The Three Periods' Buddhas Attain Bodhi

I. After the Turning: What Does the Bodhisattva Actually Arrive At?

People who talk about the spiritual life today tend to carry two slogans that contradict each other yet are equally in fashion. The first says: what matters is the journey, not the destination—the way is under your feet, the road itself is the point, and anyone still asking "but where does it actually get me?" has missed the lesson. The second says the opposite: awakening is a state you attain, like reaching a summit, like graduating, like a certificate finally in hand—and once it is yours, it is yours for good. The first slogan stretches the path into a line with no end and no need of one; the second contracts it into a point that someone owns. The two look like opposites, but underneath they share a single assumption: either there is no arrival at all, or arrival is somebody's possession.

The ending of the Heart Sūtra will grant neither. At its close it states, plainly, an arrival:

The buddhas of the three periods, relying on the perfection of wisdom, attain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi (supreme perfect awakening).

This is not a vague "just stay on the road." It is a verb with an object and a completion—"attain." And what it attains is exactly the state that the whole body of prajñā teaching has called, over and over, "no cognition and also no attainment," "by reason of non-attainment." So the sentence is itself a seam: on one side, an unmistakable consummation; on the other, a thoroughgoing non-attainment. The work of the vow, as a practice gate, lies along that seam.

To walk into the seam, one must first recall a gesture the bodhisattva has only just made. Across this volume the bodhisattva's turning—his not abiding in nirvāṇa—has been set as a settled posture: at the words "the bodhisattva-being, relying on the perfection of wisdom … reaches ultimate nirvāṇa," he could have stopped, taking cessation as the last station of the road, a self-sufficient resting place gathered all the way inward. He did not stop. By the power of the vow he turned at the very gate of nirvāṇa, refusing to let a stillness that is "as far as it goes" be the end (the prior paper of this volume showed the bodhisattva turning at nirvāṇa's door, and is not re-argued here). The present paper takes up the question that lies just past that turn: he turns—but toward what, and to arrive at what, does he turn?

The answer is already written in the second half of that same sentence: the three periods' buddhas attain bodhi. What this paper argues is that this "attaining bodhi" is neither the nothing of the no-destination party nor the possession of the attain-and-own party, but the true terminus on which the whole road of "coursing in the deep perfection of wisdom" converges and is consummated; and that the single act which carries the one breath of prajñā from "ultimate nirvāṇa," across nirvāṇa, onward to "attaining bodhi," is transference-and-vow.

II. One Sentence, Two Subjects, One Breath: The Text of the Heart Sūtra's Ending and Fazang's Two Fruits

Begin with the barest textual fact. Xuanzang's translation of the Heart Sūtra runs, at its close, like this, all in one stretch:

[The bodhisattva-being …] reaches ultimate nirvāṇa. The buddhas of the three periods, relying on the perfection of wisdom, attain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.¹

Read in one breath, it turns out to hide two different subjects and two different acts. The first subject is the bodhisattva-being, whose act is "reaching ultimate nirvāṇa"; the second is the buddhas of the three periods, whose act is "attaining anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi." Between the two the text grants not even an obvious pause—it writes the bodhisattva's ultimate nirvāṇa and the buddhas' attaining of bodhi as two successive steps taken on one breath. This is no accident of phrasing but a deliberate double climax: the perfection of wisdom, carried to its deepest, first accomplishes the bodhisattva's consummation, then accomplishes the buddhas' consummation.

Hence the question: are these two steps two ways of saying one event, or two distinct yet consecutive things, the one leading into the other?

To this question Fazang of the Huayan school, in his Brief Commentary on the Heart Sūtra, gives an exceptionally clean reading. Glossing the segment of the text on "what is attained," he divides it plainly into a prior and a posterior fruit:

Now [the text] makes plain what is attained. There are two: first, that the bodhisattva attains the cessation-fruit of nirvāṇa; second, that the buddhas attain the wisdom-fruit of bodhi.²

The cessation-fruit and the wisdom-fruit—these are the key to the whole ending of the Heart Sūtra. Fazang reads the bodhisattva's "ultimate nirvāṇa" as the cessation-fruit (the fruit of severance): the face of stillness disclosed once obscuration is severed to its end, once both the affliction-obscuration and the cognitive obscuration are cleared away. Its weight falls on severing, on exhausting, on the obstacle removed. He reads the buddhas' "attaining bodhi" as the wisdom-fruit (the fruit of cognition): the face of awareness accomplished once omniscient knowledge is full and the awakened nature pervades without hindrance. Its weight falls on fullness, on completion, on cognition now possessed in full.

