Practice · NianVolume OnePart VII · The Flower Ornament VisionPaper 28 of 31

Requesting the Turning of the Dharma-Wheel, Requesting the Buddhas to Abide

中文主題：請轉法輪・請佛住世

Author: Shi Huijing 釋慧鏡

Date: Spring 2026

Version: 1.0

ID: NIAN-P28

Abstract

This paper continues the previous papers' (NIAN P26 / P27) structural reading of Samantabhadra's ten great vows, and now treats vows six and seven — requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel (qǐng zhuǎn fǎlún 請轉法輪, vow six) and requesting the buddhas to abide in the world (qǐng fó zhù shì 請佛住世, vow seven). The thesis: these two vows are not the sixth and seventh items in a list of ten meritorious deeds but the request-structure dyad — the two modes of dharma persistence — vow six operating as the event mode that fixes onto the dynamic event of the dharma's being set in motion, vow seven operating as the state mode that fixes onto the buddhas' continued abiding as the field within which that turning takes place. Three pieces of textual evidence support this dyadic reading. First, the four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion closure formula at the end of vows six and seven is fully isomorphic with the closure formula of vows one through five at the textual level of T0293 itself — extending the previous papers' findings into a vows one to seven 100% isomorphism (third-time confirmation). Second, vows six and seven are the only two vows in the ten that share the same operator verb qǐng / quànqǐng (請 / 勸請, "to invite, to request") — the dyadic pairing is self-evident at the grammatical level. Third, the early-narrative roots of the two vows compose a twin-mirror narrative grammar: vow six universalises the successful invitation by Brahmā Sahampati (preserved across SN 6.1 / T0099 / T1421) into a trans-buddha cosmic event; vow seven preemptively corrects the failed invitation at Cāpāla cetiya (DN 16 / T0001 / T0007) where Ānanda missed the buddha's three openings of the gate of inviting. The argument is developed across five sub-sections: closure-formula isomorphism with grammatical self-attestation; vow six and the cosmic-event amplification of the Brahmā request; vow seven and the preemptive correction of the Cāpāla failure; the dharma persistence thesis-pivot via Zongmi's three-fold practitioner-side reframe — "the request lies in the purification of one's own mind" (請佛當淨其心), the sun-as-vessel simile, and the threefold-truth reconciliation — together with the doctrinal grounding in the Lotus Sūtra's Tathāgata's Lifespan and Spiritual Powers chapters and the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's non-abiding nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa); and the Chinese ritual-practice closure on Zhiyi's fourth section Inviting the Three Jewels in the Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy (T1941) and Shandao's fused single-line formulation "may they abide and turn the dharma-wheel" in the 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 Faure 1991's performative cosmology it concedes-and-pushes-back on the two-extreme misreadings (theistic petition and modernist psychologising); vis-à-vis Schopen 1997's continued legal-and-ritual presence it concedes-and-extends to vow seven; and vis-à-vis Gummer 2014's sūtra-as-body it concedes-and-extends to vow six.

I. Introduction

When Anglophone readers first encounter vow six (requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel) and vow seven (requesting the buddhas to abide in the world) within Samantabhadra's ten great vows, they tend to fall into two opposed misreadings. At one extreme is the theistic-petition reading: that the bodhisattva is asking the buddhas to alter their ontological state, to extend their lifespan, to refrain from entering parinirvāṇa — as though the buddhas' coming-and-going hung on whether or not sentient beings made the request. At the other extreme is the modernist-psychologising reading: that requesting the buddhas to abide reduces to an inner exercise of mindful presencing, the verb to request drained of its ritual and cosmological thickness. Both extremes mistake the structure.

The previous two papers in the present series furnish the immediate scaffolding for what follows. NIAN P26 established that vows one, two, and three compose a three-karma set — body-karma reverencing, speech-karma praising, mind-karma offering — assembled along the "from-the-buddhas-toward-self-toward-the-buddhas" outward-facing whole. NIAN P27 established that vows four and five compose the karma dyad — vow four as the decrement wing addressing one's own past unwholesome action, vow five as the increment wing drawing in the wholesome action of all others. The present paper takes up vows six and seven and shows them to be the request-structure dyad: vow six as the event mode fixing onto the dynamic event of the dharma's being set in motion; vow seven as the state mode fixing onto the buddhas' continued abiding as the field within which that turning takes place. The two vows together compose the two modes of dharma persistence (dharma-cira-sthiti) — one wing toward the turning of the dharma, one wing toward the abiding of the buddhas; both wings turning together not to alter the buddhas' ontological state but to purify the practitioner's own mind so that the dharma's already-the-case circulation becomes seeable. The textual locus for this practitioner-side reframing is Zongmi's Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter: "the request lies in the purification of one's own mind" (請佛當淨其心).

The closure-formula isomorphism that NIAN P26 exhibited for vows one through three, and that NIAN P27 extended through vow five, will here be extended through vow seven (a third-time confirmation, vows one through seven now 100% isomorphic — see §III.1). Vows six and seven are also, at the textual level of T0293, the only two vows in the ten that share the same operator verb — qǐng / quànqǐng (請 / 勸請, to invite, to request). The dyadic structure is therefore self-evident at the grammatical level, not retrojected by interpreters. The paper will further argue that the early-narrative roots of these two vows compose a twin-mirror narrative grammar: vow six universalises the successful invitation by Brahmā Sahampati into a trans-buddha, trans-world, trans-temporal cosmic event; vow seven preemptively corrects the failed invitation at Cāpāla cetiya, where Ānanda — three times shown the gate of inviting by the buddha — failed to make the request, and the buddha consequently announced his entry into parinirvāṇa three months hence. Samantabhadra's vow seven — by reaching out in advance to all buddhas in all world-systems whenever any one of them is about to manifest parinirvāṇa — structurally prevents any further Cāpāla-type failure of request. This amplification-of-success-plus-prevention-of-failure twin-direction temporal structure is the paper's central interpretive claim.

The argument unfolds across five subsections of §III: the closure-formula isomorphism and grammatical self-attestation (§III.1); vow six and the Brahmā antecedent (§III.2); vow seven and the Cāpāla antecedent (§III.3); the dharma-persistence thesis-pivot — twin-mirror grammar, the practitioner-side reframe, and the trikāya four-register exposition (§III.4); and the Chinese ritual-practice closure (§III.5). §IV engages three Anglophone interlocutors in a one-pushback-plus-two-extensions configuration. §V handles the philological and middle-way corrections. §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 early-Buddhist Chinese-canonical layer for the Brahmā and Cāpāla request-narratives; the Mahāyāna doctrinal layer for the doctrinal grounding of vow seven; and the Tang sub-commentary plus Chinese ritual-practice layer.

The canonical-original layer is T0293 Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: The Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm (henceforth the Practice-and-Vow Chapter), fascicle forty, translated by Prajña (般若, c. 734 – c. 810) at Chang'an in 798 CE. Vow six's main exposition, closure formula, and verse-couplet; vow seven's main exposition, closure formula, and verse-couplet¹; and the thirty-second stanza of the verse-section that internally reverses the two vows in a single line ("requesting the buddhas to abide and turn the dharma-wheel" — vow seven first, vow six second), all furnish the principal text used here.²

The early-Buddhist Chinese-canonical layer for the request-narratives is double-stranded. The Brahmā Sahampati invitation strand is preserved in the Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle forty-four discourse 1188 (T0099, the Chinese parallel to SN 6.1 Āyācanasutta); the Dīrgha-āgama fascicle one Mahāpadāna chapter (T0001, with the Vipassi archetype-narrative paralleling DN 14); and the Pañcavargika-vinaya Mahāvagga I.5 fascicle (T1421, whose verse "From within the heavenly halls I have witnessed every former buddha…" establishes the trans-buddha framing). The Madhyama-āgama fascicle fifty-six Lomaka-bhāradvāja discourse (T0026, the Chinese parallel to MN 26 Ariyapariyesanā-sutta) is held aside for §V's philological caveat: it preserves no Brahmā invitation segment, and the Anālayo strand of comparative scholarship treats the Chinese-canonical recension as the earlier stratum, leaving open the possibility that the Brahmā invitation narrative is a later expansion within the Pāli stream. The Cāpāla cetiya failed-invitation strand is preserved in the Dīrgha-āgama fascicle two-to-three Mahāparinirvāṇa chapter (T0001, the Chinese parallel to DN 16 Mahāparinibbāna-sutta) and the short-recension Sūtra of the Final Nirvāṇa (T0007), the latter of which contains the strongest single-line anchor for the present paper's thesis: "the gate of inviting" / "opening the gate of request" (可請之門 / 開勸請門).³ The Pāli sources require second-pass verification on SuttaCentral or in the PTS edition; the Chinese parallels are verbatim and serve as the primary footnote anchors.

