Part Seven · The Flower Ornament · Buddha-Recollection Opened into the Whole Dharma-Realm

The long road of buddha-recollection has reached its last and widest country — the Flower Ornament Sūtra, the Avataṃsaka.

Through the first six parts, buddha-recollection was always framed within "one Buddha, one land, one mind." In the Flower Ornament, that frame is burst. Here, to recollect one Buddha is to recollect all Buddhas; bow to one Buddha, and the Buddhas of the ten directions receive the bow together; within a single dust-mote appear buddha-fields beyond measure — layer upon layer without end, one containing all. Buddha-recollection, here, swells into the breathing of the entire dharma-realm.

Leading us into this country is the great bodhisattva Samantabhadra, with those "ten great vow-kings" of his. The curtain rises on a scene: Samantabhadra has just finished praising the merits of the Tathāgata, and turns to the youth Sudhana — the seeker who has called on fifty-three good teachers and walked the road to its end — to declare ten great vows; Sudhana asks on the spot, "How does one reverence — and so on, up to dedicate?", and that one question draws out an entire scroll of scripture.

Part Seven walks these ten vows one by one. The first chapter takes the ten as a whole — how they stretch buddha-recollection from a single act into an entire way of living. Then ten chapters, one vow to a chapter, walk them one by one: from reverence to all Buddhas, praising the Tathāgatas, and making offerings extensively, to repenting karmic obstructions and rejoicing in merit, to requesting the dharma-wheel and requesting the Buddhas to abide, and on to following the Buddha constantly in study, accommodating beings, and universal dedication.

When these ten vows have been walked, the destination this book promised — "from Āgama recollection to Flower Ornament buddha-recollection" — will have been reached.

We begin with Samantabhadra, and the whole shape of his ten great vows.