Transference

I. The Continuing Vow: How Does It Not Collapse into a Private Deposit-Account?

Picture a practitioner who has been making vows for years. Day after day he pays homage, praises, makes offerings, repents, rejoices, requests the teaching, and sustains the Dharma; and day after day he enters the merit of all this, entry by entry, under his own name. The harder he works, the thicker the ledger grows. The difficulty here is not that he is doing too little. The difficulty is the ledger itself. Once merit is treated as mine and stored up, the seemingly endless line of good conduct curls back at its far end into a private deposit. For all its outward motion, it still points home, toward the self.

This volume's first two papers have established two things. First, vow and conduct are not two separate items but the inner and outer faces of one thing—the two wings of a bird, the two wheels of a cart—where the vow names what conduct carries out, and conduct fills out what the vow names. Second, the way conduct fills the vow is moment-to-moment continuity: the vow is not a point that is finished the instant it is first raised, but a line extending to the end of all future time, unbroken, the activity of body, speech, and mind never wearying—and what lets this line continue without fatigue is the power of Samantabhadra's contemplative practice, not a self gritting its teeth and holding on by force.

The natural question follows: this vow that is both non-dual and continuous—where, in the end, is it headed?

If it is merely continuous and never turned, the endless line flows back into a private deposit: the larger the vow, the more is stored, and the more is stored, the heavier the "I" becomes. Universal transference is established precisely to sever this backflow. It is not a tenth good deed appended after homage, praise, and offering, but the single act that takes everything the prior nine vows have accumulated and, as one whole, turns it toward sentient beings and toward awakening. The tenth vow is the last vow precisely because it is the pivot of the whole: the first nine accumulate, the tenth turns; without that one turn, all that is accumulated collapses back into the self.

Western ethics offers a familiar foil. On many accounts of the gift there is no such thing as giving for free—the gift never escapes the circle of return, the recipient is bound to reciprocate, and a kind of force seems to inhere in the thing, driving it at last back to the giver. If even the sociological gift cannot break out of that backflow, then is it structurally possible at all to turn merit so that it does not flow back to oneself? Jacques Derrida argues something stronger still: a truly pure gift is impossible—the moment it is recognized as a gift, it is reabsorbed into the economy of gratitude and repayment, and thereby cancelled. The claim of this paper is that universal transference is, precisely, a path lying beyond this impossibility. But to see the path clearly, we must return first to the text.

II. The Tenth Vow's Text: Transference as "Gathering the Prior Nine and Turning the Whole"

The tenth vow announces its own structure at the very moment it is named:

Furthermore, good son, as for "universal transference": from the first act of homage down to according with beings, all the merit accrued is wholly transferred to every sentient being throughout the realm of phenomena and the realm of space. May beings ever find peace and ease, free of every sickness and pain; may every evil they would do come to nothing, and every good they cultivate swiftly be accomplished; may the gates to all evil destinies be shut, and the true road of the human, divine, and nirvāṇic states be opened. And if, through the evil deeds they have heaped up, beings must undergo grievous and bitter fruits, I will undergo it all in their stead—that they may be wholly liberated and at last accomplish unsurpassed awakening.¹

Reading this passage, one must first seize the phrase "from the first act of homage down to according with beings." "The first act of homage" is the first vow, paying homage to all Buddhas; "according with beings" is the ninth vow, perpetually according with sentient beings. This is the text explicitly looping back over the prior nine vows. The clause that immediately follows—"all the merit accrued is wholly transferred"—takes the merit those nine vows have gathered and turns it out as a single batch. In other words, the object of transference is not some fresh, separate merit but the entire body of the preceding nine vows. Transference adds not one new good deed to the inventory; it does one thing only: it inverts, as a whole, the direction of merit already accumulated. So understood, transference is not the tenth entry on a list but the hinge that gathers up the prior nine and then turns the whole.

