The Six Perfections, Served
3.1 The Six Perfections, Served
One who has received office cannot stay home. But "going out to benefit others"—the phrase rings well; what does it look like on the ground? A grand posture of compassion, or a set of practices one can see and do?
The canon's answer is concrete to a fault. In the Chapter on the Ten Practices, the bodhisattva Forest-of-Merit, sustained by the Buddha's power, lists the bodhisattva's ten kinds of practice:
Sons of the Buddha! The bodhisattva-mahāsattva has ten kinds of practice, which the buddhas of the three times proclaim. What are the ten? First, the Practice of Joy; second, the Practice of Benefiting; third, the Practice of Non-Opposition; fourth, the Practice of Indomitability; fifth, the Practice of Freedom from Confusion; sixth, the Practice of Excellent Manifestation; seventh, the Practice of Non-Attachment; eighth, the Practice of the Hard-to-Attain; ninth, the Practice of Excellent Dharma; tenth, the Practice of Truth.
Joy, Benefiting, Non-Opposition, Indomitability, Freedom from Confusion, Excellent Manifestation, Non-Attachment, Hard-to-Attain, Excellent Dharma, Truth—ten names, and like the Ten Abodes, a fixed series "proclaimed by the buddhas of the three times." The names look unfamiliar at first; but lift the lid on the first six, and a familiar face appears: the six perfections—the giving, discipline, patience, energy, meditation, and wisdom that everyone can recite.
Take the first. The chapter's account of the Practice of Joy is, from end to end, an account of giving:
This bodhisattva is a great donor: whatever he possesses, he can give it all away; his mind is even, without regret or grudging; he hopes for no reward, seeks no reputation, covets no offerings—but acts only to rescue all beings, to gather in all beings, to benefit all beings.
Read the second half's contrast once more. The bodhisattva's giving "hopes for no reward, seeks no reputation, covets no offerings"—nothing in it is for his own merit, name, or support; its one direction is "only to rescue all beings, to gather in all beings, to benefit all beings." That one "only for... beings" swings the arrow of giving from self to other, all the way. Here is the eye of the practice-position: not a new technique, but the same giving with its beneficiary changed. Through the first two parts the weight stayed on the practitioner—is the faith steady, does the position hold; from this practice onward, the main curriculum is beings.
Read on, and the first six practices pair off with the six perfections almost word for word. The second, Benefiting, speaks of discipline: "This bodhisattva guards the pure precepts; toward forms, sounds, scents, tastes, and touches his mind clings nowhere... he simply holds the pure precepts firm." The third, Non-Opposition, speaks of patience: "This bodhisattva ever cultivates the dharma of patience, humble and respectful; he harms not himself, harms not others, harms not both." The fourth, Indomitability, speaks of energy: "This bodhisattva cultivates all manner of vigour... and never, to the vexing of a single being, applies his vigour." The fifth, Freedom from Confusion, speaks of meditation's right mindfulness: "This bodhisattva accomplishes right mindfulness; his mind unscattered, firm and unmoving." The sixth, Excellent Manifestation, the text describes as "the three karmas of body, speech, and mind made pure, abiding in non-attainment"—and "non-attainment" being the very signature of prajñā's emptiness-wisdom, tradition assigns this practice to wisdom. One honest note is owed here: in the first five, the scripture is speaking of that perfection in so many words; this sixth pairing is a reading—matching the mark of "non-attainment" to prajñā—and its nature differs slightly from the five.
The ninth and tenth close the line of benefit. In the Practice of Excellent Dharma, the bodhisattva "for all the world—gods, humans, māras, Brahmās, renunciants, brahmins...—becomes a cool pool of Dharma, upholding the true Dharma so that the Buddha-seed is not cut off": beyond the gift of goods, the gift of teaching—a pool of coolness on beings' hot road. And the Practice of Truth answers the question we carried in at the door: by what right does the tenth bear the name of Truth? The text: "This bodhisattva accomplishes the speech of foremost sincerity: as he speaks, so can he practice; as he practices, so can he speak." What can be said can be done; what is done can be said. By the tenth, all that the nine have practiced answers to all that is professed, word and deed of one piece. The Ten Practices close on "Truth," measuring not how much was done, but whether the doing and the saying have become one.
(Two more honest sentences, in passing. First: tradition also assigns the last four practices—Non-Attachment, Hard-to-Attain, Excellent Dharma, Truth—to the four further perfections of means, vow, power, and knowledge; that is the classification of the national teacher Chengguan's commentary, and the chapter's own text makes no such practice-by-practice assignment, so this book does not force it, and reads those four from the text alone. Second: the six perfections run the whole length of the bodhisattva path—they are not begun at the Ten Practices nor laid down after. In the Chapter on the Ten Grounds, even the first ground has "the perfection of giving preeminent; the other perfections not unpracticed, but as strength and share allow," and ground by ground one perfection takes the lead. What marks the Ten Practices is not that the six begin here, but that here they are practiced intensively, and for others.)
Trained—Then in Practice
The difference between the Ten Abodes and the Ten Practices can now be said in one sentence: the abode is becoming; the practice is doing. The abode-stage formed the person—grown in the Buddha's house into a son of the Buddha, the standing made solid; the practice-stage spends the person on others—the formed capacities put to work among beings.
A comparison: the medical student and the practicing physician. The Ten Abodes are like the full formation of medical school—coursework done, examinations passed, the license granted; the Consecration's investiture is the licensing. But the license was never the point of studying medicine; practicing is. License in hand, the physician walks out of the academy and into the clinic, spending what was learned one operation, one patient at a time. The curriculum of the practicing years is no longer "to master" but "to treat." The Ten Practices are to the bodhisattva what practice is to the physician: the standing fixed, it is time to go out and work—intensively, for others. The abode is the training; the practice is the practice.