This reading carries two depths worth looking at closely.

First, the cessation-fruit and the wisdom-fruit rest on one and the same prajñā. Both clauses say "relying on the perfection of wisdom"—it is not that the bodhisattva leans on one prajñā and the buddhas on another. The single breath of prajñā shows, in the bodhisattva, as the "obscuration-exhausted" ultimate nirvāṇa, and in the buddhas as the "cognition-full" supreme bodhi. The two fruits are therefore not two roads but two consecutive accomplishments on one road.

Second, and more decisive: the latter consummates the former. Fazang's sequence—"first … then …"—is no idle ordering but a statement of direction. The cessation-fruit comes first and clears the ground; the wisdom-fruit comes after and, the ground once cleared, lets the awakened nature unfold to its full with nothing held back. "Obscuration exhausted" is only "nothing veils any longer," an accomplishment stated in the negative; "cognition full" is "all the qualities of awareness wholly present," an accomplishment stated in the positive. The stillness of nirvāṇa, if it halts at its own step, is merely "swept clean"; only when it is carried onward into the buddhas' attaining of bodhi does that one prajņā become truly "full." So the unbroken breath at the close of the Heart Sūtra, under Fazang's reading, gains a structure: it does not say one realization twice, but joins "the cessation-fruit of severance" to "the wisdom-fruit of fullness" in a deliberate two-step ascent—and the gate of the vow is precisely the gate that catches the second step and carries the first onward into it.

III. Attaining Bodhi as the Consummation of Buddhahood: A Grammar of Plenitude, Not of Cessation

The easiest and most fatal way to lose Fazang's division of cessation-fruit from wisdom-fruit is to read "attaining bodhi" back into a mere restatement of "ultimate nirvāṇa"—as though the buddhas' attaining of bodhi were just the bodhisattva's cessation said once more, one notch deeper. This section sets the two thoroughly apart on the level of grammar: the grammar by which scripture and treatise actually speak of each.

The decisive evidence lies in the language the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra uses when it explains the word "anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi." The treatise glosses it entirely in the register of acquisition and plenitude, never in the register of quieting and extinction. A buddha is a buddha because he is furnished with omniscient knowledge, has accomplished the golden body of the marks and signs, has brought to fullness the boundless qualities of discipline, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge-and-vision of liberation, and is possessed of the three knowledges without hindrance.³ One small but important correction belongs here: "the three knowledges" (Skt. tisso vijjā) means the three perfected powers of luminous cognition—the knowledge of past lives, the divine eye, and the knowledge of the destruction of the taints. It does not mean "penetration of the three times." It remains a positive grammar of "being furnished with a certain quality of awareness," not a negative grammar of "having severed a certain obscuration."

Set this passage beside "ultimate nirvāṇa" and the division becomes plain at a glance:

• Ultimate nirvāṇa is stated in a negative grammar—"obscuration exhausted," "stilled," "without remainder." It says what is no longer there: the afflictions gone, birth-and-death gone, conceptual proliferation gone. This is the grammar of the cessation-fruit.
• Attaining bodhi is stated in a positive grammar—"furnished with omniscience," "complete in the marks and signs," "boundless merits brought to fullness." It says what is now fully present. This is the grammar of the wisdom-fruit.

The difference of grammar is not a rhetorical preference but a difference in the thing referred to. One is clearing; the other is fullness. One is the ground swept clean; the other is the qualities of awareness grown to their full with nothing left out. To run them together is to mistake "the room has been cleaned" for "the room is now full of life"—cleaning is the precondition of the life, but it is not the life itself. Attaining bodhi stands to ultimate nirvāṇa as "fully inhabited" stands to "swept clean": the latter consummates the former, it does not repeat it.