This turning has two destinations. The verse that gathers the seven vows says it in a single line:

The merit of all homage, praise, and offering, of requesting the Buddhas to abide and turn the wheel, of rejoicing and repenting, all roots of good—transferred to sentient beings and to the Buddha-path.²

"Transferred to sentient beings and to the Buddha-path"—beings are the downward movement of compassion, the Buddha-path (bodhi) the upward movement of wisdom. Merit is not held in a private account of one's own but poured out toward these two. The first three lines list homage, praise, offering, the abiding and the wheel-turning, rejoicing, repenting, every root of good, one by one; the fourth line, with a single word—"transferred"—turns all of them out, and marks two directions plainly. This is exactly the answer to the question raised in the previous section: the continuous vow does not flow back into a private deposit because, at its far end, it is turned toward beings and bodhi rather than back toward the self.

And transference stretches on without ceasing. The seal of the tenth vow says:

The bodhisattva's transference, so cultivated, knows no exhaustion: though the realm of space be exhausted, the realm of beings exhausted, the karma of beings exhausted, the afflictions of beings exhausted, this transference of mine is never exhausted—moment after moment continuous, without interruption, the activity of body, speech, and mind never wearying. Good son, this is the bodhisattva-mahāsattva's full and complete possession of the ten great vows. If bodhisattvas accord with and enter these great vows, they will ripen all sentient beings, accord with unsurpassed, perfect awakening, and fulfill the ocean of Samantabhadra's vows of conduct.³

"Moment after moment continuous, without interruption"—transference too is a continuous turning-out; making it once does not settle the matter (the continuity of vow-power has been treated in this volume's earlier paper and is not unfolded here). What deserves notice is the closing language: having finished expounding the tenth vow, the text immediately declares the ten great vows "full and complete." The ten vows are not ten parallel items; that completion arrives upon transference, precisely because transference is the turn that gathers up the prior nine. The pivot moves, and only then is the whole wheel made to turn.

III. Transference Turns an Orientation; It Does Not Hand Over a Thing

To grasp how transference can "turn" without lapsing into the vulgar reading of a "transfer of funds," we must first be clear about what it is that is turned.

The sense of the word—that transference is a re-direction of an aim (the redirecting of a fruit-result's orientation), not the transfer of a thing—was already established in this volume's opening paper, on the strength of two scriptural proofs: that "the substance of good dharmas cannot be given to another; only the fruit-result can be given," and that "only when beings are taken as the object is it called transference"; and there the folk metaphor of a "merit deposit-account / wire-transfer" was already broken.⁴ This paper does not re-argue that point. It builds on it: precisely because what transference turns is an orientation and not a thing, it is able to serve as the hinge of the tenth vow.

How do we know that what is turned is an orientation and not a thing? The limit-case of the tenth vow shows it. The text says that for all the grievous, bitter fruits beings must undergo on account of the evil they have heaped up—"I will undergo it all in their stead." Were transference merely the moving of a thing called "merit" from my account to a being's account, "undergoing suffering in their stead" could not even be stated: suffering is not a transferable merit-item, and undergoing it is not the receipt of a sum. "I will undergo it in their stead" is possible only because what transference turns is the practitioner's whole orientation—turning oneself entirely toward beings' suffering, even to the point of vowing to bear it for them. This is substantive altruism, not symbolic bookkeeping. And the endpoint of that substituted suffering is still marked, in the text, as "at last accomplishing unsurpassed awakening": turning toward beings and turning toward bodhi here become one and the same act.

The folk metaphor of the "deposit-account" can now be placed precisely. Section I argued that a continuous vow, untransferred, collapses into a private deposit—this is an argument from the side of the vow: a vow that is only accumulated and never turned must sink into "mine." This volume's opening paper, by contrast, breaks the metaphor from the side of the thing: merit is not, to begin with, a deliverable object, so the "deposit / transfer" figure misplaces the object of transference from the root. Seen together: the necessity of transference (untransferred, it collapses into a deposit) and the reality of transference (what is turned is not a thing but an orientation) are exactly outer face and inner face. The hinge is a hinge not because of how much merit it moves, but because it inverts the whole bearing of merit.