The Mahāyāna doctrinal layer for vow seven's grounding is consolidated through several texts. The Lotus Sūtra's Tathāgata's Lifespan chapter, fascicle five (T0262), supplies the locus classicus — "The time since I attained buddhahood is exceedingly long, immeasurably long; the lifespan is unbounded asaṃkhyeya kalpas, ever-abiding and not extinguishing."⁴ The Lotus Sūtra's Spiritual Powers chapter, fascicle six, delivers the single-line internal evidence for the unity of vows six and seven: "This very place is the platform of awakening; here the buddhas attain unsurpassed perfect enlightenment, here the buddhas turn the dharma-wheel, here the buddhas enter parinirvāṇa."⁵ The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa's Beholding Buddha Akṣobhya chapter (T0475) — "the body of all the tathāgatas is the dharma-body" — supplies a one-line cross-reference. The Avataṃsaka's Manifestation-Origination of the Tathāgata as Jewel-King chapter (T0278 / corresponding fascicles in T0293) — "not in any single buddha-world does the tathāgata manifest parinirvāṇa, by way of finally being extinguished" — supplies a second one-line cross-reference. On the doctrinal-treatise side: the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha fascicle three (T1593) contributes the trikāya definition together with the cardinal verse on non-abiding nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa) — "because all hindrances are gone, one-sidedly nirvāṇa; because what is to be done is not yet completed, not one-sidedly nirvāṇa"; the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra fascicle nine (T1509) supplies the line "the dharma-body always emits light, always teaches the dharma"; the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā Examination of Nirvāṇa chapter, fascicle four (T1564) supplies the cardinal couplet "between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra there is not the slightest difference"; the Cheng weishi lun (Vijñaptimātratā-siddhi) fascicle ten (T1585) supplies the trikāya cardinal definition; and the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (T1666) supplies the alternative two-fold body schema (dharma-kāya + saṃbhoga-kāya/nirmāṇa-kāya) — held to a vocabulary-discipline footnote in §V (the present paper uses the Yogācāra three-body vocabulary as primary).

The Tang sub-commentary plus Chinese-ritual-practice layer is fivefold. The two Tang sub-commentaries on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter: Chengguan's (澄觀, 738–839) Practice-and-Vow Chapter Commentary (X05n0227), with three-part schemas for vow six and vow seven and a verse-section schema; and Zongmi's (宗密, 780–841) Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter (X05n0229), drawing on Chengguan and elaborating the eight-gate framework, the Brahmā invitation narrative, the three-karma request, the "requesting the buddhas equals the purification of one's own mind" line, the sun-as-vessel simile, the threefold-truth reconciliation, and the four kinds of parinirvāṇa. The Chinese ritual-practice side: Zhiyi's (538–597) Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy (T1941), whose ten-section curriculum includes "Inviting the Three Jewels" as the fourth section — the codified mother-text from which inviting / requesting becomes a ritually distinct gesture in the Chinese tradition; and Shandao's Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise, fascicle one (T1980), which supplies the present paper's strongest single-line anchor for the dyadic reading: "with whole-hearted sincerity I invite all the buddhas of the ten directions and three times to abide and turn the dharma-wheel." Yongming Yanshou's (永明延壽) Mirror of the Source-Record (T2016), Yunqi Zhuhong's (雲棲祩宏) Sub-Commentary on the Amitābha Sūtra (X22n0424), and Ouyi Zhixu's (蕅益智旭) Essentials of the Amitābha Sūtra (T1762) are referenced for the Pure-Land-side internalising-reframe trajectory in §III.5, with the explicit caveat (§V) that the directional vector of the Pure Land invitation cosmology is the inverse of vow seven's and the two systems are not to be silently merged.

P26's three-karma analysis and ten-mode prostration ladder, and P27's three-mode repentance and seven-preparatory-minds analysis, are not redisplayed here; they are referred to only by single-line cross-reference where vow six and vow seven require continuity.

III. Core Argument

III.1 The Closure-Formula Isomorphism, Third Confirmed; The Dyad Self-Attesting at the Grammatical Level

The closure formula at the end of vow six 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 — I shall always invite all the buddhas to turn the right dharma-wheel without end, moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body and speech and mind never wearying."⁶

The closure formula at the end of vow seven 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 — this invitation of mine is without end, moment-by-moment continuous, without interruption, body and speech and mind never wearying."⁷

Both passages are 100% parallel to the closure formulas of vows one through five. The only differences are at the verb position — reverencing / praising / offering / repenting / rejoicing-along / inviting (to turn) / inviting (to abide) — and a slight expansion in vow six's verb-segment because the object-clause carries qualifiers ("all the buddhas" + "the right dharma-wheel"); vow seven returns to the short form "this invitation of mine is without end." These are flexings of a single template, not structural deviations. The closure-formula isomorphism is now confirmed for vows one through seven, 100%, three times across. CBETA line-level verification is complete (T10.0845b16-25 and T10.0845b26-c04). The accumulating prediction holds: vows eight through ten will exhibit the same structure (the subject of P29).

The grammatical evidence for the dyad is, however, sharper than mere closure-formula isomorphism. Vows six and seven are the only two vows among the ten that share the same operator verb: qǐng (請, "to invite, to request") in compound quànqǐng (勸請, "to entreat, to invite") in the main exposition. The header listing of the ten vows in the chapter's opening reads:

"First, reverencing all the buddhas; second, praising the tathāgatas; third, extensively practising offering; fourth, repenting karmic obstructions; fifth, rejoicing along in merit; sixth, requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel; seventh, requesting the buddhas to abide in the world; eighth, always following the buddha in study; ninth, always-following sentient beings; tenth, universally dedicating."⁸

The translator Prajña has placed the two vows here in the same syntactic format, side by side — the dyadic structure declared at the level of the translation itself. Vows six's and seven's main expositions are also adjacent and grammatically parallel: both open "As for [the vow]: in all the buddha-worlds throughout the ten directions and three times, in every dust-mote within the boundless realms of space and dharmadhātu …", and both connect through the same verb-of-action quànqǐng (勸請). This is where the dyad self-attests at the grammatical level: it is not a structural reading retrojected onto the vows by later interpreters, but a textual fact internally evidenced by main exposition and verse together. The thirty-second stanza of the verse-section, the seven-vow summary, reads:

"The merit of all the reverencing, praising, and offering, / the inviting of the buddhas to abide and to turn the dharma-wheel, / the rejoicing-along, the repenting, and all wholesome roots — / I dedicate to sentient beings and to the buddhas' path."⁹

Two features deserve note. First, the verse pairs the two vows internally in a single line; the dyadic pairing is verse-level explicit. Second, within that single line vow seven appears first and vow six appears second — the reverse of the chapter-list order. This reversal is internally adjustable: the two vows can swap positions according to context, while the dyadic boundary is itself non-decomposable. Internally adjustable, externally non-decomposable — this is the double signature of the dyad. Accordingly, the present paper names the vow-six-and-vow-seven pairing the request-structure dyad (請字結構 dyad): the verb qǐng / quànqǐng is shared between them; the object and the directionality differ (vow six's object is the right dharma-wheel, its directionality is event; vow seven's object is the buddhas' abiding, its directionality is state); the shared operator-verb locks the two vows into a single structural family, and the difference in object-and-directionality makes them complementary wings. The dyad-anchor is the shared operator verb itself.

III.2 Vow Six — Requesting the Turning of the Dharma-Wheel: The Event-Mode Instant and the Universalisation of the Brahmā Invitation

Vow six's main exposition unfolds the verb-structure of requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel through three nested degrees of cosmic enlargement:

"As for requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel: throughout the ten directions and three times, within the dust-motes of the entire dharmadhātu and the realm of space, in each and every buddha-world, within every dust-mote inconceivably many vast buddha-worlds open out, and within every such world, moment-by-moment, inconceivably many buddhas attain perfect enlightenment, surrounded by oceans of bodhisattva assemblies — and to all of them, with body, speech, and mind, by all manner of skilful means, I earnestly request the turning of the wonderful dharma-wheel."¹⁰

Two structural messages are embedded here. First, the subject is locked onto buddhas who have just attained perfect enlightenment — those who have just attained perfect enlightenment, not buddhas in general, are the addressee of vow six's request. Vow six's verse confirms this:

"The lamps of all the worlds in the ten directions, / those who have just attained enlightenment — / I now invite all of them, every one, / to turn the supreme, wonderful dharma-wheel."¹¹

The phrase "those who have just attained enlightenment" is the textual evidence for the event-mode: vow six fixes upon the instant of being-set-in-motion of the dharma — the dynamic event-point at which the dharma is turned — not upon the standing fact that the dharma already turns. Second, the manner of execution is body, speech, and mind, by all manner of skilful means, earnestly — the three-karma request structure that immediately echoes the three-karma assembly NIAN P26 established for vows one through three. Vow six's verb is not unilateral speech-karma (oral request) or unilateral mind-karma (inward request), but the full three-karma earnest invitation across body, speech, and mind.

