The ‘Highest Step’ and the Language of Realisation in India and Tibet
When a Tibetan practitioner closes a session with the wish that all beings reach the highest state, she is speaking, without knowing it, in the words of a hymn sung to Viṣṇu more than three thousand years ago. The same is true of the Theravāda monk who chants of the deathless state, of the Śaiva yogin who rests in the supreme plane of consciousness, and of the Advaita-Vedāntin who seeks the place from which there is no return. All of them use one small word, pada: the step, the footprint, the place where the foot comes to rest.
Since a seer of Viṣṇu instituted the very term for the highest state that became prevalent in all these traditions, the question arises: are we all Vaiṣṇavas? The answer is more interesting than a simple yes would be. What follows traces a single word across the whole of Indian and Tibetan contemplative history. From the Ṛgveda to the Upaniṣads, from the Pali canon to the Great Vehicle, from the Yoginī tantras to the Great Perfection, the highest step of Viṣṇu became a name for realisation itself. Each tradition took it up, emptied it of what it could not accept, and kept what it could not do without: the sense that awakening is a place one finally stands, and stands in for good.
The three strides
In the Ṛgveda, Viṣṇu is the god of the wide stride. With three steps he measures out earth, air and heaven, and makes room for the world to be. The seer Dīrghatamas sings of the place where the third step comes down: viṣṇoḥ pade parame madhva utsaḥ, “in the highest step of Viṣṇu there is a spring of honey" (Ṛgveda 1.154.5). There, he says, the god-seeking ones rejoice. And in the next verse: atrāha tad urugāyasya vṛṣṇaḥ paramaṃ padam ava bhāti bhūri, "there the highest step of the wide-going bull shines down in abundance" (1.154.6).
The step is not only a place. It is light, and it is sweetness, and it is seen. A neighbouring hymn says that mortals can behold two of his strides, but the third no one dares approach, not even the winged birds in their flight (Ṛgveda 1.155.5). The highest step lies beyond every ordinary going.
The Viṣṇu verses that close Ṛgveda 1.22 give the formula that would travel furthest. Tad viṣṇoḥ paramaṃ padaṃ sadā paśyanti sūrayaḥ, divīva cakṣur ātatam: “that highest step of Viṣṇu the wise behold always, like an eye laid open in space" (1.22.20). And the last verse: tad viprāso vipanyavo jāgṛvāṃsaḥ sam indhate, viṣṇor yat paramaṃ padam, “that the inspired seers, eloquent and wakeful, set alight: that which is the highest step of Viṣṇu" (1.22.21).
Three features of these verses matter for everything that follows. The highest step is seen, not merely reached. It is seen always, by those who are awake. And it is likened to the open sky, an eye without boundary. Long before anyone spoke of nirvāṇa or the nature of mind, the Vedic seers had found a word for a place that is open like space, present to the wakeful, and beyond the reach of those who only travel.
From place to state
The Kaṭha Upaniṣad takes the Vedic formula and turns it inward. In its image of the chariot, the body is the vehicle, the senses are the horses, the mind the reins and the intellect the charioteer. The one who drives without discernment na sa tat padam āpnoti, “does not reach that step", and wanders on in saṃsāra. But the one with discernment sa tu tat padam āpnoti yasmād bhūyo na jāyate, “reaches that step from which he is not born again" (Kaṭha 3.7–8). Then the Vedic line returns, now as the end of an inner journey: vijñānasārathir yas tu manaḥpragrahavān naraḥ, so 'dhvanaḥ pāram āpnoti tad viṣṇoḥ paramaṃ padam, “the one whose charioteer is understanding, who holds the reins of mind, reaches the end of the road: that highest step of Viṣṇu" (3.9).
The god's footprint in the sky has become the destination of contemplation. It is no longer somewhere above the world. It is reached by stilling the senses and the mind. The same Upaniṣad uses pada for the sacred syllable itself: sarve vedā yat padam āmananti … tat te padaṃ saṃgraheṇa bravīmy om ity etat, “the step (or word) that all the Vedas proclaim … that step I tell you in brief: it is Oṃ" (2.15). The step is now a sound, and the sound is the Absolute.
