分別功德論 4.45

4.45

The reason why the monk Vakkali is said to have attained liberation through faith is that this monk had been bedridden with illness for six years, and all his caretakers had abandoned him. The monk thought to himself: 'My illness has lasted so long; the caretakers are weary, which is utterly distressing. Furthermore, the Tathāgata shows no pity to me. I should rather kill myself to end this suffering.' He immediately asked for a knife, and speaking to the knife, said: 'Will you only kill me, or will you also cut off the fetters?' Having said this, he slit his throat with the knife. When it reached halfway through his throat, he had already attained the destruction of the outflows, and by the time his head was severed, he had entered nirvāṇa. At that time, the great earth shook, moving even Pāpīmān. Pāpīmān thought: 'What omen has caused such an earthquake?' Using his divine eye, he saw that the monk had killed himself. [He wondered]: 'Where has his consciousness gone?' Looking all throughout the heavens, he did not see his spirit; looking among humans, he did not see it either; looking in the three bad destinies, he still did not see it. At that time, the Buddha led the monks to cremate him, and saw fire rising from the corpse. This was Pāpīmān setting a fire to search for the monk's spirit, entirely unable to find its whereabouts. The reason he searched was to know his destination and ruin it so that he would not succeed. The monks then cremated him. The Buddha praised this monk for attaining liberation through faith. Someone asked: One of supreme faith entrusts his life to what is natural; he would not even hold a staff to protect himself, so how could he kill himself? The answer is: The reason why one of faith wielded the knife was that he took the knife as the sword of wisdom, intending to cut off all fetters. The body is the root of the fetters; when the root is cleared, the branches follow, and when the body is severed, the fetters are removed. Therefore, wielding the knife was no hindrance, for he wielded the knife of faith to cut down the tree of doubt. As the later line says: his mind was without hesitation. Going from liberation through faith to liberation without doubt is transforming dull faculties into sharp ones. For this reason, he is proclaimed foremost among those who attain liberation through faith.