6th Imperishable, Morality

[Sanskrit text for this chapter is available]

(p. 34) Then the venerable Śāradvatīputra addressed himself to the bodhisattva Akṣayamati: – Well spoken by you, son of good family, was this imperishability of the bodhisattvas’ generosity. May you be inspired, son of good family, on the subject of the imperishability of the bodhisattvas’ morality, as to how the morality of the bodhisattvas becomes imperishable.

Akṣayamati said: – In sixty-five ways, reverend Śāradvatīputra, is the bodhisattvas’ mass of pure morality imperishable. What are the sixty-five?

[1. Morality correctly undertaken (samāttaśīla):] 1) Not harming any living beings; 2) not stealing others’ possessions; 3) no desire for others’ wives; 4) no lies to any being; 5) no slander through being content with one’s own circle of followers; 6) no harsh speech through enduring hard words; 7) no confused chattering through absence of chattering; 8) no cupidity through joy in others’ pleasure; 9) no ill-will through tolerating ways of speech involving accusation and slander; 10) right view through staying away from the teachings of other teachers; 11) trust in the Buddha through no impurity of thought; 12) trust in religion as it is the excellent religion teaching the way things are; 13) trust in the congregation through joy caused by all groups of saints; 14) obedience through respect for teachers; 15) obeisance with the body through honouring the Buddha, his religion and congregation with full prostration; 16) no lax morality through seeing the smallest imperfection as a danger; 17) unbroken morality through not relying on any other way; 18) unimpaired morality through avoiding bad rebirth; 19) unadulterated morality through not being corrupted by the vices of bad people; 20) untroubled morality through increase of only the good moments of existence; 21) morality of the noble through behaving the way one wishes; 22) morality which is praised through not being faulted by the wise; 23) morality of the best kind through its close relation to recollection and awareness; 24) morality which is not derided since it is without imperfections in all respects; 25) morality which is well guarded through guarding the senses; 26) morality of wide renown through having all the religious ways of the Buddha in mind; 27) morality of moderate wishes through knowing due moderation; 28) morality of being content through rejecting covetousness; 29) morality which is essentially aloof through having body and mind detached from the world; 30) morality of staying in the wilderness through shunning crowds of people; 31) morality content with the family of saints through not being for the sake of compliance with others; 32) morality in accordance with the qualities of the pure, and with severe austerity, through having all the potentialities of the good in one’s own power; 33) morality of accordance between words and actions through propitiation of both gods and men; 34) morality of friendliness through protecting all beings; 35) morality of compassion through tolerating all suffering; 36) morality of joy through the absence of despondency; 37) morality of equanimity through giving up aversion and attachment; 38) morality of examining one’s own mistakes through introspection concerning one’s own thoughts; 39) morality of seeing nothing wrong in the mistakes of others through protecting the thoughts of others; 40) morality of generosity through bringing beings to maturity; 41) morality which is well adopted through guarding morality; 42) morality of tolerance through the absence of hostile thoughts towards any being; 43) morality of vigour through never turning back; 44) morality of meditation through increasing the accumulation of the limbs of awakening; 45) morality of insight through never having enough of the potentiality for the good which consists in learning; 46) morality of learning through grasping the essence of learning; 47) morality of reliance on a spiritual friend through increasing the accumulation of the limbs of awakening; 48) morality of avoiding bad friends through rejecting wrong ways; 49) morality without view to [the safety of] the body through understanding the concept of impermanence; 50) morality not seeking safety of life through acting with zeal for the roots of good; 51) morality without regret through pure intention; 52) morality which is not artificial through pure action; 53) morality without great desires through pure determination; 54) indefatigable morality through actions well done; 55) morality without conceit since it is without arrogance; 56) morality without frivolity through absence of cupidity; 57) undistracted morality because of straightness [that is, having thoughts onepointedly (ekāgra) directed towards their objects (ālambana) ]; 58) morality which is not loquacious through being well trained; 59) disciplined morality through being undisturbed; 60) peaceful morality through appeasement [of primary and secondary vices (kleśopakleśa) ]; 61) morality of adequately grasping gentle speech through acting according to instruction; 62) morality of bringing living beings to maturity through not giving up the ways of attracting people; 63) morality of guarding true religion through not wasting [the seven kinds of noble] riches; 64) morality fulfilling all wishes through being originally pure [not adopted initially because of fear of punishment (rājadaṇḍa) or lack of livelihood, but adopted with pure intention (śuddhāśaya) ]; 65) morality to attain the morality of the Tathāgata through being transformed into that morality; 66) morality concerned with the concentrations and states of meditation of the Buddhas through having the same attitude towards all beings; in these sixty-five ways, reverend Śāradvatīputra, is the bodhisattvas’ mass of pure morality imperishable.

