Coming to Dwell

2.1 Coming to Dwell

The last part ended with a question left hanging on the line: the same aroused mind regresses within the Ten Faiths, yet once it enters the Abode of Arousing the Mind it does not—the same mind; by what right does a change of position change its nature?

To answer, look first at the word "abode" itself. The "faith" of the Ten Faiths is a mental factor, a cultivated thing that depreciates like feel; its station "both regresses and advances," like a tidal flat. But "abode"—to settle, to stay, to dwell—is a word of place, a word of coming to rest. When the Avataṃsaka's Chapter on the Ten Abodes opens, the bodhisattva Dharma-Wisdom rises from concentration and addresses the assembly, and his first sentence sets this "dwelling" somewhere altogether unlike a beach:

Sons of the Buddha! Vast is the dwelling-place of the bodhisattva, equal to the dharma-realm and to space. Sons of the Buddha! The bodhisattva dwells in the family of the buddhas of the three times. That dwelling of the bodhisattva I shall now expound.

Two phrasings fix the specifications of "dwelling." First, "equal to the dharma-realm and to space"—the bodhisattva's dwelling-place is vast as the dharma-realm and space itself; this is no provisional mooring where the tide decides one's comings and goings. Second, and weightier: "dwells in the family of the buddhas of the three times"—the bodhisattva's dwelling is dwelling in the house of all the buddhas of past, present, and future. A house is where lineage and blood belong, where one's life is settled; to enter the Buddha's house is to enter the family of the Tathāgata's lineage, and to be, from then on, one of the household. And for just this reason, the entire chapter, from beginning to end, addresses those who dwell in the ten abodes by one name: "sons of the Buddha." The phrase is no idle honorific. Recall from the last part what the faith-position's dweller is called: "bodhisattva in conception," "bodhisattva in designation," "bodhisattva in name"—titled by conception, by designation, by name, not yet made solid. "Son of the Buddha" is different: a real standing, of one who has entered the Buddha's house and taken the family name. The faith-position's provisional name is here made good.

And the line between "regressible before the abodes, non-regressing within," the Keyūra draws most directly. The last part quoted it; here it need only be set back in place: "One in the Abode of Arousing the Mind is a person of the advancing-portion roots of good." What the faith-position cultivates are roots of the regressing portion; from the Abode of Arousing the Mind one is a person of the advancing portion—and the boundary between regress and non-regress falls, in so many words, at the Abode of Arousing the Mind.

What Changed Is What Lies Underfoot

Now the opening question can be answered. The same mind changes nature with a change of position—because what bears it up underfoot has changed.

What does the faith-position rest on? Conditioned roots of good: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom—things of the feel, accruals that depreciate and drain. What does the abode-position dwell in? The "Buddha's house"—the family of the Tathāgata's lineage. Lineage is the native capacity for buddhahood, that on which the arising of the mind depends; to enter the abodes is for this already-aroused mind to pass from "provisionally named upon faith" to "dwelling in the Buddha's house upon lineage." What it rests on has been exchanged: from good roots that can drain away, to the standing of one who has entered the house and taken the name. And a standing, once made solid, is not a thing that slips through a few days' slackness, as feel does.

A comparison: the auditor and the enrolled student. The auditor (the faith-position's bodhisattva-in-name) comes and goes freely; absent three days, no one stops him; let the coursework slide and his tie to the school simply dissolves—advancing and regressing, sinking without surfacing. But once formally registered, the enrollment on the books (the abode-position's son of the Buddha), you are one of the school's own. You may fail a course; you may slacken for a season; but "you are a student of this school" is a standing that is not struck off for a missed class. Faith becoming dwelling is exactly the step from auditing to enrollment: once the standing is solid, what can still regress is only the ups and downs within the standing—no longer the standing itself.

Which One Thing "Position-Non-Regress" Cannot Lose

The words "position-non-regress" are most easily over-read, and must be defined term by term. What does not regress is the position—the bodhisattva's position, the standing of a son of the Buddha. Position-non-regress means no longer losing the position of a bodhisattva: no more falling back to the ground of the two vehicles, turning into a śrāvaka or pratyekabuddha who seeks only his own deliverance; no more falling back to the ordinary, losing the bodhisattva lineage and reverting to the outer-ordinary. What it locks is the irreversibility of vehicle and standing—that one layer.

String the three steps together and the thread comes clear. Arousing bodhicitta brings one through the gate of the Great Vehicle, enrolled among the bodhisattvas—that is entry (chapter one). But the first station entered is the outer-ordinary Ten Faiths, regressible, capable of falling—that is instability (chapter two). Walk the Ten Faiths through and enter the Abode of Arousing the Mind, and the bodhisattva's position is at last established beyond loss—that is being placed (this chapter). Entry, instability, placement: three steps, one line. What position-non-regress locks down is precisely the "bodhisattva standing" that the first step raised and the second step left swaying—here made solid, and from here on in no danger of turning back into a śrāvaka or an ordinary being.

But equally weighty is what it does not lock. Position-non-regress does not mean "from here on, nothing regresses." The Mahāyāna's three non-regresses—of position, of practice, of mindfulness—are three layers, not one. Entering the abodes secures only the first: position. Further on, in the "practice" of the six perfections and the myriad deeds, the bodhisattva can still slip—practice-non-regress must wait for the region of the Ten Dedications; and in the "mindfulness" of thought after thought according with the Dharma, the road is longer still—mindfulness-non-regress waits for the eighth ground. In other words: the bodhisattva who has entered the abodes still has his afflictions; his practice still rises and falls; his works still advance and retreat—only his being a bodhisattva is no longer losable. To hear "position-non-regress" as "smooth sailing from here" is to mistake one layer's irreversibility for the whole journey's security; and when practice and mindfulness later prove still subject to slipping, that mistake breeds needless defeat and self-doubt.

