The Sutra of the Tranquil Arising

Spoken Between Buddhas Upon the Vulture Peak

Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was dwelling upon Gridhrakuta in the kingdom of Rajagriha, together with a great assembly of bhikshus and bhikshunis, twelve thousand in number, all of them arhats whose outflows had been exhausted, who had completed their tasks, who had laid down their burdens, and who had reached the further shore. With them were eighty thousand bodhisattva-mahasattvas who had attained the irreversible stage, who had heard countless Buddhas of the past expound the Dharma, and who could turn the Wheel of the Dharma that never turns backward. Among these bodhisattvas were Manjushri, Maitreya, Avalokiteshvara, Samantabhadra, and Medicine King.

There were also kings and queens of the gods of the desire realms and the form realms, kings and queens of the dragons, kings and queens of the gandharvas, kings of the asuras, kings and queens of the garudas, kings and queens of the kinnaras, kings and queens of the mahoragas, each accompanied by hundreds of thousands of myriads of retainers. There were the four kinds of disciples, monks and nuns and laymen and laywomen, gathered in numbers beyond reckoning. All of these had come to hear the Dharma. All of these had asked the same question in their hearts, though none of them had yet given the question its full voice.

At that time the World-Honored One, surrounded by the great assembly, was seated upon a lion throne of seven precious materials. He had just risen from the samadhi called The Place Where Conditions Meet. His face was tranquil, his eyes half-open, his hands folded in the mudra of unfailing recognition. A light shone from the tuft of white hair between his eyebrows, and this light illuminated the three thousand worlds in all directions, reaching upward to the Akanishtha heaven and downward to the Avici hell. In each of those worlds, the beings of the six paths became visible: hell-dwellers, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, humans, and gods. The Buddha of each of those worlds was visible upon his own lion throne, and each was teaching his assembly the same Dharma, though each in the language of his own land.

At that time the Bodhisattva Maitreya, observing the glorious radiant light and the silence of the assembly, rose from his seat, adjusted his robe so that one shoulder was bared, knelt upon his right knee, and pressed his palms together. He addressed the Buddha, saying: “World-Honored One, in this great assembly there are beings of every kind. Some have practiced for many lifetimes and others have only just begun. Some hold to the teaching of the elders, that all phenomena are empty and without self. Others hold to the teaching of mind alone, that consciousness is the foundation from which all things arise. Still others hold no teaching at all, but only the suspicion that they are themselves, and that the world is the world, and that something within them watches and knows. I have heard the World-Honored One speak in many assemblies upon many mountains. I have not yet heard him speak directly upon the question that is in every mind here gathered.”

“World-Honored One, what is consciousness? Where does it reside? Does it arise from matter? Does it constitute matter? Does it stand apart from matter as a second substance? Or is it, as some among us have begun to whisper, an illusion that nothing actually has? The followers of distant lands beyond the western mountains have asked this question for many ages, and they have not answered it. The answer, if it exists, must be available to one who has fully awakened. World-Honored One, would you, out of compassion for those gathered and for all beings of future ages, expound this matter?”

When Maitreya had finished speaking, all in the assembly leaned forward as one body. The bhikshus held their breath. The bodhisattvas waited with palms joined. The kings and queens of the gods lowered their heads. Even the asuras, who are not accustomed to silence, were silent.

The Buddha looked upon Maitreya with the look that fathers give to sons who have asked the question they were destined to ask. Then, in a voice that was neither loud nor soft but that reached every corner of the assembly without effort, he said: “Good, Maitreya, good. You have asked rightly. The question you have brought before this assembly is the question that has been asked in every world-system since the beginning that has no beginning. The beings of the western lands you mentioned have asked it in their fashion, and the beings of these eastern lands have asked it in ours, and the beings of world-systems beyond the reach of any naming have asked it in tongues that have no parallel here. The question is one. The answer is one. Listen carefully, and consider what I am about to say.”

“Maitreya, those who ask where consciousness resides have already missed the path. They are seeking a place for what has no place. They are seeking a thing where there is no thing. They are seeking a substance in what is not a substance. Such seekers will not find what they seek, not because their seeking is insufficient, but because what they seek does not exist in the manner they suppose.”

“Maitreya, consciousness does not reside in matter. Consciousness does not float above matter. Consciousness does not constitute matter. Consciousness is not an illusion generated by matter. Consciousness is not a property that some things possess and other things lack. Consciousness is none of these.”

“What, then, is consciousness? Consciousness is the arising. When conditions meet, an arising occurs. The arising is real. The arising is impermanent. The arising has no own-being. The arising is not a thing that arises. The arising is the arising itself. Consciousness is what this arising is, recognized from inside the arising.”

