Transition One · From the Ten Faiths to the Ten Abodes

Part One is finished. Two things are now in hand.

A gate: the gate of the bodhisattva path opens at the arousing of bodhicitta, not on the rooftop of arhatship. The gate reads the card of arising, not the card of severing—so it is entered in a single thought and waits on no prior stage; and the road is measured by accumulation—what mind has been aroused, what provisions amassed, for whose sake the realization within reach remains untaken—not by subtraction. "Though long due for nirvāṇa, he does not take its realization"; "fully contemplating and knowing, without taking realization"; "though he courses in the limit of reality, he does not take its realization"—three sentences, one structure, fixing the character of the path: arriving at the very place of realization, and not taking it.

A tidal zone: the first stretch inside the gate is the Ten Faiths—outer-ordinary, before the abodes, replete with all defilements, advancing and regressing by turns. What holds a station against regress must be an irreversible accomplishment, and beneath the faith-position there is none—not one fetter severed, its entire estate the conditioned good roots that behave like feel, so regress is built into it. The watershed between regressing and not, the text draws at "entering the Abode of Arousing the Mind": the regressing portion on the faith-position's side, the advancing portion beginning at the abode. The arising is entry; entering the abodes is where position-non-regress begins; between the two lies the whole regressible stretch of the Ten Faiths.

But set these two things side by side, and they force the next question: how is that one step across taken?

Between the tidal flat and the dry ground there is always a line. The Keyūra says, "if he meets a good spiritual friend and learns the Buddha-dharma, then in one eon or two he enters the abodes"—an eon or two of ripening, gathered at last into the single step of entering. But entering what, exactly? It is the same aroused mind: within the Ten Faiths it can regress; 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? Part One gave only the names of the line (regressing portion, advancing portion); it has not yet given the line's reason. To see the line clearly one must stand on its far side and look back: the "arousing of the mind" in the Abode of Arousing the Mind, and the first thought of arousing—same words; where does the weight differ? That is the business of Part Two's first chapter.

Part Two walks the Ten Abodes. "Abode" means dwelling—the mind come to dwell unmoving in the Buddha-dharma; from here it has a home. Ten abodes by name, beginning from the Abode of Arousing the Mind: arousing the mind, preparing the ground, cultivation, noble birth, perfection of means, the rectified mind, non-regress, the child of innocence, the Dharma-prince, and the consecration. Notice the arc the names themselves trace: they begin at "arousing" and end at "consecration." Consecration is a rite of royal houses—the prince come of age, water of the four great seas poured upon his crown, henceforth fit to receive the throne. That the Ten Abodes end on this name is saying: when these ten steps are walked, the practitioner's standing in the Buddha's house is made solid—born into the family, a true child of the Buddha, fit to succeed to the Buddha's seat. Part One told the prince simile: the bodhisattva at the first arising already surpasses the two vehicles, by lineage and blood. The Ten Abodes are the ten steps by which that lineage-standing passes from "in name" to "made solid"—from bodhisattva-in-conception and bodhisattva-in-name, to "noble birth," to "Dharma-prince," to the consecration that confers the office.

And one pressing question, held over from Part One, remains unanswered: position-non-regress—what exactly is it that no longer regresses? How the faith-position falls back is easy to picture—confidence shaken, energy slackened, sinking without surfacing. But when, past the abodes' gate, the texts say "no regress," is that to say afflictions never stir again? No—the abode-stage bodhisattva still has his afflictions. That practice runs smooth from here on? No again. Of the words "position-non-regress," which one thing is it that cannot be lost? That can only be said clearly inside the Abode of Arousing the Mind. Say it clearly, and the first of the three non-regresses is truly in hand; the second and third—practice-non-regress and mindfulness-non-regress—must wait for the Ten Dedications and the eighth ground, the business of Parts Four and Five. One step at a time.

The gate has been found; the tidal zone has been seen for what it is. Now, cross the line, and enter the abodes.