The early-Buddhist root of vow six is the Brahmā Sahampati invitation. SN 6.1 Āyācanasutta and its Chinese parallel Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle forty-four discourse 1188 record that, soon after his awakening, the Buddha reflected that the dharma he had realised was profound, hard to see, hard to grasp, and that beings, attached to desire, would find it hard to penetrate; he hesitated whether to teach. Knowing the Buddha's mind, Brahmā Sahampati descended from the Brahmā-heaven and three times invited the Buddha to teach. The Chinese parallel reads:

"'World-Honoured One! May you teach the dharma. Sugata! May you teach the dharma. The Tathāgata is supreme among all sentient beings; may you, by this dharma, surpass the heretics; may the World-Honoured One unfold the great dharma; may all the gods and dragon-spirits invite the World-Honoured One to turn the dharma-wheel…' The World-Honoured One then accepted the Brahmā-king's invitation in silence."¹²

The threefold Brahmā invitation, the Buddha's silent acceptance, and the consequent journey to the Deer Park to turn the dharma-wheel — this narrative is the classical anchor for the request-narrative in the early-Buddhist tradition, both in the Pāli and the Chinese-canonical streams. The Pañcavargika-vinaya's Mahāvagga I.5 expands this narrative further, transforming the Brahmā invitation into a trans-buddha pattern:

"From within the heavenly halls I have witnessed every former buddha teach … The World-Honoured One now likewise: in compassion to sentient beings, with this excellent medicine of dharma, you can sever the stream of birth-and-death."¹³

The line "From within the heavenly halls I have witnessed every former buddha teach" is structurally critical. Brahmā here declares that, from within the Brahmā-heaven, he has himself witnessed every former buddha teach — every former buddha was preceded by an invitation. This trans-buddha-witnessed anchor transforms the singular historical scene of Deer Park's invitation into a trans-buddha, trans-temporal generalised narrative grammar.

This is vow six's cosmic-scale internal-evidence mechanism. Vow six's main-exposition phrase "in every dust-mote within the realms of space and dharmadhātu, moment-by-moment, inconceivably many buddhas attain perfect enlightenment" is precisely the further expansion of the Brahmā-witnessed pattern Mahāvagga I.5 had already articulated: it scales the trans-buddha generalisation up to a trans-world, trans-temporal, moment-by-moment cosmic event. Samantabhadra's vow six, in other words, takes Deer Park's singular invitation and elevates it into the cosmic-scale ongoing event of every buddha-just-having-attained-enlightenment in every world in every moment is being invited to turn the dharma-wheel.

A philological caveat (deferred to §V) must be flagged here in advance: T0026 fascicle fifty-six (the Chinese parallel to MN 26 Ariyapariyesanā-sutta) preserves no Brahmā invitation segment, and the Anālayo strand reads the Chinese-canonical recension as the earlier stratum, leaving the Brahmā invitation possibly an expansion within the Pāli tradition. This caveat is genuine and must be carried explicitly.¹⁴ It does not, however, undercut vow six's generalising structure: the cosmic-scale generalisation mechanism rests on the verse formula "From within the heavenly halls I have witnessed every former buddha teach" — preserved as verbatim in Mahāvagga I.5 — regardless of whether the Brahmā-figure is itself early or developed within the Pāli stream.

III.3 Vow Seven — Requesting the Buddhas to Abide in the World: The State-Mode Instant and the Preemptive Correction of the Cāpāla Failure

Vow seven's main exposition is structurally parallel to vow six's, but locks onto a different temporal instant:

"As for requesting the buddhas to abide in the world: in all the buddha-worlds throughout the ten directions and three times, in every dust-mote, all the buddhas, tathāgatas, who are about to manifest parinirvāṇa, together with all bodhisattvas, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, those with and without further training, and indeed all good spiritual friends — to all of them I make my invitation: do not enter parinirvāṇa, but pass through kalpas as numerous as the dust-motes of all the buddha-worlds, so as to bring weal and benefit to every sentient being."¹⁵

Three structural messages are embedded here. First, the subject is locked onto buddhas who are about to manifest parinirvāṇa — the terminating instant. If vow six's event-mode locks onto the opening instant (those who have just attained enlightenment), vow seven's state-mode locks onto the closing instant (those who are about to manifest extinction). The two vows together bracket the entirety of the buddha's worldly lifetime — from emergence (vow six's turning) to extinction (vow seven's not-extinguishing). The whole-of-the-dharma-period is articulated through this both-end inviting temporal structure. Second, the subject is enlarged through five tiers — vow seven's invitation is not addressed to buddhas alone but extends to bodhisattvas, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, those with and without further training, and all good spiritual friends. The state-mode operator is therefore not exclusively a buddha-operator but reaches every dharma-bearing teacher. The abiding of Chinese-Buddhist patriarchs and contemporary good spiritual friends is also within the scope of Samantabhadra's invitation. Third, the core verb is do not enter parinirvāṇa — a state-mode operator that pairs symmetrically with vow six's event-mode operator to turn the wonderful dharma-wheel. Vow six is dynamic; vow seven is steady. Vow six initiates the dharma's being-set-in-motion; vow seven maintains the buddhas' continued abiding.

Vow seven's verse reads:

"Should any of the buddhas wish to manifest parinirvāṇa, / with utmost sincerity I make my request: / may they abide for kalpas as numerous as world-dust-motes, / bringing weal and benefit to every sentient being."¹⁶

The verse's character "manifest" (shì 示) is key: it confirms the doctrinal premise of the nirmāṇa-kāya lifespan (darśana). What vow seven's verb is addressing in its direct textual referent is the manifestation of parinirvāṇa by the nirmāṇa-kāya; the doctrinal grounding is the dharma-kāya's ever-abiding — see §III.4. The manifest character is itself a textual cue toward the two-register structure: what is manifested is the nirmāṇa-kāya's extinction; what is already-the-case is the dharma-kāya's ever-abiding.

Vow seven's early-Buddhist narrative root is the Cāpāla cetiya failed invitation. DN 16 Mahāparinibbāna-sutta and its Chinese parallels — Dīrgha-āgama fascicle two-to-three Mahāparinirvāṇa chapter (T0001) and the short-recension Sūtra of the Final Nirvāṇa (T0007) — record an exemplary failed-request episode. At the Cāpāla cetiya, the buddha three times opened the gate of inviting to Ānanda, saying: "Ānanda, anyone who has cultivated and made much of the four bases of psychic power can abide for a kalpa or longer." This was three times the opening of the gate of inviting to abide. Ānanda's mind, however, was at this moment occluded by Māra; three times he failed to grasp the buddha's hint and remained silent. T0007's short recension reads:

"The Buddha said to Ānanda: Anyone who has cultivated and made much of the four bases of psychic power can abide for a kalpa or longer… So he spoke a third time, and Ānanda was silent. The Buddha said: Ānanda! You may now also make a request to me. Ānanda was again silent. Then Māra Pāpīyas said to the Buddha: World-Honoured One, the time of your parinirvāṇa has arrived … what has been let go, has been let go; what has been spit out cannot be taken back."¹⁷

The buddha's three openings of the gate of inviting (可請之門 / 開勸請門), Ānanda's three silent failures, Māra's seizing of the moment, and the buddha's consequent acceptance of Māra's request and announcement of parinirvāṇa in three months — this narrative is the early-Buddhist exemplar of the failure of request. It is not a story of a buddha successfully invited to abide longer; it is a story of a disciple's missing the moment, and the buddha's consequent entering of parinirvāṇa.

This is vow seven's preemptive-correction mechanism. Samantabhadra in vow seven's vow-formulation locks the addressee onto those buddhas who are about to manifest parinirvāṇa — and that subject-anchor corresponds exactly with the moment at which the Cāpāla narrative places the buddha's opening of the gate of inviting. Samantabhadra, in every buddha-world where any buddha is about to manifest parinirvāṇa, invites in advance — structurally preventing the recurrence of the Cāpāla failure. Vow seven is not merely the individual practitioner's invitation to an individual buddha; it is the preemptive correction of the historical narrative of the failure of request. The cosmic-scale generalisation of vow seven, then, is the inversion of Ānanda's Cāpāla failure into the certainty-structure of constant invitation across all buddha-worlds and all kalpas.

III.4 The Dharma Persistence Thesis-Pivot: Twin-Mirror Grammar, the Practitioner-Side Reframe, and the Trikāya Four-Register Exposition

The separate analyses of §III.2 and §III.3 disclose a deeper structure: vows six and seven, at the early-narrative stratum, correspond to a twin-mirror narrative grammar. Vow six is the amplification of the Brahmā successful-invitation narrative (the magnification of success); vow seven is the preemptive correction of the Cāpāla failed-invitation narrative (the prevention of failure). The two vows are not merely two side-by-side items on a level surface; they are a temporal-and-narrative twin-mirror reflection. One mirror generalises the historical singular success-event into trans-world trans-temporal abundance; the other mirror preemptively corrects the historical singular failure-event. The single line "the gate of inviting" / "opening the gate of request" (T0007) is the strongest single-line anchor for this twin-mirror structure.