IV. The Commentaries' Hinge-Reading: "To Turn, To Orient"; "Citing the Prior Seven, Then Clarifying Transference"

Two Tang-dynasty masters of the Huayan school—Chengguan, author of the Separate-Practice Commentary, and Zongmi, who followed with the Sub-commentary—gloss and structurally parse the tenth vow in a way that secures "transference is the hinge" from both sides at once: the sense of the words and the architecture of the verse.

Take the words first. The sub-commentary glosses the title of the tenth vow:

The tenth, universal transference … As for what is called universal transference: hui means to turn, xiang means to orient.⁵

"Hui means to turn"—hui is the act of turning. "Xiang means to orient"—xiang is the heading toward a direction. The two glossed together yield exactly "a turning of one's orientation": first a turning movement, then a direction toward which one is turned. This sits in airtight agreement with the thesis established above—that transference turns an orientation, not a thing—where "to turn" is that single turn and "to orient" is the destination toward which it is turned (beings and the Buddha-path). An honest disclaimer is owed here: immediately after "to turn, to orient," the commentary subdivides transference into three places toward which it is oriented, and assigns those directions according to a threefold scheme of substance, attribute, and function. But that system—the "three places of transference" and the "substance-attribute-function directions"—is the dedicated subject of a sister volume, and this paper does not enter it; here I take only the plainest layer of the word-sense, "to turn, to orient," and leave aside the direction-assignments that lie beneath it.⁶

Now the architecture. The verse of Samantabhadra's vow-king closes with its last three vows (constantly studying the Buddha, perpetually according with beings, universal transference), and Zongmi parses this closing verse thus:

Because the last three lines are all transference, the eighth and ninth are but distinct senses of transference … This cites the roots of good already transferred. The eighth and ninth gates belong to transference, so it merely cites the prior seven … "transferred to sentient beings and to the Buddha-path" directly clarifies transference.⁷

This parsing repays attention. Zongmi holds that the last three vows are, in function, "all transference"—even constantly studying the Buddha (the eighth) and perpetually according with beings (the ninth) are judged to be "distinct senses" of transference, different facets of it—while the tenth vow alone, "universal transference," is the one that "directly clarifies transference," states it formally and gathers it all up. And the syntax of the closing verse is exactly this: first it "cites the prior seven" (gathering up the roots of good of the seven preceding vows), then with the single line "transferred to sentient beings and to the Buddha-path" it "directly clarifies transference." "Citing the prior seven, then clarifying transference"—this is the commentarial layer's explicit structural reading of transference as that which gathers up all the vows and serves as their pivot: transference first gathers (cites the prior), then turns out (directly clarifies). Here too the passage goes on to subdivide a direction-assignment—"constantly studying the Buddha is oriented toward bodhi; perpetually according with beings is oriented toward beings"—but that has already entered the three-place system, which I likewise cite without entering, taking only the gathering-then-turning structure of "citing the prior seven, then clarifying transference."

Seen together, the word-sense ("to turn, to orient") and the architecture ("citing the prior seven, then clarifying transference"): transference is, in its gloss, "a turning of an orientation," and in its structure, "gathering up the prior vows and turning the whole out." The sense of the hinge has its footing in the sūtra and in the commentary alike.