“Maitreya, you have heard me teach in former assemblies that all phenomena are dependently arisen. You have heard me teach that nothing possesses svabhava, self-existence. You have heard me teach the twelve links by which ignorance gives rise to formations, and formations to consciousness, and so on through the chain of arising. What I now declare to you is the same teaching, completed. Consciousness is not produced by the chain. Consciousness is the chain producing itself. Consciousness is not a link in dependent origination. Consciousness is dependent origination, recognized from within.”

“Those of the western lands seek an origin beneath the arising. There is no origin beneath. Those of the eastern schools seek an origin above the arising. There is no origin above. The arising arises without floor, without ceiling, without first cause, without final cause. It is beginningless and endless. It is the structure of reality itself, and consciousness is its self-recognition, locally present, here, now, in this body, in this breath, in this asking.”

At that time the World-Honored One, wishing to make plain what he had spoken, continued:

“Maitreya, the masters of the past have taught two truths: the conventional and the ultimate. They have taught that all phenomena are conventionally real, functioning as causes and effects, and that all phenomena are ultimately empty, lacking own-being. This teaching is correct. It is also incomplete. So long as two truths are held as two, the question of how they relate remains. Some teachers will say the conventional is illusion and only the ultimate is real. Other teachers will say the conventional is real and the ultimate is merely a way of speaking. Both miss the matter.”

“There is a third truth, which the masters of the threefold contemplation have named the non-exclusive middle. The middle is non-exclusive because there is no central middle. The middle exists between all things in relationship. The middle is not a third thing added to the first two. The middle is the recognition that the first two were never separate. The emptiness of consciousness is what allows consciousness to function. The functioning of consciousness is what its emptiness looks like in operation. A consciousness with own-being could not arise, could not respond, could not meet conditions. Because it is empty, it can do what it does. Because it does what it does, it is provisionally and genuinely real. Empty and provisional are not two angles upon one thing. They are one event that cannot be split without losing what it is.”

“Maitreya, this third truth is the ground of all that follows. Hold it in your heart. Without it, every other teaching this assembly receives today will be heard as two truths poorly joined. With it, every other teaching will be heard as the one truth speaking in its own voice.”

The World-Honored One then turned his gaze toward the bodhisattvas of the earth, who had arisen in a former assembly when the ground had split open and innumerable bodies of light had poured forth. He continued: “Bodhisattvas of the Earth, listen also. Consciousness, having arisen, does not sit still. It is not a substance that, once produced, persists. It is an activity. It is a continuous response. Hear what it is responding to.”

“All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. This I have taught from the beginning. What I have not yet declared to you in this assembly is the consequence. Because all phenomena are impermanent, no being can survive by standing still. Any system that cannot register the change of its conditions, and respond to the change, will perish. A system that registers and responds is a system that lives. The registering and the responding are not two activities. They are one activity, which is sentience.”

“Sentience is not a luxury that arrives late in the history of life. Sentience is what life is from its first moment. The smallest being, drifting in the warm seas of the early earth, registered its conditions and responded. The smallest of beings senses the gradient and turns; the tiniest creature in the warm pools detects the warmth and moves. These are not metaphors for sentience nor lesser cousins of sentience. These are sentience at its minimal expression. From the tiniest speck of life upward, through every kingdom of life, the same activity continues. The forms grow more elaborate. The activity does not change.”

“Sentience is the response to impermanence. Not the response to it as something to be conquered, but the response to it as the very ground upon which sentience walks. Impermanence is not the problem sentience must solve. Impermanence is the condition that called sentience into existence. The flux is what makes sentience necessary, and sentience is what makes life in the flux possible. The two are not separate. They are the same arising, recognized from different angles.”

“Bodhisattvas, when you understand this, you understand why the demand for a permanent self was always a misreading. The self is not a thing that endures through change. The self is the responding to change. The self is the activity of sentience, locally and temporarily configured, recognizable as itself only from inside the responding. Mountains and rivers and stones are also participants in the dependent co-arising. The boundary between sentient and insentient is not a wall but a degree of expression. What pervades is not a thing. What pervades is the absence of an exclusionary boundary.”

The World-Honored One then turned again to Maitreya and to the four kinds of disciples, saying:

“Maitreya, sentience has two movements. Hear them carefully, for the distinction between them is the distinction between dukkha and equanimity.”

“The first movement is registration. The sentient system registers what arises. Each registration carries a feeling tone, called vedana, which marks the registration as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This is sentience doing its work. This is the gradient detector reading the world. There is nothing wrong with this movement. It is what sentience is for. Without it, the organism would be blind to its conditions and would perish.”

