大智度論 發趣品二地至六地（1／2） · 卷四十九Dazhidulun — Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa · Setting Out, Part 3 of 6

Arc Three — The Ground Free of Stain: How Morality, Knowing Kindness, and Patience Guard Not-Abandoning

What Is Being Asked

After the first ground has set up the vow, the second ground must deal with whether the vow-mind changes its character amid human relationships and adversity. The sūtra lists eight dharmas: purity of morality, knowing kindness and repaying kindness, abiding in patience, receiving joy, not abandoning beings, entering great compassion, revering the teacher and consulting and receiving from him, and diligently seeking the six perfections. These eight dharmas turn ‘I vow to liberate beings’ from a single sentence of grand aspiration into a life that can be tested by kindness and grievance, by teachers, by suffering, and by long, diligent practice.

Passage by Passage

First, purity of morality. The treatise says that on the first ground one mostly practises giving; on the second ground one goes a step further and sees that keeping morality can gather in all beings universally. Not killing is precisely giving the safety of life to immeasurable beings, and so the merit too is immeasurable. Whatever obstructs the path to buddhahood belongs to the defilements of morality; this chapter even includes among them the mind that falls back to take up the two vehicles, because the morality of this ground takes its direction from the vow of unsurpassed awakening.

Second, knowing kindness and repaying kindness. A person may say that what he has obtained is simply the ripening of merit from past lives, or may regard himself as noble by birth, and so erase the helping conditions present before him. The treatise breaks this view with the simile of grain-seed and rain: the past cause is like the seed, the present condition is like the rain; with seed and no rain, the grain still does not grow. Knowing kindness is therefore not a denial of one’s own past goodness, but an acknowledgement, true to fact, that others’ respect and affection, their offerings, and their help are also causes and conditions. The treatise further says that knowing kindness is the root of great compassion and the first gate of good action.

The birth-story (jātaka) of the great bear pushes ingratitude to its extreme. A man who had lost his way, amid a violent rainstorm, hunger and cold, and the threat of venomous beasts, was fed by a bear for seven days and shown the road; he promised not to disclose where the bear was, but later, lured by the hunters’ offer of gain, broke his pledge. When the bear’s flesh was taken, both his arms dropped off at the elbows, and only then did he understand that the bear had treated him as a father. The hunters, afraid, gave the flesh to the Saṅgha; the senior monk said the bear was a future buddha, and the king in turn exhorted knowing kindness by the law of the realm. The teaching of the story is not to frighten people with strange retribution, but to show that reducing a benefactor to an object that can be exchanged for profit first destroys one’s own root of great compassion.

The bodhisattva reflects further: even those who do evil to me ought to be liberated, how much more those who have been kind to me. This sentence places repaying kindness back within the great vow, rather than merely paying off a debt within intimate, friendly reciprocity; a benefactor certainly may not be abandoned, yet an enemy, for having shown no kindness, does not therefore drop out of the beings to be liberated either.

Third, abiding in patience. The questioner says that patience has many aspects—why speak only of not being angry and not vexing? The treatise answers that this is the substance of the initial practice: first there is anger, and only then does one vex others through body and speech; first stop this chain of growth. Here it is explicitly said to be patience toward beings; the patience toward dharmas that comes later is not yet brought forward.

Fourth, receiving joy. Morality makes body and speech pure, knowing kindness and patience make the mind pure; when the three kinds of action are pure, it is like bathing, putting on new clothes, wearing necklaces, and then looking in a mirror and rejoicing. At a deeper layer, the bodhisattva takes bringing beings to accomplishment as his joy. An elder keeps a child company at play, and then with something slightly better leads him to let go of what he liked before—a figure for the bodhisattva first giving people the wholesome joys of humans and gods and gradually leading them into the three vehicles. Joy is not the enjoyment of superiority, but rejoicing at seeing beings turn toward the good.

