The Tidal Zone
1.2 The Tidal Zone
One who has aroused the mind usually feels a certain solidity settle in: at last, I am on the road. Faith in the Buddha, faith in the Dharma, faith that this way can be walked—as if one had stepped from a swaying log onto firm ground, and from here on could only advance, never slide back. In the language of the stations, the feeling translates into a sentence: "I have entered the Ten Faiths, the first stretch of the bodhisattva's fifty stations; at the very least, it is forward from here."
Yet of all the stretches in the canon, the Ten Faiths is the one least like firm ground.
First, the terms. The Ten Faiths are the foremost ten of the fifty stations, also called the faith-position; one who dwells here is said in the scriptures to be "before the abodes"—still prior to the Ten Abodes—and is classed as "outer-ordinary": outer, still outside the noble stations; ordinary, still an ordinary being. The Bodhisattva-keyūra-sūtra describes the condition of a person on this stretch:
Replete with all defilements, amassing measureless good karma, he both regresses and advances. If he meets a good spiritual friend and learns the Buddha-dharma, then in one eon or two he enters the abodes. If not, he sinks forever and does not emerge.
Three clauses, and not one of them is firm ground. The first: "replete with all defilements"—the person at the faith-position has severed not a single fetter; the whole array of afflictions sits untouched. He cultivates faith while wearing the full harness of bonds. How different from the śrāvaka's first fruit: the stream-enterer is named by "three fetters severed," while the faith-position bodhisattva has severed nothing at all. The second clause: "he both regresses and advances"—he can fall back, he can move forward; the direction is unfixed. The third weighs heaviest: his destination hangs on outer conditions. Meet a good spiritual friend, learn the Buddha-dharma, and in one or two eons he enters the abodes; fail to meet one, and he "sinks forever and does not emerge"—submerged for long eons, never surfacing.
What is such a stretch like? Like the tidal zone at the edge of the sea. The tide comes in, the water climbs, and one moves a few steps forward; the tide goes out, and one slips a few steps back; the ground underfoot is ground that moves. The Ten Faiths are not the solid first stair of the noble stations; they are the tidal zone before the noble stations—a real beginning, but a fluid one: regressible, and in need of a steadying hand.
The Keyūra gives this judgment a formal pair of terms. What the faith-position cultivates, it says, are "roots of good of the regressing portion"—good roots of the kind that can fall away; only upon entering the Abode of Arousing the Mind, the first of the Ten Abodes, is one "a person of the advancing portion"—the kind that ascends without falling back. Regressing portion on one side, advancing portion on the other, and the line drawn at the doorway of the abodes. We will come back to that line, for it is the crux of the chapter.
Even the Names Are Unsettled
The unfixedness of the Ten Faiths leaves a trace visible even in the names: which ten minds make up the Ten Faiths has no settled canonical list.
The upper fascicle of the Keyūra lists: faith, mindfulness, energy, wisdom, concentration, non-regress, dedication, guarding, discipline, vow—with a "mind of non-regress" in sixth place. But the lower fascicle of the same sūtra, restating the ten, gives a changed list: faith, energy, mindfulness, wisdom, concentration, discipline, dedication, guarding-the-Dharma, equanimity, vow—the "non-regress mind" is gone, an "equanimity mind" has appeared, and mindfulness and energy have traded places. One sūtra, inconsistent between its own two fascicles. The eighth fascicle of the Śūraṅgama-sūtra has yet another list: faith, mindfulness, energy, wisdom, concentration, non-regress, guarding-the-Dharma, dedication, discipline, vow—non-regress present, equanimity absent, and the order of guarding and dedication differing from both Keyūra lists.
Set the three side by side: whether there is an "equanimity mind," whether there is a "non-regress mind," whether guarding precedes dedication—no two lists fully agree. This book takes no side here and forces no harmony: the three lists stand as they are, and they differ. But the fact itself is worth a second look. The nearer a stage lies to the source of the road, the less it has been hardened by the stations after it—and even its names carry a kind of unset pliancy; whereas at the fruits defined by severing, the names are exact and immovable. The looseness of the names and the looseness of the position keep time with each other here. Take this only as a suggestive correspondence, nothing more—the divergence of the lists is first of all a matter of translation and transmission, and should not be pressed into a doctrine.
Why It Must Be Able to Regress
That the faith-position can regress is not a special weakness of those who dwell in it; it follows from the structure of the position itself.
Ask: for a station to be incapable of regress, what must hold it up? Some irreversible accomplishment must sit beneath it. On the śrāvaka path, what holds the stream-enterer fast is "the three fetters already severed"—a severed fetter does not grow back; it is an unconditioned accomplishment, a demolition that cannot be undone. The previous volume of this series, The Four Fruits of the Path, is one long account of that subtractive ruler. But the person at the faith-position is "replete with all defilements": not one fetter severed, nothing irreversible underneath. What he amasses is "measureless good karma"—and karma of the good kind is conditioned: it waxes and wanes, accrues and erodes. When what bears the position up is mutable, the position moves with it. "Both regresses and advances" is not an accident; it is the structure.
A comparison: the license and the feel. Pass the test and the license is yours; let the car sit three months and the license is not revoked for rusty hands—it is an irreversible credential. The feel is otherwise: an athlete, a musician—a few weeks without practice and the feel slips. The faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom cultivated at the faith-position are things of the feel—they must be kept up daily, and slacken once and they slide; brimming confidence today, shaken by one adverse turn tomorrow. Beneath the Ten Faiths no "license of severing" has yet been laid; its entire estate is feel. To treat the Ten Faiths as a license that cannot be lost is to mistake feel for license.
