The Three Kinds of Pāramitā
Mahāmati asks the Buddha to explain the six pāramitās — giving, moral discipline, patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom — through which full and complete enlightenment is reached. The Buddha's answer divides all six into three distinct grades practiced by three distinct kinds of practitioner: the worldly grade, still caught in self and craving pleasant sensation; the transcendent grade, practiced by śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas who seek only their own nirvāṇa; and the supremely transcendent grade, in which every one of the six is simply a different name for the same single reality — false thought never arising at all. The Buddha then restates this same teaching in verse, returning to the theme of momentary destruction from Part 46 with a fuller account of exactly what does, and does not, endure across time.
The Three Kinds of Pāramitā
大慧菩薩復白佛言：「世尊！如世尊說，六波羅蜜滿足，得成正覺。何等為六？」佛告大慧：「波羅蜜有三種分別，謂：世間、出世間、出世間上上。大慧！世間波羅蜜者，我我所攝受計著，攝受二邊，為種種受生處，樂色聲香味觸故，滿足檀波羅蜜；戒、忍、精進、禪定、智慧，亦如是。凡夫神通，及生梵天。大慧！出世間波羅蜜者，聲聞、緣覺墮攝受涅槃故，行六波羅蜜，樂自己涅槃樂。出世間上上波羅蜜者，覺自心現妄想量攝受，及自心二故，不生妄想，於諸趣攝受非分，自心色相不計著。為安樂一切眾生故，生檀波羅蜜，起上方便；即於彼緣，妄想不生戒，是尸波羅蜜。即彼妄想不生忍，知攝所攝，是羼提波羅蜜。初中後夜，精勤方便，隨順修行方便，妄想不生，是毘梨耶波羅蜜。妄想悉滅，不墮聲聞涅槃攝受，是禪波羅蜜。自心妄想非性，智慧觀察，不墮二邊，先身轉勝而不可壞，得自覺聖趣，是般若波羅蜜。」
Mahāmati Bodhisattva again said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One, as the World-Honored One has taught, full and complete enlightenment is attained through the perfect fulfillment of the six pāramitās. What are these six?" The Buddha told Mahāmati: "The pāramitās admit of three distinct kinds: the worldly, the transcendent, and the supremely transcendent. Mahāmati, as for the worldly pāramitā: [it is practiced] while grasping and clinging to self and what belongs to self, embracing the two extremes, taking birth in various different places, and delighting in form, sound, smell, taste, and touch — the perfection of giving fulfilled in just this way, and moral discipline, patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom likewise. This is how the ordinary person attains spiritual powers and rebirth in the Brahmā heavens. Mahāmati, as for the transcendent pāramitā: śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, falling into a grasping after nirvāṇa, practice the six pāramitās while delighting only in their own personal bliss of nirvāṇa. As for the supremely transcendent pāramitā: becoming aware that [every object] grasped is simply the very measure of one's own mind's manifestation, and, because of this, that one's own mind is no longer split in two, false thought no longer arises — one no longer takes any portion of any destiny as something to be grasped, nor becomes attached to one's own mind's own manifestation of form. For the sake of bringing peace and happiness to every sentient being, giving arises, and the highest skillful means is set in motion; and, with respect to that very same object, false thought no longer arising — this is moral discipline, the pāramitā of śīla. That same false thought no longer arising, knowing apprehender and apprehended [to be one and the same] — this is patience, the pāramitā of kṣānti. Through the first, middle, and last watches of the night, diligently applying skillful means, cultivating practice in accordance with it, false thought no longer arising — this is diligence, the pāramitā of vīrya. False thought entirely extinguished, not falling into the śrāvaka's own grasping after nirvāṇa — this is meditative concentration, the pāramitā of dhyāna. One's own mind's false thought having no fixed nature at all, observed with wisdom, not falling into either extreme, one's prior body transformed into something ever more excellent and indestructible, attaining the domain of self-realized noble wisdom — this is wisdom, the pāramitā of prajñā."
The commentators explain why Mahāmati raises this question at exactly this point, tying it directly to the momentary-destruction teaching of Part 46: "剎那生滅者，生死此岸之事也。真常不壞者，涅槃彼岸之理也。然則自此岸而達彼岸，由剎那而究竟真常者，其六度之功乎！" — "momentary arising and ceasing belongs to this shore of birth-and-death; the truly constant and indestructible belongs to the principle of nirvāṇa, the far shore. And what carries one from this shore to that far shore, from the momentary to the ultimately, truly constant, if not the very work of the six perfections?" Having just distinguished what is momentary from what is not, the sūtra now turns to the practice that actually crosses from one to the other.
On the worldly grade of practice, the commentators identify four distinct faults folded into the single phrase describing it: "謂凡夫所修其過為四：所謂計我、我所，則無度生之念，一也；著於二邊，則不能達中道彼岸，二也；為求勝報，則不免於生死，三也；樂著六塵，則非無住相施，四也" — "the ordinary person's practice carries four faults: first, clinging to self and what belongs to self means having no thought of delivering other beings at all; second, attachment to the two extremes means being unable to reach the middle way's far shore; third, seeking a superior reward means never escaping birth-and-death; and fourth, delighting in the six sense-objects means the giving is never free of attachment to its own marks." And on the supremely transcendent grade, the commentators trace how all six pāramitās collapse into a single practice: "自然不即二邊、不離二邊，安於中道，直濟彼岸，是為上上波羅蜜相...而六度皆言妄想不生、或言悉滅、或言非性，是則六度雖異，而以離妄為本" — "naturally neither identical with the two extremes nor apart from them, resting in the middle way and going straight across to the far shore — this is the very mark of the supremely transcendent pāramitā... though all six perfections are described differently, each is said to involve false thought not arising, or being entirely extinguished, or having no fixed nature — so that, though the six differ in name, they share false thought's absence as their single root." At the highest grade, giving, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom are not six different achievements to be checked off one by one, but six names for the same single moment in which false thought simply fails to arise.
