Practice · NianVolume OnePart VII · The Flower Ornament VisionPaper 27 of 31

Repenting Karmic Obstructions, Rejoicing in Merit

中文主題：懺悔業障・隨喜功德

Author: Shi Huijing 釋慧鏡

Date: Spring 2026

Version: 1.0

ID: NIAN-P27

Abstract

This paper continues the previous paper's (NIAN P26) argument that Samantabhadra's first three vows compose a three-karma set, and now treats vows four and five — repenting karmic obstructions (chànhuǐ yèzhàng 懺悔業障, vow four) and rejoicing in merit (suíxǐ gōngdé 隨喜功德, vow five). The thesis: these two vows are not the fourth and fifth items in a list of ten meritorious deeds but the twin wings of karma practice — a karma dyad — vow four operating as the decrement wing that addresses one's own past unwholesome action, vow five operating as the increment wing that draws into one's own practice the wholesome action of all others. Three pieces of textual evidence support this dyadic reading. First, the four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure formula at the end of vows four and five is fully isomorphic with the closure formula of vows one through three at the textual level of T0293 itself — extending the previous paper's vows one to three closure-formula isomorphism finding into a vows one to five 100% isomorphism confirmation. Second, the verse-section's thirty-second stanza pairs the two vows internally in a single line — "rejoicing-along, repenting, and all wholesome roots" — making the dyadic pairing explicit at the verse-text level of the sūtra. Third, in the seven-branch worship lineage (saptāṅga-pūjā) — whose earliest Chinese-canonical configuration is fixed by Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509) fascicle sixty-one — vows four and five occupy the third and fourth branches. The argument is developed across three frames: the seven-branch worship genealogy; the Madhyamaka two-truths exposition of karma; and the Yogācāra two transformations of the basis. The Chinese ritual-practice closure draws on Zhiyi's ten-section Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy (T1941) and the rejoicing segment of the fifth recollection-gateway in Shandao's Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise (T1980). The paper engages three Anglophone interlocutors in a one-pushback-plus-two-extensions configuration: vis-à-vis Stevenson 1986/1999 it concedes-and-pushes-back on the modernist internalising reading by retrieving Stevenson's own tri-register ritual technology frame; vis-à-vis Heim 2004's theories of the gift in South Asia and Sharf 2002/2005's anti-psychologising of Buddhist ritual it concedes-and-extends. Five philological warnings are addressed: the sūtra-layer-versus-treatise-layer drift in karmic obstruction; the Tang-Song retrospective character of the three-modes-of-repentance labels; the register shift between early-Buddhist future-oriented future-restraint and Mahāyāna retroactive purification — the cardinal mitigation, not erasure slogan — which must be stated in two registers and never collapsed into a single line of development; the four-way distinction anumodanā / muditā / kataññū / pattidāna; the terminology drift in pure precepts.

I. Introduction

Modern readers of the fourth and fifth among Samantabhadra's ten great vows — repenting karmic obstructions and rejoicing in merit — within the Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm (henceforth the Practice-and-Vow Chapter) tend to read these as the fourth and fifth items in a list of ten meritorious deeds. In Anglophone reception there is a concurrent tendency to interiorise vow four as "feeling sorry for one's past wrongdoings" and vow five as "feeling happy about others' achievements."

These readings are not wrong, but they fail to register the structural binding the sūtra itself imposes between the two vows.

The previous paper (NIAN P26) treated vows one, two, and three as a three-karma set: body-karma reverencing, speech-karma praising, and mind-karma offering — three halves of a single isomorphic triplet at the textual level of T0293, codified in Chinese ritual practice by Shandao's three-karma mapping in his Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise.

The present paper extends that argument with a more precise structural reading: vows four and five are not parallel items at positions 4 and 5 of a ten-item list but a karma dyad — the twin wings of karma practice. Vow four addresses the practitioner's own past unwholesome action (decrement of one's own karma — i.e., the dissolving of past unwholesome action); vow five draws into one's own practice the wholesome action of all others (increment — the receiving of others' merit as one's own share). Both wings turn together; only then is karma actually transformed.

Three textual evidences support this structural reading.

First, the four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure formulas at the end of vows four and five are fully isomorphic with the closure formulas of vows one, two, and three; the only difference is the substitution at the verb position (reverencing, praising, offering, repenting, rejoicing). The previous paper's vows-one-to-three closure-formula isomorphism finding is now extended into a vows-one-to-five 100% isomorphism confirmation — the second incremental step in establishing the structural argument for the ten great vows as a whole.

Second, vow four is the only vow in the ten whose object is the practitioner's own self, and vow five is the only vow whose object is the wholesome action of all others. This inward / toward-others dyad is not a later commentarial imposition: the verse-section of T0293, in its thirty-second stanza, internally pairs the two — "rejoicing-along, repenting, and all wholesome roots" — placing both into a single composite verse.

Third, Samantabhadra's ten great vows are structurally isomorphic with the Indian seven-branch worship (saptāṅga-pūjā) lineage. The earliest Chinese-canonical configuration appears in Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra fascicle sixty-one: "There are three modes for the bodhisattva's reverencing the buddhas: first, the mode of confessing transgressions; second, the mode of rejoicing-along and dedicating; third, the mode of inviting the buddhas."¹ In the seven-branch framework that develops from this Indic stratum, vows four and five occupy branches three and four: Samantabhadra's ten great vows are the Mahāyāna-Huayan amplification of seven-branch worship.

On the basis of these three evidences, the core argument is developed across five sub-sections (§III.1 closure-formula isomorphism and the dyadic structure; §III.2 vow four; §III.3 vow five; §III.4 the karma dyad in three frames; §III.5 closure on the Chinese ritual-practice side). §IV engages three Anglophone interlocutors in a one-pushback-plus-two-extensions configuration. §V handles six philological cautions. §VI offers cultivation guidance.

II. Textual Sources and Recensional Configuration

The textual sources for this paper extend across four strata: the canonical-original layer of T0293; the Indo-Buddhist Pāli root layer for early-Buddhist confession and anumodanā; the Mahāyāna-canonical extension layer; and the Chinese ritual-practice and treatise layer.

The canonical-original layer is T0293 Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: The Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm, fascicle forty, translated by Prajña (般若, c. 734 – c. 810) at Chang'an in 798 CE. Vow four's main exposition, closure formula, and verse-couplet, vow five's main exposition (across four object-classes — buddhas' fruition-grounds; sentient beings of the six destinies and four births; śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas with and without further training; bodhisattvas' immeasurable difficult-and-painful practices), closure formula, and verse-couplet, together with the thirty-second stanza of the verse-section that pairs the two vows internally, furnish the principal text used here.²

The Pāli early-Buddhist root layer for confession draws on four texts in their Chinese translations: the Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle fourteen Susīma chapter (T0099), which fixes the self-seeing-and-self-knowing → future-restraint dialogical formula of confession; the Madhyama-āgama fascicle five Śāriputra-correlative chapter (T0026), which exhibits the saṅgha-as-recipient structure of confession-receiving; the Dīrgha-āgama Sāmaññaphala chapter (T0001), which gives the canonical baseline for mitigation, not erasure in Ajātaśatru's repentance episode; and the Pañcavargika-vinaya fascicle eighteen (T1421), which fixes the formal uposatha triple-call (yāvatatiyaṁ) of the prātimokṣa. The Pāli root layer for rejoicing-along draws on two Aṅguttara-nikāya texts: AN 5.36 Kāladānasutta, the most direct locus for anumodanā in canonical entry, with the verse "those who rejoice along [with the offering] … also share in the merit" (ye tattha anumodanti / … / tepi puññassa bhāgino);³ and AN 8.36 Puññakiriyavatthusutta, which gives the canonical three-base list (dāna / sīla / bhāvanā) of the meritorious-action-bases — a list later expanded by the commentarial layer (Dīgha-aṭṭhakathā and parallels) into the dasa-puññakiriyavatthu (ten meritorious-action-bases), with anumodanā added as the fifth.⁴

The Mahāyāna-canonical extension layer consists of four texts. The Sūtra on the Visualisation of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva's Practice-Method (T0277, translated by Dharmamitra, c. 424–442 CE) is the locus classicus for the three modes of repentance — though, as §V.2 below establishes, the three labels (marks-grasping repentance, ritual repentance, no-arising repentance) do not appear in the sūtra itself but are Tang-Song retrospective summaries. The Sūtra of Golden Light: Chapter on Repentance (T0663, translated by Dharmakṣema, 414 CE) — "with single-mindedness, in one act of repentance, the gravest unwholesome karma accumulated through a thousand kalpas is wholly extinguished"⁵ — is the principal canonical witness to the Mahāyāna retroactive-purification register that §V.3 below treats. The Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra: Chapter on the Merit of Rejoicing-Along (T0262, translated by Kumārajīva in 406 CE) gives the fifty-fold transmission passage that establishes the minute-action, vast-merit structure of rejoicing-along. The Avataṃsaka itself supplies the host system for the ten great vows.

