka's measure to the measure of the buddha-ground—predominant yet pervasive. From the three-part Pāli definition of Part One to the ten grounds of the Avataṃsaka, this road has taken eight parts to walk: the precept grew from rule upon rule into a precept-substance received and held in the mind, set down its mark under the prajñā blade, and at last, within three great sūtras, stood up into a complete circle.

Is it enough?

In the language of scripture and doctrine, yes. From the Āgamas to the Avataṃsaka, every station from which the precept can be spoken has been spoken.

But there is one thing the language of the scriptures has never done for us: the person reading them lives today.

People keeping precepts today have today's difficulties. Some speak the precept softer and softer, until it is spoken into a mood—only a ball of well-meaning warmth remains, and the boundary once undertaken has quietly melted away: keeping the feeling, dropping the form. Others keep the precept harder and harder, until it is kept into a ledger—every article in place, the list complete, but the bit of living heart inside it gone: keeping the form, dropping the heart. The two appearances look opposite; the root of the illness may yet not be two. That is for the next part to examine closely.

And deeper than the illness lies an entrustment. Between the twin śāla trees at Kuśinagara, as the Buddha lay on the point of parinirvāṇa, among the words He left His disciples was this one: After my passing, you should honor and revere the Prātimokṣa—know that this is your great teacher, no different from my remaining in the world.

Take the precept as your teacher. For more than two thousand years, those four words have stood. But how does the precept serve as "teacher"? How does a precept-book without a voice, in an age without the Buddha, teach a person on, day after day? Above all in this age of ours—words growing ever more plentiful, those willing to answer for their words ever fewer—how is the gate of speech to be guarded?

The final part, three chapters: first diagnose today's two illnesses, then look at one of today's perils, and at last raise those four words upright, face on—take the precept as your teacher.

The last stretch of this book walks out from the scrolls and back into daily life.

We turn the page.