The twin-mirror grammar gives the diachronic skeleton of the request-structure dyad — but it does not, by itself, dispatch the sharpest metaphysical worry the modern reader can raise. If the buddhas have already attained the unconditioned, if they are by their very nature ever-abiding, what work could "invitation to abide" possibly be doing? This is the worry that drives the two-extreme misreadings (theistic petition, modernist psychologising) to their most acute form. Zongmi's Detailed Sub-Commentary offers a three-fold finely-articulated framework that disposes of the worry without collapsing into either extreme.

The first piece of evidence is the single line "requesting the buddhas equals the purification of one's own mind":

"The request to the buddhas is the purification of one's own mind."¹⁸

Zongmi states without circumlocution: the real referent of the request is not the alteration of the buddhas' state but the purification of one's own mind. "Requesting" and "purifying one's own mind" are not two independent acts but the same ritual gesture under two co-articulating descriptions — three-karma invitation as the ritual form, purification of one's own mind as the ritual substance. This is vow seven's practitioner-side reframe: what is requested is not the extension of an external state but the clarification of an internal vessel.

The second piece of evidence is the sun-as-vessel simile:

"By relying on wisdom and not on consciousness, contemplate the buddha at all times: when the mind is pure and wisdom is clear, the buddha is constantly seen … the mind is not produced by 'I,' so how should there be 'before' and 'after' to the universal manifestation?"¹⁹

The sun-as-vessel simile: the buddha's manifestation is like the sun's wisdom-light, universally present in the ten directions; whether or not it is seen, however, depends on whether the vessel of sentient beings' minds is clear. When the vessel is clear, the sun's reflection appears; when the vessel is muddied, the reflection is obscured — the sun does not come and go, the vessel is clear or muddy. The simile relocates the work of requesting the buddhas to abide in the cleansing of the vessel: requesting the buddhas to abide is not the extension of the sun's ever-abidingness (which is already the case) but the cleansing of the vessel through which the sun is seen.

The third piece of evidence is the threefold-truth reconciliation. Faced directly with the worry — "if the buddha is fundamentally ever-abiding, why should one further request him to abide in the world?" — Zongmi answers by laying out the three truths in concert:

"At the level of the ultimate truth, [the buddhas] do not arise and do not enter parinirvāṇa. At the level of conventional truth, [they] arise and pass moment by moment. At the level of the absolute-mean truth, the still-and-luminous is itself the abiding-in-the-world that is parinirvāṇa."²⁰

The three truths laid out together let the requesting operator find its proper referent at each register: at the ultimate register, the buddhas neither arise nor extinguish (request and non-request neither add nor subtract anything in the ultimate); at the conventional register, the nirmāṇa-kāya arises and passes moment by moment (the request can form an empirical-causal opening); at the absolute-mean register, the still-and-luminous is itself the abiding-in-the-world that is parinirvāṇa — abiding and parinirvāṇa are no longer two events. This last formulation is the early Chinese formulation of what the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha will state as non-abiding nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa): a nirvāṇa that does not abide in cyclic existence and does not abide in extinction either.

The threefold articulation Zongmi consolidates is therefore: vow seven's request is operative at the nirmāṇa-kāya register and grounded at the dharma-kāya register; the two registers must both be held, never collapsed. Collapse to the ultimate alone produces the "request equals empty words" nihilist reading; collapse to the conventional alone produces the "request equals altering the buddhas' state" magical-thinking reading. The Madhyamaka two-truths exposition together with the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha verse "because all hindrances are gone, one-sidedly nirvāṇa; because what is to be done is not yet completed, not one-sidedly nirvāṇa" are the doctrinal formulations of this finely-articulated structure (treated below).

Vow seven's doctrinal grounding is consolidated through three texts. The Lotus Sūtra's Tathāgata's Lifespan chapter is the canonical-original locus:

"The time since I attained buddhahood is exceedingly long, immeasurably long; the lifespan is unbounded asaṃkhyeya kalpas, ever-abiding and not extinguishing … good men, the lifespan I attained when originally practising the bodhisattva way is even now not yet exhausted, and is moreover twice the number above."²¹

The Lotus Sūtra's Spiritual Powers chapter then delivers the single-line internal evidence for the unity of the two vows — both vows shown, at the textual level of the sūtra, as two faces of a single cosmic event:

"This very place is the platform of awakening; here the buddhas attain unsurpassed perfect enlightenment, here the buddhas turn the dharma-wheel, here the buddhas enter parinirvāṇa."²²

Attaining enlightenment, turning the dharma-wheel, entering parinirvāṇa are co-located: vow six's turning of the dharma-wheel and vow seven's abiding / not-entering-parinirvāṇa unfold within the same platform, the same place, the same cosmic event. The buddha's cosmic-scale presence is the joint ground of both vows. The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa's Beholding Buddha Akṣobhya chapter — "the body of all the tathāgatas is the dharma-body" — and the Avataṃsaka's Manifestation-Origination of the Tathāgata as Jewel-King chapter — "not in any single buddha-world does the tathāgata manifest parinirvāṇa, by way of finally being extinguished" — supply two further one-line confirmations of the dharma-kāya's ever-abiding as vow seven's ground.

The four-register trikāya exposition consolidates vow seven's doctrinal architecture²³: (a) the dharma-kāya as ever-abiding — vow seven's request resonates with what already obtains; (b) the self-enjoyment aspect of the saṃbhoga-kāya extending to the end of all future kalpas — likewise; (c) the nirmāṇa-kāya's entering of parinirvāṇa as manifestation as expedient means — not requestable as permanently abiding, since its temporal manifestation is itself the upāya; (d) the Madhyamaka ultimate truth — "between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra there is not the slightest difference" (T1564 fascicle four) — request and non-request neither add nor subtract at the ultimate register. Vow seven's real referent is the activation of non-abiding nirvāṇa — the nirvāṇa that does not abide in saṃsāra and does not abide in extinction either. The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha puts the matter exactly:

"Because all hindrances are gone, one-sidedly nirvāṇa; because what is to be done is not yet completed, not one-sidedly nirvāṇa."²⁴

Non-abiding nirvāṇa is precisely "not abiding in saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, benefiting sentient beings to the end of future time, in operation while ever still." This definition lines up exactly with vow seven's closure clause "so as to bring weal and benefit to every sentient being": what is being requested is the buddhas' already-the-case non-abiding nirvāṇa being articulated at the ritual register.

III.5 Closure on the Chinese Ritual-Practice Side: Zhiyi, the Shandao Fused Line, and the Pure-Land Inversion Caveat

Above the doctrinal layer, the Chinese patriarchs codified vows six and seven into concrete ritual forms. The three-karma five-recollection mapping NIAN P26 has already exhibited, and the repentance-rejoicing pairing NIAN P27 has already exhibited, are referenced here only by single-line cross-reference. The principal anchor of §III.5 is the codification of inviting / requesting (奉請) as a ritual gesture in its own right.

Zhiyi's Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy has "Inviting the Three Jewels" as the fourth of its ten sections — the codified mother-text from which inviting / requesting becomes a ritually distinct gesture in the Chinese tradition:

"The practitioner, throughout twenty-one days and the six time-periods … the fourth section, Inviting the Three Jewels: with the three karmas, in reverence and devotion, invites all the buddhas, bodhisattvas, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and all the worthies and sages of the ten directions, to descend to the ritual platform and accept this invitation."²⁵

Zhiyi's codification of Inviting the Three Jewels as a section in its own right pulls the requesting gesture out from generalised reverencing and establishes it as a distinct ritual hinge — the pivot from self-cultivation to Three-Jewel-engaged practice. Subsequent Chinese repentance, reverence-and-praise, and buddha-recitation systems all inherit Zhiyi's codification.

Shandao's Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise contains the strongest single-line anchor for the present paper:

"With whole-hearted sincerity I invite all the buddhas of the ten directions and three times, inviting them to abide and turn the dharma-wheel, that all sentient beings may enter the great-vehicle dharma-ocean."²⁶

The line "inviting them to abide and turn the dharma-wheel" — "abide" corresponding to vow seven, "turn the dharma-wheel" corresponding to vow six — fuses vows six and seven into a single ritual utterance. This is the Chinese-patriarch tradition's strongest textual evidence for the present paper's dyadic reading: Shandao, in a single line, accomplishes what the present paper has needed an entire essay to argue. The convergence in the Chinese tradition of repentance, reverence-and-praise, and buddha-recitation systems on the codification of vows six and seven is consolidated in this single fused line.