The treatise and Chinese-ritual-practice layer consists of three Indic-treatise sources, two Tang sub-commentaries, and three Chinese ritual sources. On the Indic-treatise side: Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra: Chapter on the Exposition of Rejoicing-Along and Dedication fascicle sixty-one (T1509, translated by Kumārajīva), which yields the seven-branch worship's earliest Chinese-canonical configuration and the doctrinal exposition of rejoicing-along and dedication; Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: Chapter on the Examination of Karma fascicle three (T1564, also translated by Kumārajīva), which deploys the "empty yet not annihilated, existent yet not eternal, the fruition of action is not lost" verse to handle karma at the level of the two truths; and the Cheng weishi lun (Vijñaptimātratā-siddhi) fascicle nine of Dharmapāla and others (T1585, translated by Xuanzang), which supplies the four-fold definition of the two transformations of the basis (āśraya-parāvṛtti) as the Yogācāra coordinate within which karma-seeds and the work of repentance are situated. On the Tang sub-commentary side: Chengguan's (澄觀, 738–839) Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary (X05n0227), with its philological gloss of kṣama (the Sanskrit etymon of the Chinese chàn 懺), its three-section schema for vow four, and its "reverse the obstruction of jealousy → arouse equal-and-impartial wholesome action" exposition for vow five; and Zongmi's (宗密, 780–841) Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter (X05n0229), which draws on Chengguan and elaborates the suppress-karma / transform-karma / extinguish-karma three-mode schema, the enemy-of-equal-strength doctrine, the seven preparatory minds for repentance, the citation of the Vimalakīrti-sūtra's Upāli chapter on the empty nature of transgression, and the "Tiantai says: there are three bodhisattva-dharmas — the gateway of precepts, the gateway of merit, the gateway of no-arising" passage (X05n0229 line 4751-4756) that supplies the original Tiantai vocabulary against which §V.2 below corrects the conventional three-modes labels. On the Chinese ritual side: Zhiyi's (538–597) Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy (T1941), the standard mother-text for the ten-section repentance liturgy in Chinese Buddhism; Zhiyi's Mohe zhiguan (Great Calmness and Insight) fascicle two (T1911, recorded by Guanding), which contains the "contemplating the empty nature of transgression" passage that defines no-arising repentance at its core; Shandao's Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise fascicle one (T1980), whose fifth recollection-gateway segment on dedication contains the rejoicing locus that anchors vow five on the Chinese Pure Land side.

Jizang's Madhyamaka-śāstra Sub-Commentary (T1824 / T1827) fascicle one cites the Vimalakīrti-sūtra's Upāli chapter — "directly extinguish" alongside the doubled "the nature of transgression and merit is empty / the marks of transgression and merit are clear and full" — supplying the Sanlun-school complement to §III.4's two-register treatment.

III. Core Argument

3.1 Closure-Formula Isomorphism and the Dyadic Structure of the Karma Dyad

The closure formula at the end of vow four reads:

"Just as space is exhausted, the realms of sentient beings are exhausted, the karmic deeds of sentient beings are exhausted, the afflictions of sentient beings are exhausted — then my repentance is exhausted. But since space — and likewise the afflictions of sentient beings — cannot be exhausted, this repentance of mine is also without end, moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body and speech and mind never wearying."⁶

The closure formula at the end of vow five reads:

"Just as space is exhausted, the realms of sentient beings are exhausted, the karmic deeds of sentient beings are exhausted, the afflictions of sentient beings are exhausted — then this rejoicing-along of mine is exhausted. But since space — and likewise the afflictions of sentient beings — cannot be exhausted, this rejoicing-along of mine is also without end, moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body and speech and mind never wearying."⁷

The two passages are 100% parallel at the four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure-formula structure. The only difference is the substitution at the verb position: repenting / rejoicing-along. Aligning the closure formulas of vows one through five yields the following table:

Vow	Verb	Object	Closure
1	reverencing	all the buddhas	my reverencing is without end
2	praising	the tathāgatas	my praising is without end
3	offering	all the buddhas (extensively making dharma-offerings)	my offering is without end
4	repenting	one's own past karma	my repenting is without end
5	rejoicing-along	the wholesome action of all others	my rejoicing-along is without end

The five closure formulas are fully isomorphic; the only difference is the verb at the verb-position. The methodological consequence is critical: the closure formula is the form of the practice-vow, not its content. What makes the ten great vows practice-vows is precisely the four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion non-exhaustibility structure — not any particular content. The content fills the verb-slot. The previous paper's vows-one-to-three isomorphism finding is now extended into a vows-one-to-five 100% isomorphism confirmation; vows six through ten exhibit the same closure-formula structure (treated in P28-P29).

Within the ten vows as a whole, vow four is the only vow whose object is the practitioner's own self — "the bodhisattva reflects: in the boundless past kalpas, … I have committed unwholesome deeds without measure or limit" — and vow five is the only vow whose object is the wholesome action of all others — "all … the buddhas and tathāgatas … all their wholesome roots, in all of these I rejoice along." The remaining eight vows have an I-toward-the-buddhas or I-toward-sentient-beings outward-facing structure.

Vow four and vow five thus constitute the karma dyad — the twin wings of karma practice: decrement (one's own past karma being dissolved through vow four) and increment (the wholesome action of others being received as one's own share through vow five). Both wings turn together; only then is karma actually transformed.

The dyadic pairing is not a later commentarial imposition. The verse-section's thirty-second stanza pairs the two internally:

"All the merit from reverencing, praising, and making offerings — requesting the buddhas to abide and to turn the dharma-wheel — rejoicing-along, repenting, and all wholesome roots — I dedicate to all sentient beings and to the buddha's path."⁸

The verse-text of the sūtra itself binds the two vows internally within a single composite stanza. This same stanza further reveals the seven-branch worship's Chinese configuration in embryonic form (reverencing, praising, offering, requesting-abiding, requesting-turning-the-wheel, rejoicing-along-and-repenting, dedicating); it also confirms that Samantabhadra's ten great vows are the Mahāyāna-Huayan amplification of the seven-branch worship lineage. Vows four and five are the third and fourth branches. §III.4 below will trace this lineage back through Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra fascicle sixty-one as the Indic-treatise root.

3.2 Vow Four: Repenting Karmic Obstructions

Vow four's main exposition in T0293 fascicle forty develops in a three-tier causal chain, beginning from the bodhisattva's reflection on unwholesome deeds done since beginningless kalpas:

"Furthermore, son of good family! As to the meaning of extinguishing-and-repenting karmic obstructions: the bodhisattva reflects: in the boundless past kalpas, by reason of greed, hatred, and delusion, I have given rise to body, speech, and mind that have committed unwholesome deeds without measure or limit. If these unwholesome deeds had a body and form, the boundless reaches of space could not contain them."⁹

The three-tier causal chain is: the root (the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion) → the path (the three karmas of body, speech, and mind) → the act (unwholesome deeds without measure or limit). The line "if these unwholesome deeds had a body and form, the boundless reaches of space could not contain them" quantifies the whole of past karma through reverse-image hyperbole.

The exposition then sets out the active formula of repentance:

"I now, by means of purified body, speech, and mind, in the presence of all the buddhas and bodhisattvas in the dust-mote-like buddha-fields throughout the dharma-realm, repent with sincerity, vowing not to commit such deeds again, abiding eternally in the merit of pure precepts."¹⁰

The passage sets out three terms in parallel: (1) by means of purified body, speech, and mind — the three karmas as the medium through which repentance operates; (2) repent with sincerity, vowing not to commit such deeds again — the two-track structure: repenting applies to deeds already committed (an inner-mental turn-from-past), not committing such deeds again applies to deeds not yet committed (a future-oriented future-restraint, saṁvarāya); (3) abiding eternally in the merit of pure precepts — the outcome: the ultimate horizon of repentance is the establishment of precept-merit. It is worth noting that, in the Practice-and-Vow Chapter, repentance is not an isolated verb but is interlocked with the establishment of pure precepts. This interlock means that repentance is not retrospective regret but the starting device of future-discipline — the active mechanism of karma-transformation, the concrete textual articulation of what the present paper terms the karma-transformation operator.