V. Transference and Western Theories of the Gift-Economy

To turn merit away from the self, toward beings and bodhi, expecting no return—the nearest neighbor to this in Western thought is the long discussion of the gift. Three thinkers happen to line up as a dialogue of deepening difficulty: Mauss lays down the baseline that "the gift must return"; Derrida radicalizes this into the paradox that "a pure gift is impossible"; Marion offers a positive vocabulary of "bracketing the three poles." Transference meets each of the three, and yet falls squarely within none of them.⁸

Marcel Mauss, on exchange in archaic societies: the gift is never given "for free"; it is bound by a threefold obligation—to give, to receive, and above all to reciprocate. To refuse to receive is to refuse the relationship; to receive without reciprocating is to fall into debt and lose standing. In the Maori material, a spirit (hau) within the thing accompanies the giver and compels the thing, in the end, to flow back. The gift can knot a society together precisely because it binds—it generates an ongoing obligation of mutual return rather than closing the account. This is the paradigm statement of the very mechanism transference sets out to break: ordinary giving is the backflow circle of do ut des—"I give so that you may give"—where the hau in the thing pulls the return back to the giver. To name it is to mark out what transference is not. But a caveat is in order: Mauss describes a sociological fact (how reciprocity binds a society), not a normative ceiling; his frame simply has no room for a gift designed to break the backflow circle—for him, "a gift without return is barely a gift at all." Transference is exactly such a structure: merit is deliberately turned so that no hau returns to the giver, no debt is incurred, no return is sought; and transference's "recipient" is not a counterpart who can or must reciprocate—it is beings (under no obligation) and bodhi (not an agent at all). Mauss's triangle (giver → ensouled thing → counter-gift) simply has no "counter-gift" slot within transference; the return-arc is not waived so much as structurally absent.

Derrida pushes this line to its limit. For a gift to be a gift, he argues, it must fall wholly outside the circle of exchange—carrying no return, incurring no debt, generating no obligation. Yet the moment a gift is recognized as a gift (by the recipient, by a bystander, even by the giver's own awareness), it is instantly reabsorbed into the economy of gratitude, memory, and repayment, and so cancelled. A pure gift is therefore structurally impossible: only insofar as it never appears as a gift is it a gift at all. Derrida names with great precision the very thing transference most wants to escape—the backflow to the giver; his insight that any retained awareness of "I have given" rebinds the gift into self-interest is exactly the structure transference dismantles, for the practitioner refuses to retain, to enter into the books, even to register inwardly "my" merit. The paradox that "a gift is cancelled the instant it is held as a gift" is almost the perfect Western analogue to the grasping at the three wheels (giver, gift, recipient) that transference releases.

And yet transference dissolves Derrida's paradox from another direction—this is the load-bearing point of the paper. Derrida's gift is impossible: it self-destructs upon being recognized, leaving only a paradox with no way out. Transference does not require the merit to vanish, nor that it go unrecognized; what it requires is that the self-ward orientation be relinquished. What transference renounces is not the thing (merit is real, effective, even nameable) but the bookkeeping orientation—it turns merit's vector away from the self. Merit can be "seen" as merit in full without re-entering the self's economy, because the operative move lies in releasing "mine," not in hiding the gift. Two further distinctions follow. First, transference is directed—toward beings and toward bodhi—whereas Derrida's gift must be aimless to preserve its purity; transference's directedness is no contamination but precisely its structure (the turn just is "a turning of an orientation," not a leak out of the circle). Second, Derrida's circle is one of interpersonal exchange (person-to-person, "I give so that you may give"); transference operates instead on an inward vector—the dissolution of self-reference—so that "no return" is achieved not by escaping the other's gratitude but by emptying the self-pole. Derrida proves the impossibility of a pure intersubjective gift; transference is not that thing. It is a structured re-orientation whose only casualty is the self-as-accountant.