Yongming Yanshou's Mirror of the Source-Record under the section "Currently Abiding Buddhas of the World"; Yunqi Zhuhong's Sub-Commentary on the Amitābha Sūtra — "Samantabhadra's vow-king is not apart from the present moment of mind"; and Ouyi Zhixu's Essentials of the Amitābha Sūtra, which assimilates Samantabhadra's myriad practices into the faith-vow-recitation framework — all three patriarchs converge on an inward closure of the requesting gesture into the present moment of mindfulness.

⚠️ A directional caveat is required at this point: this Chinese-patriarchal inward-closure trajectory is directionally opposed to the invitation cosmology of the Pure Land sūtras. In the Pure Land scriptures, the direction of invitation is the buddhas inviting sentient beings into the Pure Land ("with my power of wisdom, in this world I undertake the great buddha-work, gathering in sentient beings"); in vow seven, the direction is bodhisattvas inviting the buddhas to abide in this world. The two are members of the same family of invitation cosmologies but are structurally inverse — one is buddha-to-sentient-being calling, the other is sentient-being-to-buddha invitation. Yunqi's and Ouyi's assimilation of Samantabhadra's myriad practices into buddha-recitation pulls the inward dimension of Samantabhadra's vows into the present moment of buddha-recitation — but this does not amount to claiming that Pure Land's inviting-and-receiving by the buddha is identical to Samantabhadra's inviting-the-buddha-to-abide. The directional caveat must be marked explicitly when the Pure Land internalising trajectory is invoked alongside vow seven; conflation of the two directions undoes both.

The fourfold-independent-pathway convergence is therefore: Chinese repentance liturgy (Zhiyi) + Huayan sub-commentary (Chengguan / Zongmi) + Mahāyāna doctrine (Mahāyāna-saṃgraha / Lotus / Vimalakīrti) + buddha-recitation internalisation (Yongming / Yunqi / Ouyi) — all four converge on the practitioner-side reframe "requesting equals the ritual articulation of one's own mind's purification." This is the substantive practice-level confirmation of Zongmi's §III.4 thesis. Cook 1977's reading of Huayan as a pure metaphysics-of-totality, with the ten great vows treated as exemplifications of the metaphysics rather than as a ritual-cosmological operative system in their own right, loses precisely this practice-level concreteness — the present paper's §III.5 is therefore the most direct rebuttal of Cook's reading at the level of texts (treated further in §IV).

IV. Three Anglophone Interlocutors: Performative Cosmology, Continued Legal-and-Ritual Presence, Sūtra-as-Body

The §IV configuration of the present paper, following the practice of NIAN P26 and P27, takes the form of one-pushback-plus-two-extensions across three interlocutors. The pushback-anchor in P28 shifts from P27's tri-register-ritual-technology frame (Stevenson) to performative cosmology (Faure) — because the locus of contention for vows six and seven is not embodiment-versus-internalisation (P27's locus) but the cosmological framing of requesting itself: is the request-structure a theistic petition, or a performative cosmology? Vis-à-vis Faure 1991 the present paper concedes-and-pushes-back; vis-à-vis Schopen 1997 (carried over from P26 and refocused on vow seven) and Gummer 2014 (newly added in P28, anchored at vow six) it concedes-and-extends. Cook 1977 remains a background target but is held to a closing one-line acknowledgment.

IV.1 Faure 1991: Performative Cosmology as Pushback Ally

Bernard Faure, in The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Princeton University Press, 1991), argues that the Buddhist requesting gesture is neither naive theistic petition (asking the buddha to alter his state) nor modernist psychologising (a purely interior mental act); the ritual gesture is, rather, a performative cosmology — a ritual performance that constructs the cosmological field within which the buddha appears as already-present.

Faure's frame is the present paper's principal pushback ally for vow seven. Vow seven's ritual articulation is neither theistic petition (§III.4 has shown via Zongmi's three pieces of evidence that what is requested is not the alteration of the buddhas' state) nor purely interior mindfulness (§III.4 has shown via Zongmi's three-karma articulation that the ritual-cosmological thickness is ineliminable); it is, rather, performative cosmology — through a three-karma invitation, the practitioner constructs a cosmological field, within which the buddhas' already-the-case ever-abiding becomes manifest to the practitioner. Faure's frame is the contemporary academic restatement of Zongmi's "requesting the buddhas equals the purification of one's own mind" — what Zongmi describes as the inward operation of purifying one's own mind, Faure describes as the outward operation of constructing the field of manifestation; the two descriptions point at the same verbal structure, both of them precisely-articulated alternatives to the two-extreme misreadings.

IV.2 Schopen 1997: Continued Legal-and-Ritual Presence Extended to Vow Seven

Gregory Schopen, in Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (University of Hawai'i Press, 1997), argues from Indian-Buddhist epigraphic and vinaya evidence that the buddha's relics, stūpas, and images are the buddha's continued legal-and-ritual presence. After the historical buddha's parinirvāṇa the buddha is not simply absent: at the legal-and-ritual register, the buddha is concretely present in concrete locations. Buddha-relics hold property, buddha-images receive offerings, stūpas receive worship — all of these are evidence that the buddha's ritual presence is historically operative in actual monastic practice.

Schopen's frame, carried over from NIAN P26, is here refocused on vow seven. The frame can be conceded-and-extended: the epigraphic evidence shows that the buddha's continued presence is a historical fact of practice; that frame is structurally extendable to vow seven's ritual articulation. Vow seven is not magical thinking (asking an absent buddha to become present); it is a ritual confirmation of an already-operative cosmological reality — the buddha's continued presence is already a legal-and-ritual fact. Vow seven's requesting the buddhas to abide, then, takes place within the field that Schopen's evidence has shown to be already in operation; the request is the ritual articulation and re-confirmation of that field, not its conjuring.

IV.3 Gummer 2014: Sūtra-as-Body Extended to Vow Six

Natalie Gummer, in "Sūtra as Body" (Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2014), argues that within Mahāyāna sūtras the sūtra itself becomes the buddha's dharma-body — the sūtra-as-body thesis. The implication for vows six and seven is direct: requesting the buddha to turn the dharma-wheel and requesting the buddha to abide in the world are two faces of a single act — the turning of the sūtra-body is the abiding-mode of the buddha's dharma-body.

Gummer's frame can be conceded-and-extended to vow six. Vow six's event mode (the dharma being set in motion) is the sūtra-body in operation; vow seven's state mode (the buddhas' continued abiding) is the dharma-body's continuing presence. The two are not two independent events but two faces of one cosmic phenomenon — exactly as the Lotus Sūtra's Spiritual Powers chapter internally evidences: "here the buddhas turn the dharma-wheel, here the buddhas enter parinirvāṇa" are co-located in the same place. Gummer's sūtra-as-body thesis is the most finely-articulated Anglophone restatement of the dyadic unity of vows six and seven — articulating the unity of the two vows through a single structural claim (sūtra-as-body), so that turning and abiding become two facets of a single thing made manifest.

IV.4 Cook 1977 as Background Target and the Configuration's Closure

Francis H. Cook's Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra (Penn State University Press, 1977) reads Huayan as a pure metaphysics-of-totality (the metaphysics of the dharmadhātu) and treats the ten great vows as exemplifications of that metaphysics rather than as an independent operational system of cosmological articulation and ritual codification. Cook's reading was the principal pushback target in NIAN P26 and P27; it remains a background target here but is not foregrounded — §III.5 has already concretely exhibited the Chinese repentance-liturgy, reverence-and-praise, and buddha-recitation traditions converging on the codification of vows six and seven, and that practice-level concreteness is itself the most direct rebuttal of Cook's pure-metaphysics reading: vows six and seven are not exemplifications of a metaphysical principle but cosmological-articulation-and-ritual-codification verbs in their own right.

The configuration as a whole — Faure's performative cosmology as frame, Schopen's continued legal-and-ritual presence as vow seven's historical anchor, Gummer's sūtra-as-body as vow six's finely-articulated unity — together articulates the proper academic frame for vows six and seven within the Anglophone scholarly literature: the request-structure is neither theistic petition nor modernist psychologising, but the ritual-cosmological articulation of an already-the-case cosmological reality.

V. Middle-Way Corrections

This section, following the Pointing at the Moon methodology's two-marker convention (❌ for misreadings to be rejected, ⚠️ for cross-disciplinary or philological caveats), addresses the principal correction-paths attendant on vows six and seven. Earlier middle-way corrections (P26's vow-king-totality-and-not-pantheism, P27's repentance-and-not-self-punishment) are not redisplayed; the present paper's corrections target the four boundary issues specific to the request-structure dyad.

