Receiving as Gate

I. The Question: How Are Precepts Received?

Anyone who has taken the bodhisattva precepts in the Chinese tradition will recall a scene unlike full ordination. Prātimokṣa full ordination (upasampadā) demands a quorum of preceptors present in the flesh — ten in the central lands, five in the border regions — proceeds through a formal saṅgha act, and confers a precept that is bounded and losable. The bodhisattva precepts, on the testimony of the sūtras, may be received in the absence of any teacher, by one who kneels with palms joined before images of the buddhas and bodhisattvas and receives by self-vow; once received, they "have a law of reception but no law of relinquishment," and they open to anyone at all who can understand the words of the rite. Both are called "receiving the precepts." Why should the two diverge so widely on the single matter of receiving? Where did this open, self-vowed, indestructible mode of reception come from — was it manufactured by the Chinese from nothing, or does it inherit something earlier?

The Pusa yingluo benye jing (菩薩瓔珞本業經, hereafter Yingluo Sūtra) sets the coordinates of the question in a plain sentence:

佛子！若一切眾生初入三寶海以信為本，住在佛家以戒為本。 (Translator's rendering: "Sons of the Buddha! When any being first enters the ocean of the Three Jewels, faith is its root; when one dwells in the household of the Buddha, the precept is its root.")¹

Faith is the gate of entry; the precept is what one dwells in. But how is the precept by which one "dwells in the Buddha's household" itself brought in — how is it received? The same sūtra answers immediately, and the answer has no parallel in the earlier tradition: there is not one mode of receiving but three grades. In the passage given as this paper's epigraph, the Yingluo lays out the higher grade (reception in the present presence of the buddhas and bodhisattvas), the middle grade (reception from a bodhisattva who has already received the precepts and is requested to serve as preceptor), and the lower grade — reception by self-vow before images, when no preceptor can be found within a thousand li — and seals all three with a three-time formula: the past buddhas have taught it, the future buddhas will teach it, the present buddhas teach it now.²

What this paper sets out to clarify is not the content of the bodhisattva precepts — what the ten major and forty-eight minor precepts prohibit — but the other thing this passage discloses: how the precept is received and retained. In other words, it isolates "receiving" itself and treats it as an object worthy of structural analysis, naming it the ordination architecture (受戒架構, or, equivalently, the receiving-architecture). The culmination of the three grades is the teacherless, self-vowed lower grade: not a single word grounds it in the prātimokṣa Vinaya, yet it became the most distinctive feature of the Chinese bodhisattva precepts. This paper argues that around this self-ordination the two sūtras — the Yingluo and the Brahmā's Net — together with the Sui–Tang commentaries, jointly settle into an architecture of reception that is graded, gated, indestructible, and open to all who have the mind for it.

The question follows directly from the previous paper in this volume. P14 analyzed the nine-fold śīla (navavidha-śīla) of the Chapter on Śīla (Śīlapaṭala) of the Yogācārabhūmi's Bodhisattvabhūmi, and fixed the four qualities of intrinsic-nature śīla (svabhāva-śīla) as the definitional root, the first of which is "reception from another" (從他正受) — that the precept must be received from another is the foremost defining function of the bodhisattva precept as a precept.³ If the previous paper asked "what is the structure of the precept," the present one asks "how is the precept received." And when that foremost function, reception-from-another, is suspended in the teacherless situation by self-ordination, by what does the Chinese ordination architecture re-supply the absent "from another"? That is the knot the second half of this paper (§III) sets out to untie.

II. The Textual Basis: The Three Gates, the Three Grades, and the Auspicious-Sign

2.1 "Three Gates of Reception" and the History of the Term Three Clusters

Before unfolding the three grades, the Yingluo first establishes "the root of all precepts" in three members. It is worth marking that the term it uses here is not the later-standard four-character formula three pure precept clusters (三聚淨戒) but "the three gates of reception" (三受門) and "the three embracing receptions" (三攝受, three kinds of precept-receiving):

佛子！今為諸菩薩結一切戒根本，所謂三受門：攝善法戒，所謂八萬四千法門；攝眾生戒，所謂慈悲喜捨化及一切眾生皆得安樂；攝律儀戒，所謂十波羅夷。 (Translator's rendering: "Sons of the Buddha! I now set forth for the bodhisattvas the root of all precepts — namely the three gates of reception: the precept of gathering wholesome dharmas, which is the eighty-four thousand dharma-gates; the precept of embracing beings, which is loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, transforming all beings so that they attain peace; and the precept of restraint, which is the ten pārājika.")⁴

