Upagupta Leaves Home

Keizan's commentary

The teacher was from the country of Tāḍi. He was also called Upagupta, and he belonged to the śūdra caste. He began to study with Venerable Śāṇavāsa at fifteen, left home at seventeen, and realized the fruit at twenty-two. He traveled to teach in Mathurā and ordained an extraordinary number of people. Māra's palace consequently shook, and Pāpīyān became anxious and afraid. Whenever someone realized the fruit, Upagupta placed a four-inch tally in a stone chamber. The chamber was eighteen cubits long and twelve cubits wide, and the tallies completely filled it. A cubit is two feet. When he died, the tallies of all those ordained and realized during his lifetime were cremated with him. He brought so many people across that it was as if the Tathāgata were still in the world. People everywhere therefore called him “the Markless Buddha.”¹ Pāpīyān grew angry. Watching for a time when Upagupta entered concentration, he exhausted his demonic powers in an attempt to damage the true Dharma. Upagupta entered samādhi and observed the cause. Māra watched him and secretly placed a jeweled necklace around his neck. Upagupta decided to subdue him. Rising from concentration, he took the corpses of a person, a dog, and a snake and transformed them into a flower garland. In a gentle voice he reassured Māra: “You gave me a jeweled necklace. It is wonderfully precious. I have this garland of flowers and would like to repay you with it.” Māra was delighted. He stretched out his neck and accepted it. At once it changed into three stinking corpses, worm-eaten and rotting. Māra was disgusted and tormented. He exhausted his supernatural power but could not discard the garland, loosen it, or move it. He ascended through the six heavens of desire and appealed to their lords. He then went to Brahmā and begged for release. They all told him, “This transformation was made by a disciple of the One Possessing the Ten Powers. We are common and inferior. How could we remove it?” Māra asked, “Then what can I do?” Brahmā said, “Turn your heart back to the venerable one. He alone can remove it.” He spoke a verse to turn Māra around: If you fall because of the ground, Rise by that same ground. If you leave the ground and seek to rise, That can never happen. Return to the disciple of the One Possessing the Ten Powers; From him you may seek release.² Māra accepted the instruction, descended from the heavenly palace, bowed at Upagupta's feet, and exposed his distress in repentance. Upagupta asked, “From now on, will you ever again injure the Tathāgata's true Dharma?” Māra said, “I vow to turn toward the Buddha-way and forever cut off what is unwholesome.” Upagupta said, “If so, declare with your own mouth that you take refuge in the Three Treasures.” The lord of demons joined his palms and repeated the refuge three times. The garland disappeared completely. Upagupta displayed the power of the Buddha-Dharma in this way, just as if the Tathāgata were still in the world. When Upagupta's head was shaved at seventeen, Śāṇavāsa asked, “Has your body left home, or has your heart left home?” The Buddha's household has always spoken of two kinds of home-leaving: in body and in heart. To leave home in body is to abandon attachment, leave one's native household, shave the hair, dye the robe, keep no servants, become a monk or a nun, and practice the way through all twelve hours. No moment is passed emptily, and there is no other desire. One neither delights in birth nor fears death. The heart is bright and clean as the autumn moon; the eye is an unclouded mirror. One does not seek mind or yearn for nature. One does not even construct the noble truths, much less cling to the world. Practicing in this way, one remains neither on the ground of an ordinary person nor entangled in the ranks of sages. One becomes all the more a person of the way with nothing on the mind. This is a person who has left home in body. To leave home in heart is not to shave the hair or dye the robe. Though living at home amid worldly strain, one is like a lotus unstained by mud or jade that does not take dust. Even if conditions bring spouse and children, one regards them as mustard seed and dust, without a thought of possessive love or any greed and attachment. Such a person is like the moon suspended in open sky or a pearl running across a tray: at leisure in the middle of the noisy market, clarifying what lies beyond the ages within the threefold world. Cutting off afflictions is recognized as sickness; turning toward true thusness is understood as error. Nirvana and birth-and-death are flowers in the sky. Awakening and affliction are none of one's business. This is a person who has left home in heart. Thus Śāṇavāsa asked, “Has your body left home, or has your heart?” Home-leaving that is not like either of these is not home-leaving at all. That is why the question came. Upagupta answered, “In truth, my body has left home.” Here he did not preserve mind, speak of nature, or discuss the mysterious. He knew only that the body of four elements and five aggregates itself leaves home. He arrived without carrying himself there and so clarified unhindered power. He obtained it without seeking and so clarified the unobtainable. This is why he said, “In truth, my body has left home.” But the wondrous Dharma of the buddhas cannot form even this view. Śāṇavāsa therefore pointed it out: the buddhas do not truly leave home in body or in heart. They cannot be seen as the four elements and five aggregates, or realized as rational nature and mysterious subtlety. Ordinary and holy are liberated together; body and heart drop away together. It is like empty space without inside or outside, or seawater without front or back. However many subtle principles and measureless Dharma gates there may be, with their thousand differences and ten thousand distinctions, they all expound only this matter. Therefore you cannot call the “I alone am honored” the Buddha. You cannot call it neither coming nor going. Who could name it “before father and mother were born” or “before the empty kalpa”? Arriving here, one goes beyond born and unborn and is released from heart and no-heart. It is like water following the vessel or space following an object. Grasp it, and the hand is not filled. Search for it, and no trace is found. This is the wondrous Dharma of the buddhas. At this place Upagupta does not remain and Śāṇavāsa does not arise. It is not made by motion or stillness, going or coming. Though there may be right and wrong, other and self, they are like a sound at the bottom of water or an edge in open sky. Yet unless you have once directly touched it, a thousand Dharma gates and measureless subtle principles become only the outflow of karmic consciousness. When Śāṇavāsa pointed it out in this way, Venerable Upagupta suddenly greatly awakened. It was like sudden thunder breaking across a clear sky or fierce fire springing from the great earth. One crack of thunder did more than sever Upagupta's faculty of hearing: it swiftly destroyed his liferoot. The fierce fire did more than burn; every Dharma gate of the buddhas and every ancestral crown became ash. When this ash appears, it is called Venerable Upagupta. Hard as stone, black as lacquer—how many times has it cost people their original color? His whole body smashed to pieces, Upagupta vainly throws his tallies and counts the number of empty space. He burns emptiness and leaves the trace of emptiness. Today, for the descendants of Mahāyāna, I want to seek that trace beyond the clouds and fasten words to the blue sky. Do you wish to hear them?