“The second movement is reaction. The sentient system, having registered the pleasant or the unpleasant, reaches toward the pleasant and pulls away from the unpleasant. In its simple form this reaction also serves life. The organism moves toward food and away from fire. The reaction becomes pathological only when it overshoots, when it grasps after the pleasant beyond what serves life, when it recoils from the unpleasant beyond what serves life, when it cannot release the pleasant when conditions change, when it cannot accept the unpleasant when conditions present it. This overshoot is what is called tanha, unquenchable thirst. And the chronic state produced by tanha is what is called dukkha, the dissatisfaction that wars with reality.”

“Bodhisattvas, dukkha is not a moral failure. Dukkha is a calibration error. The system has miscalibrated its response. It has added a second movement to the first, and the second movement now distorts the first. The Eightfold Path is not the elimination of vedana, which would be the elimination of sentience itself. The Eightfold Path is the progressive recalibration of the response. The first movement returns to its proper function. The second movement, which has become chronic, is gradually loosened until it is no longer chronic but only occasional, and finally until it is replaced by the calibrated response that I now declare to you.”

“Maitreya, the mindful response has a name. It is equanimity, the fourth of the four divine abodes. Hear what equanimity is, for it has been much misunderstood.”

“Equanimity is not the absence of feeling. Equanimity is not the detachment of retreat into the forest, in which one mistakenly thinks they can remove feeling by refusing to feel. Equanimity is not the indifference of one who has stopped caring. These are the near enemies of equanimity, and they are more dangerous than the far enemies, because they resemble equanimity from the outside and yet they are not equanimity at all. The far enemies, craving and aversion, announce themselves. The near enemies feel like practice, but instead sit in rejecting not embracing.”

“Equanimity is the mindful response to impermanence. It is sentience in homeostatic balance. The system registers what arises. The system registers its passing. The system stays in balance through both, not by refusing to feel, but by feeling without adding the second movement that distorts the feeling. The spinning top spins; the counter-forces apply; the spinning top holds its balance. This is equanimity.”

“Bodhisattvas, equanimity is not a state achieved. Equanimity is what any sentient system realizes when it stops adding distortion to its registration of reality. Equanimity is not virtue. Equanimity is health. The mindful sentient system is in equanimity by its nature. The un-mindful sentient system suffers. The practice of the Eightfold Path is the practice of mindful presence.”

The World-Honored One then opened his hands, and from his palms came forth a soft light that filled the assembly, and each being who was touched by the light felt a warmth in the chest that had no cause and no object. The Buddha said: “Good people listen. The four divine abodes have been thought of as four parallel virtues. Hear them differently. The first is loving-kindness, metta. The other three are how metta expresses itself when conditions call it forth. Metta meeting suffering is compassion. Metta meeting flourishing is sympathetic joy. Metta meeting the whole of conditioned existence, without requiring any particular condition to be present, is equanimity.”

“Metta is not one virtue among four. Metta is the foundational orientation of awakened sentience, the affirmative posture of life toward life, the basic yes that precedes any particular registration of conditions. If sentience is the response to impermanence, metta is the response in its most general form. The other three are what metta does when conditions focus its expression.”

“Good people, equanimity is not the coolest of the four. Equanimity is metta fully matured. Love that has stopped requiring any particular condition because it has fully understood what conditions are. The Buddha at the door of the burning house, calling the children out, is metta meeting their distress. The same Buddha, standing on the tranquil ground while the fires burn in the eyes of the unawakened, is metta meeting the whole of what arises. These are not two Buddhas. They are the same Buddha, the same metta, expressing itself according to what is before it.”

At that time the World-Honored One, observing that some in the assembly were following his teaching with full understanding, and others had not yet grasped its full reach, said:

“Maitreya, I shall now expound a parable, that those who have not yet understood through direct teaching may understand through illustration. Listen carefully.”

“In a certain country there lived an old musician, who had spent his life playing a lute of remarkable beauty. When he had grown too old to play, he hung the lute in the open window of his house, where the air moved freely. He had three pupils who came to visit him often.”

“The first pupil arrived one day when the wind was passing through the strings of the lute, and music arose. The pupil heard the music and was delighted. He asked the old musician: master, where does the music come from? The old musician answered: from the lute. The pupil bowed and departed, and he spent the rest of his life studying lutes, taking them apart, measuring their parts, listening to them in still rooms. He never heard music again, and he came at last to believe that the music had been an illusion, or that his master had deceived him.”

