Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment

TRAINING IN THE MAHĀYĀNA: PRECEPTS AND PERFECTIONS

iii) Explanation of the process of learning the precepts

a' How to train in the Mahāyāna in general

1' Establishing the desire to learn the precepts of the spirit of enlightenment

2' Taking the vows of the conquerors’ children after establishing the desire to learn the precepts

3' How to train after taking the vows

a" What the precepts are based upon

b" How all the precepts are included in the six perfections

1" A discussion of the main topic, the fixed number of perfections

(a) The fixed number of perfections based on high status

(b) The fixed number of perfections based on fulfilling the two aims

(d) The fixed number of perfections based on their subsuming the entire Mahāyāna

(e) The fixed number of perfections in terms of the completeness of paths or method

(f) The fixed number of perfections based on the three trainings

2" An ancillary discussion of the fixed order of the perfections

(a) The order of arising

(b) The order in terms of inferior and superior

iii) Explanation of the process of learning the precepts

The explanation of the process of learning the precepts has two parts:

1. How to train in the Mahāyāna in general (Chapters 8 and on)

2. How to train specifically in the Vajrayāna (Chapter 27 of Volume 3)

a' How to train in the Mahāyāna in general

The explanation of how to train in the Mahāyāna in general has three sections:

1. Establishing the desire to learn the precepts of the spirit of enlightenment

2. Taking the vows of the conquerors’ children after establishing the desire to learn the precepts

3. How to train after taking the vows (Chapters 8 and on)

1' Establishing the desire to learn the precepts of the spirit of enlightenment

In the discipline of individual liberation and in tantra it is inappropriate to study the precepts before you have first taken the vows, but these bodhisattva vows are different. First you understand the precepts well and then, after you are trained in them, if you have an enthusiasm for taking them, you are given the vows. In this regard the Bodhisattva Levels says:¹⁷⁴

For persons wanting to take the ethical discipline vows of a bodhisattva you should make known in advance the fundamental precepts and the sources of fault for bodhisattvas taught here in the “Summary of the Bodhisattva Fundamentals” for the bodhisattvas’ scriptural collection of the discourses. If after sincere investigation and intelligent analysis these persons are inspired, and if it is not because of being made to do it by someone else and it is not to compete with others, then know that these are reliable bodhisattvas. These persons should be given the vows of ethical discipline and should receive them in accord with the ritual.

This is a very good method because, if you understand the precepts, bring them to mind, establish a wish to train in them from the depths of your heart, and then take the vows, you will be extremely constant. [357] To explain the precepts both here and below would make for too great a burden of words, so I shall indicate them below. ¹⁷⁵

2' Taking the vows of the conquerors’ children after establishing the desire to learn the precepts

I have already established in detail in my Basic Path to Awakening commentary on the Bodhisattva Levels’ chapter on ethical discipline¹⁷⁶ first how to take the bodhisattva vows, immediately after that how to guard against fundamental transgressions and transgressions which constitute minor infractions, and then how to repair vows if they degenerate. It is most definitely necessary that you read this before you take the vows, so understand them from there.

3' How to train after taking the vows

How to train after taking the vows has three parts:

1. What the precepts are based upon

2. How all the precepts are included in the six perfections

3. The process of learning the perfections (Chapters 9 and on)

a" What the precepts are based upon

There are limitless clear categorizations, but if you arrange the bodhisattva precepts by type, you can include them all within the six perfections. The six perfections are thus the great condensation of all the key points of the bodhisattva path. The four ways to gather disciples [generosity, pleasant speech, working at the aims, and consistency of behavior] are also included within these six perfections as follows. That generosity is included is obvious. Pleasant speech is giving instructions to disciples, taking the six perfections as the point of departure; working at the aims is establishing others in the aims of these instructions; and consistency of behavior is practicing just as the disciple does.

Although it is true that the entire bodhisattva path is also subsumed under other condensations such as the two collections, the three trainings [ethical discipline, meditative concentration, and wisdom], and so forth, these are not able to produce the understanding that the six perfections do, so the six perfections are the best inclusive set.

b" How all the precepts are included in the six perfections

How all the precepts are included in the six perfections has two parts:

1. A discussion of the main topic, the fixed number of perfections

2. An ancillary discussion of the fixed order of the perfections

1" A discussion of the main topic, the fixed number of perfections

The Bhagavan formulated a bare outline of the six perfections, and the holy Regent [Maitreya] produced certain knowledge of these by explicating in accord with the Buddha’s intended meaning the key points of the rationale for formulating the perfections in that fashion. These explanations show that there is a fixed number of perfections. When you are convinced of this and astonished by it, you will understand the practice of the six perfections as the supreme instruction, so obtain such conviction.