More important still, this "consummation" is not something the buddha grows in isolation, self-sufficiently, out of himself. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra, in its chapter on the Manifestation of the Tathāgata, traces the lineage of the buddhas' ocean of omniscience without ambiguity:

The ocean of omniscience of all the buddha-tathāgatas is likewise: it arises wholly from the great vows the Tathāgata made in ages past.⁴

That shoreless ocean of all-knowledge in the buddhas arises from the Tathāgata's great vows of old. The line stitches "vow" directly to "attaining bodhi": the buddha-fruit is not a causeless, self-existing stillness, nor a blank left over after exhaustion, but a fullness of cognitive qualities accomplished and held up by the great vows of old. Put otherwise: the cessation-fruit can come about through "prajñā contemplating emptiness, the obscurations exhausting of themselves," but the wisdom-fruit is full—is a living, teeming "ocean of cognition" rather than a pool gone still—because behind it there is a vow that births it, holds it, steers it toward fullness.

By here the identity of attaining bodhi is clear: it is the consummation of the buddha-station, a wisdom-fruit that is positive, plenary, and vow-born, distinct in grammar and in stage from the bodhisattva's ultimate nirvāṇa, which is the negative, severance-stated cessation-fruit. The next question follows of itself: what, exactly, carries the first step onward into the second?

IV. Transference-and-Vow as the Pivot of the Passage: The Vow as Charioteer, Non-Dual Mind, Not Taking Nirvāṇa's Witness

If ultimate nirvāṇa is the natural outcome of "prajñā contemplating emptiness, obscuration exhausted and stilled," then to carry on from that step of stillness to the step where "the buddhas attain bodhi" no longer depends on the contemplation of emptiness itself but on an added, directed act. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra names this act with one exquisite image:

By the vow one receives the surpassing fruit. Moreover, to adorn a buddha-field is a great matter; merit walking alone cannot accomplish it, and so vow-power is required. As the strength of the ox can pull the cart, yet a charioteer is needed for it to arrive somewhere—so too the vow to purify a [buddha-]world: merit is the ox, the vow is the charioteer.⁵

Merit is the ox, the vow is the charioteer. The ox has strength and can pull the cart—much as the merit accumulated in practice, the prajñā cultivated, has real power. But strength alone will not bring the cart to any destination; the ox may wander, or stand where it is. For that power to "arrive somewhere," to reach a definite place, a charioteer must drive and direct it. The vow is the charioteer. Merit and prajñā, undirected by vow-power, can accomplish the stillness of exhausted obscuration (an ox standing still is also a kind of "not moving"), but they will not of themselves walk toward great matters like "adorning a buddha-field" or "consummating the buddha-station"—"merit walking alone cannot accomplish it, and so vow-power is required."

This explains the carrying-on within that one breath of the Heart Sūtra: the bodhisattva, relying on prajñā, reaches ultimate nirvāṇa—the ox's strength is already sufficient; but for that power not to stop at nirvāṇa and to continue toward the three periods' buddhas' attaining of bodhi, a charioteer is needed—a vow, to direct the merit upon supreme bodhi. Transference-and-vow is exactly this taking-up-of-the-reins.

But here a danger appears at once. If the charioteer drives the cart toward "the fruit I want," does the vow not become an order placed with the buddha-station, a trade of merit for result? The treatise had guarded against this in advance. Speaking of the bodhisattva's transference, it marks out the empty stillness of the transferring mind:

He holds this merit in common with all beings, transferring it toward anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi. When this bodhisattva transfers, he gives rise to no dual mind: who is the one transferring? toward what is it transferred?⁶

The bodhisattva holds the merit in common with all beings and transfers it toward supreme bodhi—yet in the very act of transferring he "gives rise to no dual mind": he raises no discrimination of "who is transferring?" or "transferred to where?" In other words, this charioteer drives the cart without clinging to an "I" who drives, a "place" driven toward, or a parcel of "merit" handed over. The one who transfers, the place transferred to, and the merit transferred—all three are ungraspable. This is the three empty spheres realized in the gate of the vow. So the directedness of "the vow is the charioteer" and the empty stillness of "non-attainment" are made one within the single act of transference: the vow is not the craving that grips a result, but the giving-over, in non-attainment and within the three empty spheres, of the direction of merit toward bodhi.