Fifth, not abandoning all beings. The treatise uses the simile of having promised someone a thing and afterwards not giving it; making a vow is equivalent to making a promise to beings, and to fall back and abandon them makes one’s words and vow lose their truth. The bodhisattva fears failing beings, and also does not wish to let the buddhas, the worthies, and the sages see his great words and small deeds.

Sixth, entering the mind of great compassion. The sūtra vows to undergo the suffering of hell for long kalpas for each and every being, until that being becomes a buddha. The questioner points out that no one can take another’s place in the retribution of karma; the treatise does not deny it, but says instead that this vow serves to show the measure of the mind: if there really were a principle by which one could take another’s place, one would certainly take it without hesitation. Again, seeing that in worldly sacrifices there are cases in which a person is permitted to undergo it in another’s place, he vows that if hell too could be like this, he would certainly take that place. The true meaning of great compassion is not a claim to be able to carry off another’s karma, but that not even the suffering most impossible to escape is made into a reason for abandoning a single person.

Seventh, having faith in the teacher, revering him, and consulting and receiving from him. The teacher is the cause and condition for attaining awakening; if the mind exalts itself, then however sharp its wisdom, it does not receive the Dharma. A deep well holds fine water, but without a rope it cannot be drawn; rain does not stay on the mountain-top, and the water of the Dharma likewise does not enter an arrogant mind. The questioner then presses a challenge: how can one regard an evil teacher as the Buddha? The treatise answers: take the benefit of his being able to open the deep meaning and untie the knots of doubt, and do not discard the Dharma on account of his other faults—just as, when a shabby bag holds a treasure or a base man holds a torch, one does not throw away the treasure and the light because the bag stinks or the man is evil. This does not declare faults to be no faults; it first discerns the benefit of the Dharma that one is seeking at this moment.

The same section further uses the trees that rely on the Snow Mountains and so flourish in root, stem, branch, leaf, flower, and fruit to say that relying on a good teacher can make morality, concentration, wisdom, and liberation increase. Facing a teacher’s faults, the treatise records two layers of self-restraint side by side: Sadāprarudita, having once received instruction, did not dwell on the Dharma-teacher’s shortcomings; and again, clay images and wooden images have in themselves no real merit, yet because one regards them as the Buddha one can still produce merit—how much more a person who can teach the Dharma with wisdom and skilful means. Finally it closes by contemplating all dharmas as ultimately empty and contemplating all beings as buddhas, saying that the Dharma-teacher can do the work of bringing about buddhahood, and all the more should one take up the benefit of his wisdom. These similes all speak of how the disciple does not lose the benefit of the Dharma; they have not rewritten faults as good deeds.

Eighth, diligently seeking the six perfections. The six perfections are the causes and conditions for becoming a buddha; one should, like a merchant who prepares goods according to his destination or a farmer who chooses seed according to the soil, attend to them diligently with a single mind. If one delays with a soft mind, one is easily broken by the afflictions and the deeds of Māra. Therefore the second ground, after reverently receiving the Dharma, closes with continuous practice.

Do Not Misread

Do not read the section on revering the teacher as cancelling the discernment of good and evil. The treatise states explicitly ‘not dwelling on his other evils’; precisely because it first acknowledges that there are other evils does it say not to discard, on their account, the Dharma that can be received; what it discusses is how a disciple takes the benefit of the Dharma, not an exemption granted to any conduct whatever. Nor should the vow to undergo suffering in another’s place be spoken of as though karmic results could be transferred at will; the question and answer have already explicitly denied this.

Bearing on Practice

The Ground Free of Stain can be used to test whether the great vow can withstand relationships. When receiving kindness, can one acknowledge others’ share? When meeting adversity, can one stop before anger turns into words and deeds? Toward a teacher, can one neither follow blindly nor, because of one fault of his, discard all the benefit of the Dharma? Toward the people hardest to liberate, does one still not withdraw one’s promise? The eight dharmas bring great compassion back from imagination into the choices of each day.