Two points must be stated plainly. First, as to terminology: a search of the whole Yingluo Sūtra turns up the four-character three pure precept clusters exactly zero times; what the sūtra itself uses is "three gates of reception" and "three embracing receptions." Second, as to order: the three members here run gathering-wholesome-dharmas (first) → embracing-beings → restraint (last) — precisely the inverse of the standard sequence of the Pusa dichi jing (Bodhisattvabhūmi), which places the precept of restraint first. The present paper records this only descriptively; it does not adjudicate which recension is "mature" or "corrupt." The divergence in the order of the three members is a difference of textual recension and exegesis, not a defect.

The name three clusters (三聚) and the consolidation of the four-character three pure precept clusters must likewise be distinguished. Zhiyi (智顗, 538–597) of the Sui already uses the name three clusters in his Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts (菩薩戒義疏), names its source, and directly cites the Yingluo to define its content:

此三聚戒名出《方等》、《地持》……《瓔珞經》云：「律儀戒謂十波羅夷，攝善謂八萬四千法門，攝生謂慈悲喜捨化及眾生令得安樂」也。 (Translator's rendering: "The name of these three-cluster precepts comes from the Vaipulya [scriptures] and the Dichi [i.e., the Bodhisattvabhūmi*] … The* Yingluo Sūtra says: 'the precept of restraint is the ten pārājika*; gathering wholesome [dharmas] is the eighty-four thousand dharma-gates; gathering beings is loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, transforming beings and bringing them to peace.'")*⁵

When Zhiyi restates the set he smooths the order to restraint–wholesome–beings (itself again an inversion of the Yingluo's own "wholesome first"); this too is recorded only as a fact. The point to retain is that Zhiyi explicitly cites the Yingluo to define the content of the three clusters — an indigenous Chinese commentarial uptake of this sūtra, to be stated directly without the hedge "this paper holds." The fixed four-character term three pure precept clusters, however, scores zero hits in Zhiyi's Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts; its true consolidation comes only in the Tang. Mingkuang (明曠) of the Tang first shows the locution "the three pure precept clusters — what dharma do they not embrace?" in his Tiantai Commentary on the Bodhisattva Precepts,⁶ and Daoxuan (道宣) likewise writes "in order to complete the three-cluster precept."⁷ Thus: the name "three clusters" is in place by the Sui; the four-character "three pure precept clusters" crystallizes only in the Tang; and all three source-translations (the Yingluo, the Dichi, and the Shanjie) lack the four-character form. The detailed analysis of the content of the three clusters is the home subject of the earlier paper P12; the present paper does not restate it, marking here only its name, order, and term-history as background to the ordination architecture.

2.2 The Three Grades and Self-Ordination

The pivot of the ordination architecture is the three grades of reception (cited as the epigraph above).² The three are divided by whether or not a buddha is present and whether or not a teacher is available: in the present presence of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, one attains the higher grade; after their parinirvāṇa, if within a thousand li there is a bodhisattva already in possession of the precepts who can be requested as preceptor, one attains the middle grade; and after their parinirvāṇa, when no preceptor exists within a thousand li, one kneels with palms joined before their images and receives by self-vow — attaining the lower grade. The end of the three grades is just this self-ordination (zìshì shòu), the self-instituted vow taken with no present conferrer. The sūtra further seals the three with "the past buddhas have already taught it, the future buddhas will teach it, the present buddhas teach it now," establishing the three grades as a stable architecture running through the three times, not a stopgap. Coupled with this, the same sūtra adds that "spouses and the six kinds of kin may serve as mutual preceptors,"⁸ further loosening the qualification of the conferrer: the one who confers the precept need not be a monastic and need hold no particular status.

This set of three grades is no late conjecture. Zhiyi, discussing the reception of the bodhisattva precepts, already enumerates "six base-texts for receiving" — the Brahmā's Net base, the Dichi base, the Gaochang base, the Yingluo base, the newly-composed base, and the Zhizhi base — showing that in his day several modes of receiving the bodhisattva precepts ran in parallel, the Yingluo base among them; and when Zhiyi restates the Yingluo's procedure he says outright: "if, after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, there is no preceptor within a thousand li, and one receives by self-vow before the images of the buddhas and bodhisattvas — this is named the lower-grade precept," in full accord with the lower grade of the sūtra's three grades.⁹ The three grades together with self-ordination were thus, by the Sui, already a current procedure for receiving the bodhisattva precepts in China, not a dead letter on the page.