Jean-Luc Marion supplies the positive face. A phenomenon is most fully itself, he holds, not when it is constituted by consciousness but when it surges up from itself, gives itself, and overflows what intuition can contain; and for the gift, he rescues it from Derrida's bind by bracketing the three poles: bracket the giver (a gift may come from an anonymous or absent giver), bracket the recipient (one may give to an enemy or to no determinate person), bracket the gift-object (one may give a non-thing—time, a word, a presence). What remains once the economy is bracketed is the pure event of givenness, and before this overflow the subject is reconstituted as a "gifted one"—a receiver rather than a self-standing subject. This corresponds strikingly to the "emptiness of the three wheels" on which transference rests—empty giver, empty recipient, empty gift-object—where what remains is the giving of "no giver, no recipient, no merit-thing, only the turn"; and his "subject as the gifted one" echoes the dissolution of the "self-as-accountant" that transference enacts—the practitioner is no longer the proprietor of merit but the place through which merit is turned. Marion is the nearest Western vocabulary for transference's positive face. Still, a caveat: Marion's bracketing is, in the end, a phenomenological-theological operation—givenness finally points toward God, toward revelation, and the gifted subject is constituted by the call of that source. Transference has no such referent—it is not a bracketing oriented toward God but a re-orientation between karma and liberation, and its terms (merit, beings, bodhi) are not saturated phenomena overflowing intuition but ordinary, analyzable contents of practice. Moreover, Marion's gifted subject is passive (gifted, called), whereas the agent of transference is active—transference is itself a vow-act (universal transference is Samantabhadra's tenth vow, a vow the practitioner enacts), a deliberate turning of the merit one has produced. Marion gives the finest vocabulary for "the non-acquisitive remainder once the three wheels are emptied," yet he cannot capture transference's directed, enacted, vow-driven character.

The three line up as one progression: Mauss marks out the backflow circle that transference leaves behind; Derrida presses it to the paradox of the "impossible pure gift"; transference stands as the solution Derrida cannot reach—real, directed, its self-pole emptied—and Marion furnishes the vocabulary for that solution's positive face. In a single sentence: the Western gift is either bound by backflow (Mauss), or pure to the point of impossibility (Derrida), or pure only as passive reception (Marion). Transference is none of these. It is an actively enacted, directed re-orientation that empties one thing only—the bookkeeping self.

VI. Conclusion: Transference Is the Pivot of the Vow

Universal transference is the tenth vow not because it happens to fall tenth in the count, but because it is the hinge that turns the whole of the prior nine vows—and indeed of all merit—toward beings and toward bodhi. The first nine vows accumulate; the tenth turns. Without that one turn, the merit accumulated curls back, in the end, into a private deposit-account of merit, and the "vow" no longer points toward awakening and beings but degenerates into acquisition. What transference turns is an orientation, not a thing; its limit-case—"I will undergo it in their stead," the bearing of beings' suffering—shows it to be substantive altruism; and Chengguan and Zongmi, glossing its words as "to turn, to orient" and parsing its structure as "citing the prior seven, then clarifying transference," both secure this hinge-sense.

What does this mean for practice? It means that the destination of merit lies not in accumulation but in turning. A person may well be diligent day after day, continuous moment to moment; but if, at the far end of each stretch of good conduct, he does not invert its orientation, then that endless line of good conduct will flow back here, to him—settling, depositing, thickening "mine." Transference is not a procedure tacked on outside of practice but the very mechanism that keeps practice facing outward throughout, never collapsing back into the self. What it asks one to release was never merit itself, but the accountant who wants to enter merit under his own name.

With this, the three papers in this volume on the "vow" face of Samantabhadra's conduct can be drawn to a close: vow and conduct are not two (the vow and conduct are the inner and outer faces of one thing); moment-to-moment continuity (the way conduct fills the vow is a tireless, continuous line); and transference as pivot (this continuous vow, in the end, turns as a whole toward beings and bodhi). Taken together, Samantabhadra's vow is not an isolated psychological event but a complete structure—non-dual, continuous, and at last turning.

A final signpost, left unopened. The tenth vow, once expounded, comes to rest at "according with anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi"—and this very phrase is the same destination as the close of the Heart Sūtra: "the Buddhas of the three times, relying on prajñāpāramitā, attain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi." The endpoint of transference is "at last accomplishing unsurpassed awakening"—the step that turns the bodhisattva's own ultimate toward the Buddhas' attainment of bodhi. How this step draws the whole series to its close is treated in detail in this volume's concluding paper; here only the signpost is set, not disclosed. Transference is the pivot of the vow—and the endpoint toward which it turns is, as it happens, the endpoint of the whole path.

