Pāli RootsRemorse in the ĀgamasThe Sevenfold Worship and SamantabhadraThe Death-and-Rebirth BridgeThe Three RepentancesThe Chinese Repentance LiturgiesThe Repentance of Non-Arising: Transgression Has No Own-BeingThe Modern Diagnosis, and Daily Use
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Part 5 · The Three Repentances
Repentance · 2 papers
The part before this walked to the end of that bridge, and we discovered one thing: from Part One through Part Four, the repentance we have been speaking of has all along been a si[ from the book's part intro ]
論Study the papersfootnotes · abstracts
10The Three RepentancesRepentance is not a single act but a ladder that rises from the phenomenal into the principial, each rung buttressing the next. In the second fascicle of his Explaining the Stages of the Perfection of Dhyāna, the Sui master Zhiyi of Tiantai sorts repentance into three grades — procedural repentance buttressed by morality, sign-contemplating repentance buttressed by concentration, non-arising repentance buttressed by wisdom. This paper does not hasten to the summit. It first sets up the whole structure to be seen: what each grade does, how they pass one to the next, and why this is a ladder rather than three methods one might pick from at will. We shall see that climbing to a higher rung does not tear down the rung below — the three repentances "penetrate in meaning both the Tripiṭaka and the Mahāyāna," and a higher grade buttresses the lower rather than replacing it. The summit rung (non-arising repentance) is here named only; the deep sense by which it sees the offence as non-arising is left for this volume's end.11Sign-Based RepentanceOf the three repentances, procedural repentance most resembles what we ordinarily mean by repenting: to speak a fault aloud before the saṅgha and be restored to purity by the rule. Non-arising repentance stands at the farthest end, contemplating the nature of the offence and entering emptiness. Wedged between them, sign-based repentance (which Zhiyi's own text calls sign-contemplating repentance) is the easiest to pass over — yet it is the very rung at which repentance first needs concentration. Zhili's definition is the most exact: "sign-based repentance means that the concentrated mind conjures the contemplation, and takes the arising of a sign as its term." Zhiyi says it "sees, within a stilled mind, various signs … all of which is done within the concentrated mind." From here repentance is drawn in from the mouth and the formal procedure outside, in the saṅgha, into the stilled mind of the individual. It takes "seeing an auspicious sign" — a Buddha coming to stroke the crown, the sight of light, of flowers — as the token that an offence is extinguished; and yet at once it teaches that "the sign arises, but one does not grasp at the sign." The sign is a verification, not a destination; to grasp it is to fall to māra. Precisely because it takes the sign as token and not as home, it breaks downward the offence of intrinsic nature that procedural repentance cannot touch, and opens a door upward toward non-arising repentance — making it the true pivot by which repentance moves from the phenomenal into the principial. This paper crouches down to look hard at this middle rung: where the signs come from, why they cannot be relied on, and why it is a rung that neither end can spare. It is no skippable treadle; the three repentances are "performed in one and the same time," and the higher grade does not abolish the lower. The summit rung, non-arising repentance, is here named only and kept outside the door, reserved for this volume-part's end (Part VII).Same part, two ways in — papers keep the scholarly apparatus; the book is continuous prose for reading. Same source.