2.3 The Auspicious-Sign Gate and the Complementarity of the Two Canons

Self-ordination has no present teacher to witness it; by what, then, is its validity judged? The Brahmā's Net Sūtra (梵網經) inserts here a gate — the auspicious sign (好相):

若佛子！佛滅度後，欲以好心受菩薩戒時，於佛菩薩形像前自誓受戒，當七日佛前懺悔，得見好相便得戒。若不得好相，應二七三七乃至一年，要得好相。得好相已，便得佛菩薩形像前受戒。若不得好相，雖佛像前受戒，不得戒。 (Translator's rendering: "Sons of the Buddha! After the Buddha has passed away, when one wishes with a good heart to receive the bodhisattva precepts, one receives them by self-vow before the images of the buddhas and bodhisattvas. One should repent before the Buddha for seven days; on obtaining the sight of an auspicious sign, one then attains the precepts. If one does not obtain the sign, one should continue for two weeks, three weeks, even up to a year, until it is obtained. Having obtained it, one then attains the precepts received before the images. But if one does not obtain the auspicious sign, then though one receive the precepts before the image, one does not attain them.")¹⁰

"If one does not obtain the auspicious sign, then though one receive the precepts before the image, one does not attain them" — this is a hard validity-gate: self-ordination must repent until the sign is seen before it is accomplished. The Brahmā's Net at the same time notes that one receiving before a present preceptor need not see an auspicious sign:

若現前先受菩薩戒，法師前受戒時，不須要見好相。何以故？以是法師師師相授故，不須好相。 (Translator's rendering: "If one receives in the present presence of a preceptor who has already received the bodhisattva precepts, then at the time of receiving before that preceptor one need not see an auspicious sign. Why? Because the preceptor stands in a master-to-master transmission; therefore no auspicious sign is required.")¹¹

A contrast surfaces here: where a teacher is present, the unbroken lineage of master-to-master transmission (師師相授) is itself the witness, so no auspicious sign is needed; where no teacher is present, the lineage is broken, and so the auspicious sign must take its place as the witness. One point must be carefully marked: in the Brahmā's Net root text itself, "auspicious sign" stands as just those two characters; what the auspicious sign is — the specific roster of the Buddha rubbing the crown of one's head, seeing light, seeing flowers, and the like — is supplied by Zhiyi and other commentators,¹² and may not be read back into the root text of the Brahmā's Net. Zhiyi, discussing the Brahmā's Net procedure, already operates this gate: "before an image one receives by self-vow, and must see the auspicious sign to attain it; under master-to-master transmission, one need not see a sign," in full accord with the sūtra.¹²

The complementary division of labor between the Yingluo and the Brahmā's Net is now visible: the Yingluo supplies the graded scaffold of the three receptions / three grades and the framework of the indestructible precept-substance; the Brahmā's Net supplies the auspicious-sign validity-gate and the precept content (the ten major and forty-eight minor precepts — which the present paper marks only as the location of the precept-list, without enumerating, since the mechanism of receiving is not the list of precepts).¹³ The two scriptures are bone and flesh, joined into one ordination architecture. The present paper describes only their complementarity in the two scriptures; it does not rank their priority or merit.

III. The Core Argument: Provenance, the Absence of a Vinaya Precedent, and Mind as Substance

3.1 Self-Ordination Is Not a Chinese Invention from Nothing: The Indic Seed in the Bodhisattvabhūmi

It is commonly held that self-ordination is a Chinese invention without precedent. The claim needs an honest correction. The Indian Yogācārabhūmi's Bodhisattvabhūmi, in its Chapter on Śīla, already contains a fallback procedure for receiving "before an image of the Tathāgata when no teacher is found":