The discussion of the main topic, the fixed number of perfections, has six parts:

1. The fixed number of perfections based on high status

2. The fixed number of perfections based on fulfilling the two aims

3. The fixed number of perfections based on perfecting the complete fulfillment of others’ aims

4. The fixed number of perfections based on their subsuming the entire Mahāyāna

5. The fixed number of perfections in terms of the completeness of paths or method

6. The fixed number of perfections based on the three trainings

(a) The fixed number of perfections based on high status

To fully complete the greatly effective bodhisattva deeds you need an immeasurably long succession of lifetimes. [358] Moreover, to attain quick success on the path within these lifetimes you need a life excellent in every aspect. Our present life is not excellent in every aspect but rather has only some of the aspects of full excellence; we do not make progress with it though we practice the teachings. You need a life that has four kinds of excellence: (1) resources to use [the result of the perfection of generosity], (2) a body with which you act [the result of the perfection of ethical discipline], (3) companions together with whom you act [the result of the perfection of patience], and (4) work that you are able to accomplish once undertaken [the result of the perfection of joyous perseverance]. Since in many cases these four kinds of excellence alone may themselves become conditions for afflictions, you must not fall under the control of the afflictions [the result of the perfection of meditative stabilization]. As just the four kinds of excellence are not sufficient, you must also distinguish well, in regard to what to adopt and what to cast aside, precisely what things to do and to stop doing [the result of the perfection of wisdom]. Otherwise, just as a bamboo or plantain tree dies after giving fruit, or a mule dies with pregnancy, you will be destroyed by the four excellences.

The wise understand how these six—the four excellences, control of the afflictions, and knowledge of what to adopt and what to cast aside—are the results of earlier virtuous actions, and they strive again at steadily increasing their causes. The unwise use the results of their earlier accumulations of virtue and exhaust them; as they do not increase them anew, they reach the brink of their future suffering.

When you again produce these six in future lives, their production will not be causeless, or from discordant causes, but rather from concordant causes that are the perfections, fixed as six in number. Therefore in this lifetime you must repeatedly habituate yourself to constant reliance on the six perfections because the superiority of the effects is commensurate to the superiority of the causes. A life with the four excellences constitutes temporary high status, whereas the ultimate high status, which consists of ultimate excellence of body, etc., exists at the buddha level. Thus the Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras (Mahāyāna-sūtrālaṃkāra) says:¹⁷⁷

High status possessed of excellent resources and body,

Excellent companions and undertakings,

Not going under the power of the afflictions,

And never being mistaken in activities. . . . [359]

(b) The fixed number of perfections based on fulfilling the two aims

When someone in such a life of high status learns the bodhisattva deeds, these activities are comprehensively categorized as two: those which fulfill your own aim and those which fulfill the aims of others. Therefore, there is a fixed number of perfections based on fulfilling the two aims.

To fulfill the aims of others you must first help them with material goods. Since no benefit will come from generosity accompanied by harmfulness toward living beings, you need ethical discipline, which has a great purpose for others in that it is the state of desisting from harm to others and the causes of such harm. To bring this to its full development you also need patience that disregards the harm done to you, for, if you are impatient with harm and retaliate a time or two, you will not attain pure ethical discipline. When you do not retaliate because of your patience, you prevent others from accumulating a great amount of sin and bring them to virtue by inspiring them with your patience. So this practice has a great purpose for others.

You attain your own aim, the bliss of liberation, through the power of wisdom. Since you will not attain this with a distracted mind, you must set your mind in meditative equipoise by means of meditative stabilization, obtaining a mental serviceability wherein you intentionally set your attention on any object of meditation. Since a lazy person does not produce this, you need joyous perseverance day and night that never slackens, so this is the basis of the other perfections.

For accomplishing the two aims, then, the number of perfections is fixed as six. The Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras says:¹⁷⁸

Those who strive for the aims of beings

Work at giving, non-harm, and patience;

And completely fulfill their own aims

With stabilization and liberation, together with their basis.