The vow four verse (T10.0848a)¹¹ is the locus classicus for the Chinese-Buddhist verse of repentance — the daily-recitation, mengshankou-shi (Pure Hungry Ghost-feeding), and Water-Land ritual all anchor on this four-line formula:

"All the evil deeds I have ever done in the past arose from beginningless greed, hatred, and delusion; springing from body, speech, and mind — all of them I now repent."¹²

Zongmi's Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter divides the verse into a four-fold analytical schema: fruit (the karma being repented) → cause (the cause of karma-arising) → path (the instrument of karma-arising) → act (the formal repenting itself).¹³ The four-line structure is tightly composed in reverse-rhymed order — a condensation of the three-tier causal chain of the main exposition into the verse register.

Chengguan's Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary offers the Sanskrit gloss of repentance-as-such under the term kṣama:

"Chàn: in Sanskrit fully kṣama, here huǐguò (repenting transgression). Distinguishing them more precisely: chàn names the self-disclosing-of-prior-transgression; huǐ names amending-from-the-past, cultivating-toward-the-future. Extinguishing the obstruction of unwholesome karma; bringing about the wholesome of pure precepts. Thus the text names this only repenting karma, but in fact the three obstructions and the four obstructions are all alike repented."¹⁴

Chengguan's two-fold gloss — self-disclosing-of-prior-transgression / amending-from-the-past, cultivating-toward-the-future — corresponds exactly to the main exposition's two-track repenting with sincerity / not committing such deeds again. The doubled outcome — extinguishing the obstruction of unwholesome karma / bringing about the wholesome of pure precepts — likewise echoes the main exposition's abiding eternally in the merit of pure precepts.

Zongmi, on the front-end of repentance, sets out the structure of the seven preparatory minds for repentance:

"First arouse the seven minds, as the means of approach: first, shame and repugnance; second, fear; third, world-renouncing aversion; fourth, arousing the awakening-mind; fifth, equal-and-impartial regard for those who have wronged you and those dear to you; sixth, recollection of the buddhas' kindness; seventh, contemplating the empty nature of transgression."¹⁵

The unfolding of the seven minds is: (1) shame and repugnance — self-judgement on what has been done; (2) fear — recognition of the consequence of karma; (3) world-renouncing aversion — a turning of attitude toward saṃsāra; (4) arousing the awakening-mind — a locking-in of will toward future practice; (5) equal-and-impartial regard — the adjustment of mental disposition toward those one has wronged; (6) recollection of the buddhas' kindness — recognition of the cooperating conditions; (7) contemplating the empty nature of transgression — the ultimate ontological judgement of karma. The seven-mind structure already provides a complete protocol of repentance as a bodily-speech-and-mental karma-transformation operator (not a purely inner repenting): emotional (1, 2), cognitive (3, 7), and volitional (4, 5, 6) — three registers operating jointly. §IV below will use this directly as a frame-anchor for engagement with Stevenson.

A philological detail must be flagged here. T0293 fascicle forty's chapter list has chànhuǐ yèzhàng 懺悔業障 (repenting karmic obstructions), but vow four's main exposition opening reads yán chàn-chú yèzhàng zhě 言懺除業障者 (as to the meaning of extinguishing-and-repenting karmic obstructions). The same translation (Prajña, 798 CE), single fascicle, the translator's deliberate dual usage: huǐ names the inner-mental turn (repent with sincerity, not committing such deeds again), chú names the function (the obstruction of karma being extinguished). The CBETA XML and the Taishō base text agree here; this is not a textual-critical anomaly. The doubled use of repenting and extinguishing will be picked up again in §V.1 below as part of the sūtra-layer-versus-treatise-layer terminology drift around karmic obstruction.

3.3 Vow Five: Rejoicing in Merit

Before turning to vow five's main exposition, a philological hard-anchor must be set. The Pāli equivalent of rejoicing in merit is anumodanā (anu-mud-, rejoicing-along) — and not muditā (sympathetic joy, the third of the four immeasurables), and not kataññū (gratitude / recognition of kindness), and not pattidāna (giving the merit one has gained). The four terms have distinct etymologies and distinct doctrinal-canonical loci:

Pāli term	Literal	Principal locus	Chinese rendering
anumodanā	rejoicing-along	AN 5.36 Kāladānasutta; commentarial dasa-puññakiriya, position 5	suíxǐ 隨喜
muditā	gladness	the four immeasurables (loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity)	xǐ 喜 (the third immeasurable)
kataññū	knowing-gratitude	AN 2.32 ff. and the Recognition of Kindness discourses	zhī'ēn 知恩 / bào'ēn 報恩
pattidāna	giving-the-attained	commentarial dasa-puññakiriya, position 7	huíxiàng 迴向 (reverse-direction structure)

Anglophone secondary literature — including portions of P. Williams, Heim, and Schopen — sometimes uses the loose translation sympathetic joy to cover all four; this is the philological pitfall that §V.4 below addresses. Samantabhadra's vow five's early anchor is anumodanā, and the Aṅguttara-nikāya 5.36 Kāladānasutta verse is its most direct canonical locus:

"Those who rejoice along [with the offering], or render assistance, do not thereby diminish the offering; they too share in the merit."¹⁶

A layered editorial history must also be flagged. The canonical-original puññakiriyavatthu (meritorious-action-bases) has three positions — dāna (giving), sīla (precept-keeping), bhāvanā (cultivation) — with AN 8.36 as its principal canonical formulation;¹⁷ anumodanā is not in the canonical list. Anumodanā's position as the fifth position is the result of the commentarial layer (the Dīgha-aṭṭhakathā and parallels) expanding the three-base list into the dasa-puññakiriyavatthu (ten meritorious-action-bases). Samantabhadra's rejoicing in merit is thus the third tier of this elevation: the canonical three-base list → the commentarial ten-base list (anumodanā at position five) → the Mahāyāna ten great vows (anumodanā now the principal verb of vow five). Three successive elevations — from a canonical-list position to a Mahāyāna bodhisattva-path core verb.

Returning to T0293 vow five's main exposition. The sūtra unfolds rejoicing-along across four classes of objects:

§1 The buddhas' fruition-grounds (all wholesome roots from initial mind-arousal through final parinirvāṇa):

"As to the meaning of rejoicing in merit: all the dust-mote-like buddhas-and-tathāgatas in the buddha-fields throughout the dharma-realm and space-realm in the ten directions of past, present, and future — from their initial mind-arousal in pursuit of all-knowing wisdom, through their diligent cultivation of merit, not sparing body or life, throughout buddha-field-dust-mote-like kalpas beyond expression … through their attainment of the buddhas' supreme awakening and parinirvāṇa, their distribution of relics — all their wholesome roots, in all of them I rejoice along."¹⁸

§2 The wholesome roots of sentient beings of the six destinies and four births:

"And of all kinds of beings of the six destinies and four births in all worlds of the ten directions, down to one mote-of-dust, in all of them I rejoice along."¹⁹

The phrase down to one mote-of-dust sets the lowest threshold at the level of the everyday wholesome action; the object of rejoicing-along is not selectively chosen.

§§3–4 Śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas with and without further training, plus the bodhisattvas' immeasurable difficult-and-painful practices:

"Of all śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas with and without further training in the ten directions of past, present, and future — all their merit, in all of it I rejoice along. The immeasurable difficult-and-painful practices of all bodhisattvas — vast merit aspiring to supreme perfect awakening — in all of them I rejoice along."²⁰

The four classes — buddhas' fruition-grounds, sentient beings of the six destinies, śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas' immeasurable practices — are an exhaustive enumeration of every possible source of wholesome roots within the Buddhist system. Vow five's verse compresses the four classes into four lines (in reverse-rhymed order):

"All sentient beings of the ten directions — śrāvakas with and without further training — all the tathāgatas and the bodhisattvas — in all their merit I rejoice along."²¹

Chengguan's exposition of vow five gives the doubled structure of reversing the obstruction of jealousy:

"Because in the past one did not delight in others' wholesome action, now this rejoicing-along celebrates them: extinguishing the obstruction of jealousy, arousing equal-and-impartial wholesome action. … Now I will explain that rejoicing-along is a sub-meaning of repentance, since their force-and-form are mutually opposed, so it is set out alongside it: equal-and-impartial — in the equal-and-impartial vastness one is fit to receive the dharma."²²

Two key clauses are decisive. First, "rejoicing-along is a sub-meaning of repentance" — Chengguan reads vow five directly as a sub-meaning of repentance, because the functional logic of rejoicing-along is extinguishing the obstruction of jealousy / arousing equal-and-impartial wholesome action, structurally isomorphic with vow four's extinguishing the obstruction of karma / bringing about the wholesome of pure precepts (extinguish a certain obstruction → bring about a certain wholesome). Second, "equal-and-impartial — in the equal-and-impartial vastness one is fit to receive the dharma" — the prior mental disposition of rejoicing-along is the establishment of self-and-others-equality.