This also answers the deepest tension of the vow-gate, and stitches it to this volume's earlier treatment of "raising the vow in non-attainment": transference directs the fruit toward bodhi (that is the vow), and the transferring gives rise to no dual mind (that is non-attainment), so that the "attaining of bodhi" thus directed-toward can only be an "attaining that is no attainment," a consummation with "no one transferring and no place transferred to."

Finally, one passage states the whole engine of the "carrying-on" most thoroughly of all. The bodhisattva already courses on the path of nirvāṇa; why then does he not take up its witness here and stop? The treatise's answer is not "he holds himself back from stopping" but something far more radical—he simply finds no "witness" anywhere to settle into:

This is the path of nirvāṇa; how is it that the bodhisattva practices this path-dharma yet does not take up the witness of nirvāṇa? … The bodhisattva contemplates form and all dharmas as empty … he does not see even this emptiness as a dharma; and because he does not see it, there is nothing realized.⁷

The bodhisattva contemplates all dharmas as empty and does not set up even "emptiness" as a graspable dharma; and since even "emptiness" is unseen and ungraspable, there is no thing called "the witness of nirvāṇa" for him to arrive at and settle into. "Because he does not see it, there is nothing realized"—it is not that he willfully declines to take it, but that, by reason of non-attainment, there is simply no "realized object" standing there waiting to be taken. So this path of nirvāṇa is, by prajñā's own non-attaining nature, walked clear past nirvāṇa and onward toward the buddha-path.

Take the three passages together and the pivot of the passage is complete: the vow as charioteer supplies the direction of the carrying-on (so that merit does not stand still); transferring without a dual mind supplies its emptiness (so that the direction does not collapse into trade and attainment); not taking the witness of nirvāṇa supplies its reason (since, in non-attainment, there is no witness to halt at, and the road walks past nirvāṇa of itself). These three are the three faces of the one act of transference-and-vow. It is the single carrying-on that, within that one breath, leads "ultimate nirvāṇa" onward into "attaining anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi."

V. Consummation with No One Consummated: Dialogue with Western Thought on Fulfillment / the Eschaton, and Middle-Way Corrections

To call "attaining bodhi" a consummation that is arrived at invites a mirror from Western thought at once—and invites, too, a string of misreadings that need correction. This section first holds up two Western mirrors to that consummation, then sets three middle-way lines of correction.

The first mirror is Josef Pieper on leisure and festivity. Pieper resists understanding human fullness as the cessation of labor or the extinction of desire; for him the highest fullness is festive—a fulfillment, an abundant presence and affirmation, not the quieting of a lack. What is worth taking is that he helps us say clearly what attaining bodhi is not. Attaining bodhi is not the two-vehicle traveler's "burn the self away, leave nothing"—the extinction in which body is reduced to ash and cognition stilled; it is closer to the buddha-ground's effortless, spontaneous ease—the qualities of awareness fully and unlaboredly present, an arrival that is itself completion, a kind of "festival." But a step must be pushed back: Pieper's festivity still stands upon a celebrating subject—there has to be someone enjoying the good that is given. Attaining bodhi, by contrast, is consummation with no one consummated: a fullness in non-attainment, a fullness so complete that not even "a person who has been made full" is left over (this volume's opening treatment showed how the vow, in its turning toward awakening, dissolves the very self that vows). Pieper's fulfillment has a fulfilled one; the consummation of bodhi, in the three empty spheres, leaves no one behind to own it.

The second mirror is Jürgen Moltmann's theology of hope and Ernst Bloch's principle of hope. Both understand the eschaton as a "not-yet" drawn toward consummation—the end is not the abolition of the world but the flowering and completion of the whole. What is worth taking is that this is perhaps the closest mirror Western thought offers to the insight that "the terminus is fulfillment, not stopping"; it lets us see that to read a forward road (the forward-leaning tension running through the whole sequence of practice gates) as "inclined toward consummation" is no peculiarly Buddhist conceit. But a step must be pushed back: their eschaton is an event that breaks in from the future, from outside, to redeem a real history with a real subject—what is hoped for is a "thing" to be given in time to come. Attaining bodhi is not that thing, deferred to the future and at last cashed out. Because the dharma-realm arises dependently, the buddha-station is actionless; because the path's own nature is seen to be originally unborn (the line this volume held in treating the patience of non-arising and the non-regressing vow), attaining bodhi is not an event "reached only after crossing time," but the residue-free, here-and-now disclosing, in non-attainment, of the path's own originally-unborn nature. It is not hope's object finally in hand, but a disclosure with no remainder.