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References

Primary Buddhist Sources

• Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Chapter on Entering the Inconceivable Realm of Liberation: The Conduct and Vows of Samantabhadra, fascicle 40; trans. Prajñā (Tang), Taishō vol. 10, No. 293.
• Avataṃsaka-sūtra (Eighty-fascicle), fascicle 23, Chapter on the Ten Dedications; trans. Śikṣānanda (Tang), Taishō vol. 10, No. 279.
• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, Chapter on Rejoicing and Transference, by Nāgārjuna; trans. Kumārajīva (Later Qin), Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509.
• Verses on the Vows and Conduct of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva; trans. Amoghavajra (Tang), Taishō vol. 10, No. 297.
• Sub-commentary to the Separate-Practice Commentary on the Conduct-and-Vows Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Chengguan's Separate-Practice Commentary with Zongmi's accompanying Sub-commentary, Manji Zokuzōkyō vol. 5, No. 229.

Modern Scholarship

• Derrida, Jacques. Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. University of Chicago Press, 1992. (The impossibility of the pure gift; the gift cancelled the moment it is recognized.)
• Marion, Jean-Luc. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford University Press, 2002. (Bracketing the three poles; givenness; the gifted one.)
• Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. W. W. Norton, 1990. (Originally Essai sur le don, 1925.) (The threefold obligation of the gift; hau; the do ut des backflow circle.)

Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Taishō / Zokuzōkyō no.	Compiler / Translator
Conduct-Vows Chapter	Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Chapter on the Conduct and Vows of Samantabhadra (fasc. 40)	T0293《大方廣佛華嚴經》(四十華嚴)Gaṇḍavyūha (40-fascicle, including the Ten Vows)T10, No. 293Prajñā (Tang, 798 CE)Closes with Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows — the textual locus of NIAN Part VII.View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 10)	trans. Prajñā
Ten Dedications Chapter	Avataṃsaka-sūtra (Eighty-fasc., fasc. 23), Chapter on the Ten Dedications	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
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, Chapter on Rejoicing and Transference	T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 25)	Nāgārjuna; trans. Kumārajīva
Vow-Verses	Verses on the Vows and Conduct of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva	T0297《普賢菩薩行願讚》T10, No. 297View on CBETA online reader ↗ (vol. 10)	trans. Amoghavajra
Sub-commentary	Sub-commentary to the Separate-Practice Commentary on the Conduct-and-Vows Chapter	X0229 (vol. 5)	Chengguan's commentary; Zongmi's sub-commentary

Cross-References

This is the third paper of Part VI (Samantabhadra's Vows of Conduct) and seals the part's three-paper arc (vow and conduct are not two / moment-to-moment continuity / transference as pivot), closing the "vow" face of Samantabhadra's conduct. The sense of transference (a turning of an orientation, not the handing over of a thing) and the refutation of the "merit deposit-account / wire-transfer" folk metaphor are established in this volume's opening paper, Vow and Conduct Are Not Two (P13); the structure of the non-duality of vow and conduct (the vow and conduct as inner and outer faces of one thing) is likewise found there. The continuity of vow-power (tirelessness; the power of contemplative practice) belongs to the part's second paper, Moment-to-Moment Continuity (P14), referenced here in a single clause. The three places of transference of the tenth vow, the substance-attribute-function directions, and the distinction of the Pure-Land direction of transference toward rebirth are treated in the Samantabhadra-related chapters of the NIAN volume and are cited here without being unfolded. The carrying-over of "the emptiness of the three wheels" into the vow (the one who vows / what is vowed / the emptiness of the vow) is reserved for a later paper in this volume. The ultimate sense of transference as "the step of attaining bodhi," and the gathering-in of the whole six-gate sequence, are reserved for this volume's concluding paper and its closing treatment; here only a single signpost is set, not disclosed.