又諸菩薩欲受菩薩淨戒律儀，若不會遇具足功德補特伽羅，爾時應對如來像前，自受菩薩淨戒律儀。應如是受，偏袒右肩，右膝著地……我今欲於十方世界佛菩薩所，誓受一切菩薩學處，誓受一切菩薩淨戒……第二、第三亦如是說。 (Translator's rendering: "Further, when bodhisattvas wish to receive the bodhisattva's pure precept-restraint, if they do not meet a person endowed with the [requisite] qualities, then they should, before an image of the Tathāgata, receive the bodhisattva's pure precept-restraint by themselves. They should receive it thus: baring the right shoulder, placing the right knee on the ground … 'I now wish, before the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the worlds of the ten directions, to receive by vow all the bodhisattva's training-precepts, to receive by vow all the bodhisattva's pure precepts' … The second and third are likewise so declared.")¹⁴

The Pusa dichi jing (Bodhisattvabhūmi, an alternate translation) has a parallel passage: "if there is no such person endowed with the [requisite] qualities … the bodhisattva should receive by oneself before an image of the Buddha."¹⁵ Thus the basic form — no teacher → self-reception before an image → triple declaration — is an existing Indic seed in the Bodhisattvabhūmi, not something the Chinese produced from nothing.

Yet this seed and the formed Chinese architecture differ. The Indian Bodhisattvabhūmi's self-reception has neither an auspicious-sign gate nor a graded hierarchy; it goes no further than a single fallback — "no teacher, then self-receive before an image with the triple declaration." What the Chinese Yingluo and Brahmā's Net add here is precisely: the graded hierarchy (the Yingluo), the auspicious-sign validity-gate (the Brahmā's Net), the indestructibility of the precept-substance, and the near-universal eligibility of the mind-basis. An honest qualification must also be entered: the Pusa shanjie jing (菩薩善戒經, Guṇavarman's rendering, T1582《菩薩善戒經》T30, No. 1582View on CBETA online reader ↗), which belongs to the same Bodhisattvabhūmi lineage, centers its section on receiving upon the master's conferral through "examining the preceptor by eight criteria," and contains no discrete no-teacher self-reception fallback.¹⁶ The self-reception seed thus appears in only two of the three Chinese recensions of the Bodhisattvabhūmi. On this basis the proper framing of the present paper is: the Chinese texts inherited and ritualized an existing Indic seed; they did not invent self-ordination from nothing.

3.2 Three Axes of Reception — Other-Conferred, Losable, Restricted: The Prātimokṣa Contrast

Turning to the Vinaya, the "Chinese-only" character of the ordination architecture grows still clearer. Prātimokṣa full ordination is, on three axes, exactly the reverse of the bodhisattva mode of reception.

First, other-conferred. Prātimokṣa reception is always conferred from another: either by the Buddha's single word "come, monk" (ehi-bhikkhu, 善來比丘), or through the saṅgha's motion-and-three-proclamations act (ñatti-catuttha-kammavācā, 白四羯磨) — ten preceptors in the central lands, five in the borderlands. There is no instance of self-vowed reception. The Buddha's "come, monk" is moreover the Buddha's sole prerogative; the Vinaya explicitly forbids monks to imitate it by declaring it of themselves.¹⁷ A search of the reception-skandhakas (受戒揵度) of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya (Sifenlü, T1428《四分律》T22, No. 1428View on CBETA online reader ↗) and the Mahīśāsaka Vinaya (Wufenlü, T1421《彌沙塞部和醯五分律》T22, No. 1421View on CBETA online reader ↗) yields zero hits for "self-vowed reception / reception before a buddha-image." Second, losable. The prātimokṣa precept can be lost: a pārājika defeat (波羅夷不共住) entails the automatic loss of the precept and removal from communion, and one may also actively relinquish the precepts and return to lay life — the Vinaya even draws fine distinctions between valid and invalid relinquishment.¹⁸ Third, restricted. Prātimokṣa reception sets numerous qualifications: one must be twenty years old, must have parental consent, must not be a debtor, a slave, or a paṇḍaka, with the thirteen [absolute] bars (十三難事) excluding others besides.¹⁹ The same three axes hold for the upasampadā of the Pāli Vinaya (the Mahāvagga), outside the Bodhisattvabhūmi lineage as well: it too is the saṅgha's other-conferred act, not something a self-vow can accomplish.²⁰

