Transition One · From Equal-Awakening to Sublime-Awakening

Part One is finished. Two things are in hand.

A mark: off by one. Equal-awakening stands not by more but by one remainder—the one step on this side of the threshold, the one realization held untaken, the one nescience whose beginning is unexhausted; three "ones" that are three faces of the same one. The position is defined entirely by that single remaining thing; and the thing is definite and has a name: the beginningless-nescience abiding-ground, its end known, its beginning not.

A mechanism: one instant. The adamantine concentration, the trainee's last thought—a concentration crushing all and crushed by none, root cut and branches ended in a single thought; and the severing thought, being the road's last act, turns into fruit on the spot because nothing remains to sever. The road is not finished; it is used up in its final thought.

Then, downstream, one question only remains: where does that last thought settle?

The answer is a name: sublime-awakening—the limit of the fifty-two positions, another name for the fruit of buddhahood. But the question is not "what is it called"; it is "how is it to be read." The natural reading takes sublime-awakening for a higher rung above equal-awakening: equal-awakening already pressing close to the Buddha, sublime-awakening closer still, indeed the Buddha—one more step on the same rising staircase. Part Two's single chapter says the opposite: sublime-awakening is not on the staircase—sublime-awakening is where the staircase stops.

And that chapter holds a second office. This series runs on two axes: the Realization axis writes "how one walks there"; the Attainment axis writes "the freedom once arrived." The Realization axis's three volumes end at sublime-awakening; the Attainment axis's twin volume sets out exactly from it. The two axes hand over upon the same scriptural passage—and that chapter is the handing-over.

The last thought has fallen. Now look at the ground where it settles.