The Ground Where Naming Is FullThe Three BodiesThe Four WisdomsThe Ten Powers, Four Fearlessnesses, and Eighteen Distinctive DharmasThe Marks, the Great Compassion, and the All-Kinds WisdomThe Perfected Freedom
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Part 1 · The Ground Where Naming Is Full
Tathāgata’s Mastery · 2 papers
The twin volume, Equal and Sublime Awakening, laid down its pen before a door.[ from the book's part intro ]
論Study the papersfootnotes · abstracts
01The Ground Where Naming Is FullThis paper opens the Mastery of the Tathāgata division and is the second cross-axis seam paper between the Attainment axis and the Realization axis: it reads, two-facedly, the same sublime-awakening / buddha-fruit passage that the Realization axis's "The Ground Where Walking Ends" (SAMBODHI-P03) reads. The Realization axis reads sublime-awakening as "the arrival of the path's last step" (the ground where walking ends); this paper sets out from the same sublime-awakening to read it as "the freedom with no further step to walk" (the ground where naming is full). The thesis: the Tathāgata's ten epithets (Thus-Come · Worthy-of-Offerings · Rightly-and-Fully-Awakened · Perfect-in-Knowledge-and-Conduct · Well-Gone · Knower-of-the-World · Unsurpassed-One · Tamer-of-Persons · Teacher-of-Gods-and-Humans · Buddha-World-Honored-One) are not ten virtues a Buddha acquires beyond severance, but the signature of perfected mastery — a mastery so complete that nothing is left provisional, nothing left to obstruct (unobstructed mastery, apratihata), and whose completeness can be read off as a fixed set of names. In the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra, and the eighty-fascicle Avataṃsaka, three points confirm one another. First, the ten epithets are one fixed name-set (the Śāstra cites Dīpaṃkara's prophecy listing them in a single breath), and each, as glossed, names one face of one buddha-fruit (Thus-Come = come as the true character of dharmas, taking no further being; Worthy = slayer of the defilement-foe; Rightly-and-Fully-Awakened = rightly and fully knowing all dharmas), not ten unrelated feats. Second, "only a Buddha should receive the buddha-names" — only a Buddha, with two things fulfilled, "the power of great merit and spiritual penetration" and "the foremost purified mind, the fetters extinguished," fully bears the ten epithets; the fullness of the names rests on the fullness of the being (the mastery with nothing left provisional), so naming-full is being-full, name and being coinciding at the buddha-fruit. Third, the same sublime-awakening / buddha-fruit, read by Realization as "arrival" and by Attainment as "freedom," is two faces of one fruit, the fineness of their reconciliation held at the seam, not settled by one axis alone. Conclusion: a signature is not a thing added beside its signer but the readable aspect of his completeness; the ten epithets as the ultimate signature means precisely that the buddha-fruit's mastery has become complete enough "to be named to the full." The Realization axis lays down its pen at the ground where walking ends; the Attainment axis sets out from the ground where naming is full — this paper opens the axis's final division, below which unfold the three bodies, four wisdoms, ten powers, ten masteries, and four qualities in full.02Two Sets of Ten MasteriesThe opening paper (TATHAGATA-P01) established "the Tathāgata's ten epithets as the signature of perfected mastery" and flagged "the Tathāgata's mastery and the bodhisattva's are categorically different" as a distinction to be unfolded. This paper makes good on it. A natural confusion: the bodhisattva at the eighth ground also attains "ten masteries" (over life, mind, wealth, karma, birth, vow, resolve, will, knowledge, dharma), the same number, ten — so one suspects the Tathāgata's mastery is merely the bodhisattva's "turned up, magnified." The thesis: no — they are two distinct sets, a qualitative break of fruit and cause, not the dim and bright of one mastery. In the eighty-fascicle Avataṃsaka and the Daśabhūmika-vyākhyāna, three points confirm one another. First, the texts themselves keep two distinct lists — the bodhisattva's ten masteries in the "Ten Grounds" chapter (attained on perfecting the body of knowledge, bound to the immovable ground's causal level), the Buddhas' ten masteries separately in the "Inconceivable Dharmas of the Buddhas" chapter (the fruit-level, separately enumerated); not one list. Second, the eighth-ground ten masteries are attained at "the bodhisattva level" ("this bodhisattva attains this bodhisattva's ten masteries"), and item by item are largely functions of "manifesting" (able to manifest the Buddha's virtues, not to possess them) — a path-bound, causal-level mastery. Third, scripture witnesses the causal level unfilled: the Buddhas, when the eighth-ground bodhisattva attains the forbearance of quiescence, personally exhort him, "our ten powers, fearlessnesses, and eighteen distinctive dharmas of the Buddhas, you have not yet attained." So the bodhisattva's mastery, however high, is still separated by the one step of "walking exhausted" (sublime-awakening) — a qualitative break, not a quantitative increment. Conclusion: this distinction is the very ground of P01's signature-frame — only by the qualitative break of cause and fruit are the ten epithets the ultimate signature exclusive to a Buddha; the bodhisattva's mastery, though it bears the name of ten masteries, does not receive the name "Buddha." Naming-full is being-full, and only the mastery of walking-exhausted fully bears the ten epithets.Same part, two ways in — papers keep the scholarly apparatus; the book is continuous prose for reading. Same source.