The Dharma Should Still Be Let Go, How Much More So Non-Dharma—The Second Cut
5.4 The Dharma Should Still Be Let Go, How Much More So Non-Dharma—The Second Cut
Once You Have Caught Hold of the Buddha's Teaching, Have You Arrived?
After §5, a question rises naturally in the reader's mind.
The Diamond Sūtra says "all marks are illusory." Marks have been cut—good. But what about the Buddha's teaching? Is the teaching itself a kind of mark? And if the teaching too is a mark, is the teaching also illusory?
§6 answers this question at once, and the answer is more radical than the reader expects:
You bhikṣus, know that my teaching of the Dharma is like a raft simile—the Dharma should still be let go, how much more so non-dharma.
Eight characters in the Chinese—"the Dharma should still be let go, how much more so non-dharma"—push the most easily misread passage in the entire Diamond Sūtra right up to the reader's face.
What makes this passage so easy to misread is the air of effortless liberation it gives off. Even the Buddha's teaching is to be set down, how much more the things that are not the teaching—it reads as though the Buddha were granting a reprieve: no need to take it all so seriously, the teaching isn't absolute either. A wave of relief washes up—so practice isn't such a solemn business after all.
But that very wave of relief is precisely the illness the raft simile was made to treat.
What this chapter sets out to do is make the exact meaning of "the Dharma should still be let go" clear—what is being cut, when the cut may be made, and what is left once it has been cut.
The Raft in the Āgamas
The Diamond Sūtra's raft simile did not spring up out of nowhere. The Buddha used the words "always says"—this was a teaching He had given consistently. The prototype is preserved in the Āgamas, and it should be read together with another simile that is rarely told alongside it.
In the Āgama version, the raft simile is preceded by a snake simile.
Someone wants to catch a snake, but does not know how. He reaches out and grasps it by the middle—the snake turns its head and bites his hand. This is not understanding how to catch a snake. One who knows how presses the snake's head down with an iron staff first, and only then takes hold of it—the snake may coil around him, but it cannot bite.
The Buddha used this story to say one thing: whether your method of learning the Dharma is right or wrong matters more than whether you learn it at all. Learn the Dharma improperly, and the Dharma will turn around and harm you—just as catching the snake by the middle gets you bitten. It is not that the snake cannot be caught, nor that the Dharma cannot be learned—it is that the way of catching, and the way of learning, decide the outcome.
Then the Buddha told the raft simile: the mountain torrent is deep, the long current swift; a person stands on this near shore and wishes to reach the far one. There is no boat, no bridge. He gathers grass and wood, binds them into a raft, and rides it across. Having crossed, he thinks: this raft has served me so well, I will carry it on my head and take it with me, or bear it on my shoulder.
The Buddha asks the bhikṣus: does doing this do the raft any good?
It does the raft no good whatsoever. The right thing to do is "to return this raft to the water, or leave it at the bank, and depart." Give the raft back to the water, or set it at the bank—and then walk your own road.
Then the Buddha spoke the original, fuller version of those eight characters in the Diamond Sūtra:
Through the long night I have taught you the raft-simile Dharma, wishing you to abandon it, not wishing you to hold on to it. If you understand my long-night teaching of the raft-simile Dharma, you should let go even of the Dharma—how much more so non-dharma?
Read together, the two similes make the pedagogical structure complete: the snake simile handles "how to learn," the raft simile handles "what to do once you have finished learning." The way must be right while you learn; the tool must be set down once you have learned. Both ends are taken care of—only then is the teaching whole.
The Diamond Sūtra quotes only the raft portion. But the surrounding text—"they have already planted good roots under immeasurable millions of buddhas"—already hints at whom these words are addressed to: people who have practiced for a long time. The one who can hear "set down the raft" must be the one who has actually, truly used a raft.
The Raft Is of the Dependent Nature
The single most crucial point in the raft simile: the raft is not fake.
This point is easily lost in the grain of the Chinese language. Hearing "the Dharma should still be let go," the mind slides readily toward "the Dharma is fake, and so it must be discarded." But the Āgama prototype says it plainly—"riding this raft, I have arrived safely"—the raft carried the person safely across the river. The raft is not fake; the raft has a real function.
