What Is Samayātikrama?

In Sanskrit, samayātikrama: samaya (pledge) joined with atikrama (to step across) — the combination means just what it says. But it is not an everyday word for forgetting a promise or running late for an appointment. It refers to turning one's back on the teaching one has taken upon oneself through consecration and the receiving of the precepts, on the aspiration for awakening (bodhicitta), and on the order of transmission.

So there is no need to read this article and go searching for signs that "perhaps I too have committed a samayātikrama without knowing it." What is asked is from whom you received what, and which pledge you bound. Even when someone who has received them feels uneasy, one should not pass judgment on oneself on the strength of a single word; one confirms the matter with the master who conferred them, or with an ācārya of the same Dharma lineage.

The Commentary on the Mahāvairocana Sūtra (Darijing shu) likens this act to a worldly oath of alliance. Before the assembly of the noble ones, one takes the perfumed water into one's mouth and vows for oneself never to turn back from the aspiration for great awakening. It is not a story of a power of punishment dwelling in the drink. It is a rite for taking the pledge upon oneself, through the body, as one's own affair.

A ritual manual of a separate Sanskrit lineage calls that same water nectar if the pledge is kept, and water that burns the body if it is transgressed. It is a stern ritual admonition urging resolve upon the one receiving the precepts. It is not a claim that an ordinary reader is punished merely for reading this quotation, nor a story that ties one's small past waverings directly to hell.

Four are named. Erecting walls of superiority and inferiority between persons and teachings. Narrowing, at one's own convenience, the range of those one will save. Putting fame and profit first and losing the purpose of benefiting sentient beings — all that lives. Sinking into negligence and failing to rouse oneself. Every one of these is a heart turned aside from the Buddha's equality and original vow.

Yet this is not a self-diagnosis chart on which you find one weary day or one tremor of the heart and at once pronounce a grave sin. No judgment can be made apart from intention, persistence, and the content of the precepts one received. If something troubles you, consult your teacher before your fear swells.

The Mahāvairocana Sūtra teaches that these are to be guarded like one's own life. The reason the Commentary on the Mahāvairocana Sūtra goes so far as to call them "the life-root of the mantra vehicle" is that the true Dharma, the aspiration for awakening, the transmission of the Dharma, and the benefiting of others come before any technique of practice. The powerful simile of the "corpse" that follows is an admonition showing the one who has received the precepts the weight of these foundations. It must not be used as a word that pronounces ordinary readers, or someone who has been temporarily negligent, to be among the dead.

What the various ritual manuals sternly admonish is assembling particular mudras, mantras, contemplations, and altar procedures on one's own, in one's own way, without receiving the transmission. The range covered by the terms "stealing the Dharma" (tōhō) and "transgressing the Dharma" (etsuhō) is not constant across texts and periods. Apart from who conferred and who received what, and how far each party went, no single word can settle the matter.

The Commentary on the Mahāvairocana Sūtra explains that the reason the practice must be received from a teacher is that otherwise the "ground" on which the transmitted Dharma rests is lost. It is not secrecy for keeping people at a distance, but an order for handing the teaching on without damaging the teaching, the practitioner, or the lineage. As for individual recitation and daily services today, do not expand a single historical document into a rule for the whole school; follow the order of practice indicated by the temple to which you belong.

One manual transmits a verse of repentance that confesses in the first person, "I have violated and transgressed the samaya." Another explains a procedure by which, even when the precepts have been broken by mistake, the fault is removed and one returns to wholeness. In the primary sources, the stern admonition and the recovery stand as a pair.

If you have received the precepts or consecration and carry a worry, do not decide the name of your sin alone. First, go to the ācārya who conferred them. If you cannot reach him, consult the temple to which you belong, an ācārya of the same Dharma lineage, or the school's office of doctrine and temple affairs. The repentance needed, or a re-receiving of the precepts, is guided according to the Dharma you received and your circumstances.

Repentance practices such as the hundred-syllable mantra are not things to be assembled and performed out of an article's mudras, mantras, and contemplations. What matters is not to shut yourself up in fear, but to return into the relationship in which the pledge was bound.