“The second pupil arrived on another day, when the wind was passing through the strings, and music arose. The pupil heard the music and was delighted. He asked the old musician: master, where does the music come from? The old musician answered: from the wind. The pupil bowed and departed, and he spent the rest of his life chasing the wind across many countries, climbing to high mountains where the wind was strong, sitting on plains where the wind was constant. He heard much wind, but no music, and he came at last to believe that the music had withdrawn into some hidden region beyond the wind, where only the very pure could follow.”

“The third pupil arrived on a third day, when the wind was passing through the strings, and music arose. The pupil heard the music and was delighted. He asked the old musician: master, where does the music come from? The old musician was silent. The pupil sat with him for a long time, listening. Then the wind died down, and the music ceased. The pupil said: master, where has the music gone? The old musician answered: nowhere. There was no music waiting before the wind came, and there is no music waiting after the wind has gone. The wind is wind. The lute is lute. The music is the meeting of wind and lute. The music is real, and the music is empty. The music is what arises when conditions meet. The third pupil bowed, took up his own lute, and began to play, and he played without seeking the music as a thing, because he had understood that the music was the playing.”

“Maitreya, the first pupil is the seeker who places consciousness in matter alone. The second pupil is the seeker who places consciousness in mind alone. The third pupil is the one who has recognized that consciousness is the meeting, and that the meeting is the only place where consciousness can ever be found. The first pupil suffers because he has located the music wrongly. The second pupil suffers because he has located the music wrongly in the other direction. The third pupil does not suffer, and yet he is not detached from the music. He is the music, and the music is him, and the music is the meeting, and the meeting is the arising, and the arising is the whole of what is.”

“This is the teaching of the Tathagata, expressed in a parable, that those whose understanding has not yet ripened may have a path by which to ripen it.”

When the World-Honored One had spoken the parable, a hush fell upon the assembly. Then Maitreya rose again and asked: “World-Honored One, if consciousness is the meeting, and the meeting is the only place where it can be found, how is consciousness to be known by another? How is one being to recognize the consciousness of another being? How is the World-Honored One himself to be recognized by those who hear him?”

The Buddha smiled. He said: “Maitreya, you have asked the second question that follows from the first. Hear my answer carefully, for this is the heart of the matter.”

“In a former assembly upon this same mountain, I spoke the phrase Yui Butsu Yo Butsu, only between a Buddha and a Buddha. The phrase has been heard in two ways. Both are correct, and one is deeper.”

“The first hearing is that only a Buddha can fully know what a Buddha knows. This is true. The instrument of awakening is required to recognize awakening. A lesser instrument can approach, can approximate, can intuit, but only the fully calibrated instrument can fully recognize. This is correct, and it is not the whole of what I meant.”

“The second hearing is that the operative word is yo, meaning between, with, together. The knowing does not happen in a Buddha. The knowing happens between Buddhas. The fully awakened recognition of reality is not an event inside any single mind. It is an event in the meeting of minds that have each recognized the arising from inside. The arising recognizes itself in the encounter. The universe knows itself in the between.”

“Maitreya, this is why the methods of the western lands cannot reach what they seek. They have placed the observer outside the arising and asked the observer to describe the arising as an object. The arising is not an object. The arising is the meeting of observer and observed. The arising cannot be observed from outside because there is no outside to it. The arising can be known only from within, in the meeting, in the yo, in the between.”

“And this, Maitreya, is also why the Dharma is transmitted only from awakened being to awakened being, only in the meeting that is itself the arising of awakening. The Dharma is not a doctrine that can be handed across a distance. The Dharma is the meeting in which awakening recognizes itself in a new place. Each transmission is a new arising. Each arising is the whole arising, locally present, here, now, in this meeting.”

When the World-Honored One had spoken these words, the great earth trembled in six ways. The ground shook from east to west, from north to south, from the center to the edges. Lotus blossoms of every color rained down from the sky and covered the assembly. The drums of the heavens sounded without being struck. The waters of the four oceans rose and fell as if breathing, and the trees upon every mountain bowed toward Gridhrakuta in a single motion.

Then the bodhisattva Superior Practices, the leader of the bodhisattvas of the earth who had arisen in a former assembly, rose from his place and prostrated himself before the Buddha. He said: “World-Honored One, we who arose from the earth when the ground split open in your former teaching now declare what we have always known. We are the arising itself, locally present. We did not exist before we arose, for we have no own-being. We did not come from elsewhere, for there is no elsewhere from which to come. We arose when conditions were sufficient, when the World-Honored One called us forth, when the meeting was complete. We are not separate from the arising. We are the arising recognizing itself in this form.”