To put it in the language of Yogācāra: the raft is of the dependent nature (paratantra). It exists in dependence on conditions—someone needs to cross, there is grass and wood to hand, there is a person who knows how to bind a raft; the conditions come together, and the raft is made. It is not conjured from nothing, it is not eternal, but it is genuinely useful. You cannot say it does not exist merely because it is conditionally arisen—the person is standing on it as he crosses.
The Buddha's teaching is just the same. The Dharma is a teaching that arises in dependence on conditions—the Buddha appears in the world, speaks, the canon is compiled, translated, transmitted—a whole chain of conditions, and only so do we have the sūtra text we read today. The Dharma is not fake; the Dharma is genuinely useful.
So what does the raft simile cut?
It cuts—after crossing the river, the very act of hoisting the raft onto your head and walking off with it.
That act has a precise name in Yogācāra: the imagined nature (parikalpita). Take a tool of the dependent nature and lay over it a film of clinging—"this is substantially real," "this must be gripped forever"—and the tool turns from a tool into a cage. What was a person crossing a river becomes "a person who owns a raft"—his identity bound to the raft, so that if the raft vanishes he no longer knows who he is.
The raft simile's three stages correspond exactly to the Diamond Sūtra's is-not tripartite formula:
- The raft itself ＝ the dependent nature (a genuinely useful tool)
- Clinging to the raft as the destination ＝ the imagined nature (the tool becomes a cage)
- Using it and setting it down ＝ the disclosure of the perfected nature (seeing the raft as it truly is)
The Cheng weishi lun calls this mechanism the transformation of the basis. The transformation of the basis is not the destruction of the dependent nature—the "dependent nature" that serves as the ground does not change. What is transformed is the relationship between the person and the dependent nature: where before he clung to this ground as substantially real (the imagined nature), afterward he sees it as it truly is (the perfected nature).
In one sentence: the raft is still in the water, but you have reached the shore. The raft itself has not changed; what changed is your relationship with the raft.
Superimposing, Diminishing, Fidelity
A tool of the dependent nature can be used in three ways.
Superimposing—carrying the raft on your head as you walk. This is the most common illness. The Buddha's teaching, as a tool (the dependent nature), takes effect in a person's life—it soothes anxiety, clears confusion, brings the mind to rest. Then the tool is slowly made substantial: "I am a Buddhist," "this is my worldview," "I accept only what accords with the Dharma." The tool becomes an identity, and the identity becomes a new wall. The person has built a house out of the Dharma and shut himself inside it.
Diminishing—throwing the raft away in the middle of the river. This is the most common misreading once a person has heard "the Dharma should still be let go." Since even the Buddha's teaching is to be set down, then have done with all of it—no reading sūtras, no sitting, no keeping the precepts. It sounds wonderfully free; in fact it is another extreme. The Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra passes a severe verdict on this:
If they see the dependent and perfected natures as markless, they thereby also repudiate the imagined nature… this is the means for vast karmic obstruction.
Not only is the layer of clinging negated (which is correct)—the dependent nature and the perfected nature underneath are negated along with it. This is not prajñā; this is wrong view. And it is "the means for vast karmic obstruction"—believing himself to be propagating emptiness, the person is in fact manufacturing karmic obstruction.
Fidelity—using the raft to cross, and setting it down at the shore. This is the Middle Way. The Yogācārabhūmi puts it in very plain words:
If a dharma truly exists, know it as truly existing; if a dharma truly does not exist, know it as truly not existing.
What is there is there; what is not there is not there. Not one thing added, not one thing taken away. This sounds simple and is exceedingly hard to do—because the human habit of cognition is forever adding and subtracting. See a person and pin a label on him (superimposing); hear a principle and suspect there is something wrong with it (diminishing); to see a thing as it actually is turns out to be the least natural act of all.
Kuiji reduces these three roads to a single line:
One should not grasp dharma—this departs from existence. One should not grasp non-dharma—this departs from non-existence. Having departed both existence and non-existence, one returns to the Middle Way.