Arc Four — The Ground of Radiance: How Much Learning Turns into the Pure Gift of the Dharma

What Is Being Asked

The third ground has only five dharmas, yet it strings hearing, speaking, the land, long suffering, and shame and conscience into a single path. The question is this: much learning easily becomes the possession of knowledge, the gift of the Dharma easily seeks fame, adorning the land easily becomes self-exaltation, and long benefiting of beings easily grows weary. How does the Dharma one has obtained truly give off light, rather than lighting up one’s own status?

Passage by Passage

First, learning much without satiety. The bodhisattva vows to hear and hold what is spoken by the buddhas of this world and of the ten directions, as the great ocean takes in the waters of the ten directions. Much learning is a cause and condition of wisdom, making one like a person with eyes who can discern the road he walks; dhāraṇī, the pure divine ear, and the power of not forgetting speak of being able to receive, able to hold, and not scattering or losing—not of merely pursuing quantity.

Second, the pure gift of the Dharma, not exalting oneself. The treatise uses the simile of pulling weeds from among the seedlings: fame and gain, later reward, and even seeking only a lesser nirvāṇa for oneself are all weeds mixed into the gift of the Dharma. Removing these mixed seekings does not make the gift of the Dharma aimless; it is only, with great compassion, to turn the wheel of the Dharma following the Buddha.

Third, adorning the buddha-land, not exalting oneself. The sūtra dedicates roots of goodness to purifying the buddha-world. What is cultivated is not sealed away under one’s personal name, but turned toward the pure conditions of the life beings share in common; precisely because the merit is dedicated outward, there is one measure less of the conceit ‘this is my land.’

Fourth, undergoing immeasurable toil and suffering in the world without weariness. The questioner says that there are many causes for not wearying of birth and death—why take only bringing beings to accomplishment and adorning the buddha-realm? The treatise uses a good medicine smeared on a sore to say that roots of goodness make suffering and affliction thinner, and further uses one’s own experiencing of merit and happiness, being able to benefit according to one’s vow, and the land being adorned and pure to say that long practice has its supports; but what can best bear the great mind remains these two matters, beings and the land. It is not because suffering itself is lovable, but because what is done does not pass in vain.

Fifth, abiding in the place of shame and conscience. The treatise uses the simile of a bodhisattva who has already set out a great feast and invited the multitude, but who, on meeting a little suffering, with a stingy mind eats it himself and takes nirvāṇa alone, to point out that falling back from the great vow is most to be ashamed of. Shame and conscience are not self-loathing, but let the original promise illuminate the present retreating mind, so that one returns to the direction of the Great Vehicle.

Do Not Misread

Do not take much learning as the whole of the third ground; if after hearing one does not give, if in giving one seeks fame, if in dedicating one exalts oneself, if on meeting suffering one retreats, much learning instead becomes a new covering. Nor should not wearying of suffering be understood as seeking suffering. The treatise says that roots of goodness are like a medicine that lessens pain, which plainly does not count pain as merit; the point is to have a purpose and provisions sufficient for not retreating.

Bearing on Practice

The Ground of Radiance requires that what is heard be able to flow. With each dharma one learns, one can ask how it becomes an explanation useful to beings; with each portion of good one does, one can ask whether one is willing to dedicate it to a shared purity; when weary, one neither denies the suffering nor at once shrinks back to seeking only one’s own ease, but with shame and conscience reconnects with the ‘multitude’ one first invited.

Arc Five — The Ground of Increasing Radiance: How Ten Kinds of Not-Abandoning Keep Renunciation Free of Attachment to Marks

What Is Being Asked

The fourth ground lists ten kinds of not-abandoning and abandoning. On the surface they look like a set of ascetic rules for those who have left home, yet the treatise pushes them one by one toward nothing to be attained: not abandoning the araṇya while having to surpass the mind of the two vehicles; few desires, to the point of not taking even awakening by desire; keeping morality without taking up the mark of morality; wearying of the world while entering non-action; giving without seeking gratitude. The question is how to renounce without turning ‘I am one who has renounced’ into a new attachment.