Zongmi extends Chengguan's reading and gives a more compact judgement at the term vast:

"As to the sub-meaning of repentance: it extinguishes the obstruction of jealousy. As to vast: self and others are not two."²³

The phrase self and others are not two breaks open vow five's deeper doctrinal layer: the reason rejoicing-along can extend down to one mote-of-dust is precisely that, at the dharma-realm level, self and others are not actually distinct — others' wholesome action is one's own share of one's own wholesome. This connection prepares the entrance to the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra frames in §III.4.

A final source-stratum observation must be added: the dyadic pairing of vow five with vow four — rejoicing-along paired with repenting — is not a Huayan-school innovation. The Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra's Chapter on the Merit of Rejoicing-Along already exhibits the minute-action, vast-merit structure of rejoicing-along (the fifty-fold transmission passage: a single moment of rejoicing-along, transmitted through fifty intermediaries, yet the merit of the fiftieth recipient remains incalculable); Nāgārjuna's Chapter on the Exposition of Rejoicing-Along and Dedication in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra fascicle sixty-one supplies the seven-branch worship's earliest configuration and the doctrinal exposition of rejoicing-along — the chapter's title (Rejoicing-Along and Dedication) itself signals rejoicing-along's systematic position in the Mahāyāna treatise layer. Samantabhadra's vow five is the fully-formed apex of this lineage.

3.4 The Karma Dyad in Three Frames (the Argument's Pivot)

The argument's pivot can now be stated: vows four and five are not two isolated items in a list of ten meritorious deeds but an isomorphic dyad — the twin wings of karma practice — vow four operating as the decrement-mechanism on one's own karma (decrement of one's own karma); vow five operating as the increment-mechanism on the karma of others (increment of others' wholesome action); only when both wings turn together is karma actually transformed (karma-transformation). This dyadic reading lands in three doctrinal frames.

Frame one: the seven-branch worship lineage (saptāṅga-pūjā). The earliest Chinese-canonical configuration of seven-branch worship appears in Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra fascicle sixty-one:

"There are three modes for the bodhisattva's reverencing the buddhas: first, the mode of confessing transgressions; second, the mode of rejoicing-along and dedicating; third, the mode of inviting the buddhas. Spoken at length, they are immeasurable and limitless."²⁴

Nāgārjuna's three modes already explicitly place confessing transgressions and rejoicing-along and dedicating as the first two modes of the bodhisattva's reverencing-the-buddhas. Later esoteric ritual texts (T0866, T0897 et al.) expand this into a fixed five-to-six-position sequence (repenting → rejoicing-along → taking refuge → arousing the awakening-mind → vow-making → dedicating); Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra chapter two (the chapter on confessing transgression) consolidates the late-Indic seven-branch structure (reverencing / offering / repenting / rejoicing-along / requesting-the-turning-of-the-dharma-wheel / requesting-the-buddhas-to-abide / dedicating). Samantabhadra's ten great vows are the apex of this lineage: the Mahāyāna-Huayan amplification of seven-branch worship — vows 1+2+3 = branches 1-2 (reverencing, offering); vows 4+5 = branches 3-4 (repenting, rejoicing-along); vows 6+7 = branches 5-6 (the requesting dyad); vows 8+9+10 = the expansion of branch 7 (dedicating) into a closing triad (treated in P28-P29).

Frame two: the Madhyamaka two-truths exposition. Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: Chapter on the Examination of Karma handles karma's ontological status in a single verse:

"Empty yet not annihilated, existent yet not eternal, the fruition of action is not lost — this is what the buddha taught."²⁵

The doctrinal logic: at the level of ultimate truth, karma's nature is empty (ultimately empty, quiescent, natureless); at the level of conventional truth, karma's fruition is not lost (deeds are not lost, even after a hundred-thousand kalpas; when conditions converge, the fruition returns to one's own self). The two truths must be stated together; they cannot be collapsed onto a single side. Within this frame, vow four's repentance can be read in two ways: at the ultimate level, the nature of transgression and merit is empty (repenting is no-repenting; the repenter and what is repented are alike unattainable); at the conventional level, the karma of action is not lost (the ritual act of repentance has a real action on future-direction). Vow five's rejoicing-along has the same doubled reading: at the ultimate level, self and others are not two (the rejoicer and what is rejoiced-in are alike effaced); at the conventional level, down to one mote-of-dust, in all I rejoice along (the ritual has a real referent). The two truths stated together is the karma dyad's coherent treatment in the Madhyamaka frame.

Frame three: the Yogācāra two transformations of the basis. The Cheng weishi lun fascicle nine sets out the core definition of the two transformations of the basis (āśraya-parāvṛtti):

"By transforming the afflictions one obtains great nirvāṇa; by transforming the cognitive-obstacle one realises supreme awakening. … By repeated cultivation of the wisdom of non-discrimination, one severs the gross seed of the two obstacles in the root-consciousness; thus one is able to transform-and-extinguish-the-basis-as-saṃsāra and transform-and-realise-the-basis-as-nirvāṇa. Although the suchness is by nature pure but its marks are mixed-and-defiled, when it is freed from defilement we provisionally speak of a new purity; this new purity is just what is called the transformation of the basis."²⁶

Within the Yogācāra system, the extinguishing of karmic obstruction is understood as the transformation of karma-impressions (karma-vāsanā) within the ālayavijñāna (the storehouse-consciousness) — not the erasure of past karma into nothing, but the severing of its grossness and the turning of its basis. The line "although the suchness is by nature pure but its marks are mixed-and-defiled, when it is freed from defilement we provisionally speak of a new purity" is decisive: karmic obstruction extinguished operates at the level of marks; the level of nature is intrinsically pure. Repentance's functional logic is the severing of grossness, not the extinction of the nature-substance. Vow five's rejoicing-along has the same Yogācāra reading: others' wholesome roots, at the shared-aspect level of the storehouse-consciousness, are pure-seeds whose perfuming-increase one's own karma can receive through the act of rejoicing along — this is the meaning of sharing in the merit. This doctrinal layer underpins the mechanism of down to one mote-of-dust, in all I rejoice along: rejoicing-along is not idle words but a concrete verb of perfuming-increase upon karma-impressions.

The three frames cannot be collapsed onto a single side — and this is the prelude to §V.3's register-shift warning. The seven-branch worship frame is the ritual-genealogical level; Madhyamaka two truths is the ontological level; Yogācāra two transformations of the basis is the karma-impression mechanism level. Each of the three has its own field of operation; the habits of two-truths-stated-together cannot be transposed onto the ritual-genealogical inquiry, and vice versa.

But all three frames converge on a single conclusion: repenting and rejoicing-along are the karma dyad's two-faced active treatment of karma — the decrement of one's own karma and the receiving-in of others' wholesome action are the twin wings of karma-transformation. This is the argument's pivot, and the concrete articulation of the term karma-transformation operator.

3.5 Closure on the Chinese Ritual-Practice Side

The previous paper (P26) developed Shandao's three-karma-five-recollection-gateways correspondence as the daily six-period ritual schedule; the present paper does not re-deploy the three-karma mapping here, but instead takes the fifth recollection-gateway's rejoicing segment alone as the Chinese-Pure-Land anchor for vow five, and then proceeds to the further Chinese-patriarchal articulations of the repentance-rejoicing dyad.