Not grasping dharma—departing from the "substantially real" end. Not grasping non-dharma—departing from the "nihilistic void" end. Only when both ends are left behind is it the Middle Way. The Middle Way is not standing "in the middle"; it is standing at neither side.
The Prescription
Here is a simile closer to ordinary life.
A person falls ill. The physician prescribes medicine.
The medicine is necessary—without it, the illness cannot be cured. This is the right use of the dependent nature.
The illness is cured, and the person keeps taking the medicine. He says, "What if it comes back?" The dose grows and grows, the body comes to depend on the drug, and in the end the drug-dependency becomes a new illness. This is superimposing—the medicine has turned from a tool into an object of clinging.
Another person hears that "the medicine has side effects" and simply refuses to take it. He says, "The body will heal itself anyway." The condition worsens. This is diminishing—denying the tool's value.
A third person: falls ill, takes the medicine, recovers, stops. He neither thanks the medicine for "saving me" (that would be making the tool sacred) nor complains that the medicine "had side effects" (that would be denying the tool's value). Medicine is medicine; when its work is done, its work is done. This is fidelity.
The Buddha's teaching is the prescription. Affliction and ignorance are the illness; the Dharma is the medicine that treats it. When the illness is cured—that is, when true suchness has been seen—the medicine has fulfilled its function. To go on taking the medicine is to carry the raft as you walk. To throw the prescription away is to fling the raft into the middle of the river. To stop the medicine once you are well is the Middle Way.
One further detail is worth noting: the person who has recovered knows this prescription. He may pass it to another patient. He no longer needs the medicine himself, but he knows there are others who still do. This is the bodhisattva's raft—the one who has crossed comes back to build rafts for others. He does not carry a raft as he walks, yet neither does he refuse to ready a raft for those still on the near shore.
"I Have Already Let Go of the Raft"
Last of all, we must deal with the single most dangerous misreading.
Having read this chapter, a thought may rise in your mind: "Good, now I understand—I am going to let go of the Buddha's teaching." Next time you discuss practice with someone, you will say, "Well, the Dharma should still be let go"—with the tone of an old hand who has been through it.
At that moment, something has quietly come into being—"I am a person who has already let go of the raft."
The raft is gone, but you have added a new thing to your back: the act of "letting go of the raft" has itself become your new identity. The original illness was carrying the raft as you walk; the present illness is not carrying the raft and needing to tell everyone you are not carrying it. The tool has changed; the structure is exactly the same.
This is not sophistry. This is the precise way cognitive obstruction operates. The afflictive obstruction has been cut through (the four marks have been set down), and the cognitive obstruction surfaces next—a person's clinging to "having reached a certain level in my practice" is harder to detect than his clinging to outer things. Because it hides behind the halo of "attainment in practice."
⚠️ A necessary reminder: having read this chapter, you can state clearly that "the raft simile teaches the Middle Way; superimposing, diminishing, and fidelity; the transformation of the basis does not destroy the dependent nature"—but this is only to have understood the doctrine of the raft simile. To speak of it fluently is to know; to genuinely not carry the raft as you walk, in your daily life, is to realize. The distance between the two may be the work of several lifetimes.
So "letting go" is not a one-time act. It is not "the crossing is done and that is the end of it"—it is that every time you quietly shoulder the raft again, you can see that you have shouldered it, and then set it down again. Once and again, and again.
The premise of letting go is always having once taken up. Without real practice, what is called letting go is only another name for never having taken anything up at all. The raft simile is not telling you not to practice—it is telling you to practice and, at the same time, not be bound by the practice itself.
The next chapter takes up a structure in the Diamond Sūtra that looks very strange: it returns again and again to "merit." And not in passing, either—it says, over and over, "this merit is greater than that merit," "the merit of receiving and holding four lines of verse surpasses the merit of the seven treasures filling a great-thousandfold world." A sūtra that teaches us to let go—why should it weigh merit against merit like this? Is this comparison not itself another raft?