As for the Aristotelian "self-sufficient flourishing as resting place," the Kojève–Fukuyama "last man after the end of history," and the Arendtian "action without end," these three Western imaginations of "the terminus" served, in this volume's prior paper on the bodhisattva's non-abiding in nirvāṇa, as the negative pole of reference—the bodhisattva's turning is exactly the refusal of that "last man" kind of rest. The present paper is the next turn of the screw: having refused one terminus, what consummation does he then arrive at? The prior paper asked about the turning; this one asks about the arrival; the two are two coils of one spiral. (These interlocutors are not re-introduced or re-quoted here.)

From these two mirrors, three middle-way corrections can be set.

❌ Equating "attaining bodhi" with "ultimate nirvāṇa." This is the paper's highest risk. The Heart Sūtra places the two apart by two grammatical subjects and two parallel clauses; scripture and treatise speak of attaining bodhi in the grammar of "plenitude and acquisition" and of nirvāṇa in the grammar of "obscuration exhausted and stilled." To conflate them is to flatten Fazang's whole division of cessation-fruit from wisdom-fruit, and so to lose the deliberate two-step ascent at the close of the Heart Sūtra. The correct reading holds the division: attaining bodhi belongs to the grammar of acquisition, ultimate nirvāṇa to the grammar of cessation; the latter consummates the former; the two are not interchangeable. (The full unfolding of ultimate nirvāṇa in its own right belongs to the gate of concentration and is settled in the close of that volume; this paper takes only the single step "from nirvāṇa onward toward bodhi" and does not restate it.)

⚠️ Taking the Western thought of "fulfillment" and "the eschaton" as theoretical equivalents of attaining bodhi. Pieper's festivity, and the eschaton of Moltmann and Bloch, are only heuristic analogies that help us find, in Western vocabulary, an approximate echo of "the terminus is consummation"; they are not theoretical equivalents. The root difference is ontological: Western fulfillment and eschaton presuppose a subject who is fulfilled, a history that is redeemed, a future that breaks in from outside; attaining bodhi is the three empty spheres, no one consummated, the dharma-realm actionless, the originally unborn. Mirroring is permitted; equation is not.

❌ Reading "attaining bodhi" as a goal that is achieved and possessed. Once attaining bodhi is described as "the highest state you too can reach," "the ultimate reward of practice," the vow-gate collapses back into the "attain-and-own" party named at the paper's opening—back into a posture that treats awakening as an order placed, a possession acquired. But scripture and treatise are explicit: in transferring, no dual mind arises—no one who transfers, no place transferred to; the witness of nirvāṇa is not taken—by reason of non-attainment, there is nothing realized. Attaining bodhi is a consummation, yet it is no one's possession. To hold this line is what keeps the vow from degrading into a refined version of craving.

VI. The Buddha-Fruit Abides by the Power of the Original Vow: The Terminus of the Sequence, and the Last Page Reserved for the Closing Synopsis

First, to gather the point. The close of the Heart Sūtra does not say one realization twice; it is a deliberate two-step ascent: the bodhisattva, relying on prajñā, "reaches ultimate nirvāṇa"—the cessation-fruit of exhausted obscuration; the buddhas of the three periods, relying on prajñā, "attain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi"—the wisdom-fruit of full cognition; the latter consummates the former. And what carries the one breath of prajñā from the step of nirvāṇa onward to the step of attaining bodhi is transference-and-vow—the vow as charioteer, giving direction; transferring without a dual mind, giving emptiness; not taking the witness of nirvāṇa, giving the reason to continue. Attaining bodhi is therefore neither a nihilistic endlessness nor anyone's possession, but the non-attaining wisdom-fruit on which the whole road of "coursing in the deep perfection of wisdom" converges and is consummated.