The standard mother-text for the configuration of Chinese repentance liturgy is the ten-section structure of Zhiyi's Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy:

"When the practitioner first enters the ritual space, he must equip himself with ten dharmas: (1) purifying the ritual space; (2) purifying the body; (3) the three-karma offering; (4) inviting the Three Jewels; (5) praising the Three Jewels; (6) prostrating to the buddhas; (7) repentance; (8) walking the ritual path in circumambulation; (9) reciting the Lotus Sūtra; (10) contemplating the one true reality. … Within the three-times-seven-day period, day and night six times, beginning from the first entry into the ritual space, all ten dharmas are to be cultivated together within each session."²⁷

The internal structure of the ten sections is suggestive: 1-2 (purifying space and body) are preliminaries; 3-6 (offering, inviting, praising, prostrating) are invocation (i.e., seven-branch worship's first two branches); 7 (repentance) is the decrement of one's own karma; 8 (circumambulation) is a body-karmic transition; 9 (sūtra-recitation) is the internalisation of the dharma; 10 (contemplating one true reality) is the contemplative closure. Repentance (the seventh section) sits at the middle of the ten and forms the axis of self-orientation following the invocation. Although rejoicing-along is not enumerated as an independent section, it is already contained within contemplating the one true reality (i.e., the contemplation of the empty nature of transgression and merit, of self-and-others-not-two).

Zhiyi's core definition of no-arising repentance (Mohe zhiguan fascicle two) reads:

"Contemplating the empty nature of transgression: realising that the minds of greed, hatred, and delusion are all gateways of stillness. … Penetrating deeply into the marks of transgression and merit, illuminating in all ten directions. This empty wisdom, being matched with the mind, is like the morning dew at sunrise that vanishes all at once. … This is the ten-fold repentance: along the path of nirvāṇa, against the stream of saṃsāra, capable of extinguishing the four major and five inverted transgressions."²⁸

The line "like the morning dew at sunrise that vanishes all at once" is the classical metaphor of no-arising repentance, and bears on §V.3's register-shift caution (the extinguishment-of-transgression metaphor must be read as a re-judgement of the ontological status of karma, not as the physical erasure of a physical event).

Shandao's Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise fascicle one, on the fifth recollection-gateway segment, reads:

"Fifth: the gateway of dedication. That is, with single-mindedness, whether toward the wholesome roots one has oneself made, or toward all the wholesome roots made by all the saintly-and-ordinary of the three vehicles and five destinies, in each and every one, deeply give rise to rejoicing-along. As all the buddhas and bodhisattvas perform rejoicing-along, so do I likewise rejoice along. With this rejoicing-along's wholesome roots, together with my own wholesome roots, all are shared with sentient beings and dedicated toward the Land of Bliss."²⁹

The parallel placement of the wholesome roots one has oneself made and all the wholesome roots made by all the saintly-and-ordinary of the three vehicles and five destinies is precisely vow five's one's-own-karma + others'-karma dyadic structure on the Chinese Pure-Land side; rejoicing-along, in the five-recollection-gateway scheme, is not an isolated segment but the active mechanism of dedication. Shandao has already concretised the three-fold structure receiving-in-one's-own-karma + receiving-in-others'-karma → shared dedication into a daily six-period ritual programme. Yongming Yanshou's Records of the Source Mirror and Ouyi Zhixu's Essential Commentary on the Amitābha-sūtra further compress this structure into the doctrinal simplification of name-recollection's encompassing of Samantabhadra's myriad practices (Ouyi's Essential Commentary chapter-by-chapter exposition is reserved for the closing paper of NIAN's Part VIII).

A final philological anchor must be supplied. The early-Buddhist dialogical formula of confession is fixed in the Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle fourteen Susīma chapter:

"If an ordinary person commits a transgression, and self-sees, self-knows, and confesses-the-transgression, then in the world to come the discipline-of-restraint will be established, merit will increase, never to retrogress or diminish. … The Buddha said to Susīma: 'I receive your repenting-of-transgression. You should fully say: I was foolish, unwholesome, and without wisdom; I went forth surreptitiously into the True Dharma and Discipline; today I confess, self-seeing the transgression, self-knowing the transgression. In the world to come the discipline-of-restraint will be established, merit will increase, never to retrogress or diminish.'"³⁰

This passage realises in full the four anchors of early-Buddhist confession: community-positioning (declaring before the Buddha) + dialogical exchange (the offender speaks → the recipient receives, I receive your repenting-of-transgression) + formulaic structure (self-seeing transgression, self-knowing transgression → discipline-of-restraint established) + future-orientation (the discipline-of-restraint's object is the world to come). Early-Buddhist confession is not a transgression-extinguishing mechanism but the starting device of future-discipline — this is the textual root of §V.3's mitigation, not erasure.

The Chinese ritual-practice trajectory is clear: early-Āgama dialogical formula → sectarian-Vinaya triple-call uposatha → Mahāyāna three modes of repentance → Zhiyi's ten-section liturgy → Shandao's five recollection-gateways → Yongming and Ouyi's name-recollection-encompassing. Each stage is a more refined ritual-protocol articulation of the karma dyad; Samantabhadra's vows four-and-five are the doctrinal apex of this lineage, while the Chinese patriarchs concretise it on the ritual-curricular side into the actual practice of daily six-period observance.

A single response to Cook 1977's reading of Huayan as a metaphysical system (and not a concrete practice) can be offered here: the concrete ritual configuration of the karma-transformation operator is the hard evidence on Huayan's practice side — Huayan is not metaphysics-only. But this is only a glancing remark on the background target; the foreground engagement will be picked up in §IV by Stevenson.

IV. Cross-Disciplinary Engagement

This paper's §IV configuration matches the previous paper's: one pushback ally plus two extensions, the principal interlocutors being the Anglophone Huayan and Chinese-Buddhism interpretive tendencies. Cook 1977 remains the background target, glanced at the close of §III.5, and is not foregrounded in §IV.

Stevenson 1986 / 1999 (primary pushback ally · tri-register ritual technology). Daniel Stevenson, in The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T'ien-t'ai Buddhism (Gregory ed., Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, University of Hawaii Press, 1986) and "Protocols of Power: Tz'u-yün Tsun-shih" (Gregory and Getz eds., Buddhism in the Sung, University of Hawaii Press, 1999), establishes that the Tiantai repentance liturgy is not pure inner repenting-of-transgressions but a bodily / verbal / mental tri-register ritual technology — somatic (prostration, circumambulation, perambulation), verbal (sūtra-recitation, name-calling, praising), and contemplative (contemplating the empty nature of transgression, contemplating the one true reality) all activated together as a ritual technology.³¹ The present paper extends this frame: vow four's repenting is itself a karma-transformation operator and not pure inner repenting — the main exposition's "by means of purified body, speech, and mind, repent with sincerity" internally binds repentance to the medium of the three karmas (§III.2); Zongmi's seven preparatory minds for repentance (shame and repugnance, fear, world-renouncing aversion, arousing the awakening-mind, equal-and-impartial regard, recollection of the buddhas' kindness, contemplating the empty nature of transgression) supply a complete protocol with all three of emotional, cognitive, and volitional registers operating jointly (§III.2); Zhiyi's Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy's ten-section structure embeds repentance still more concretely into a three-times-seven-day six-period bodily curriculum (§III.5). Stevenson's tri-register frame is the strongest available ally for pushing back against the modernist interiorise-repentance-as-private-regret reading.

Heim 2004 (concede-and-extend · merit-pool economics). Maria Heim, in Theories of the Gift in South Asia: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Reflections on Dāna (Routledge, 2004), demonstrates that the South Asian dāna system embeds a structure of merit-pool economics — giver, recipient, and rejoicer-along all share in merit within a single giving event, distributed not by proportion of material contribution.³² The concede-and-extend move: the present paper concedes that vow five's rejoicing-along has, at the dāna-economics level, the merit-pool mechanism Heim identifies (the AN 5.36 Kāladānasutta line "they too share in the merit" is precisely the canonical-layer textual evidence for this mechanism); and extends the frame to the Mahāyāna's super-large scale of three times and ten directions — vow five's four classes of objects of rejoicing-along (the buddhas' fruition-grounds, sentient beings of the six destinies and four births, śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas with and without further training, bodhisattvas' immeasurable practices) far exceed the localised South Asian dāna-ritual economy and constitute a cosmological extension of the merit-pool structure. Heim's frame is a secondary articulation of vow five rather than its principal thesis, but as an Anglophone-academic frame-anchor, it serves dialogue effectively.