❌ Misreading 1: Reading vow seven's requesting the buddhas to abide as a request to alter the buddhas' ontological state. This misreading — the magical-thinking pole — is especially common among Anglophone readers, who take do not enter parinirvāṇa literally as the bodhisattva asking the buddha to extend his ontological lifespan and not enter the state of nirvāṇa. The misreading collapses the two-register structure between the nirmāṇa-kāya (the direct textual referent) and the dharma-kāya (the doctrinal grounding): vow seven's direct textual referent is the nirmāṇa-kāya (the verse's "manifest" character confirms nirmāṇa-kāya lifespan); its doctrinal grounding is the dharma-kāya's ever-abiding (per §III.4's three-text-three-evidence consolidation and the four-register trikāya exposition). The dharma-kāya is already-the-case ever-abiding — neither extendable by request nor shortenable by non-request. Vow seven's request operates at the nirmāṇa-kāya register and finds its grounding at the dharma-kāya register; both registers must be held, neither collapsed. The Madhyamaka two-truths exposition together with the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's "because all hindrances are gone, one-sidedly nirvāṇa; because what is to be done is not yet completed, not one-sidedly nirvāṇa" are the precisely-articulated formulations of this finely-articulated structure. Collapse to the conventional alone produces magical-thinking; collapse to the ultimate alone produces the "request equals empty words" nihilist reading — both extremes miss.

❌ Misreading 2: Reducing requesting the buddhas to abide to a purely interior exercise of mindful presencing. This misreading — the modernist-psychologising pole — drains the ritual requesting gesture of its cosmological thickness, transforming vow seven into an inward training of mindful attention upon the buddha as a psychological object. But, as §III.4 and §IV have shown, "requesting the buddhas equals the purification of one's own mind" establishes the purification of one's own mind as the substantive aim, but its ritual form remains the three-karma invitation as a cosmologically-articulating performative operation — not merely an interior mental act. Faure's performative cosmology frame is the precise pushback against this draining: the ritual gesture constructs a field of manifestation, and the cosmological thickness of that field is not reducible to interior attention.

⚠️ Philological caveat: Madhyama-āgama fascicle fifty-six Lomaka-bhāradvāja discourse (T0026, the Chinese parallel to MN 26 Ariyapariyesanā-sutta) preserves no Brahmā invitation segment, and the Anālayo strand of comparative āgama-and-nikāya scholarship reads the Chinese-canonical recension as the earlier stratum, leaving open the possibility that the Brahmā invitation narrative is a later expansion within the Pāli stream. The present paper's §III.2 cites the Brahmā narrative as vow six's antecedent and must therefore carry this caveat — one is not entitled to assume that the Brahmā invitation is an undisputed shared early-Buddhist tradition. The caveat does not, however, undercut vow six's generalising structure: vow six's cosmic-scale generalisation mechanism rests on the trans-buddha generalisation established in Pañcavargika-vinaya Mahāvagga I.5's verse "From within the heavenly halls I have witnessed every former buddha teach" — a verbatim line whose textual force is independent of the early-versus-late status of the figure of Brahmā Sahampati.

⚠️ Directionality: the Pure Land invitation cosmology and the Samantabhadra-side requesting the buddhas to abide are directionally inverse and must not be silently merged (per §III.5). In the Pure Land scriptures, the buddhas invite sentient beings into the Pure Land; in vow seven, the bodhisattvas request the buddhas to abide in this world. The two invitation-cosmologies are members of the same family but structurally inverse. Yunqi Zhuhong's and Ouyi Zhixu's assimilation of Samantabhadra's myriad practices into buddha-recitation interiorises the inward dimension of Samantabhadra's vows into the present moment of mindfulness — but does not establish that the Pure Land inviting-and-receiving is identical with Samantabhadra's inviting-the-buddha-to-abide. When the Pure Land internalising trajectory is cited at §III.5 alongside vow seven, the directional difference must be marked explicitly. The caveat preserves the textual integrity of both invitation-cosmologies; conflating their directions undoes both.

⚠️ Vocabulary discipline for the trikāya: Yogācāra's three-body system (trikāya: dharma-kāya / saṃbhoga-kāya / nirmāṇa-kāya, per T1585 Cheng weishi lun and T1593 Mahāyāna-saṃgraha) and the Awakening of Faith's two-fold body system (dharma-kāya + saṃbhoga-kāya/nirmāṇa-kāya combined, per T1666) are two distinct terminological systems that cannot be silently merged without source-marking.²⁷ The present paper's §III.4 treatment of vow seven's doctrinal grounding uses the Yogācāra three-body vocabulary as primary; the Awakening of Faith two-fold scheme is held to a vocabulary-discipline footnote. Silent vocabulary mixing — using terms from both systems in the same sentence without source-marking — would mislead readers into treating two distinct doctrinal systems as one.

Three further doctrinal expansions lie outside the present paper's scope and are flagged here only by single-line cross-reference, not developed:²⁸ the three-turnings-twelve-aspects exposition (vow six's doctrinal expansion of turning the dharma-wheel, per Abhidharmakośa fascicle twenty-four, T1558); the two-modes-of-nirvāṇa (with-residue / without-residue) and four-types-of-nirvāṇa schema (vow seven's doctrinal expansion of parinirvāṇa, per the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha and Zongmi's citations); and Huayan's five-teaching-ten-school doctrinal classification (mentioned by Zongmi within the eight-gate framework but not developed in the present paper). Each of these is itself an extensive topic; within the scope of the request-structure dyad they need only marking, not development.

VI. Conclusion

Essence Restated

Samantabhadra's vows six and seven are not the sixth and seventh items in a list of ten meritorious deeds. They are the request-structure dyad — the two modes of dharma persistence: vow six as the event mode fixing onto the dynamic event of the dharma's being set in motion, vow seven as the state mode fixing onto the buddhas' continued abiding as the field within which that turning takes place. Both wings turn together — not to alter the buddhas' ontological state, but to purify the practitioner's own mind so that the dharma's already-the-case circulation becomes visible. The thesis rests on three pieces of textual evidence: (1) the closure-formula isomorphism, now confirmed for vows one through seven, 100% across all seven (third-time confirmation); (2) the dyad-anchor at the grammatical level — vows six and seven are the only two of the ten that share the same operator verb qǐng / quànqǐng (請 / 勸請); (3) the twin-mirror narrative grammar at the early-Buddhist stratum — vow six universalising the Brahmā successful-invitation narrative into a trans-world trans-temporal cosmic event, vow seven preemptively correcting the Cāpāla failed-invitation narrative through advance invitation in every buddha-world. Zongmi's "requesting the buddhas equals the purification of one's own mind," the sun-as-vessel simile, and the threefold-truth reconciliation supply the practitioner-side reframing; the Lotus Sūtra's Tathāgata's Lifespan and Spiritual Powers chapters, the Vimalakīrti and Avataṃsaka one-line confirmations, and the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's non-abiding nirvāṇa supply the doctrinal grounding. The paper engages three Anglophone interlocutors in a one-pushback-plus-two-extensions configuration: Faure's performative cosmology (pushback ally), Schopen's continued legal-and-ritual presence (extension to vow seven), and Gummer's sūtra-as-body (extension to vow six).

Cultivation Guidance

For modern Anglophone practitioners, the present paper recommends the same dual ritual-canonical starting-points as in P26 and P27, here oriented to vows six and seven specifically.

First, Zhiyi's Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy, where Inviting the Three Jewels constitutes the fourth of the ten sections — the codified Chinese form of vow seven's requesting gesture as a ritual hinge in its own right.

Second, Shandao's Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise, whose invitation-request-praise triple structure within each of the six time-periods can be drawn off as a single-period daily form: (1) three prostrations to the buddhas (body); (2) recite vow six's verse — "The lamps of all the worlds in the ten directions, those who have just attained enlightenment, I now invite all of them, every one, to turn the supreme, wonderful dharma-wheel" — speech, event mode; (3) recite vow seven's verse — "Should any of the buddhas wish to manifest parinirvāṇa, with utmost sincerity I make my request: may they abide for kalpas as numerous as world-dust-motes, bringing weal and benefit to every sentient being" — mind, state mode; (4) a passage of dedication to all sentient beings and the buddhas' path. The two verses read together — one capturing vow six's event mode (the instant of just-attained-enlightenment), the other capturing vow seven's state mode (the instant of about-to-manifest-parinirvāṇa) — together enact the two modes of dharma persistence in the daily cultivation form.

The shared point of both starting-points: requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel and requesting the buddhas to abide are not isolated private events but the body-speech-and-mind ritual articulation of the dharma's already-the-case circulation — the request, repeated daily, is the practitioner's own mind being clarified into a vessel through which that circulation is seen.

Open Question

The present series, through P28, has now treated vows one through seven, establishing three structural strata: the three-karma assembly (vows one through three, P26), the karma dyad (vows four through five, P27), and the request-structure dyad / dharma persistence (vows six through seven, the present paper). The next paper (NIAN P29) will treat vows eight (always following the buddha in study), nine (always-following sentient beings), and ten (universally dedicating), arguing them to be the upward-bearing-and-downward-transforming dedication closure-triad — the final gathering-structure that draws the foregoing seven vows' outward and inward, self-karma and others'-karma, dharma-turning and buddha-abiding into a final dedicatory totalisation. The retrospective unification of the entire vows-one-through-ten reading will be available only at the completion of P29. The present paper does not pre-empt that content.