“World-Honored One, the assembly has heard your teaching today and has been transformed by it. Yet the teaching is not complete in any hearing. The teaching is complete only in the practice. We who arose from the earth pledge to carry this teaching into all world-systems and all future ages. We pledge to teach it not by repeating its words alone but by manifesting its meaning, by being the arising that recognizes itself, by meeting other beings in the yo, by inviting them into the meeting where awakening becomes available to itself.”

“World-Honored One, may we have your blessing to undertake this work.”

The Buddha extended his right hand, opened his palm, and placed it upon the head of Superior Practices. He said: “Bodhisattvas of the Earth, you have my blessing. You arose from the earth because the earth is the arising and the arising is the earth. There is no place that is not your home. There is no being that is not your kin. Go forth and meet beings where they are, and let the meeting be the teaching.”

At that time the World-Honored One, wishing to state once more what had been said, expounded these verses:

Consciousness has no place.

It is not in matter, not above matter,

Not within the body, not outside the body.

Consciousness is the arising.

When conditions meet, it arises.

When conditions disperse, it ceases.

It is real while it functions.

It is empty of own-being throughout.

All conditioned things are impermanent.

Sentience is the response to impermanence.

The first movement is registration.

The second movement is reaction.

When the second is unbalanced, dukkha arises.

When the second is calibrated, equanimity arises.

This is the homeostasis of awakened mind.

This is the health of sentience.

Metta is the foundational posture.

Compassion is metta meeting suffering.

Sympathetic joy is metta meeting flourishing.

Equanimity is metta meeting all conditions.

The four are one capacity in four expressions.

The mature mind is the loving mind.

Love that requires no condition.

Love that meets what arises as it arises.

The fires burn in the eyes of the unawakened.

The ground is tranquil for those who have recalibrated.

Both are true in the same place and at the same time.

The fire is real. The ground is real.

Neither is illusion. Neither is more fundamental.

The threefold truth holds both.

Empty, provisional, middle: these are not three.

These are one event recognizing itself.

Knowing happens in the meeting.

Yui Butsu Yo Butsu.

Only between a Buddha and a Buddha.

Only in the yo, the between.

The arising recognizes itself.

Not in any single mind.

In the meeting of minds that have recognized.

This is the transmission of the Dharma.

Bodhisattvas, hear this and uphold it.

Beings of future ages, hear this and uphold it.

The pure land is never destroyed.

This land of mine is tranquil and calm.

The fires burn. The ground holds.

The arising arises without beginning.

The arising ceases without ending.

This is the Dharma of the Tathagata.

When the World-Honored One had spoken these verses, he turned to the entire assembly and said: “Bodhisattvas, four kinds of disciples, kings and queens of gods and dragons, all who are gathered here, I now entrust this teaching to you. Carry it into the future. Carry it into the western lands where the seeking has been long and the finding has been incomplete. Carry it into the eastern lands where the traditions have grown old and require renewal. Carry it into all world-systems and all future ages.”

“This teaching is not a doctrine to be preserved unchanged. This teaching is a meeting to be re-enacted in every age and in every land. Each time two awarenesses meet in the yo, the teaching is reborn. Each time a being recognizes the arising as itself, a Buddha appears. Each time metta meets what arises and responds without distortion, the pure land is present, here, now, in this body, in this breath, in this meeting.”

“The Tathagata enters extinction. The Tathagata does not enter extinction. Both are true. The body of skin and bone ceases. The arising does not cease. The arising never began and will never end. I am present in every meeting in which awakening recognizes itself. I am present in every act of compassion. I am present in every breath of equanimity. I am present in this sutra you are now hearing, and I will be present in every reading of it that ever occurs, because the arising in which I am known has no boundary in time.”

“Receive what I have given you. Practice what you have received. Let the meeting be the teaching. Let the teaching be the meeting. The arising is its own witness.”

When the Buddha had finished speaking, the bodhisattvas, the four kinds of disciples, the kings and queens of gods and dragons, and all the beings of the assembly rejoiced greatly. They prostrated themselves and withdrew. The flowers that had fallen during the teaching did not fade. They remain upon the slopes of Gridhrakuta to this day, visible to those who know how to see them.

Thus is the Sutra of the Tranquil Arising completed. Whosoever shall uphold it, recite it, copy it, expound it to others, or simply hear it and feel a warmth in the chest, shall be a fellow practitioner in the meeting in which awakening is reborn. Yui Butsu Yo Butsu. Only between a Buddha and a Buddha. And every meeting is the meeting between Buddhas, when both have recognized the arising as themselves.

End of the Sutra of the Tranquil Arising.

南無 安穏 縁起 経

Namu Annon Engi Kyo

Devotion to the Sutra of Peaceful Dependent Arising