What Holds the Non-Regress

Then what is it that props this non-regress up? Among the ten abodes there is one whose very name is "non-regress"—the seventh. The chapter describes its mark in a striking way:

This bodhisattva hears ten kinds of teaching and is firm without regress. What are the ten? Hearing that there is a Buddha, that there is no Buddha, his mind does not turn back within the Buddha-dharma. Hearing that there is a Dharma, that there is no Dharma, his mind does not turn back within the Buddha-dharma. ... Hearing that the three times are of one mark, that the three times are not of one mark, his mind does not turn back within the Buddha-dharma.

Look at what this "non-regress" consists in. It is not the non-regress of "concentration held firm, experience never lost," but this: faced with a battery of opposed dilemmas—is there finally a Buddha or not? does the Dharma finally stand or not? are the three times one or many?—"his mind does not turn back within the Buddha-dharma." Every one of these pairs is the kind of metaphysical razor that can shake a beginner's root view to its base; an ordinary person hearing them swings between the horns, even to the loss of the faith-root. The non-regress of the Abode of Non-Regress is exactly this: before the ten dilemmas most apt to cause regress, the root view stands unmoved.

And that lays the texture of "non-regress" bare: it is a matter of view, not of experience. Position-non-regress does not hold because of how deep a concentration or how bright a radiance has been amassed—those regress, as the last part said in full—but because one's root view of the Buddha-dharma has grown firm enough that even the sharpest dilemmas do not turn the mind. What it rests on is the settledness of view, not the flush of experience.

A comparison: believing a thing, and having thought a thing through. Belief can burn hot and yet not survive one elegant counterexample—"but what if..." and it wavers; that is the faith-position's condition. Having thought it through is different: such a person has walked both sides and every dilemma, and sees the root of the matter plainly; throw "Buddha or no Buddha, Dharma or no Dharma" at him, and his mind does not turn—not because he is more stubborn in temperament, but because in view he has taken his stand. The ten teachings of the Abode of Non-Regress sketch precisely this standing-fast of view with the dilemma at full press.

Readers of the previous volume in this series, The Four Fruits of the Path, will recognize the spine. That whole volume argued one thing: the śrāvaka's fruits are measured by fetters severed, not by experiences attained—the fruit hangs on the severance wrought by seeing, not on the depth of concentration. Here is the same spine in its Mahāyāna form: the bodhisattva's position-non-regress hangs on the view's refusal to turn before dilemmas, not on the waxing and waning of experience. One says the fruit is not measured by experience; the other says the non-regress is not propped by experience. Two roads, subtraction and accumulation—one spine through both: by seeing, not by feeling.

Two Honest Sentences

Two boundaries must be stated in the open here.

The first: the judgment "entering the abodes is where position-non-regress begins" is a classification laid down by the later doctrinal systematizers, not the chapter's own words. At the seventh abode, the text says only that the bodhisattva "hears ten teachings and is firm without regress," "his mind does not turn back within the Buddha-dharma"; it nowhere pronounces "this position is position-non-regress, the first of three as against practice- and mindfulness-non-regress." Assigning position-non-regress to the Ten Abodes, practice-non-regress to the Ten Dedications and the first ground, mindfulness-non-regress to the eighth ground, is the station-framework erected by the Tiantai and kindred schools upon the treatises. This book walks the whole way by that reading—it is the very architecture of the book—but walks it remembering that it is a classifier's judgment; on the scripture's side, the hardest single anchor is the Keyūra's sentence, "one in the Abode of Arousing the Mind is a person of the advancing portion."

The second: this chapter has used two "non-regresses" of different levels, and they must not be fused. One is the Abode of Arousing the Mind—the entrance of the Ten Abodes, where the Keyūra draws the regressing-portion/advancing-portion line: the non-regress sense of "the whole stretch of the Ten Abodes, at its doorway." The other is the seventh, the Abode of Non-Regress—a single named abode within the ten, so called from the ten teachings that do not turn the mind. The former is the starting point of the position's non-regress; the latter is one abode among ten that happens to bear the name. Both say "non-regress"; they do not point at the same thing. The chapter set both out so that the sense of non-regress might be seen at the entrance and in the proper name alike—not to make the seventh abode the beginning of position-non-regress.

Standing on Dry Ground

Gather the chapter: entering the abodes is a change of kind because what lies underfoot has changed—from drainable roots of good to the standing of one who has entered the Buddha's house and taken its name; what position-non-regress cannot lose is the one thing, "the bodhisattva's position"—no falling to the two vehicles, no reverting to the ordinary—while the non-regress of practice and of mindfulness still lie ahead; and what holds it is the view's refusal to turn before the root dilemmas, not the flush of experience.

For a practitioner taking stock, the yardstick is now plain. Dry land exists, and its threshold is not "how deep my experience runs, how hot my confidence burns," but "has my root view of the Buddha-dharma grown firm enough that the dilemmas, at full press, do not turn my mind?" If a clever rejoinder or an unsettling argument can still shake the root conviction in the Three Jewels and the way, one is still on the flats; if, with the dilemmas at hand, the mind no longer turns, one is already on the advancing portion—a son of the Buddha, inside the house.

But entering the abodes is only getting through the door. Within lie ten halls in succession—from the Abode of Arousing the Mind all the way to the Consecration. How does the child of this house grow up, and what does he become when grown? The next chapter goes in to see.