Crossing the Path
The traveler steps onto the narrow white path and does not look back — not even when the bandits, in their own final and almost sympathetic-sounding appeal, call out that the path is too dangerous to cross. Shandao then turns from telling the parable to explaining it, point by point.
Not Once Looking Back
此人既聞此遣彼喚，即自正當身心，決定尋道直進，不生疑怯退心。或行一分二分，東岸群賊等喚言：「仁者迴來，此道嶮惡不得過，必死不疑，我等眾無惡心相向。」此人雖聞喚聲，亦不迴顧，一心直進念道而行，須臾即到西岸，永離諸難。善友相見，慶樂無已。
This person, having heard both this urging and that calling, thereupon settled his own body and mind directly, resolved to seek out the path and advance straight forward, giving rise to no thought of doubt, timidity, or retreat whatsoever. He walked perhaps a portion of the way, or two portions, when the bandits on the eastern bank called out to him: "Sir, come back — this path is perilous and evil, and cannot be crossed; you shall surely die without any doubt; we ourselves bear you no ill will at all." Though this person heard this very calling, he did not turn to look back, but, with a single mind, advanced straight forward, holding the path in thought as he walked — and, in but a moment, he reached the western bank, forever free of every peril. Meeting there with his own good friend, his joy and delight knew no end.
The bandits' own closing words are worth pausing on for their particular cruelty: not a threat, but a claim of goodwill — "we ourselves bear you no ill will at all" — offered at the exact moment the traveler is most exposed, midway across a path too narrow to turn around on. This is temptation at its most persuasive, wearing the appearance of concern rather than malice, and it is precisely this final, almost reasonable-sounding voice that the traveler must refuse to even glance toward. His arrival, "reunited with his own good friend," closes the parable on a note the entire preceding terror makes vivid by contrast: not merely survival, but a reunion that the whole ordeal was, from its own beginning, oriented toward.
Unpacking the Parable: The World Left Behind
此是喻也。次合喻者。言東岸者，即喻此娑婆之火宅也。言西岸者，即喻極樂寶國也。言群賊惡獸詐親者，即喻眾生六根六識六塵、五陰四大也。言無人空逈澤者，即喻常隨惡友不值真善知識也。言水火二河者，即喻眾生貪愛如水，瞋憎如火也。
This, then, is the parable itself. Next comes the correspondence of the parable to its own meaning. As for the eastern bank: this represents this very burning house of the Sahā world. As for the western bank: this represents the jeweled Land of Ultimate Bliss. As for the bands of bandits and fierce beasts, feigning intimacy: this represents sentient beings' own six sense faculties, six consciousnesses, six sense-objects, five aggregates, and four elements. As for the vast, desolate, uninhabited expanse: this represents constantly following evil companions, never once encountering a true and good spiritual friend. As for the two rivers of water and fire: this represents that sentient beings' own greed and attachment are like the water, and their own anger and hatred are like the fire.
The most striking move in this correspondence is easy to miss on a first pass: the bandits and fierce beasts, described in the parable as external threats "feigning intimacy," turn out to represent something entirely internal — the practitioner's own six sense faculties, six consciousnesses, six sense-objects, five aggregates, and four elements, the very apparatus of ordinary embodied experience itself. The danger this traveler flees was never really outside him; it was the pull of his own habitual perception and attachment, personified as pursuers precisely because that is how such pulls actually feel from the inside — as though something else is chasing you, rather than something you yourself carry everywhere you go.
Part 82 Complete
This closes Part 82. Part 83 completes the parable's own correspondence, identifying the narrow white path itself, the two voices calling from either shore, and the practitioner's own final crossing — closing this celebrated parable and, with it, the third of the three minds in full.
Continue to Part 83 — The White Path, and Two Voices Calling →