Reading Map · How to Read This Book

This book is one road in five stretches. Let the five be pointed out first—with a map in mind, even a road of three incalculable eons reads without alarm.

Five Stretches

Part One · The Ten Faiths. Find the right gate. The bodhisattva path is no second story built on arhatship; the gate opens at the arousing of bodhicitta—entered in one thought, waiting on no prior stage. Two chapters: the first dismantles the single-ladder picture of "lesser first, greater after," watching the Yogācārabhūmi, the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, and the Avataṃsaka tie the entrance cleanly to the arising of the mind; the second looks at the first stretch inside—the Ten Faiths are a tidal zone, where faith can regress, even to "sinking forever"; entering is one thing, standing firm another. The book's gate and ruler are both delivered in this part.

Part Two · The Ten Abodes. Settle in, grow up. At the Abode of Arousing the Mind, what lies underfoot is exchanged—drainable roots of good for the standing of one who has entered the Buddha's house; the first of the three non-regresses, position-non-regress, counts from here, resting on the view's refusal to turn before dilemmas, not on experience. Then the ten halls of the house: from the Abode of Arousing the Mind to the Consecration, a line of growth—noble birth, the innocent child, the prince, the anointing—grown to the office of doing the Dharma-King's work.

Part Three · The Ten Practices. Out the door, to work. The six perfections pass from names on a menu to dishes on the table—the first six practices are the six perfections in motion, every arrow marked "only to benefit all beings"; benefit waits on no completed cultivation. And the five without prajñā are blind; only with prajñā leading do they earn the words "to the far shore."

Part Four · The Ten Dedications. Hand the good over. Roots of good gravitate toward a private ledger; dedication is the turn against that gravity: the good amassed is consigned entire to three places—beings, bodhi, the real—with no reach left toward "mine." The good dedicated whole, no self-fruit remains to retreat into; practice-non-regress stands here, and the three worthy ranks close.

Part Five · The Ten Grounds. The worthy and the noble—the book's longest part, four chapters. The first ground's path of seeing, the first cut: suppression becomes severance, the worthy enters the noble. The second through seventh grounds: the innate afflictions ground finer and finer, the seventh passing the place where the two vehicles stop. The eighth: the effort falls away—the forbearance of non-arising, application cast off for spontaneity, mindfulness-non-regress in hand. The ninth's unobstructed teaching; the tenth's Dharma-Cloud investiture—the second consecration, the buddhas' water of wisdom on the crown, fallen within the number of the buddhas, with one subtle obstacle remaining and the buddha-ground spoken of separately. The volume's pen stops at the door of equal and sublime awakening.

Four Bridges

Between the five parts stand four "transitions." They are short—bridges between road and road, gathering what has been walked, sighting what comes, then setting out again. Do not skip them; each stretch's questions are first asked on the bridge.

Three Ways to Read, as You Please

One: end to end. This is best. The book is one ascending argument: Part One sets the gate and the ruler; Part Two uses them to establish position-non-regress; Part Three to enact the six perfections; Part Four to turn the dedication; Part Five carries them into the grounds, to the door of the number of the buddhas. Miss no stretch, and the road runs smooth.

Two: the impatient, Part One first. The gate is handed over there. Two chapters read, and the book's most essential pair is in your hands—"the arising enters" and "the entered can still regress"; thereafter, go first to whatever stretch answers your heart, and it will still read.

Three: those who come with a question, straight to its stretch. Hanging on "am I qualified for this path"—Part One, chapter one. Having aroused the mind and slipped back again and again, doubting it was ever real—Part One, chapter two, and Part Two. Wanting to know how daily kindness becomes a perfection—Parts Three and Four. Holding the doubt "does the bodhisattva also sever afflictions—the same as the arhat?"—Part Five was written for you. But whichever stretch you go to first, make up Part One—without the gate in hand, every stretch's words will warp.

A Few Small Conventions

• The scriptures' own words are set off as indented quotation blocks—at a glance: which words are the sūtra's, which are the explanation given to you.
• Canonical numbering, Sanskrit romanization, and source details are kept out of the main text entirely and gathered in the appendices: chapter-by-chapter sources in Appendix A (Index of Scholarly Notes); romanized terms in Appendix C (Glossary of Terms).
• Wherever the book uses names laid down by the later classifiers rather than the verbatim scripture—the proper names of the three non-regresses (position, practice, mindfulness), the threefold scheme of dedication, the matching of "discriminated" and "innate," and the like—the boundary is noted in passing where each is used, and recorded in detail under "variances" in Appendix A. The book uses them, remembering they are judgments.
• This book and the previous volume, The Four Fruits of the Path, are two parallel roads, not volume one and volume two—the earlier need not be read first; read together, the two rulers light each other. A twin volume on the "attainment" axis writes the bodhisattva's mastery: this book writes the walking; that one, what is attained.

Setting Out

The map points this far. The road is made by walking.

We begin with Part One: find the right gate, and set out.