Part Four · The Ten Powers, Four Fearlessnesses, and Eighteen Distinctive Dharmas

The first three parts read the name, the body, the wisdom. This part reads the function.

The name is this freedom's readable aspect, the body its visible aspect, the wisdom its cognitive aspect. Here we read its aspect "toward the world, toward beings"—its function. Once the four wisdoms set to work, a whole string of fruition-virtues shows forth: the ten powers, the four fearlessnesses, the eighteen distinctive dharmas, the four analytical knowledges. When scripture lists this string together, it gives it a name—"the Tathāgata's masterful function"—and says its import is "all manifested to deliver beings." So what this part reads is how this freedom turns toward beings and functions for their sake.

This part's eye is a dialogue in verse, in the Avataṃsaka. The bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, having told the merit of pure conduct, wishing to show the merit of the awakening-mind, asks in verse a bodhisattva named Bhadraśrī, Worthy-Head; and Bhadraśrī answers in verse. Coming to the buddha-fruit, he raises the ten powers, the fearlessnesses, and the eighteen distinctive dharmas all at once, and says outright—these are "the Tathāgata's masterful function," "all manifested to deliver beings." The words "the Tathāgata's mastery" thus stand, plain and explicit, in the scripture. The whole string of fruition-virtues this part reads is gathered into that one line: they are not a free-standing checklist of abilities, but the "function" of "the Tathāgata's mastery."

And this part is where this book's keynote shows itself most densely. This book has said the Tathāgata's freedom is the "unobstructed" freedom. But only here, at this part, is the word "unobstructed" written one by one into the names of the buddha-virtues: among the ten powers, "the divine eye unobstructed, past lives unobstructed"; among the eighteen distinctive dharmas, "knowing the three times unobstructed"; the four analytical knowledges are called, whole, "unobstructed." To read this part is to mark the keynote "unobstructed" through the buddha-virtues' very names, one place after another.

This part has two chapters. The first (the ten powers and four fearlessnesses): what manner of "knowing" the power is, what manner of "roar" the fearlessness—reading out their "function," still the already-established freedom turned toward beings, not superpowers acquired beyond severing the defilements. The second (the eighteen distinctive dharmas and four analytical knowledges): how that "non-lapse" and "unobstructedness" are the "completeness" and the "opening-out" of one and the same freedom's function. The two chapters together gather this string of fruition-virtues into one line: the function is not acquired; and the function is wholly for beings.

In, then, to the first chapter: knowing as it is, the lion's roar.