On all three axes the ordination architecture stands opposite to the prātimokṣa Vinaya: self-vowable (not necessarily other-conferred), unlosable (a law of reception but no law of relinquishment), universal (open to whoever has the mind to understand, unrestricted by status). This runs exactly parallel to the finding of the earlier papers in this volume that the prajñā and Yogācāra readings of the bodhisattva precepts have "no direct precedent in the prātimokṣa Vinaya." One honesty must be reaffirmed: the Indic Bodhisattvabhūmi's self-reception seed (§3.1) is a bridge to this architecture; but in the Vinaya itself there is indeed no precedent for self-ordination, and the Buddha's teacherless awakening is sui generis and, by the Vinaya's own statement, not to be replicated.¹⁷

3.3 Mind as Precept-Substance: The Ground of Reception

Why can self-ordination be accomplished, and why can universal eligibility stand? The ground the Yingluo offers is "mind as the precept-substance" (以心為戒體). Consider first its indestructibility:

故知菩薩戒有受法而無捨法，有犯不失，盡未來際。 (Translator's rendering: "Thus know that the bodhisattva precepts have a law of reception but no law of relinquishment; once received they are not lost even by transgression, unto the very end of future time.")²¹

And then the reason they are not lost — mind as substance:

一切菩薩凡聖戒盡心為體，是故心亦盡戒亦盡，心無盡故戒亦無盡。六道眾生受得戒，但解語，得戒不失。 (Translator's rendering: "The precepts of all bodhisattvas, ordinary or noble, have mind as their substance throughout; therefore [only] when the mind is exhausted is the precept exhausted, and because the mind is inexhaustible the precept too is inexhaustible. Beings of the six destinies, when they receive the precepts, so long as they understand the words [of the rite], attain the precepts and do not lose them.")²²

If the precept has mind as its substance, then so long as the mind persists the precept is not lost, unto the very end of future time. Two direct conclusions follow. The first, on the side of retaining: "to have [the precept] and transgress is superior to lacking it and never transgressing; one who has the precept and transgresses is [still] a bodhisattva, while one who has never [received] it is an outsider."²³ Once received, the precept-substance is already established; even should one transgress, the substance is not thereby lost, so the transgressor is still called a bodhisattva — exactly the reverse of the prātimokṣa Vinaya's "grave transgression loses the precept." The second, on the side of receiving: with mind as substance, reception requires no particular personal conferrer and no qualification of status; whoever has the mind to understand attains it. The Yingluo thus states its universality plainly: the newly aspiring laymen and laywomen, even those of impaired faculties, even those identities the world holds in low regard and the prātimokṣa code of individual liberation would bar, all "attain the precepts, because all have the mind that turns toward [the path]."²⁴ The Brahmā's Net echoes this universality — "when beings receive the Buddha's precepts, they at once enter the rank of the buddhas; their station being now the same as the Great Awakened One's, they are truly sons of the buddhas"²⁵ — and its sole criterion is understanding: "whoever can understand the preceptor's words receives and attains the precepts in full, and is in every case called one of foremost purity."²⁶ Whether one attains the precepts turns on whether one can understand, not on the category of one's status. Reception thereby becomes an ontological transformation of identity: "one who receives the precepts enters the number of bodhisattvas in the realm of the buddhas and transcends the suffering of birth-and-death through three kalpas; therefore one should receive them."²⁷

A line must be drawn here. The present paper cites "mind as substance" only as the ground of reception — to show why self-ordination and universal eligibility can stand at all (with mind as substance, no personal conferrer and no status-qualification is required). As for what this precept-substance is at the level of being — whether form-dharma, mind-dharma, or a seed in the ālaya store-consciousness, the later threefold debate over the precept-substance — that the present paper does not open; it is reserved for the dedicated papers that follow (the precept-substance studies, P16–P18). Here the paper takes "mind as substance" only in the single sense of "the ground of reception," and stops.

3.4 Self-Ordination Suspends "Reception from Another"; the Auspicious Sign Re-Supplies It

We may now return to the knot left at §I. The previous paper (P14) fixed the first of the four qualities of intrinsic-nature śīla (svabhāva-śīla) in the Bodhisattvabhūmi as "reception from another" (從他正受) — that the precept must be received from another is the defining foremost function of the bodhisattva precept as a precept.³ But self-ordination, structurally, suspends exactly this foremost function: in the teacherless situation there is no other from whom to receive, and "from another" falls away.