Sharf 2002 / 2005 (concede-and-extend · P26 carry-over · anti-psychologising extension). Robert Sharf's methodological essays — particularly Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise (University of Hawaii Press, 2002) and the "Ritual" entry in Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism (Lopez ed., University of Chicago Press, 2005) — argue that two modern Western interpretive tendencies in reading Chinese-Buddhist liturgy both miss the phenomenon: (a) reading liturgy as superstitious residue requiring apologetic defence, or (b) reducing liturgy to a phenomenological inner-experiential mechanism. Sharf argues that, within the Chinese-Buddhist context, liturgy is a constitutive social-and-cosmological action whose real effect on the karmic cosmos is not subject either to subjective-psychological analysis or to superstition-charge.³³ The previous paper (P26) used this frame on the offering-as-cosmological-action side; the present paper extends it to the repentance-and-rejoicing-along dyad — to resist the modernist drift that would interiorise repentance as feeling sorry for past wrongs and rejoicing-along as feeling happy about others' achievements. Sharf's anti-psychologising is the strongest support for the present paper's dyadic structure; the present paper's thesis — the karma-transformation operator's twin wings — is the concrete articulation of Sharf's frame within the Huayan textual context.

The three-interlocutor configuration forms a 1+2 cadence: Stevenson supplies the foreground pushback frame (ritual technology, not inner repenting); Heim supplies the secondary articulation on the vow-five side (merit-pool economics); Sharf carries forward the previous paper's conceptual guard (extending the constitutive-action frame from offering to the dyad). Cook 1977's metaphysics-only frame is no longer foregrounded; the concrete ritual-curricular instantiation of the karma-transformation operator is itself the sharper pushback lever against any reading-as-metaphysics-only.

V. Middle-Way Cautions

This paper's philological cautions are five. Four are addressed in full (C.1–C.4); the remaining one (C.5 the pure-precepts terminology drift) is flagged in a single-sentence footnote gloss.

❌ C.1: The treatise-layer concept of karmic obstruction must not be retroactively imposed on the sūtra layer. In T0293 fascicle forty as a whole, the term karmic obstruction (yèzhàng 業障) appears only three times in the surface text (the chapter list, vow four's main exposition heading, and the vow-king's general-summary-of-merit passage). The sūtra itself offers no definition. The sūtra's reference for karmic obstruction is restricted to the extensional description unwholesome deeds committed by body, speech, and mind through the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion since beginningless kalpas. The later treatises and sub-commentaries — Zongmi citing the Sūtra on the Names of the Buddhas (Foming jing) for the three obstructions (affliction-obstruction / karmic-obstruction / fruition-obstruction); the Chapter on the Excellent Marks for the four obstructions (karma / affliction / fruition / view); the Yogācāra two-obstruction schema (affliction-obstruction / cognitive-obstruction) — represent a layered framework expansion. The sūtra-layer karmic obstruction is not the treatise-layer karmic obstruction — the former is extensional, indicating unwholesome deeds done through the three poisons and three karmas; the latter is the formal taxonomic distinction within a three / four / two-obstruction structure. §III.2 has already noted the dual-track translation fact (repenting / extinguishing); here the principle is reaffirmed: the framework-distinctions of the treatise layer cannot be retroactively imposed on the sūtra layer; the two layers must be allowed to stand together.

⚠️ C.2: The three-modes-of-repentance labels (marks-grasping / ritual / no-arising) are Tang-Song retrospective summaries. The Sūtra on the Visualisation of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva's Practice-Method (T0277) is the locus classicus of the three modes of repentance (it does set out three classes of repentance practice), but the sūtra itself does not deploy the three labels marks-grasping repentance / ritual repentance / no-arising repentance as a parallel triplet. Zhiyi's Mohe zhiguan (T1911) employs the phenomenal repentance / principial repentance binary plus the ten minds / twenty minds framework, not the three-label triplet. Zongmi's Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter cites "Tiantai says: there are three bodhisattva-dharmas — the gateway of precepts, the gateway of merit, the gateway of no-arising" (X05n0229 line 4751-4756) — this is the formal landing of Zhiyi's three-mode schema in the Huayan context. Note: the actual term is not marks-grasping / ritual / no-arising but precepts / merit / no-arising. The triplet marks-grasping repentance / ritual repentance / no-arising repentance, in its parallel form, is most likely a later abbreviation; direct grep on X05n0227 + X05n0229 yields no occurrence. The present paper, when it deploys the three-modes label, supplies a footnote noting "a later abbreviation; the original Tiantai vocabulary is precepts / merit / no-arising in three gateways".

❌ C.3: Early-Buddhist confession is not a transgression-extinguishing mechanism; the Mahāyāna three modes of repentance are not a continuation of early-Buddhist confession — register shift must be stated in two registers and never collapsed into a single line of development. Early-Buddhist confession's outcome is "the discipline-of-restraint will be established; merit will increase, never to retrogress or diminish" (the Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle fourteen Susīma chapter and the Madhyama-āgama fascicle five Śāriputra chapter, verbatim); confession generates future-discipline, does not erase the past act. The Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle thirty-two Self-Repentance Chapter states explicitly: "although it cannot make that act not have been done, by virtue of this self-repentance, in the world to come one will be free from killing."³⁴ The Sāmaññaphala-sutta episode of King Ajātaśatru is the canonical baseline: mitigation, not erasure — the act of patricide cannot, ontologically, be made not to have been done, but, by reason of repentance, the future-orientated discipline-of-being-free-from-killing is established. By contrast, the Mahāyāna Sūtra of Golden Light: Chapter on Repentance — "with single-mindedness, in one act of repentance, the gravest unwholesome karma accumulated through a thousand kalpas is wholly extinguished" (T16n0663, 0337b29-c05)³⁵ — represents a register shift: the early-Buddhist future-discipline register has shifted into the Mahāyāna retroactive-purification register.

The textual evidence for both registers is original, both are sūtra-layer, neither can be set aside — the two must be stated in two registers. They cannot be collapsed into a single line of development (one cannot say either that the Mahāyāna register is a reasonable development of the early register, or that it is a deviation or hyperbole). Zhiyi's "like the morning dew at sunrise that vanishes all at once" metaphor (§III.5) is the Mahāyāna retroactive-purification register's reading of the re-judgement of karma's ontological status (transgression's nature is intrinsically empty; phenomenal repentance is able to halt its perfuming, principial repentance is able to alter its basis-of-support). This reading should not be drawn into either modernist apology (as a symbolic, magical-thinking picture) or maximalist literalism (as physical erasure). The correct treatment is the two-register textual statement: the early register and the Mahāyāna register are two distinct doctrinal articulations, belonging to two distinct normative frameworks.

⚠️ C.4: anumodanā ≠ muditā ≠ kataññū ≠ pattidāna — the four-way pitfall. See §III.3 opening. Anglophone secondary literature — including portions of P. Williams, Heim, and Schopen — sometimes employs the loose translation sympathetic joy to cover all four. This loose rendering collapses four terms with distinct doctrinal-canonical loci into a single cover term, and is a hard philological error. Samantabhadra's vow five's early anchor is anumodanā (rejoicing-along, AN 5.36) — not muditā (the third of the four immeasurables); not kataññū (gratitude / recognition of kindness); not pattidāna (the reverse-direction structure of giving the merit one has gained). The present paper's usage: the Chinese suíxǐ 隨喜 always corresponds to anumodanā; the Chinese xǐ 喜 (third immeasurable) always corresponds to muditā.

⚠️ C.5 (one-sentence footnote gloss): T0293 deploys only "pure precepts" (a single category) in its surface text; it has neither the triple-grouping pure precepts taxonomy (restraint-precepts / wholesome-action-precepts / sentient-being-benefiting-precepts) nor the precept-substance category. The development into the triple-grouping / precept-substance system is a Tiantai, Huayan, and Vinaya-school sub-commentarial elaboration. Vow four's main exposition phrase "abiding eternally in the merit of pure precepts" must not be tacitly upgraded to triple-grouping pure precepts; the sūtra layer must be distinguished from the treatise layer.³⁶

VI. Closing

Essence Restated

Samantabhadra's vows four and five are not the fourth and fifth items in a list of ten meritorious deeds. They are the karma dyad — the twin wings of karma practice: vow four addresses the practitioner's own past unwholesome action (the decrement wing — the dissolving of one's own past unwholesome action); vow five draws into one's own practice the wholesome action of all others (the increment wing — the receiving of others' merit as one's own share). Both wings turn together; only then is karma actually transformed. This dyadic structure is supported by three pieces of textual evidence: the closure-formula isomorphism (vows one through five 100% isomorphic); the verse-section's internal pairing (the thirty-second stanza's "rejoicing-along, repenting, and all wholesome roots"); and the seven-branch worship lineage's branches three and four (the Indic locus classicus is Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra fascicle sixty-one). The argument lands in three doctrinal frames — the seven-branch worship lineage, the Madhyamaka two-truths, and the Yogācāra two transformations of the basis — each with its own field of operation; all three converge on a single conclusion: the karma-transformation operator is a dyad, not a pair of isolated items.