Then, what it points to for practice. The plainest teaching of this gate lies not in "how to attain bodhi" but precisely in "how to take nothing whatever as one's own." Transference is the loosening of cultivated merit from the grip of "mine," turned over to beings and to bodhi; not taking the witness of nirvāṇa is the refusal to set up even "liberation"—the most worth-having thing of all—as a graspable resting place, a possession. The vow, as a practice, is thus a discipline against possession: the more it turns toward the highest consummation, the less it leaves behind any self to step forward and claim that consummation. Transference in the three empty spheres and the attaining of bodhi in non-attainment are the two ends of one and the same thing.

Last, a question is left open, pointing toward a final page not yet turned. The Avataṃsaka, speaking of the body of the Tathāgata, leaves a line of long resonance:

The body of the Tathāgata has no fixed location; it is neither real nor void; yet by the power of the buddhas' original vow, whenever beings are fit to be liberated, it appears.⁸

The buddha-body has no fixed place; it falls neither into the substantial nor into the void; and it appears in the world "by the power of the buddhas' original vow": it is the buddhas' original vow-power of old that, when beings are fit to receive liberation, brings the buddha-fruit forth into presence. The line carries this paper's conclusion to its farthest reach: the wisdom-fruit of attaining bodhi, once consummated, does not shrink back into a self-sufficient stillness; it is born from the vow (the ocean of omniscience arising from the great vows of old) and abides in the world by the vow (the power of the original vow, appearing whenever beings are fit to be liberated). From birth to abiding-in-presence, the buddha-fruit is, from first to last, held up by the vow.

The remaining question, then, is this: if the whole road of "coursing in the deep perfection of wisdom" ultimately turns toward, and is completed upon, this single "attaining of bodhi," then what whole do the gates make among themselves? And why, along this entire road, should it be the gate of the vow that alone holds the key to "attaining bodhi"? These questions this paper does not answer—they belong to the closing synopsis of this volume, to the book's last page, still unturned.

What this paper can place in the reader's hands is one thing only: in that sentence at the close of the Heart Sūtra, from "ultimate nirvāṇa" to "attaining anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi," the breath that never paused between them—that one unbroken breath is the vow.

---

---

References

Primary Buddhist Sources

• Heart Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra), trans. Xuanzang (Tang); Taishō vol. 8, No. 251.
• Brief Commentary on the Heart Sūtra, composed by Fazang (Tang); Taishō vol. 33, No. 1712.
• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom), attributed to Nāgārjuna; trans. Kumārajīva (Later Qin), Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509.
• Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra, eighty-fascicle recension, Chapter on the Manifestation of the Tathāgata), trans. Śikṣānanda (Tang); Taishō vol. 10, No. 279.

Modern Scholarship

• Pieper, Josef. Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Translated by Gerald Malsbary. South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 1998. (Fulfillment as festive presence and affirmation, not the quieting of a lack.)
• Pieper, Josef. In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 1999. (Festivity as the form of the highest human fullness.)
• Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology. Translated by James W. Leitch. London: SCM Press, 1967. (The eschaton as the "not-yet" drawn toward the completion of the whole.)
• Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986. (Hope and the not-yet; the forward pull toward a future fulfillment.)

(Note: the Western works above are adduced only for heuristic comparison, not as doctrinal equivalents of scripture and treatise; bibliographic details follow standard editions.)

Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Taishō no.	Compiler / Translator	Locus in this paper
Heart Sūtra	Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra	T0251《般若波羅蜜多心經》Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdayaT8, No. 251Xuanzang (Tang, 649 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 8)	trans. Xuanzang	p. 0848c (the closing sentence; two subjects, ultimate nirvāṇa and attaining bodhi)
Brief Commentary on the Heart Sūtra	Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra commentary	T1712《般若波羅蜜多心經略疏》T33, No. 1712View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 33)	Fazang	p. 0554b (the cessation-fruit and the wisdom-fruit)
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom	T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 25)	Nāgārjuna; trans. Kumārajīva	fasc. 59, p. 0281b (the plenitude grammar of bodhi); fasc. 5, pp. 0108b–c (merit the ox, the vow the charioteer); fasc. 81, p. 0626a (transferring without a dual mind); fasc. 76, p. 0593c (not taking the witness of nirvāṇa)
Avataṃsaka	Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra (eighty-fasc., Manifestation of the Tathāgata)	T0279《大方廣佛華嚴經》(八十華嚴)Avataṃsaka-sūtra (80-fascicle)T10, No. 279Śikṣānanda (Tang, 695–699 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 10)	trans. Śikṣānanda	p. 0273c (the ocean of omniscience from the great vows of old); p. 0276c (the buddha-body abiding by the power of the original vow)