This paper proposes that the Brahmā's Net's auspicious sign may be read as the Chinese means of re-supplying that absent "from another" through a substitute witness. Self-ordination suspends the present, personal witness of "from another"; the auspicious sign — the Buddha rubbing one's crown, the sight of light, the sight of flowers, and other supra-personal manifestations of the Buddha — then steps into the vacated position as a trans-personal witness, re-supplying the sense of "from another." Put concisely: where a teacher is present, the lineage of master-to-master transmission is the witness; where no teacher is present, the auspicious sign's responsive manifestation is the witness — the former a personal, present "from another," the latter a supra-personal, sympathetically-responsive "from another." On this reading, the "self" of self-ordination does not in fact cancel "reception from another" but transfers it from the personal teacher to the supra-personal witness of the Buddha. This must be solemnly flagged: the "suspension–resupply" reading is this paper's own interpretive proposal; the Yingluo and Brahmā's Net texts state no such correspondence. Its epistemic level is wholly different from the text-self-evident items — the three grades, the three gates of reception, the indestructible precept-substance, Zhiyi's explicit citation of the Yingluo — which can be directly quoted. Here the paper offers only one possible reading; it does not claim the sūtras say so.

IV. Modern Scholarship and Apocrypha as Positive Evidence

How does modern scholarship handle this ordination architecture? Three representative figures, and the lacuna they leave, can be set out — all engaged through paraphrase, their works being under copyright.

On the side of the receiving-mechanism and the history of ordination stands Paul Groner. His Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School (1984; reprinted 2000) and his series of studies on the Brahmā's Net and self-ordination are the foremost English-language authority on the history of bodhisattva-precept ordination; his contribution is to have established that "receiving" can itself be studied as a self-standing institutional act, with its own machinery (self-ordination, the auspicious sign, the precept-substance) open to analysis.²⁸ Push-back. Groner's center of gravity lies in the downstream Japanese Tendai development — the perfect-and-sudden precepts, and Saichō's replacement of the Sifenlü full-ordination platform with the Brahmā's Net bodhisattva precepts. The present paper pushes the focus back upstream to the Chinese formation at the source: the pairing of the Yingluo and the Brahmā's Net is already, in itself, a self-standing ordination architecture (three grades, self-ordination, the auspicious-sign gate, the indestructible substance), to be read as a Chinese systematization rather than merely as the prehistory of Japanese Tendai.

On the side of Chinese apocrypha and the history of self-ordination stands Funayama Tōru (船山徹). His rigorous source-historical work on the formation of Chinese-composed scriptures and on the history of self-ordination (largely in Japanese) lays the documentary foundation for two of this paper's pillars — that the Yingluo and Brahmā's Net are Chinese compositions, and that self-ordination is a genuine Chinese institutional emergence.²⁹ Push-back. Funayama's treatment is largely oriented to practice-history (when and how self-ordination arose); the present paper goes further, reading self-ordination as the keystone of an integrated architecture — licensable only through the auspicious-sign gate, intelligible only through the indestructible precept-substance — and so not an isolated item of practice-history but the linchpin of the structure. (A citation note: Funayama is engaged here specifically for self-ordination and apocrypha, distinct from the earlier paper P12's use of him for transmission-history, to avoid double-billing.)

On the side of the text, its translation, and its commentarial reception stands A. Charles Muller. His English translation of the Brahmā's Net Sūtra (BDK English Tripiṭaka, 2017) is the standard rendering, and his studies of East Asian commentaries such as Taehyŏn's (太賢) Beommanggyeong gojeokgi establish the Brahmā's Net as a living, repeatedly-exegeted precept-text.³⁰ Push-back. Muller's focus is the Brahmā's Net alone — its translation and reception; the present paper pairs the Brahmā's Net with the Yingluo and shows that the ordination architecture (three grades, self-ordination, the auspicious-sign gate, the indestructible substance) is articulated precisely across the pair: the Yingluo supplies the receiving-grade scaffold that the Brahmā's Net's precept-list presupposes but never itself systematizes.

A lacuna thereby comes into view. There is now an authoritative English translation of the Brahmā's Net, a Japan-Tendai-centered monograph on ordination-history, and source-historical studies of Chinese apocrypha and self-ordination; but there is as yet no sustained English-language study treating the Yingluo–Brahmā's Net receiving-architecture as a single integrated structure — reading the three grades, the self-ordination keystone, the auspicious-sign gate, and the indestructible precept-substance as one Chinese systematization, and clarifying how the Yingluo supplies precisely the graded scaffold the Brahmā's Net lacks. This lacuna runs parallel to the findings of the earlier papers (P12: no structural monograph on the three pure precept clusters; P14: no monograph treating the nine-fold śīla as a structure). The present paper is offered as the structural-analytic supplement at this specific gap.