The Bhagavad Gītā carries the word into the heart of devotion and knowledge alike. The wise, freed from the bondage of birth, padaṃ gacchanty anāmayam, “go to the state free of affliction" (2.51). In its fifteenth chapter Kṛṣṇa speaks of the inverted tree of saṃsāra and tells Arjuna to cut it down: tataḥ padaṃ tat parimārgitavyaṃ yasmin gatā na nivartanti bhūyaḥ, "then that step must be sought, gone to which they do not return again" (15.4). Those without delusion gacchanty amūḍhāḥ padam avyayaṃ tat, "go to that imperishable step" (15.5).
By now pada means three things at once, and every later tradition inherits all three. It is a place one goes to. It is a state from which there is no falling back. And it is imperishable, avyaya, the word that Buddhist poets will soon render as accuta.
The Buddha’s step
The Buddha kept the word, too. In the Pali canon pada is one of the standing names for nibbāna, and the old lexicon of the Pali tradition, the Abhidhānappadīpikā, lists nibbāna among its meanings. Its commentary gives the reason in a phrase that could stand beside the Vedic hymn: it is called pada ariyehi pajjitabbattā gantabbattā, “because it is to be stepped into, to be gone to, by the noble ones".
What changed was the adjective. Instead of parama, the Buddhist verses describe the step by what it is free from.
The deathless step. Appamādo amatapadaṃ, pamādo maccuno padaṃ: “heedfulness is the deathless step, heedlessness the step of death" (Dhammapada 21). And: ekāhaṃ jīvitaṃ seyyo passato amataṃ padaṃ, “better one day lived seeing the deathless step" than a hundred years without it (Dhammapada 114). As in the Ṛgveda, the step is seen.
The peaceful step. The monk who dwells in loving-kindness adhigacche padaṃ santaṃ saṅkhārūpasamaṃ sukhaṃ, “would reach the peaceful step, the stilling of formations, bliss" (Dhammapada 368 and 381). In the Theragāthā the epithets gather into a single line: asokaṃ virajaṃ asaṅkhataṃ santaṃ padaṃ, “the sorrowless, stainless, unconditioned, peaceful step" (Theragāthā 520).
The imperishable step. The elders whose verses open the Theragāthā speak phusitvā accutaṃ padaṃ, “having touched the imperishable step". The elder Cūḷaka ends his verse with taṃ uttamam accutaṃ padaṃ, “that highest, imperishable step" (Theragāthā 212). Here the Gītā's avyaya has become accuta (Skt. acyuta) and parama has become uttama: the same highest step, in another tongue.
The imperishable place. The sages yanti accutaṃ ṭhānaṃ yattha gantvā na socare, “go to the imperishable place, where, having gone, they do not grieve" (Dhammapada 225). It is the Kaṭha's place of no return.
The Buddhist texts also say something the Vedic hymns could not. Ākāse padaṃ natthi, “in the sky there is no footprint" (Dhammapada 254–255). The awakened one is apada, “trackless" (Dhammapada 179), leaving no trace of craving behind. The Vedic seer looked up and saw the highest pada in the sky. The Buddhist seer looks into the same sky and sees that it holds no footprint at all. These are two ways of pointing at the one openness in which every step comes to rest.
The Buddhist poet Aśvaghoṣa, a brahmin by birth who knew the Veda and the epics, finally spoke the old formula aloud within the Buddha's teaching. In his Saundarananda, Nanda asks to hear the Dharma so that he may paramaṃ prāpnuyāṃ padam, “reach the highest step" (12.17). Two cantos later he warns that whoever loses mindfulness, naṣṭaṃ tasyāmṛtaṃ padam, “for him the deathless step is lost" (14.44). The Vedic and the Buddhist idioms here stand side by side in a single poem.
