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Session Three: Stabilization

DESCRIPTION

The third gate, stabilization (止 zhǐ), is another term for the stillness of śamatha. Contrast this with the following gate, contemplation, which is the complimentary practice of vipaśyanā.

The Willow Tree

Chapter Six presents the the Six Gates in terms of ‘identities and differences’ with other Buddhists and non-Buddhists

  • Deviant practitioner - covets the pleasurable results of counting and stillness,
  • Non-Buddhist - determining where the breath exists or does not exist and other false views,
  • Śrāvaka - desiring to depart rapidly from the three realms of existence in a personal quest for nirvāṇa, they realize the Four Noble Truths through counting the breath:
    • Breath is the body, which is the aggregates, which are suffering
    • Attachment to the aggregates is the accumulation of suffering
    • Understanding the true nature of breath, one realizes suffering is unproduced or ‘ceased’
    • Such unobstructed knowledge of suffering is the Path
  • Pratyekabuddha - counting the breath, they concurrently know that this very thought which is engaged in counting the breaths is just the “becoming” component of the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination. The practitioner experiences a profound realization that the counting of the breaths belongs to the sphere of causes and conditions and that it is empty and devoid of any inherently existent nature of its own.
  • Bodhisattvas - when one is engaged in the counting of the breaths, one realizes that the breath is non-breath and is like a magical conjuration. Therefore that it is not the case that the breath is solely in the sphere of birth-and-death nor is it the case that it is solely in the domain of nirvāṇa. At that very time, in the midst of the breath, one is unable to apprehend a birth-and-death which might be cut off. Nor does one apprehend a nirvāṇa into which one might enter.

“Thus the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sutra states, ‘This is analogous to the great flood which is able to inundate and wash away everything with the sole exception of the willow which remains on account of its flexibility. The great flood of birth-and-death is just the same in this regard. It is able to submerge and drown all common persons with the sole exception of the bodhisattva who abides in the great parinirvāṇa of the Great Vehicle. This is on account of the pliancy of their mind.”