This also hooks back into the book's master line. Part One established it: the bodhisattva path is measured by accumulation—by what has been amassed, and for whom. The practice-position is where that accumulation first becomes a dense, daily enactment: each act of the six perfections is provision amassed for beings. The abode-stage made solid the one who can amass; the practice-stage is that one amassing, and liberating, in earnest.
From the Menu to the Table
The most important thing the practice-position reveals is that here the six perfections come alive.
We are used to reciting the six as a list of virtues: giving, discipline, patience, energy, meditation, wisdom—six names, memorizable, examinable. But to know the names and to do the deeds are two different things. A comparison: "Luohan vegetable platter" printed on a menu is a name and a description—you read it and know what it is, but there is not a bite to eat. Only when the monastery kitchen has made it, brought it to the table, and fed the assembly does it pass from a name on a menu to a dish that is feeding someone. The six perfections as a list of virtues are six names on a menu; the six perfections of the practice-position are six dishes being cooked and carried out to feed people. The Practice of Joy is not "a theory of giving"; it is the giving the bodhisattva is doing right now—without regret, without hope of return, only for the other. The Practice of Benefiting is not "the definition of discipline"; it is the pure precept being guarded right now, clinging nowhere among the five dusts.
And a dish, by its nature, is made to be eaten. The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha spells the point out item by item: "By the perfection of giving one benefits beings; by the perfection of discipline one does not harm or vex beings; by the perfection of patience one can bear their insults without a mind of revenge; by the perfection of energy one grows their roots of good and destroys their roots of evil." Giving is benefiting beings; discipline is not harming them; patience is bearing their insults unavenged; energy is growing their good and destroying their evil. The six perfections and the benefit of others are not two stages—not "first perfect the six, then go benefit others"—but two faces of one act: once a perfection is enacted, that perfection is itself a form of benefit. This is why the Practice of Joy opens with "only to benefit all beings": the word "practice" here carries "for others" inside it.
A practitioner's habitual inversion must be named and set right: do not harbor the thought, "when my cultivation is complete, then I will go benefit people." The work of the practice-position is precisely to enact the six perfections within the conduct of benefiting others. One gift given this moment—without regret, without hope of return, only for the other—is the perfection of giving in motion; one insult borne this moment without a mind of revenge is the perfection of patience in motion. Benefiting others does not wait upon completed cultivation—benefiting others is the site of the cultivation.
Five Perfections Blind, Prajñā Leading
The six enacted, others benefited—is that completeness? One eye is still missing. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra has a figure of great weight:
So it is with the five perfections: apart from the perfection of prajñā they are like the blind without a guide, unable to set out on the way, unable to attain omniscience. ... If the five perfections gain the perfection of prajñā to lead them, then are the five perfections said to have eyes; with prajñā leading, they obtain the name of perfections.
Giving, discipline, patience, energy, meditation—these five, apart from prajñā, are "like the blind without a guide": they can walk, but cannot see the road, and do not arrive at the far shore. Only with prajñā leading are the five "said to have eyes"; and mark the weight of the last clause—only with prajñā leading do they obtain the very name of perfections. "Pāramitā" means "gone to the far shore." Giving without prajñā is merely the merit of giving—the merit is real, but merit is not arrival; led by prajñā, the same giving becomes the perfection of giving.
A comparison: a company on the road. However strong the legs, however great the loads, however iron the will, if no one in the company can see the road, the whole troop may drift further astray the harder it marches. The first five perfections are the legs, the loads, the will; prajñā is the one member who can see. Without the guide, the effort is real effort with no guarantee of direction; with the guide in front, the same company's same effort at last bears toward the far shore.
And what does this eye of prajñā see by? The three words of the Practice of Excellent Manifestation: non-attainment. In the doing of good, illuminate it with the wisdom of non-attainment—hope for no reward; take no hold of "I who give, he who receives, the thing given." This non-attainment is not coldness; it is precisely the eye that raises a good deed from "a worldly kindness" to "a deed gone to the far shore." The treatises give the structure a name as well: among the six, giving, discipline, and patience belong to the portion of merit; prajñā to the portion of wisdom; energy and meditation run through both—two threads, merit and wisdom, woven through the six, with wisdom guiding merit.
Readers who have come this far—through the previous volume and this one—will recognize the single spine. The Four Fruits of the Path said: the śrāvaka's fruits are measured by fetters severed, not by experiences attained. Part Two of this volume said: the bodhisattva's position-non-regress rests on the view's refusal to turn before dilemmas, not on the flush of experience. This chapter adds the third clause: the bodhisattva's practice arrives at the far shore by prajñā's leading, not by the bulk of merit. The way of subtraction and the way of accumulation, the stretch of self-benefit and the stretch of benefiting others—through all of it runs one and the same eye: led by seeing, not by feeling and not by reward.
Do It, and Walk by the Eye
Gather the chapter: the Ten Practices are the position of going out to benefit others—the first six are the six perfections in motion, every arrow marked "only to benefit all beings"; the six pass here from names on a menu to dishes on the table, and their enactment is itself the benefit, waiting on no completed cultivation; and the five without prajñā are blind, earning the name "to the far shore" only with prajñā in the lead.
The practitioner's work, then, is two sentences. First: do it—the six perfections are no monopoly of great monks but a practice for daily use; one unhoping gift this moment, one unavenged forbearance this moment, is a perfection in motion. Second: walk by the eye—illuminate every good deed with non-attainment; merit must be led by wisdom to reach the far shore.
Only—the good thus done piles up, day upon day, and a new question rises with the pile: where is all this good to go? Amassed for whom? "Dedication," the work of Part Four, answers exactly that.