Passage by Passage

First, not abandoning the araṇya dwelling. Leaving the assembly to dwell alone is not merely a change of place; it must pass beyond the mind that, on meeting suffering, takes nirvāṇa alone—otherwise the body has left the assembly, but the mind still guards only itself. Second, few desires. Not even unsurpassed awakening is taken by desire, how much less the other desires. This is not a not-wanting to become a buddha, but not treating awakening as an object that can be possessed.

Third, contentment. Contentment with food and drink, clothing, and bedding is a helping condition for wholesome dharmas, yet this chapter takes omniscience of all kinds as the ultimate contentment, since there is then no superior dharma left to seek. Contentment in living guards against desire scattering the mind; contentment in wisdom marks out where one is heading. Fourth, not abandoning the merits of the dhūta practices. The twelve dhūta practices make morality pure; morality supports concentration, and concentration gives rise to wisdom; the acceptance of non-arising is their fruit, and the text speaks of the cause by way of the fruit. The bodhisattva at this point abides in compliant acceptance and contemplates the acceptance of non-arising, without passing off the name of the fruit as something already realised.

Fifth, not abandoning morality. Knowing the real mark of all dharmas, one does not take up even the mark of keeping morality, yet all the more does not break morality. The gate of liberation of emptiness keeps morality from becoming a badge of self, without making morality lose its guarding. Sixth, loathing the desires as foul. Knowing the mind of desire to be empty and deceptive, one does not even give rise to it, how much less follow desire and indulge in it; what the loathing points to is the deceit of the defiled mind, not a hatred of the body and the world.

Seventh, the mind that wearies of the world. The treatise takes the gate of liberation of non-action as the fruit of this weariness. Weariness is not the fabricating of an identity that flees the world, but seeing that in all dharmas nothing is fabricated, and ceasing to demand eternal satisfaction from the dharmas of the three realms. Eighth, giving up all one has. Not begrudging inner and outer dharmas, one places both external wealth and possessions and inner attachments within the range of what can be given up.

Ninth, the mind does not sink. Eye and form, ear and sound, and so on up to mind and dharmas, are the sites of consciousness of two classes, faculty and object; the bodhisattva does not give rise to a grasping, attached consciousness at either of the two sites, contemplates what the six consciousnesses know as empty and deceptive, and further vows that beings abide in non-duality. ‘Not sinking’ is not a numb absence of consciousness, but not sinking into the prison of the opposition of subject and object.

Tenth, not begrudging anything. The deepest cause and condition is ultimate emptiness: not recollecting what was given, not taking up the mark of the recipient, not seeking gratitude from the recipient, and not giving rise to a lofty mind on account of being able to give. The first nine items are gathered up here into pure giving, showing that the renunciation of the fourth ground has not left the first perfection.

Do Not Misread

Do not read not taking up the mark of morality as morality being optional, and do not read not desiring even awakening as giving up awakening. This chapter consistently distinguishes direction from possession: the direction is still toward omniscience, while possession does not take up even the mark of omniscience. Do not describe the mind’s not giving rise to the two sites of consciousness as the stopping of the senses; what the treatise refutes is treating faculty, object, and consciousness as really existent and sinking into them.

Bearing on Practice

These ten dharmas can be used to discern whether ‘reduction’ is truly renunciation. Fewer things but increased self-conceit is not few desires; keeping morality while looking down on others is not the not-taking-up of marks; dwelling in a quiet place and caring only for one’s own ease is not the transcendence of the araṇya. True increasing brilliance is that, once outer conditions are simplified, giving, the vow-mind, and non-dual wisdom become all the brighter.