[2. The morality of the true state of things (dharmatāśīla):] Further, reverend Śāradvatīputra, morality is where there is no attribution of a self, an animated being, a life-principle, a life-sustaining principle, a spirit, a personality, a man, no attribution of a human being; morality is where there is no attribution of form, feeling, perception, formative factors, no attribution of consciousness; morality is where there is no attribution of element of earth, element of water, element of fire, no attribution of element of wind; morality is where there is no attribution of distinguishing marks of the eye, no distinguishing marks of form, nor of hearing or sound, nose or smell, tongue or taste, body or tangibles, no attribution of distinguishing marks of mind, no attribution of distinguishing marks of moments of existence; morality is where there is no attribution of body, speech or mind.

[3. Morality with the essential characteristic of the two ways (dvimārgalakṣaṇaṃ śīlam):] Morality is that which has the essential character of peaceful meditation through one-pointedness [having one object (ālambana) ]; morality is that which has the essential character of expanded vision through skill in discerning moments of existence [both their general and individual characteristics (svasāmānyalakṣaṇa) ].

[4. Morality with the essential characteristic of the three gates of liberation (trivimokṣamukhalakṣaṇaṃ śīlam):] Morality is that which is knowledge of emptiness, fully beyond distinguishing marks, not something that can be longed for, not mingled with the threefold world.

[5. The deep morality effected through purification of the contrary to morality (śīlavipakṣaviśuddhigambhīraśīlam):] Morality is that which is tolerance of unbornness, brought about as not conditioned [by vices (kleśa), or by causes and conditions (hetupratyaya) ] and [from understanding moments of existence as] unborn; morality is that which is not made, not active; morality is that which is not born in the beginning, does not perish in the end, does not remain in between; morality is that which is pure thought, not dependent on consciousness, not mingled with mental effort; morality is that which is not dependent on the world of desire [not depending on the the qualities, viz. the objects of desire (kāmaguṇa) ], not remaining in the world of forms [tasting the pleasure of meditation (dhyānāsvāda) ], not staying in the formless world [not being born there though having attained the formless states of meditation (ārūpyasamāpatti) ]; morality is that which is to give up the impurities of passion, which is avoiding malice, harshness, aversion and repugnance, and which is the absence of delusions, darkness and ignorance; morality is that which is neither [belief in] permanence, nor nihilism, it is not in disaccord with the principle of dependent origination; morality is that which is without the principle of an ego, without things related to the ego, not abiding by the view that there is a permanent substance; morality is that which is no attachment to names [that is, informative concepts (prajñāpti) like Devadatta or Yajñadatta] and signs [like “Devadatta has qualities (guṇavān)”], not abiding by distinguishing marks of form [like “form gives resistance (sapratigha)”] , no mingling with names and forms [that is, the parts of personality (skandha) ]; morality is that which is absence of causal bad dispositions, non-arising of doctrinal view-points, (p. 37) not abiding by hindrances like regret; morality is that which does not abide by the root of bad which is covetousness, does not abide by the root of bad which is aversion, does not abide by the root of bad which is delusion; morality is that which is indefatigable, without desires and thus having the essential character of tranquility; morality is that which is the non-interruption of the Buddhas’ lineage because of [attaining] the transcendent body, non-interruption of the lineage of religious teaching because of [attaining] non-separation from total reality, non-interruption of the lineage of the religious community because the unconditioned is revealed.

Morality, reverend Śāradvatīputra, should be seen as imperishable because of the imperishability of its continuity.

Why? The morality of ordinary people perishes because of the places they are born; the morality of those possessing the five outer supernormal powers [like the seers (ṛṣi) ] perishes when they are deprived of their supernormal powers; the morality of men perishes when the ten ways of good action perish; the morality of the sons of gods in the world of desire perishes when their merit perishes; the morality of the sons of gods in the world of form perishes when their immeasurable states and meditations perish; the morality of the sons of gods in the formless world perishes when their meditation-produced births perish; the morality of disciples – those still to be trained and those needing no more training – perishes in the end by extinction; the morality of isolated buddhas perishes because of their lack of great compassion. But the morality of the bodhisattvas, reverend Śāradvatīputra, is imperishable. Why? Because all types of morality originate from that morality [which here is to be taken in the same meaning as the thought of awakening (bodhicitta), the essence (svabhāva) of that morality]. Just as, reverend Śāradvatīputra, when the seed is imperishable, the gain is also imperishable, thus, reverend Śāradvatīputra, the morality of the Tathāgatas should be known as imperishable since its seed, the thought of awakening, is imperishable. And that is why these good men are called “those whose morality is imperishable”.

This, reverend Śāradvatīputra, is called the bodhisattvas’ imperishable morality.