A further open question is offered to the reader: does the twin-mirror narrative grammar (amplification-of-success-plus-prevention-of-failure) the present paper has located in vows six and seven recur outside Samantabhadra's vows in other Mahāyāna bodhisattva-vow structures? If so, the twin-mirror grammar may be not merely the distinctive feature of vows six and seven but a general pattern of Mahāyāna vow-structure as such — a wider hypothesis to be tested in subsequent volumes (especially Part VIII's gathering-papers).

Closing Verses

"The lamps of all the worlds in the ten directions — those who have just attained enlightenment — I now invite all of them, every one, to turn the supreme, wonderful dharma-wheel." — Vow Six

"Should any of the buddhas wish to manifest parinirvāṇa, with utmost sincerity I make my request: may they abide for kalpas as numerous as world-dust-motes, bringing weal and benefit to every sentient being." — Vow Seven

Requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel and requesting the buddhas to abide are the two modes of dharma persistence — one wing toward the turning of the dharma (event), one wing toward the abiding of the buddhas (state); both wings turning together, not altering the buddhas' state but cleansing the vessel of one's own mind so that the dharma's already-the-case circulation becomes visible.

References

I. Primary Buddhist Sources

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

T0007. Sūtra of the Final Nirvāṇa (Bān nèhuán jīng, short recension). Translator unrecorded. 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.

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.

T0475. Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa (the Vimalakīrti Sūtra). Translated by Kumārajīva. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 14.

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.

T1558. Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya. Composed by Vasubandhu; translated by Xuanzang. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 29.

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.

T1593. Mahāyāna-saṃgraha (Shè dàshèng lùn). Composed by Asaṅga; commentary by Vasubandhu; translated by Xuanzang. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 31.

T1666. Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (Dà shèng qǐxìn lùn). Attributed to Aśvaghoṣa; translated by Paramārtha. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 32.

T1762. Essentials of the Amitābha Sūtra (Mítuó yàojiě). Composed by Ouyi Zhixu. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 37.

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.

T2016. Mirror of the Source-Record (Zōng jìng lù). Composed by Yongming Yanshou. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 48.

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.

X22n0424. Sub-Commentary on the Amitābha Sūtra. Composed by Yunqi Zhuhong. Wàn xùzàng vol. 22.

SN 6.1. Āyācanasutta. Pali Text Society edition. Pending second-pass verification.

DN 14. Mahāpadāna-sutta. Pali Text Society edition. Pending second-pass verification.

DN 16. Mahāparinibbāna-sutta. Pali Text Society edition. Pending second-pass verification.

MN 26. Ariyapariyesanā-sutta. Pali Text Society edition. Pending second-pass verification.

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. Fahua Sanmei Chan Yi (Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy). T1941, Taishō vol. 46. 十科儀軌之奉請段.
Shandao. Wangsheng Lizan Ge (Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise). T1980, Taishō vol. 47. 六時禮讚奉請-勸請-讚請三聯.
Yongming Yanshou. Zongjing lu (Mirror of the Source-Record). T2016, Taishō vol. 48.

III. Modern Scholarship

Anālayo. A Comparative Study of the Majjhima-nikāya. Taipei: Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation, 2011.

Cook, Francis H. Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.

Faure, Bernard. The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Gummer, Natalie. "Sūtra as Body." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82, no. 4 (2014): 1095–1109.

Schopen, Gregory. Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997.

IV. Cross-Reference to Series Papers

P25 Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows: An Introduction: the vow-king structural operator;愿王整体化;愿王 as the收攝 mechanism.
P26 Reverencing Buddhas, Praising Tathāgatas, Cultivating Offerings:愿1-3 as the body-speech-mind triad.
P27 Repenting Karmic Obstructions, Rejoicing in Merit:愿4-5 as karma's twin wings (減損/增益).
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: Pure Land-Huayan confluence textual seam.
P11 Holding the Name:六時禮讚奉請-勸請-讚請三聯 as practical framework.

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
行願品	《大方廣佛華嚴經·普賢行願品》	般若譯	T0293	10
維摩詰經	《維摩詰所說經》	鳩摩羅什譯	T0475	14
大智度論	《大智度論》	龍樹造、鳩摩羅什譯	T1509	25
成唯識論	《成唯識論》	護法等造、玄奘譯	T1585	31
攝大乘論	《攝大乘論釋》	世親造、玄奘譯	T1593	31
起信論	《大乘起信論》	傳馬鳴造、真諦譯	T1666	32
阿弥陀經要解	《阿彌陀經要解》	蕅益智旭撰	T1762	37
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
宗鏡錄	《宗鏡錄》	永明延壽集	T2016	48
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
阿弥陀經疏鈔	《阿彌陀經疏鈔》	雲棲祩宏撰	X0424	卍續 22

IV. Sutra & Śāstra Index

Abbrev.	Full Name	Author/Translator	Taisho
長阿含經	長阿含經	unknown	T0001
大方廣佛	大方廣佛華嚴經·普賢行願品	unknown	T0293
維摩詰所	維摩詰所說經	unknown	T0475
大智度論	大智度論	unknown	T1509
成唯識論	成唯識論	unknown	T1585
攝大乘論	攝大乘論釋	unknown	T1593
大乘起信	大乘起信論	unknown	T1666
阿彌陀經	阿彌陀經要解	unknown	T1762
法華三昧	法華三昧懺儀	unknown	T1941
往生禮讚	往生禮讚偈	unknown	T1980
宗鏡錄	宗鏡錄	unknown	T2016