Arc Six — The Ground Hard to Conquer: How Twelve Kinds of Keeping Away Guard the Hardest Place

What Is Being Asked

What the fifth ground deals with is not the coarse evils that only beginners have, but the obstructions that, even as practice gradually deepens, can still invade through human affairs, talk, and self-assessment. The twelve kinds of keeping away begin from close association with householders, bhikṣuṇīs, stinginess over others’ families, and places of unprofitable talk, and advance to anger, self-importance, contempt for others, the ten evils, great conceit, self-will, the inversions, and the three poisons. What it asks is this: how does one who already has merit, receives others’ offerings, and can discuss the meaning of the Dharma, not lose one’s guard in the most familiar places?

Passage by Passage

First, keeping away from close association with householders. One leaves home in the first place to leave the conditions that hinder the path; if one again grows close to household life, one is no different from before. The treatise uses the simile of one who cannot swim going into the water to save a drowning man and both sinking together, to say that first seeking one’s own liberation is not refusing beings, but first acquiring the ability to save others; one who deeply keeps the Buddha in mind can still go to the lands of the buddhas, leave home, and gather virtue.

Second, keeping away from bhikṣuṇīs. The questioner challenges this with the equal mind: since one regards beings equally, why may one not dwell together? The treatise answers that this bodhisattva is not yet non-retrogressing and has not yet cut off the outflows, and moreover, because of his merit, easily becomes an object of love and attachment; he must avoid his own defilement and attachment and the slander of others. This is a safeguard for a mind and conduct not yet stable at that stage, not a judgement of beings as high or low by gender.

Third, keeping away from stinginess over others’ families. Having oneself already given up home, one should not turn round and regard other families’ offerings as one’s private property. The donors are helping the bodhisattva to bring ease and happiness to beings; what another obtains, moreover, comes from his own past merit, and the one who receives offerings has no reason for envy or stinginess. Fourth, keeping away from places of unprofitable talk. Talk of kings’ affairs, of bandits, of seas and mountains, of medicines and treasures, and local miscellany, if it only relieves boredom without profiting merit or the path, squanders the time for rescuing from suffering—just as, when fire breaks out on all four sides, one cannot sit calmly talking of other matters. This chapter even lists talk that merely draws one back to the two vehicles as unprofitable at this ground, because its direction does not accord with the great vow.

Fifth, keeping away from anger. The treatise analyses the order of its growth in detail: what first arises and is not yet settled is called anger; when it grows and one does harm with the body, it is called vexation; when one slanders with harsh speech, it is called contention; when one inflicts killing and binding, it is called fighting. Keeping away does not wait until one strikes someone to restrain it, but constantly keeps guard before the first angry thought comes in at the door.

Sixth, keeping away from self-importance; seventh, keeping away from contempt for others. Self-importance comes from treating the inner five aggregates as something that can be high; contempt for others comes from treating outer dharmas as something that can be low; when one contemplates inner and outer dharmas as unfindable, both kinds of comparison lose their real ground at once. Eighth, keeping away from the ten unwholesome paths of action. The ten evils already obstruct the noble eightfold path; still less could they bear the unsurpassed path.

Ninth, keeping away from great conceit. Practising the eighteen emptinesses, one does not see dharmas as having any fixed great or small, and so cannot set up great conceit on the scale of one’s cultivation and realisation. Tenth, keeping away from self-will. Only by uprooting the roots of the seven conceits, and moreover truly loving and delighting in wholesome dharmas, does one not take one’s own opinion as the only measure. Eleventh, keeping away from the inversions. Permanence, bliss, purity, and self are all unfindable, so one does not establish the world by inverted marks. Twelfth, keeping away from lust, anger, and delusion. The three poisons are not only harmful; their objects themselves have no fixed mark either; seeing that the objects are unreal leaves the poisons nothing to cling to.

