Part Three · The Sevenfold Worship and Samantabhadra · Bringing Remorse Before the Buddhas

In the two parts before this, the scene of remorse was a plain one: a monk saying his fault aloud to the Saṅgha; a king disclosing his remorse to a Buddha living in the world. The one addressed was a person right before the eyes.

But after the Buddha's nirvāṇa? That act of "handing the remorse over" — to whom is it to be handed?

The Mahāyāna tradition not only did not let it fall empty; it raised it to a higher station. It carried this act, once addressed to a person, up into a solemn worship addressed to the Buddhas of the ten directions — you no longer disclose to one Buddha living in the world; rather, in contemplation, facing the measureless Buddhas who fill all of space and pervade the dharma-realm, you disclose the faults of beginningless time, all at once.

And it no longer appears alone, but has been set into a fixed sequence: homage, praise, offering, and only then the confession of the karmic obstacle, followed by rejoicing, requesting, the petition that the Buddhas remain in the world, and dedication. Seven links in a row — later ages called them "the seven limbs." Confession, among these seven limbs, has a place of its own.

What Part Three looks at is precisely this raising to a higher station.

Two chapters. The first looks at where confession stands among these seven limbs, and why it stands there — of the seven, it alone is "subtraction," while all the rest are "adding"; it sits exactly on the gate where addition turns to subtraction and then turns back to addition. The second looks at how the same confession rises one step further, from a "limb" among the seven into a "vow" among Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows — a vow established to "continue moment after moment, with no exhaustion."

Both chapters tell of the same old act — saying aloud what was hidden — and of what it looks like once it has put on the solemnity of the Avataṃsaka. We begin with the sequence of those seven links.