Cultivation Guidance

For modern Anglophone practitioners, the present paper recommends two Chinese ritual-canonical texts as concrete starting-points.

First, Zhiyi's Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy, the three-times-seven-day six-period ten-section curriculum: purifying the ritual space → purifying the body → three-karma offering → inviting the Three Jewels → praising the Three Jewels → prostrating to the buddhas → repentance → walking the ritual path in circumambulation → reciting the Lotus Sūtra → contemplating the one true reality. The ten sections embed repentance (the seventh) within a three-times-seven-day six-period bodily curriculum, with contemplating the one true reality (the contemplation of the empty nature of transgression and merit, of self-and-others-not-two) as the contemplative closure — the historical prototype of Stevenson's tri-register ritual technology.

Second, Shandao's Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise, the six-period reverence-and-praise pairing. Each period contains the complete seven-branch structure of prostration (body-karmic) + praising (speech-karmic) + name-recollection (mind-karmic) + repentance + rejoicing-along + dedication. For the busy modern practitioner, a single-period daily form (morning or evening) can be drawn off: (1) three prostrations to the buddhas; (2) recite vow four's verse ("All the evil deeds I have ever done in the past …") — repentance; (3) recite vow five's verse ("All sentient beings of the ten directions …") — rejoicing-along; (4) a passage of dedication to all sentient beings and the buddhas' path. The single-period daily form takes only five to ten minutes but already carries the structural skeleton of seven-branch worship.

The shared point of both starting-points: repentance and rejoicing-along are not isolated private events but the body-speech-and-mind ritual protocol embedded within the ritual curriculum. Abide in the body, abide in the schedule, abide in the dyad.

Open Question

Vows four and five's dyadic structure handles the self-karma / others'-karma dyad; the next paper (NIAN P28) will handle vows six and seven's requesting dyad — requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel and requesting the buddhas to abide — whose doctrinal locus classicus is the long-abiding of the dharma (Dharma-cira-sthiti) rather than karma-transformation: another isomorphic dyad. The present paper does not pre-empt that content.

Closing Verses

To close, the central verses of vow four and vow five read together as the paper's epigraph-of-conclusion:

"All the evil deeds I have ever done in the past arose from beginningless greed, hatred, and delusion; springing from body, speech, and mind — all of them I now repent." — Vow Four

"All sentient beings of the ten directions — śrāvakas with and without further training — all the tathāgatas and the bodhisattvas — in all their merit I rejoice along." — Vow Five

Repentance and rejoicing-along are the karma dyad — one wing toward one's own past (decrement), the other toward the wholesome action of all others (increment); both wings turning together, karma is at last transformed.

References

I. Primary Buddhist Sources

T0001. Dīrgha-āgama (Cháng āhán jīng). Translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 1.

T0026. Madhyama-āgama (Zhōng āhán jīng). Translated by Saṅghadeva. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 1.

T0099. Saṃyukta-āgama (Zá āhán jīng). Translated by Guṇabhadra. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 2.

T0262. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra (the Lotus Sūtra). Translated by Kumārajīva. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 9.

T0277. Sūtra on the Visualisation of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva's Practice-Method. Translated by Dharmamitra. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 9.

T0293. Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: The Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm (the forty-fascicle recension). Translated by Prajña. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 10.

T0663. Sūtra of Golden Light (Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra). Translated by Dharmakṣema. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 16.

T1421. Pañcavargika-vinaya (Wǔfēn lǜ). Translated by Buddhajīva. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22.

T1509. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (Dà zhìdù lùn). Composed by Nāgārjuna; translated by Kumārajīva. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 25.

T1564. Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (the Madhyamaka-śāstra). Composed by Nāgārjuna; translated by Kumārajīva. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 30.

T1585. Cheng weishi lun (Vijñaptimātratā-siddhi). Composed by Dharmapāla and others; translated by Xuanzang. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 31.

T1824 / T1827. Madhyamaka-śāstra Sub-Commentary. Composed by Jizang. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 42.

T1911. Mohe zhiguan (Great Calmness and Insight). Composed by Zhiyi; recorded by Guanding. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 46.

T1941. Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy. Composed by Zhiyi. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 46.

T1980. Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise. Composed by Shandao. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 47.

X05n0227. Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary. Composed by Chengguan. Wàn xùzàng vol. 5.

X05n0229. Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter (also known as Bie-xing-shu chao 別行疏鈔). Composed by Zongmi. Wàn xùzàng vol. 5.

AN 5.36. Kāladānasutta. Pali Text Society edition, AN III 41-42.

AN 8.36. Puññakiriyavatthusutta. Pali Text Society edition, AN IV 241-243.

II. Patriarchal Commentaries

Chengguan. Huayan-jing Xingyuan-pin Shu (Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter). X05n0227, Wàn xùzàng vol. 5.
Zongmi. Huayan-jing Xingyuan-pin Bie-xing Shuchao (Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter). X05n0229, Wàn xùzàng vol. 5.
Zhiyi. Mohe Zhiguan (Great Calmness and Insight). T1911, Taishō vol. 46. 無生懺核心定義.
Zhiyi. Fahua Sanmei Chan Yi (Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy). T1941, Taishō vol. 46. 十科儀軌之懺悔定型.
Shandao. Wangsheng Lizan Ge (Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise). T1980, Taishō vol. 47. 五念門隨喜段.
Nāgārjuna. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509), fascicle 61 on rejoicing-and-dedication. Kumārajīva trans. Taishō vol. 25.
Dharmakṣema. Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra (Golden Light Sūtra). T0663, Taishō vol. 16. 懺悔品.

3. Modern Scholarship

Heim, Maria. Theories of the Gift in South Asia: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Reflections on Dāna. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Sharf, Robert H. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002.

Sharf, Robert H. "Ritual." In Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., 245-270. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Stevenson, Daniel B. "The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T'ien-t'ai Buddhism." In Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, edited by Peter N. Gregory, 45-97. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1986.

Stevenson, Daniel B. "Protocols of Power: Tz'u-yün Tsun-shih and the Sung Dynasty Synthesis." In Buddhism in the Sung, edited by Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, Jr., 340-408. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999.

IV. Cross-Reference to Series Papers

P25 Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows: An Introduction: the vow-king structural operator;愿王整体化.
P26 Reverencing Buddhas, Praising Tathāgatas, Cultivating Offerings:愿1-3三業合構; the body-speech-mind triad.
P28 Requesting the Turning of the Dharma-wheel, Requesting the Buddhas to Abide:愿6+7 as法之久住雙模; follows愿4-5.
P29 Constantly Following the Buddha, Accommodating Sentient Beings, Universal Dedication:愿8-10 as the upward-downward + dedication triad.
P24 The Synthesis from Yongming through Yunqi to Ouyi: 永明—雲棲—蕅益合流; Pure Land-Huayan confluence.
P16 Confession as Buddha Recollection: Zhiyi's repentance liturgy as structural tool.