Do Not Misread

Do not use ‘keeping away’ as grounds for contempt for others, for the seventh item of this very ground is precisely keeping away from contempt for others. Nor should one lift the protective rules out of their conditions and turn them into verdicts on the essential nature of all people; the treatise’s reasons are not yet being non-retrogressing, not yet having cut off the outflows, being easily attached to, and easily inviting slander—what it treats is a concrete risk.

Bearing on Practice

The Ground Hard to Conquer is best suited to examining the subtle forms of conceit: does one regard offerings as one’s own domain? Does one use the terms of the Buddhadharma for idle chatter? Before anything is spoken, does one allow anger to rehearse itself over and over? Because one keeps away from something oneself, does one look down on people still in it? Only by holding firm at these small entrances can one be said to have conquered the place hard to conquer.

Arc Seven — The Ground of the Present: How the Six Perfections Do Not Retreat When Giving Is Right Before One

What Is Being Asked

The sixth ground on the one hand speaks of fulfilling the six perfections, and on the other lists six things that should not be done. It no longer asks only whether one understands the six perfections, but whether, when giving actually takes place, the mind will grieve at the loss, fear the asking, hold back, regret afterwards, doubt when meeting the deep Dharma, and finally retreat toward seeking only its own liberation. The test of ‘the present’ lies precisely in the moment when the asker stands before one and the goods are about to leave one’s hand.

Passage by Passage

The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and prajñā. The sūtra says that the buddhas, as well as the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, all reach the other shore by relying on the six perfections; the questioner doubts this: since this is the bodhisattva ground, why speak of the two vehicles? The treatise answers that the Great Vehicle can contain and receive the Small Vehicle, while the Small Vehicle cannot contain the Great Vehicle. This does not declare the results of the three vehicles to be all the same; it only says that the six perfections have a vast capacity to bear.

The six guards are linked item by item. First, not forming the intent of the two vehicles: not taking the narrower quiescence as the path of unsurpassed awakening. Second, giving without grief: not regarding giving as a loss because the goods leave one’s hand. Third, the mind not sinking on seeing the asker: not shrinking back when the need truly appears. Fourth, giving whatever one has: from the first arousing of the mind one does not first mark off which things may be given and which may never be given. Fifth, not regretting after giving: guarding what has been done by the power of loving-kindness and compassion. Sixth, not doubting the deep Dharma: bearing, by the power of the merit of faith, what is spoken by the Buddha’s wisdom that one has not yet fully penetrated.

The treatise says that the bodhisattva of the sixth ground has already contemplated all dharmas as empty, yet is not yet complete in skilful means, and may instead, fearing birth and death, fall into the two vehicles; therefore the Buddha especially keeps him in mind and protects him. Knowing ultimate emptiness leaves nothing begrudged at the time of giving; deeply keeping beings in mind brings no grief and no regret; great merit makes the power of faith great, so that even before one has attained the acceptance of the non-arising of dharmas and the pratyutpanna samādhi, one is in no hurry to deny the deep Dharma with the disputations of ordinary people. The last sentence is not telling people to stop reasoning and discerning, but saying that all idle discourse has its shortcomings in each case, while the Buddha’s wisdom is both free of idle discourse and able to cultivate the good by skilful means, and both sides must be received in faith.

Do Not Misread

Do not describe the six perfections’ running through the three vehicles as the three vehicles being without difference; the treatise only says that the Great Vehicle contains the Small. Nor should ‘giving whatever one has’ be abstracted into an impulse that does not discern causes and conditions; the opening of this chapter has already listed the power of skilful means as a condition for cultivating the good; what is treated here is first marking off, by what is mine, a core that may not be touched.

Bearing on Practice

The sixth ground places the six perfections on a timeline to test them: before giving, does one hold something back in advance; when the asker appears, does the mind retreat; at the moment of giving, does one grieve; after giving, does one regret; and when meeting a meaning of emptiness that cannot be understood at once, does one shrink the vow out of fear? Only when these four points in time of giving, and this further situation, are seen clearly are the six perfections more than a list of names.