Cross-References

This is the first paper of Part VIII (The Sealing: Attainment of Bodhi & the Grand Reveal). It follows the volume's three papers on vow and emptiness and takes up, head-on, the second step of the Heart Sūtra's double climax—"attaining bodhi." The bodhisattva's turning in "not abiding in nirvāṇa" (vow-power declining to make cessation the end) is treated in this volume's The Bodhisattva Does Not Enter Final Nirvāṇa; the present paper continues from its sequel question, "what is arrived at after the turning," and does not restate it. The sense of "transference as turning a direction rather than handing over a thing," and the pivotal role of transference, are treated in this volume's Transference; "raising the vow in non-attainment, and the three empty spheres in the vow—the one who vows, the thing vowed, the vow itself," in this volume's Vowing in Non-Attainment, whose conclusion this paper takes up to speak of "the attaining that is no attainment," without re-establishing it. The full unfolding of ultimate nirvāṇa in its own right belongs to the close of the volume on meditative concentration; this paper takes only the single step "from nirvāṇa onward toward bodhi" and does not restate it. As for the full mapping of all the gates onto the Heart Sūtra, disclosed in the closing synopsis, and the question of why the vow alone unveils "attaining bodhi"—these are reserved for the closing synopsis of this volume; here only a signpost is set, not disclosed.

Footnotes

1. Heart Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra), trans. Xuanzang (Tang); Taishō vol. 8, No. 251, p. 0848c. In the closing sentence, "reaches ultimate nirvāṇa. The buddhas of the three periods, relying on the perfection of wisdom, attain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi," the "bodhisattva-being" and the "buddhas of the three periods" stand as two parallel subjects. The rendering above adapts the canonical wording for the Western reader and does not reproduce a modern translation. ↩

2. Brief Commentary on the Heart Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra commentary), composed by Fazang (Tang); Taishō vol. 33, No. 1712, p. 0554b. In glossing the segment on "what is attained," Fazang divides it into a prior and a posterior fruit: the bodhisattva's cessation-fruit of nirvāṇa, the buddhas' wisdom-fruit of bodhi. This division of the two fruits serves the present paper as the interpretive backbone for the double climax at the close of the Heart Sūtra. ↩

3. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom), fascicle 59, attributed to Nāgārjuna, trans. Kumārajīva (Later Qin); Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 0281b. In glossing "anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi," the treatise states it in a grammar of acquisition and plenitude—"furnished with omniscience, the body of the marks and signs, boundless discipline, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge-and-vision of liberation, and the three knowledges without hindrance." Note: "the three knowledges" (tisso vijjā) are the knowledge of past lives, the divine eye, and the knowledge of the destruction of the taints—not "penetration of the three times." The rendering adapts the canonical wording and does not reproduce a modern translation. ↩

4. Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Mahāvaipulya-buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra, eighty-fascicle recension), Chapter on the Manifestation of the Tathāgata, trans. Śikṣānanda (Tang); Taishō vol. 10, No. 279, p. 0273c. ↩

5. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 5; Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, pp. 0108b–c. The figure "merit is the ox, the vow is the charioteer" occurs in a context concerning the vow-power required to "adorn a buddha-field"; the present paper borrows it to show transference-and-vow as the pivot directing merit, and does not extend it to a general theory of transference beyond its reach. ↩

6. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 81; Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 0626a. ↩

7. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 76; Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 0593c. ↩

8. Avataṃsaka Sūtra (eighty-fascicle recension), Chapter on the Manifestation of the Tathāgata, trans. Śikṣānanda (Tang); Taishō vol. 10, No. 279, p. 0276c. ↩