In these six there is no complete fulfillment of others’ aims.¹⁷⁹ The mention of “stabilization and liberation” differentiates between the two as (1) the stabilization of the mind on the object of meditation, this being the imprint of meditative stabilization, and (2) the liberation from cyclic existence, this being the imprint of wisdom. Notice that this does not mistake meditative serenity for insight. [360] As this is so, those who assert that the meditation of fixing one’s attention in an absence of conceptual thought is meditation on the profound are speaking of a meditation that is a single portion of the meditative stabilization that is one of these six perfections. You must attain certain knowledge of the six perfections in their entirety.

You first relieve others’ poverty by giving away material goods. Then you do no harm to any living being and, in addition, are patient with harm done to you. Without becoming dispirited you joyously persevere at helping those who harm you. You depend on meditative stabilization and inspire them through displaying supernormal powers and so forth. When they become suitable vessels for the teachings, you rely on wisdom and give good explanations, cut through their doubts and thereby bring them to liberation. Because you do all this, the perfections are fixed as six in number. The Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras states:¹⁸⁰

Through relieving others’ poverty, not harming them,

Being patient with their harm, not being dispirited with what they do,

Delighting them, and speaking well to them

You fulfill others’ aims, which fulfills your own.

This verse, together with the one above, says that it is not possible to fulfill others’ and your own aims without relying on the six perfections. Once you are certain about the way in which you fulfill your own and others’ aims through these six perfections, you will have respect for the practice of them.

(d) The fixed number of perfections based on their subsuming the entire Mahāyāna

You are indifferent to resources because you are not attached to those you have and do not pursue those you lack. Since you then have the ability to safeguard precepts, you adopt and respect ethical discipline. You are patient with the suffering that comes from living beings and inanimate things and you are enthusiastic about whatever virtue you set out to cultivate, so you do not get dispirited by either of these. You cultivate a non-discursive yoga of meditative serenity and a non-discursive yoga of insight. These six comprise all the Mahāyāna practices through which you advance by the six perfections, for you accomplish these practices in stages by means of the six perfections and you do not need any more than these six perfections. The Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras states:¹⁸¹

The entire Mahāyāna is summed up in

Not delighting in resources,

Reverence, not being dispirited in two ways,

And the yogas free of discursiveness. [361]

Given this, it is a contradiction to want to enter the Mahāyāna and yet to reject the practice of the six perfections.

(e) The fixed number of perfections in terms of the completeness of paths or method

The path—i.e., method—for not being attached to the resources that are your possessions is generosity, because you become free from attachment to your things by becoming habituated to giving them away. The method for restraining yourself from the distraction of trying to possess what you do not possess is ethical discipline, for when you maintain a monk’s vows, you do not have all the distractions of making a living. The method for not abandoning living beings is patience, because you do not despair at the suffering caused by the harm others inflict. The method to increase virtues is joyous perseverance, because you increase them when you joyously persevere at what you undertake. The methods for clearing away obscurations are the final two perfections, because meditative stabilization clears away the afflictions and wisdom clears away the cognitive obscurations. Thus the perfections are fixed as six in number. The Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras states:¹⁸²

Non-attachment to objects is a path;

Another is restraint from the distraction of obtaining them;

Not abandoning beings, increasing virtues,

And clearing away the obscurations are others.

The following explanation produces strong conviction about the six perfections. In order to avoid being dominated by the distraction of sensual objects, you need generosity that is free from attachment. To prevent sensory experiences that have not occurred, you need ethical discipline that restrains distraction by things that are pointless [deeds that are wrong by prohibition] or counterproductive [deeds that are wrong by nature]. Given that there are a great number of living beings whose behavior is bad and who you are constantly in danger of meeting, you need a powerful conditioning to patience as a remedy for giving up on their welfare. In order to increase virtue in terms of the great number of actions and its practice over long periods of time, you need joyous perseverance that has the intense and long-term enthusiasm that comes from reflecting on the benefits of virtuous actions, etc. In order to suppress afflictions you need meditative stabilization, and to destroy their seeds and the cognitive obscurations you need wisdom. [362]

(f) The fixed number of perfections based on the three trainings

The nature of the training in ethical discipline [the first of the three trainings] is the practice of ethical discipline. The precondition of the training in ethical discipline is generosity, because once you have generosity that is indifferent to resources, you can properly adopt an ethical discipline. The aid to the training in ethical discipline is patience, because the patience of not retaliating when scolded, etc. safeguards your properly adopted ethical discipline. Meditative stabilization is the training of mind [the second training, the training of meditative concentration], and wisdom is the training in wisdom [the third training]. As for joyous perseverance, it is included in all three trainings, so the perfections are fixed at six in number. The Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras states:¹⁸³

The Conqueror rightly presented six perfections

In terms of the three trainings: three are the first,

Two of the six are connected with the final two,

One is included in all three.