The Watershed Is at Entering the Abodes, Not at the First Thought
Here the last chapter's words must be squared with this one's. The last chapter said: arouse bodhicitta, and in a single thought you enter the gate of the Great Vehicle. This chapter says: the faith-position regresses, even to "sinking forever." Do the two collide?
They do not—provided two things are kept apart: entering the gate is one thing; position-non-regress is another.
The Keyūra says that when an ordinary being, within the teaching of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, "gives rise to one thought of faith, he thereupon arouses bodhicitta"; such a person is named a "bodhisattva in conception," also a "bodhisattva in designation," a "bodhisattva in name"—and the sūtra stamps the line: "such a person is, at that time, before the abodes." The arising brought him through the gate and gave him the bodhisattva's name; but the three titles the sūtra confers all carry the sense of not yet made solid: a bodhisattva so called by conception, by designation, by name. The gate truly was entered; the standing inside it is still provisionally conferred. And the line between regress and non-regress the text draws in full clarity: the regressing portion lies on the faith-position's side; the advancing portion begins at the Abode of Arousing the Mind. Of the Mahāyāna's "three non-regresses"—of position, of practice, of mindfulness—the first, position-non-regress, begins at entering the abodes, not at the thought of arising. The Ten Faiths are the incubation belt before position-non-regress.
Another comparison. Signing up for a gym membership and building a base of fitness that does not easily drain away are two different things. The signing is a moment's decision; card in hand, you are a member—that is entry, and no one can say you did not enter. But the first weeks after signing are precisely when most lapse—two days on, three days off—and many never walk in again: "both regresses and advances," even "sinks forever and does not emerge." Only when one has trained past a certain threshold, and the body has genuinely changed its base so that the foundation no longer drains away with an occasional absence—only that is "entering the abodes," the beginning of position-non-regress. The thrill of the signing is not the moment of being secure. Neither is the thought of arising.
Draw the line cleanly, and the two chapters compose one picture without contradiction: the thought arises, the gate opens, you are on the road—this is true; the first stretch inside the gate is a tidal zone where you advance and regress, and only by walking it through and truly entering the abodes do you cross the watershed of position-non-regress—this is also true. The misunderstanding is born of fusing two sentences into one: "I have aroused the mind, therefore I cannot regress." The first half is entry; the second is position-non-regress; between them lies the whole of the Ten Faiths.
The Least Stable Is the Most Fundamental
After so much about regress, has faith been talked down to nothing? The Keyūra has one more weighty sentence:
The ten minds of faith are the root of all practice.
The ten minds of faith are the root of all bodhisattva practice; the sūtra adds that one mind of faith opens into ten grades, and the ten minds multiplied become "a hundred gates of luminous dharma." So the Ten Faiths wear two titles at once: in stability, the least settled of the whole way (regressible, before the abodes, in name only); in standing, the most fundamental of the whole way (the root of all practice).
The two titles do not merely fail to conflict; they are two faces of one fact. Precisely because faith is the root of all practice, it must sit foremost—simplest, least hardened; and foremost, simplest, least hardened is exactly what is most able to regress. A root is a root just insofar as it has not yet turned to wood, is still tender and woundable; were it already hard and immovable, it would not be a sprouting root but a finished trunk. The regressibility of the faith-position is not its defect; it is the honest aspect of the first sprouting of all practice. Nor is "bodhisattva in designation" a slight; it is exactness: at this point the bodhisattva's name is provisionally conferred upon a newly sprouted faith, and between the name and the reality lies the whole unwalked road. See this clearly, and a practitioner will neither demand of the faith-position a solidity it was never meant to have, nor think less of faith because faith can fade.
One more sentence of honest accounting. The explicit texts for "the faith-position can regress" in this chapter—"replete with all defilements, both regresses and advances, sinks forever and does not emerge," "regressing portion / advancing portion"—come entirely from the Keyūra. The Śūraṅgama, though it lists the same ten minds, lays them out flat, name and virtue, and nowhere says the faith-position falls back; its sixth member is in fact a "mind of non-regress," whose ring leans rather toward advancing without retreat. The judgment "the faith-position can regress" therefore rests its scriptural weight on the Keyūra line; this book argues from the Keyūra's explicit words, states that boundary in the open, and does not read into the Śūraṅgama what it never said.
How to Walk a Tidal Zone
The work of the faith-position now comes clear, and it is two things.
First, daily upkeep. Faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom are feel, not license; and the way of keeping feel is nothing other than not stopping. Today's confidence is no guarantee of tomorrow's; tomorrow it must be aroused again, guarded again. Second, keeping close to good spiritual friends. The sūtra ties the destination of the faith-position, in so many words, to "meeting a good spiritual friend and learning the Buddha-dharma"—meet one, and in an eon or two you enter the abodes; fail to, and you sink without surfacing. Nowhere is walking alone more dangerous than on a tidal flat; for this stretch, the canon's prescription is company—someone alongside, someone steadying.
And a tidal zone has an end. Walk the Ten Faiths through, and ahead lies dry ground: entering the abodes, where position-non-regress begins. From a faith that can fail to an abiding that cannot—how is that one step taken? And what lies inside the gate of the Ten Abodes? That is the business of Part Two.