There is also a warning in the Buddhist use of the word. The Pali canon and the Lalitavistara both speak of the padaparama, the one for whom pada in the sense of “word" is the highest thing. This is the hearer who learns the words of the teaching but never touches their meaning. The tradition plays on the two senses deliberately: one person stands in the highest step, another stands only in the highest word.
The Great Vehicle
In the Great Vehicle the step becomes the very ground from which the Buddha never moves. The Ratnagotravibhāga, the great treatise on buddha nature, describes the awakened one in a verse of rare beauty: anāsravād brahmavad acyutaḥ padād anekadhā darśanam eti nirmitaiḥ, “like Brahmā, not moving from the stainless step, he appears in many forms through his emanations" (Ratnagotravibhāga 4.87). Like the sun, it continues, the light of his wisdom streams out without pause.
Here the old words come together in a new key. Acyuta, the imperishable, the unmoving, was the epithet of the Buddhist accutaṃ padaṃ and also, in Vaiṣṇava devotion, one of the names of Viṣṇu himself. Pada is now the stainless state of the dharmakāya, which never leaves itself and yet appears everywhere. What was once a footprint in the sky has become the unmoving ground of all appearance.
The same treatise praises buddhahood as acintyaṃ nityaṃ ca dhruvam atha śivaṃ śāśvatam, “inconceivable, permanent, steadfast, auspicious, eternal", praśāntaṃ ca vyāpi vyapagatavikalpaṃ gaganavat, “utterly at peace, pervading, free of concepts, like the sky" (Ratnagotravibhāga 2.29). Every quality the Vedic and Pali traditions gave to the highest step is gathered here: the peace, the imperishability, the openness of space.
The phrase itself lived on in the devotion of the Great Vehicle. A scribe who copied Prajñākaramati's commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra ended his work with a verse of dedication: tatpuṇyād bodhisattvatvaṃ labhate paramaṃ padam, “by that merit may he attain bodhisattvahood, the parama pada, the highest step". A monk copying a work on the bodhisattva path reached, without hesitation, for the words of the Ṛgveda to name the goal of all his labour.
Secret Mantra and the tantras of Śiva
In the Yoginītantras of Secret Mantra the highest step is no longer only reached or seen. It is meditated as a deity. The Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, describing the circle of Yoginīs gathered around their lord, instructs: śrīherukamahārājaṃ bhāvayet paramaṃ padam, “let him meditate on the glorious Heruka, the great king, as the parama pada, the highest step". The verse goes on: sarve tuṣṭādvayībhūtā, "all, satisfied, become non-dual". The highest step of Viṣṇu has become the state of Heruka at the centre of the maṇḍala, envisioned and then dissolved into non-duality.
The Śaiva tantras of the same centuries use the phrase with the same freedom. The Netra Tantra, revealed in Kashmir, praises the supreme nectar of the mantra: etat tat paramaṃ padam, “this is that highest step" (Netra Tantra, chapter 2). The Kularatnapañcakāvatāra teaches that one who knows the nature of his own consciousness needs no further means parame pade, “on the highest plane", which is made of pure awareness. In the Śaiva initiation manuals, the initiate is joined at death to the paramapada, the highest level of the cosmos.
In the Krama (also known as the Path of Ati), the tradition of the Kālīs and the Yoginīs of Oḍḍiyāna, pada becomes the word for every state of the path. The Vātūlanāthasūtras promise nirākhyapadāvasthitiḥ, “abiding in the Nameless step", once the three coverings are left behind (sūtra 6). The Mahānayaprakāśa of Arṇasiṃha speaks of awareness dissolving suddenly into the great void, and the anonymous Mahānayaprakāśa calls the place where every sequence ends kramākramapadojjhita, the step beyond both sequence and non-sequence. In these texts the step has lost even its last trace of location. It is the Nameless, anākhya, the open sky of awareness in which the twelve Kālīs come to rest.
The Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra, meanwhile, never let the old meaning go. In the Padma Saṃhitā the paramapada is the region at the feet of Viṣṇu, the highest of all worlds. For the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition of South India, Paramapadam is Vaikuṇṭha itself, counted as the last of the hundred and eight holy places of Viṣṇu. So by the end of the first millennium the same two words named a heaven at Viṣṇu's feet for the Vaiṣṇava, the deity-state of Heruka for the Buddhist yogin, and the supreme plane of consciousness for the Śaiva.
The highest state in Tibet
When the translators of Tibet met the Sanskrit pada in its sense of state or rank, they rendered it go 'phang. With that word the highest step entered the daily speech of Tibetan practice. The aspirations and dedications that close countless sessions ask that all beings reach bla na med pa'i go 'phang, the unsurpassed state, or go 'phang dam pa, the highest state. Where the Sanskrit spoke of a step and the Pali of a peaceful step, the Tibetan speaks of a state, a station one comes to occupy.
The word lives at the very heart of the Great Perfection. In Finding Rest in the Nature of Mind (Rdzogs pa chen po sems nyid ngal gso), the Omniscient Longchenpa uses it again and again for the goal of the path. Three of his lines echo, almost word for word, the three great Pali epithets.
The deathless. He praises the precious human body, because through it the Buddha 'chi med bdud rtsi'i go 'phang brnyes, “attained the state of deathless nectar". This is the Dhammapada's amataṃ padaṃ, the deathless step.
The peaceful. Of the merit of devotion he says that one mthar thug zhi ba mchog gi go 'phang 'thob, “attains the state of ultimate, supreme peace". This is the Dhammapada's santaṃ padaṃ, the peaceful step.
The touched. Seeing that appearances arise without essence, in pure interdependence, one mi gnas mchog gi go 'phang myur du reg, “swiftly touches the supreme state of non-abiding". The elders of the Theragāthā, too, spoke of phusitvā accutaṃ padaṃ, “having touched the imperishable step". In both, the highest step is not attained from outside. It is touched, directly, the way one touches one's own nature.
The Omniscient Longchenpa's state of non-abiding, mi gnas, is the final transformation of the old image. The Vedic step came down in a place, the highest place. The Buddhist step was a place without footprints. The step of the Great Perfection is the state that abides nowhere, the ground that was never left. It is the Ratnagotravibhāga's buddha who never moves from the stainless step, and Viṣṇu's highest step seen like an eye spread in the sky, now recognised as the open nature of one's own awareness.
The same lineage of words runs into the Krama's own vocabulary. The Krama or Atinaya masters of Kashmir spoke of the step that is homeless, aniketa, the Nameless step of the sky of awareness. The Tibetan masters of the Great Perfection, many of whom traced their transmissions to the same land of Oḍḍiyāna, spoke of the supreme state of non-abiding, homeless. The two traditions reached, by their own roads, the same final meaning of the old Vedic word.
Not Vaiṣṇavas, but heirs of one word
So are we all Vaiṣṇavas? Something did pass from hand to hand across three thousand years, and it was not only a sound. The Vedic seers already knew three things about the highest step. It is seen rather than merely reached. It is present to the wakeful, jāgṛvāṃsaḥ, always, sadā. And it is like the open sky. And it is like an eye. Every later tradition kept these three. The Pali elders saw and touched the deathless step. The Great Vehicle spoke of a stainless state never left. Secret Mantra meditated it as the deity in whom all becomes non-dual. The Krama or Atinaya called it the Nameless step of the sky of awareness. The Great Perfection recognised it as the state that abides nowhere, touched in an instant.
The highest footstep of Viṣṇu is therefore not the property of any one school. It is the oldest name we have for what every Indo-Tibetan tradition of realisation is pointing at: the place where seeking stops because what was sought is found to have been present all along. The seers of the Ṛgveda looked into the sky and saw it like an eye in space. The early Buddhist sage looked into the same sky and found no footprint there. Both were describing the same openness. When we dedicate our practice to the highest state, we stand, knowingly or not, within the oldest continuous vocabulary of awakening in the world.