V. Sūtra & Śāstra Index

簡稱	全名	造／譯者	T／X 編號	冊數
長阿含	《長阿含經》	佛陀耶舍譯	T0001	1
中阿含	《中阿含經》	僧伽提婆譯	T026	1
雜阿含	《雜阿含經》	求那跋陀羅譯	T099	2
法華經	《妙法蓮華經》	鳩摩羅什譯	T262	9
觀佛三昧	《觀佛三昧海經》	東晉·佛馱跋陀羅譯	T0277	9
行願品	《大方廣佛華嚴經·普賢行願品》	般若譯	T0293	10
金光明經	《金光明經》	曇無讖譯	T0663	16
五分律	《五分律》	佛陀耆婆譯	T1421	22
大智度論	《大智度論》	龍樹造、鳩摩羅什譯	T1509	25
中論	《中論》	龍樹造、鳩摩羅什譯	T1564	30
成唯識論	《成唯識論》	護法等造、玄奘譯	T1585	31
三論疏	《三論疏》	吉藏撰	T1824/1827	42
摩訶止觀	《摩訶止觀》	智顗講、灌頂筆錄	T1911	46
法華懺儀	《法華三昧懺儀》	智顗撰	T1941	46
往生禮讚偈	《往生禮讚偈》	善導集記	T1980	47
行願品疏	《華嚴經行願品疏》	澄觀撰	X0227	卍續 5
行願品疏鈔	《華嚴經行願品疏鈔》（別行疏鈔）	宗密述	X0229	卍續 5

Pointing at the Moon Research · Six Practice Gates, Volume One: Mindful of the Buddha · Part VII The Flower Ornament Vision · 7.3 Shi Huijing (釋慧鏡) First draft, May 2026 This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Footnotes

Nāgārjuna, Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra: Chapter on the Exposition of Rejoicing-Along and Dedication, fascicle sixty-one (translated by Kumārajīva, T25n1509, 0494a16). The three modes of confessing transgressions / rejoicing-along and dedicating / inviting the buddhas constitute the seven-branch worship's earliest configuration in the Chinese canon at the Indic-treatise stratum. ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approximations: T10.0844c19–25 region (vow four main exposition); T10.0847a region (vow four closure formula); T10.0848a (vow four verse); T10.0844c25–0845a region (vow five main exposition, four classes of objects); T10.0847a–b region (vow five closure formula); T10.0848a (vow five verse); T10.0848a region, the thirty-second stanza of the verse-section, internally pairing vows four and five. ↩
AN 5.36 Kāladānasutta (PTS AN III 41–42); cf. Bhikkhu Sujato's English translation (CC0): "Whoever rejoices, or helps out, their offering is not diminished; they too have a share in the merit." ↩
AN 8.36 Puññakiriyavatthusutta (PTS AN IV 241–243). The three meritorious-action-bases are dāna (giving), sīla (precept-keeping), and bhāvanā (cultivation). The commentarial-layer expansion into the dasa-puññakiriyavatthu (ten meritorious-action-bases) is found in the Dīgha-aṭṭhakathā and parallels, adding apaciti (paying respect), veyyāvacca (rendering service), pattidāna (giving the attained), anumodanā (rejoicing-along), desanā (teaching the dharma), savana (hearing the dharma), and diṭṭhujukamma (rectifying view). Samantabhadra's vow five's anumodanā is the third tier of this elevation: the canonical three-base list → the commentarial ten-base list → the Mahāyāna ten great vows. ↩
T16n0663 Sūtra of Golden Light: Chapter on Repentance, translated by Dharmakṣema, fascicle one, 0337b29-c05. See §V.3 below for the register-shift treatment. ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approx. T10.0847a region. ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approx. T10.0847b region. ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approx. T10.0848a, the thirty-second stanza of the verse-section. The line "rejoicing-along, repenting, and all wholesome roots" is the verse-text's internal evidence for the dyadic pairing. ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approx. T10.0844c19–25 region. ↩
Same as preceding note. The two-fold parallel — purified body, speech, and mind as medium and abiding eternally in the merit of pure precepts as outcome — is the sūtra's internal connection between repentance's medium and its outcome. ↩
Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: The Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm (translated by Prajña, T10n0293, fascicle forty, 0848a). The verse is the locus classicus for the Chinese-Buddhist verse of repentance: it serves as the core four-line formula of daily liturgical recitation, of the mengshankou-shi (Pure Hungry Ghost-feeding) ritual, and of the Water-Land ritual. Zongmi's Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter divides the verse into a four-fold analytical schema: fruit (the karma being repented) → cause (the cause of karma-arising) → path (the instrument of karma-arising) → act (the formal repenting itself). The dual usage in the sūtra — chànhuǐ yèzhàng 懺悔業障 in the chapter list and yán chàn-chú yèzhàng zhě 言懺除業障者 in the main exposition opening — is preserved here as the standard repenting alongside the function-noun extinguishing; see §III.2 below and §V.1. ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approx. T10.0848a. ↩
Zongmi, Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter (X05n0229), in the region of line 7073. The four-fold analytical schema is the locus. ↩
Chengguan, Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary (X05n0227), in the region of line 11452-11456 (X 0193c23). The Sanskrit gloss kṣama → repenting transgression, together with the self-disclosing-of-prior-transgression / amending-from-the-past-cultivating-toward-the-future binary, anchors the philological reading of the term repent used throughout this paper. ↩
Zongmi, Detailed Sub-Commentary (X05n0229), in the region of line 4724-4729. The seven preparatory minds for repentance constitute the standard structure, citing the Sūtra on the Names of the Buddhas (Foming jing) as their source. ↩
AN 5.36 Kāladānasutta verse (PTS AN III 41-42); cf. note 4. Bhikkhu Sujato's translation: "Whoever rejoices, or helps out, their offering is not diminished; they too have a share in the merit." ↩
AN 8.36 Puññakiriyavatthusutta (PTS AN IV 241-243); cf. note 5. ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approx. T10.0844c25–0845a region (the first object-class of vow five's main exposition). ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approx. T10.0845a region (the second object-class). The phrase "down to one mote-of-dust" sets the lowest threshold of rejoicing-along. ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approx. T10.0845a region (the third and fourth object-classes). ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty verse-section, CBETA approx. T10.0848a. ↩
Chengguan, Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary (X05n0227, line 11493-11497). The doubled framework of reversing the obstruction of jealousy. ↩
Zongmi, Detailed Sub-Commentary (X05n0229, line 5137-5138). The phrase self and others are not two is the doctrinal condensation of vow five. ↩
T25n1509, 0494a16; cf. note 2. The three modes of confessing transgressions / rejoicing-along and dedicating / inviting the buddhas constitute the Indic-treatise stratum's embryonic configuration of seven-branch worship. ↩
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: Chapter on the Examination of Karma, fascicle three (T30n1564, line 297-305 region). The core verse for the two-truths handling of karma. ↩
Cheng weishi lun, fascicle nine (T31n1585, line 488-504 region). The core definition of the two transformations of the basis. ↩
Zhiyi, Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy (T46n1941, 0950a17-a23). ↩
Zhiyi, Mohe zhiguan fascicle two (T46n1911 fascicle two). The core definition of contemplating the empty nature of transgression. ↩
Shandao, Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise fascicle one (T47n1980, 0438c27-0439a02). The fifth recollection-gateway segment's rejoicing locus. ↩
Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle fourteen Susīma chapter (T0099 fascicle fourteen). The textual locus classicus for the early-Buddhist dialogical formula of confession. The Pāli parallel is the Sāmaññaphala-sutta (DN 2)'s repentance episode of King Ajātaśatru, plus the Sūkaraposa-sutta of the Majjhima-nikāya as a cognate-structure parallel of the Susīma episode. ↩
Stevenson, Daniel B. "The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T'ien-t'ai Buddhism." In Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, edited by Peter N. Gregory, 45-97. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1986; "Protocols of Power: Tz'u-yün Tsun-shih and the Sung Dynasty Synthesis." In Buddhism in the Sung, edited by Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, Jr., 340-408. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999. ↩
Heim, Maria. Theories of the Gift in South Asia: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Reflections on Dāna. New York: Routledge, 2004. ↩
Sharf, Robert H. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002; "Ritual." In Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., 245-270. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. ↩
Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle thirty-two (T0099 fascicle thirty-two), the Self-Repentance Chapter. The line "although it cannot make that act not have been done" is the textual root of mitigation, not erasure. ↩
T16n0663, 0337b29-c05; cf. note 6. The principal Mahāyāna-side textual evidence for register shift. The Pāli Vinaya's yāvatatiyaṁ (the triple call for self-disclosure of transgression in the prātimokṣa) and the accayo accayato disvā formula (the transgression seen as transgression) are two further early-side reference points for the future-orientation register, pending second-pass verification on SuttaCentral or the PTS edition. The Chinese parallels (the Saṃyukta-āgama Susīma chapter and the Madhyama-āgama Śāriputra-correlative chapter) are verbatim and serve as the primary anchor footnotes. ↩
The triple-grouping pure precepts system (restraint-precepts / wholesome-action-precepts / sentient-being-benefiting-precepts) is the development of Liang-Chen-period Tiantai, Huayan, and Vinaya-school sub-commentators; it is standardised in the post-Tang period. See Zhiyi's Bodhisattva Precept Sub-Commentary, Zhanran's Auxiliary Practice of Calmness and Insight, Daoxuan's Karma Treatise on the Four-Part Vinaya. ↩

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