Chapter 9 · Arousing the Mind — with Non-Attainment as the Method
第九章 · 發心——無所得為方便
Part Three · The Path
If everything is non-attainment, what mind is left to arouse? What beings are left to liberate?
Part Three concerns the path—how prajñā is practiced. Its first step is arousing the mind. Yet the doctrine just established in Part Two seems to remove the ground beneath that very step: beings cannot be attained, bodhisattva is only a name, and even attainment is non-attainment. Does arousing the mind to liberate beings not become empty labor? This chapter lets the sūtras answer: arousing the mind and non-attainment have never been two different things.
1 · Bringing Forth the Great Adornment — the Act of Arousing the Mind
In the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā, arousing the mind is called 「bringing forth the great adornment」—bringing forth a great vow that adorns all things. The Buddha himself describes the form it takes:
「A bodhisattva forms this thought: 『I should bring immeasurably many incalculable beings across. Yet after I have brought those beings across, not a single being has attained cessation.』 Why? Because the character of dharmas has always been so. It is like a skilled conjurer who, at a crossroads, conjures a great crowd and then cuts off the heads of all the conjured people. What do you think? Is anyone among them injured or dead?」 〔《小品般若》初品·T08n0227 0538c29 起〕
Look carefully at the structure of this thought. 「I should bring immeasurably many incalculable beings across」 and 「not a single being has attained cessation」 are two faces of the same thought, not first a vow and then an added reflection on emptiness. How can both be true at once? 「The character of dharmas has always been so」—this is simply how things are. A conjurer produces a crowd at a crossroads and then cuts off their heads, yet no one is injured: liberating beings is just so. The Buddha's seal upon this arousing of the mind is:
「A bodhisattva is the same. After bringing immeasurably many incalculable beings across, not a single being has attained cessation. Bodhisattvas who hear this and are neither startled nor afraid should be known to have brought forth the great adornment.」 〔同段〕
「Neither startled nor afraid」—only one who does not panic on hearing 『liberating without anyone liberated』 has truly brought forth the great adornment. Non-attainment does not puncture the aspiration; it is the touchstone that tests it.
2 · Setting Out in the Great Vehicle — the Vehicle of the Aroused Mind
Once the mind has been aroused, where does it go? The sūtra continues with questions and answers about the vehicle:
「Subhūti said to the Buddha: 「World-Honored One! What is the Great Vehicle? What does it mean for a bodhisattva to set out in the Great Vehicle? Where does this vehicle abide? From where does it emerge?」 The Buddha told Subhūti: 「The Great Vehicle is so called because it has no limit and no numerical measure. As for where this vehicle emerges and where it abides: it emerges from the three realms and abides in all-knowledge. In truth, no ‘vehicle’ emerges anywhere. Why? Because both the dharma that emerges and that from which it emerges are nothing whatsoever. What dharma, then, could emerge?」」 〔同品·T08 0539a 段〕
The vehicle emerges from the three realms and abides in all-knowledge—the direction is perfectly clear. Yet in the same breath, 「no vehicle emerges anywhere」 and 「both the dharma that emerges and that from which it emerges are nothing whatsoever」. The vehicle, the emergence, and the one emerging are not established. In the very act of setting out there is non-attainment; within non-attainment, setting out still proceeds.
3 · The Diamond's Paired Statements — Liberating Beings and Non-Abiding as One
The Diamond Sūtra gives this matter words that have endured through the ages. First comes the vow to liberate beings, beyond which nothing greater could be added:
「Every class of living being—whether born from an egg, a womb, moisture, or transformation; whether having form or without form; whether having perception, without perception, or neither having nor lacking perception—I will bring all of them into nirvāṇa without remainder and deliver them across.」 〔羅什譯《金剛般若波羅蜜經》大乘正宗分·T08 0749a06（分起 0749a05）〕
Not one of the nine classes of beings is left out. The sūtra continues immediately:
「In this way, measureless, countless, boundless beings are delivered across, and yet in truth there is not a single being who is delivered.」 〔同分〕
Its structure is identical to the conjurer simile in the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā. Sūtra confirms sūtra: this is not an unusual turn of phrase confined to one text but the common rule of arousing the mind in prajñā. The positive formulation of that mind appears in the division on adorning the pure land:
「For this reason, Subhūti, bodhisattva-mahāsattvas should give rise to a pure mind in just this way. They should not give rise to a mind that abides in form, and they should not give rise to a mind that abides in sound, scent, taste, touch, or dharmas. They should give rise to that mind without abiding anywhere.」 〔同經莊嚴淨土分·T08 0749c20（分題 0749c16）〕
「Without abiding anywhere」 and 「give rise to that mind」 stand within one sentence. Non-abiding is not a refusal to arouse the mind, and an aroused mind need not abide anywhere. What the chapter title calls 『non-attainment as the method』 is precisely this sentence: the sūtra places non-abiding and arousing the mind together in the same breath.
4 · Guideposts
What follows the arousing of the mind? The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra lays out the full guideposts of the bodhisattva path: from the first arousing of the mind through the ten bodhisattva grounds〔T25n1509 卷四十九 0411a27·待譯〕, as far as acceptance of the non-arising of dharmas—「Within the true reality of dharmas that neither arise nor cease, trusting and accepting, penetrating, having no obstruction, and not retreating: this is called acceptance of non-arising」〔卷五十 0417c05·待譯〕. The road is long. Once the mind is aroused, how does one contemplate? How does one practice?—chapters ten and eleven continue the journey.
Author · Shi Huijing CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · 二〇二六 · 夏