Footnotes

1. Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Chapter on Entering the Inconceivable Realm of Liberation: The Conduct and Vows of Samantabhadra, fascicle 40, "as for what is called universal transference … at last accomplish unsurpassed awakening"; trans. Prajñā (Tang), Taishō vol. 10, No. 293, p. 0846a29–b07. ↩

2. Ibid., the verse gathering the seven vows, "the merit of all homage, praise, and offering … transferred to sentient beings and to the Buddha-path," p. 0847a24–25. Note: this line in T0293《大方廣佛華嚴經》(四十華嚴)Gaṇḍavyūha (40-fascicle, including the Ten Vows)T10, No. 293Prajñā (Tang, 798 CE)Closes with Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows — the textual locus of NIAN Part VII.View on CBETA online reader ↗ reads "the merit (fu) of offering" (the merit thus transferred), whereas Zongmi's Sub-commentary cites it as "offering the Buddha (fo)" (X05n0229, p. 0309a08); the verse is quoted here following the T0293《大方廣佛華嚴經》(四十華嚴)Gaṇḍavyūha (40-fascicle, including the Ten Vows)T10, No. 293Prajñā (Tang, 798 CE)Closes with Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows — the textual locus of NIAN Part VII.View on CBETA online reader ↗ reading "fu." ↩

3. Same as ¹, the seal of the tenth vow, "the bodhisattva's transference, so cultivated … fulfill the ocean of Samantabhadra's vows of conduct," p. 0846b07–13. ↩

4. The sense of transference as "a re-direction of a fruit-result's orientation, not the transfer of a thing," together with the refutation of the "merit deposit-account / wire-transfer" folk metaphor, is the subject of this volume's opening paper, resting on the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, Chapter on Rejoicing and Transference (Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509)—"the substance of good dharmas cannot be given to another; what can be given is the fruit-result"—and the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Chapter on the Ten Dedications (Eighty-fascicle Avataṃsaka, fascicle 23; Taishō vol. 10, No. 279)—"only when beings are taken as the object is it called transference." This paper continues on that basis and does not re-establish the point. Note also: 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 ↗'s "Chapter on the Ten Dedications" expounds the ten stages of dedication and is a distinct text from this paper's principal locus, the tenth vow of universal transference in T0293《大方廣佛華嚴經》(四十華嚴)Gaṇḍavyūha (40-fascicle, including the Ten Vows)T10, No. 293Prajñā (Tang, 798 CE)Closes with Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows — the textual locus of NIAN Part VII.View on CBETA online reader ↗; the two are not to be conflated. ↩

5. Sub-commentary to the Separate-Practice Commentary on the Conduct-and-Vows Chapter of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, Chengguan's Separate-Practice Commentary with Zongmi's accompanying Sub-commentary, "the tenth, universal transference … hui means to turn, xiang means to orient," Manji Zokuzōkyō vol. 5, X05n0229, p. 0297c11–13. The source writes the graph in its common variant form; the body of this paper standardizes it throughout as 迴向. ↩

6. The "three places of transference" of the tenth vow (transference to beings, to bodhi, to the real) and the assignment of the "substance-attribute-function directions" are the dedicated subject of the NIAN volume's treatment, cited here by reference and not unfolded. Their precise loci (e.g., X05n0229 p. 0297c13–14 ff.; the ten-gate assignment at p. 0298b16 ff.; the substance-attribute-function directions at p. 0298c19–20) are settled in that volume. ↩

7. Same as ⁵, the parsing of the closing verse, "because the last three lines are all transference … directly clarifies transference," p. 0309a01–13. ↩

8. The three thinkers in this section are set side by side as a logical space, not as a historical development. Note also that Derrida enters this series twice: earlier, in the volume on forgiveness, his account of "the unforgivable" (l'imprescriptible) was drawn upon; here it is his treatment of the gift in Given Time that is taken up—the same author, a different work, a different operation, noted explicitly to forestall any charge of drawing twice on the same material. ↩