Transition ⑥ · From Illumination to Gathering-In

Transition ⑥ · From Illumination to Gathering-In

The reader who has walked through Part VI carries one new thing—a wariness.

Whenever something turns up that looks like an attainment, like a measure of realization, like a destination, a thought rises in the mind of its own accord: is this a conjured city?

This thought is the gift Part VI leaves behind. Without it, a practitioner is bound to stop somewhere along the way, mistaking a conjured city for the place of treasure. But it is also a gift that wears a person down. Hold the mirror up forever, asking "is this a conjured city?", and you can only keep shifting your feet—you can never rest.

What Transition ⑥ has to do is to set that wariness down for a while.

⚠️ Here a precise correction of the middle path is needed.

The posture Part VII is about to take looks like the reverse of Part VI's—the Śūraṅgama Sūtra says no single position is ultimate; the Lotus Sūtra says there is only one ultimate. This is not a contradiction. It is sequence.

The Śūraṅgama's negation is the admission ticket to the Lotus's affirmation.

Only when a person has identified every conjured city, once and for all, do they dare to believe head-on that far off there truly is a place of treasure—otherwise any confidence in the place of treasure, the moment it is voiced, gets caught by the next conjured city and is instantly, subtly refined into one more form of pervasive imputation. Without Part VI's training in wariness, Part VII's affirmation would slip into a flattering expedient; without Part VII's head-on affirmation, Part VI's wariness would harden into a never-resting posture of doubt, itself becoming one more kind of clinging.

This seam is not a switch between two postures. It is two stages of one posture—diagnose first, then rest.

What is gathering-in?

It is not the taking up of one more new tool. The mirror Part VI handed the reader, Part VII will not ask the reader to give back—the mirror stays in hand, ready to be drawn at any moment. What is to be set down is the tension of "I must hold the mirror up right now."

Like a long-distance traveller who, after crossing a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers, sits down beneath a tree. The blade, the mirror, the map, the demon-revealing glass—not one of them is thrown away. They simply hang quietly at his side now. He can smile through a meal, and listen to a story.

The five great parables of the Lotus—the burning house, the destitute son, the medicinal herbs, the conjured city, the jewel in the robe and the jewel in the topknot—are those stories.

The five stories all tell one and the same thing: you were the elder's son all along (the destitute son); a bright pearl was always sewn into your robe, a wish-granting jewel always set in your topknot (the jewel in the robe, the jewel in the topknot); the road you walk truly does have an end (the conjured city); beings of differing capacities are all moistened by one same rain (the medicinal herbs); outside the burning house a father stands with carriages already prepared and waiting (the burning house).

After Part VI's illumination, the Lotus places back into your hands the trust that was there all along—only tucked away for a time behind the posture of wariness.

On the next page, "Expedient Means" opens with a refusal—

The Buddha says to Śāriputra: Stop. There is no need to say more.

These words look as though they are closing a door. In truth they are opening one. The first thing a weary traveller needs to hear is someone asking him, first of all, to stop.

Stop—and then, listen to a story.