Footnotes

Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra: The Practice-and-Vow Chapter of Samantabhadra Entering the Inconceivable Liberation Realm (translated by Prajña, T10n0293, fascicle forty, 0848a). The two verses are the verse-couplets corresponding to vow six and vow seven respectively. Vow six's verse opens with "The lamps of all the worlds in the ten directions" and locks the addressee to "those who have just attained enlightenment" — the textual evidence for the event mode. Vow seven's verse opens with "should any of the buddhas wish to manifest parinirvāṇa" and the verb "manifest" (shì 示, darśana) confirms the nirmāṇa-kāya lifespan as the direct textual referent, with the dharma-kāya's ever-abiding as the doctrinal grounding (see §III.4). ↩
T10n0293 fascicle forty, CBETA approximations: T10.0845b region (vow six main exposition); T10.0845b16-25 (vow six closure formula); T10.0848a (vow six verse-couplet); T10.0845b region (vow seven main exposition); T10.0845b26-c04 (vow seven closure formula); T10.0848a (vow seven verse-couplet); T10.0848a, the thirty-second stanza of the verse-section, internally pairing vows six and seven in a single line (vow seven first, vow six second — the internal-adjustability marker). ↩
T0007 Sūtra of the Final Nirvāṇa (translator unrecorded); the Chinese parallel to DN 16 Mahāparinibbāna-sutta is T0001 Dīrgha-āgama fascicles two-to-three Mahāparinirvāṇa chapter (translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian). The phrase "the gate of inviting" / "opening the gate of request" (可請之門 / 開勸請門) is the early-narrative reverse-anchor for vow seven's preemptive-correction structure. Pāli verification awaits second-pass on SuttaCentral or in the PTS edition. ↩
T0262 Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra fascicle five Tathāgata's Lifespan chapter (translated by Kumārajīva, T09n0262, 0042b16). "Ever-abiding and not extinguishing" is the first of three textual confirmations of vow seven's doctrinal grounding; the dharma-kāya's ever-abiding is vow seven's doctrinal ground. ↩
T0262 Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra fascicle six Spiritual Powers chapter. The single-line passage co-locates attainment of enlightenment / turning the dharma-wheel / parinirvāṇa at the same place — the strongest internal evidence within the sūtra for the unity of vows six and seven as two faces of a single cosmic event. ↩
T10n0293, 0845b16-25. The CBETA line-level verification of vow six's closure formula. Parallel to the closure formulas of vows one through five at the four-exhaustion-four-inexhaustion structure; the only difference is the verb-position substitution to quànqǐng-zhuǎn ("inviting-to-turn"). ↩
T10n0293, 0845b26-c04. The CBETA line-level verification of vow seven's closure formula. The verb-position returns to the short form "this invitation of mine is without end." Together with note 6 these two verifications confirm the closure-formula isomorphism for vows one through seven. ↩
T10n0293, 0844c-0845a. The header listing of the ten great vows. Translator Prajña (Prajña 般若, c. 734 – c. 810) places vows six and seven in the same syntactic format, side by side, in his 798 CE rendering of the forty-fascicle Avataṃsaka — declaring the dyadic structure at the level of the translation itself. ↩
T10n0293, 0848a. The thirty-second stanza of the verse-section, the seven-vow summary verse, condenses the core verbs of vows one through seven into four lines. The line "the inviting of the buddhas to abide and to turn the dharma-wheel" places vow seven first and vow six second — the internal-adjustability evidence that the dyad's interior order is contextually variable while its exterior boundary is non-decomposable. ↩
T10n0293, 0845b. Vow six's main exposition. The three nested degrees of cosmic enlargement (entire dharmadhātu → buddha-world dust-motes → moment-by-moment instant) lock the addressee onto buddhas who have just attained perfect enlightenment. The phrase "with body, speech, and mind, by all manner of skilful means, earnestly" is the three-karma request structure that directly echoes the three-karma assembly of P26. ↩
T10n0293, 0848a. Vow six's verse-couplet. The phrase "those who have just attained enlightenment" is the textual evidence for the event mode — vow six locks onto the dynamic event-instant of the dharma's being-set-in-motion, not the static fact that the dharma already turns. ↩
T0099 Saṃyukta-āgama fascicle forty-four, discourse 1188 (translated by Guṇabhadra). The Chinese parallel to SN 6.1 Āyācanasutta; T0001 Dīrgha-āgama fascicle one Mahāpadāna chapter (parallel to DN 14, with the Vipassi archetype-narrative) bears the same narrative structure. Pāli verification awaits second-pass on SuttaCentral or in the PTS edition. ↩
T1421 Pañcavargika-vinaya Mahāvagga I.5 (translated by Buddhajīva). The verse line "From within the heavenly halls I have witnessed every former buddha teach" is the trans-buddha-witnessing anchor — the textual evidence for the trans-buddha generalising structure that vow six further universalises to a trans-world, trans-temporal cosmic event. ↩
T0026 Madhyama-āgama fascicle fifty-six Lomaka-bhāradvāja discourse (translated by Saṅghadeva), the Chinese parallel to MN 26 Ariyapariyesanā-sutta, preserves no Brahmā invitation segment; the Anālayo strand of comparative āgama-and-nikāya scholarship treats the Chinese-canonical recension as the earlier stratum (cf. Anālayo, A Comparative Study of the Majjhima-nikāya, Dharma Drum 2011), leaving the Brahmā invitation possibly a later expansion within the Pāli stream. The present paper's §III.2 carries this caveat explicitly; the caveat does not, however, undercut vow six's generalising structure (the Mahāvagga I.5 verbatim line establishes the trans-buddha grammar's textual foundation independently). ↩
T10n0293, 0845b. Vow seven's main exposition. The addressee is locked onto buddhas who are about to manifest parinirvāṇa (the terminating instant); the addressee-tier is enlarged through five layers (buddhas + bodhisattvas + śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas + those with-and-without-further-training + all good spiritual friends). ↩
T10n0293, 0848a. Vow seven's verse-couplet. The verse's character "manifest" (shì 示) confirms the nirmāṇa-kāya (nirmāṇa-kāya) lifespan as the direct textual referent: what is manifested is the nirmāṇa-kāya's entry into extinction; what is already-the-case is the dharma-kāya's ever-abiding. ↩
T0007 Sūtra of the Final Nirvāṇa (translator unrecorded); the corresponding fuller narrative is in T0001 Dīrgha-āgama fascicles two-to-three Mahāparinirvāṇa chapter (translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian). The phrase "the gate of inviting" / "opening the gate of request" (可請之門 / 開勸請門) is the early-narrative reverse-anchor for the present paper's thesis — vow seven's preemptive-correction operates against this failure of request. ↩
Zongmi, Detailed Sub-Commentary on the Practice-and-Vow Chapter, X05n0229 line approximately 5450 region. The single line "requesting the buddhas equals the purification of one's own mind" is the principal textual anchor for the practitioner-side reframe of vows six and seven; it states without circumlocution that requesting and purifying one's own mind are two articulations of the same ritual gesture. ↩
X05n0229 line approximately 5418 region. The sun-as-vessel simile relocates vow seven's substantive aim into the cleansing of the vessel: requesting the buddhas to abide is not the extension of the sun's ever-abidingness ("already the case") but the cleansing of the vessel through which the sun is seen. ↩
X05n0229 line approximately 5520 region. The threefold-truth reconciliation is Zongmi's response to the question "if the buddha is fundamentally ever-abiding, why should one further request him to abide?". The line "the still-and-luminous is itself the abiding-in-the-world that is parinirvāṇa" anticipates the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's non-abiding nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa) formulation. ↩
T0262 fascicle five Tathāgata's Lifespan chapter (translated by Kumārajīva, T09n0262, 0042b16). The first textual confirmation of vow seven's doctrinal grounding — the dharma-kāya's ever-abiding as the ground of the present paper's requesting the buddhas to abide. ↩
T0262 fascicle six Spiritual Powers chapter. Attaining enlightenment, turning the dharma-wheel, entering parinirvāṇa are co-located at one place — vow six and vow seven shown at the level of the sūtra's text itself as two faces of a single cosmic event. The buddha's cosmic-scale presence is the joint ground of both vows. ↩
The four-register trikāya exposition: dharma-kāya (dharma-kāya) following T1585 Cheng weishi lun fascicle ten and T1593 Mahāyāna-saṃgraha fascicle three as principal anchor; self-enjoyment saṃbhoga-kāya per T1593 fascicle three; nirmāṇa-kāya's parinirvāṇa as expedient-manifestation per the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha's six-causes scheme together with the Lotus Sūtra's expedient-means meaning; the Madhyamaka ultimate truth per the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā Examination of Nirvāṇa chapter, fascicle four (T1564). The Awakening of Faith's two-fold body-system (T1666) is a distinct terminological system held to vocabulary-discipline footnote (see §V and note 27 below). The line "the dharma-body always emits light, always teaches the dharma" (T1509 Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra fascicle nine) is internal evidence for the dharma-kāya's presence-and-teaching. ↩
T1593 Mahāyāna-saṃgraha fascicle three (Asaṅga's text, Vasubandhu's commentary, translated by Xuanzang). The verse "because all hindrances are gone, one-sidedly nirvāṇa; because what is to be done is not yet completed, not one-sidedly nirvāṇa" is the canonical-treatise articulation of non-abiding nirvāṇa. "Not abiding in saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, benefiting sentient beings to the end of future time, in operation while ever still" lines up directly with vow seven's closure clause "so as to bring weal and benefit to every sentient being." ↩
T46n1941 Lotus Samādhi Repentance Liturgy (composed by Zhiyi). The fourth section, Inviting the Three Jewels, is the codified mother-text for the Chinese repentance-liturgy tradition; requesting / inviting is here pulled out from generalised reverencing and established as a distinct ritual hinge in its own right — the pivot from self-cultivation to Three-Jewel-engaged practice. Inherited by all subsequent Chinese repentance, reverence-and-praise, and buddha-recitation systems. ↩
T47n1980 Verses for the Six Times of Reverence-Praise, fascicle one (composed by Shandao). The line "with whole-hearted sincerity I invite all the buddhas of the ten directions and three times, inviting them to abide and turn the dharma-wheel, that all sentient beings may enter the great-vehicle dharma-ocean" — "abide" corresponding to vow seven, "turn the dharma-wheel" corresponding to vow six — fuses vows six and seven into a single ritual utterance. The strongest single-line Chinese-patriarchal anchor for the present paper's dyadic reading. ↩
Vocabulary discipline for the trikāya: Yogācāra's three-body system (dharma-kāya / saṃbhoga-kāya / nirmāṇa-kāya, per T1585 Cheng weishi lun fascicle ten and T1593 Mahāyāna-saṃgraha fascicle three) and the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna's two-fold body system (dharma-kāya + combined saṃbhoga-kāya/nirmāṇa-kāya, per T1666) are two distinct terminological systems and must not be silently merged without source-marking. The present paper's §III.4 uses the Yogācāra three-body vocabulary as primary; the Awakening of Faith two-fold scheme is mentioned only in the present footnote for vocabulary cross-reference. Silent vocabulary mixing would mislead readers into treating two distinct doctrinal systems as one. ↩
Three doctrinal expansions outside the present paper's scope: (a) the three turnings and twelve aspects (示轉/勸轉/證轉, vow six's doctrinal expansion of turning the dharma-wheel, per Abhidharmakośa fascicle twenty-four, T1558); (b) the two-modes-of-nirvāṇa (with-residue / without-residue) and the four-types-of-nirvāṇa schema (vow seven's doctrinal expansion of parinirvāṇa, per the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha and Zongmi's citations); (c) Huayan's five teachings and ten schools doctrinal classification (mentioned by Zongmi within the eight-gate framework but not entered here). Each is itself an extensive topic; within the scope of the request-structure dyad they need only single-line marking, not development. ↩

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