By a certain kind of excellent life you bring to completion either others’ or your own aims; you practice certain kinds of trainings by possessing a diversity of methods, depending on which vehicle you are in. Understand in this way that the six perfections comprise and bring to completion the above perspectives on their fixed number—life, aims, the Mahāyāna, the methods, and the trainings. Reflect until you get a deep conviction about how the six perfections are the summation of all the key points of bodhisattva practice.

Furthermore, there are two causes of not initially transcending or rising above cyclic existence—attachment to resources and attachment to a home. The remedies for these are generosity and ethical discipline, respectively.

You may rise above these attachments once, but still turn back without reaching the end. There are two causes of this—suffering from the wrongdoing of living beings and becoming dispirited at the length of time you have pursued virtue. The remedies for these are patience and joyous perseverance, respectively. Once you understand how to sustain a disregard for all suffering and harm, as well as an enthusiasm which views even an eternity as though it were one day, you must practice them in various ways. [363] If you do this, you will produce the patience and joyous perseverance that are capable of functioning as remedies to what causes you to turn back. Thus, they are extremely crucial. Never mind the matter of the bodhisattva deeds, even with regard to present-day cultivation of virtue, there are many who start out but few who do not turn back after a while because (1) their forbearance for the slightest hardship is tiny, and (2) their enthusiasm for the path they cultivate is tepid. This is the result of their not putting into practice the personal instructions associated with patience and joyous perseverance.

There are two causes for letting your virtue go to waste even if you do not turn back after a while—distraction, wherein your attention does not stabilize on a virtuous object of meditation, and faulty wisdom. The remedies for these are meditative stabilization and wisdom, respectively. Meditative stabilization is a remedy because it is said that even virtuous practices such as repetition of mantra and daily recitations are senseless if your attention wanders elsewhere. Wisdom is a remedy because if you fail to develop the wisdom that fully delineates the topics in the collections of Buddhist knowledge, you will be mistaken about what to adopt and what to cast aside, even the obvious, and will then conduct yourself wrongly. This fixes the number of perfections at six in terms of their being remedies that eliminate the class of phenomena that are incompatible with virtue.

The number of perfections is fixed at six based on the fact that they are the foundation for achieving every quality of a buddha. This is because the first four perfections are preconditions for meditative stabilization, so through these four you accomplish meditative stabilization—the perfection of non-distraction. Furthermore, when you cultivate insight based on this, you will know reality.

Fixing the number of perfections at six in terms of their being concordant with helping living beings to mature is similar in meaning to the third one [perfecting the complete fulfillment of others’ aims] mentioned earlier.

I have explained here the noble Asaṇga’s assertions as presented by the master Haribhadra [in his Long Explanation of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra in Eight Thousand Lines (Abhisamayālaṃkārālokā)]. It is extremely crucial to gain conviction about the six perfections.

2" An ancillary discussion of the fixed order of the perfections

This discussion has three parts:

1. The order of arising

2. The order in terms of inferior and superior

3. The order in terms of coarse and subtle

(a) The order of arising

When you have a generosity that is disinterested in and unattached to resources, you take up ethical discipline. [364] When you have an ethical discipline which restrains you from wrongdoing, you become patient with those who harm you. When you have the patience wherein you do not become dispirited with hardships, the conditions for rejecting virtue are few, so you are able to persevere joyously. Once you joyously persevere day and night, you will produce the meditative concentration that facilitates the application of your attention to virtuous objects of meditation. When your mind is in meditative equipoise, you will know reality exactly.

(b) The order in terms of inferior and superior

Each preceding perfection is inferior to the superior one that follows it.

Each preceding perfection is easier than the subsequent one to engage in and perform, so it is coarser than the subsequent one. Each subsequent perfection is more difficult than the preceding one to engage in and perform, so it is more subtle than the preceding one. The Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras says:¹⁸⁴

Because the subsequent perfections arise contingent on the preceding ones,

Because they are ranked as inferior and superior,

And because of their coarseness and subtlety,

The perfections are taught in order.