Closing Verse: Momentary Destruction Revisited
爾時，世尊欲重宣此義而說偈言：
「空無常剎那， 愚夫妄想作，
如河燈種子， 而作剎那想。
剎那息煩亂， 寂靜離所作，
一切法不生， 我說剎那義。
物生則有滅， 不為愚者說，
無間相續性， 妄想之所勳。
無明為其因， 心則從彼生，
乃至色未生， 中間有何分？
相續次第滅， 餘心隨彼生，
不住於色時， 何所緣而生？
以從彼生故， 不如實因生，
云何無所成， 而知剎那壞？
修行者正受， 金剛佛舍利，
光音天宮殿， 世間不壞事。
住於正法得， 如來智具足，
比丘得平等， 云何見剎那？
乾闥婆幻等， 色無有剎那，
於不實色等， 視之若真實。」
At that time, wishing to restate this meaning once more, the World-Honored One spoke in verse:
"Emptiness, impermanence, momentariness — these are the foolish and ignorant's own false thought's making, forming the notion of 'momentary' through images like a river's flow, a lamp's flame, and a seed.
Momentariness, once understood, brings turmoil to rest; stillness itself is apart from anything constructed — no dharma at all is truly born; this alone is what I mean by the meaning of 'momentary.'
What is born must therefore perish — this is not taught to the foolish, [lest they misuse it]; the very nature of unbroken, continuous succession is what false thought's own habituation produces.
Ignorance itself serves as its cause, and mind then arises from it — but in the interval before form itself has even arisen, what portion could there possibly be [for mind to depend upon]?
Continuing on, ceasing in succession, one mind following as another arises — yet, not abiding within form even for an instant, on what object could it possibly depend in order to arise at all?
Since it arises in just this way, it does not arise from any truly real cause — how, then, could one claim there is nothing at all accomplished, and yet still speak of knowing 'momentary destruction'?
The practitioner's own attainment in samādhi, a vajra, a buddha's relics, the palace of the heaven of radiant sound — these are things in the world that are never destroyed.
Abiding in the attainment of the true Dharma, the Tathāgata's own wisdom fully complete, a monk who has attained equanimity — how, then, could he still see 'momentary destruction' anywhere?
Like a gandharva city, like an illusion — form itself has no momentary destruction at all; it is only with respect to unreal form and the like that one looks upon it as though it were truly real."
The commentators explain that the verse's opening lines are not a fresh introduction to momentariness but a corrective aimed squarely at the misuse of the teaching just given in Part 46: "如來常以如河流、如種子、如燈等喻，破彼妄想有為作法，皆是空、無常、剎那。凡愚不善此隱密之說，而起剎那妄想" — "the Tathāgata constantly uses images like a river's flow, a seed, and a lamp's flame to refute [attachment to] conditioned, constructed dharmas as empty, impermanent, and momentary — yet the foolish and ignorant, unskilled in this teaching's hidden meaning, give rise instead to a false, fixed notion of 'momentary' itself." Even a correct teaching, misunderstood, becomes exactly the kind of view it was meant to dislodge — the images of flowing water and a burning lamp were given to loosen attachment, not to install a new dogma called "everything is momentary."
On the four things named in the verse as "never destroyed" — a practitioner's own samādhi-attainment, a vajra, a buddha's relics, and the palace of the heaven of radiant sound — the commentators explain the fourth, less familiar image directly: "光音天宮殿⋯此天三災不壞，復為後劫生成之始" — "the palace of the heaven of radiant sound: this heaven is undamaged even by the three great calamities [that destroy a world-system at an aeon's end], and it is, moreover, the very starting point from which the next aeon's world comes to be formed." Set alongside a practitioner's own attainment and a buddha's relics, this heaven's endurance through even a world-ending calamity makes the same point from the cosmic scale that gold and the vajra made from the human one: some things are simply not touched by the destruction that governs everything else.
Part 47 Complete
This closes Part 47: the six pāramitās distinguished across their worldly, transcendent, and supremely transcendent forms, with the highest grade collapsing all six into a single practice in which false thought simply does not arise, and the closing verse revisiting momentary destruction to show that the teaching was never meant to install "everything is momentary" as a fixed new dogma, illustrated by four things — a practitioner's own attainment, a vajra, a buddha's relics, and the heaven of radiant sound — that endure even a world-ending calamity untouched. Part 48 turns to a new and searching question Mahāmati raises immediately afterward: if the Buddha predicted that arhats would attain full buddhahood no different from any bodhisattva's own attainment, and if the Buddha himself never spoke a single word from his enlightenment to his final nirvāṇa, how can the very same Buddha still be said to experience the karmic consequences of past evil deeds?
Continue to Part 48 — Why Does the Tathāgata Still Experience Karmic Consequences? →