One thing must finally be set down affirmatively. The Yingluo and the Brahmā's Net are, by scholarly consensus, Chinese compositions (中國撰述, or apocrypha): Sengyou (僧祐), in his Chu sanzang ji ji, already doubted the provenance of the Brahmā's Net, and the Yingluo's ascribed translator is likewise unreliable.³¹ This apocryphal status is, for the argument of this paper, not a defect but positive evidence. For the very innovations of the ordination architecture — receiving made a gate through the three gates of reception, the indestructibility of the precept-substance, self-ordination together with the auspicious sign, even the embedding of the fifty-two stages — are precisely what the Indian Bodhisattvabhūmi lineage either lacks or carries only as a seed, and what comes to full crystallization only in the Chinese-composed Yingluo and Brahmā's Net, together with the indigenous Sui–Tang commentaries of Zhiyi, Mingkuang, and Daoxuan. The mark "Chinese composition" therefore signals not a failed Indian scripture but a genuine episode of Chinese doctrinal creativity. The present paper describes this only, and renders no judgment on authenticity or relative merit. (For the broader history of Vinaya in China, see further the studies of Satō Tatsugen (佐藤達玄); for the nexus of the auspicious sign with sign-vision and the responsive efficacy of repentance, see further the studies of Yamabe Nobuyoshi (山部能宜) on image-visualization and repentance-vision. Both are brief side-references here.)³²

V. Corrections of the Middle Way

❌ Misreading one: that self-ordination is a Chinese invention from nothing. Correction: the Indian Yogācārabhūmi's Bodhisattvabhūmi and the Pusa dichi jing already contain a "no teacher, then self-receive before an image of the Tathāgata" seed (§3.1); what the Chinese added is the graded hierarchy and the auspicious-sign gate, not self-ordination as such. An honest qualification must be entered: the Pusa shanjie jing of the same lineage has no such self-reception fallback, so the seed occupies only two of the three Chinese recensions — its universality should not be overstated.

❌ Misreading two: retrojecting the four-character "three pure precept clusters" into the Yingluo, the Brahmā's Net, or Zhiyi. Correction: the Yingluo uses "three gates of reception" and "three embracing receptions"; Zhiyi (Sui) uses "three clusters"; the three source-translations and Zhiyi's Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts all lack the four-character "three pure precept clusters," whose consolidation is as late as the Tang (Mingkuang, Daoxuan). In quoting the sūtra one must not read the later term back into the root text.

❌ Misreading three: ascribing the specific roster of auspicious signs (the Buddha rubbing one's crown, seeing light, seeing flowers) to the root text of the Brahmā's Net. Correction: the Brahmā's Net root text reads only "auspicious sign," two characters; the specific content of the signs is supplied by Zhiyi and other commentators (§2.3).

⚠️ Hypothesis: that "the auspicious sign re-supplies reception-from-another" is this paper's interpretive reading, not self-evident in the text. What §3.4 argues — that self-ordination suspends "from another," and the auspicious sign re-supplies it — is a reading this paper proposes; the Yingluo and Brahmā's Net contain no such statement. Its level differs from the directly-quotable, text-self-evident items (the three grades, the indestructible precept-substance, and the rest), and the reader should keep the two apart.

⚠️ Boundary: "mind as substance" is taken here only as "the ground of reception," not as an entry into the ontology of the precept-substance. Whether the precept-substance is form-dharma, mind-dharma, or a seed of the store-consciousness (the later threefold debate) is the home subject of the papers that follow (P16–P18); the present paper cites "mind as substance" only to explain why self-ordination and universal eligibility can stand, and goes no further into ontology.

⚠️ Descriptive discipline: no ranking, no adjudication of present-day disputes. The present paper describes only the complementarity of the Yingluo and the Brahmā's Net, ranking neither in priority or merit; on the inverted order of the three members it speaks only descriptively, judging no recension "mature" or "corrupt"; and on the various contemporary controversies over receiving the bodhisattva precepts, self-ordination, and dual-saṅgha ordination, this paper is a descriptive-historical study, neither adjudicating the concrete practice of any present-day saṅgha nor naming any living community.

VI. Conclusion

The essential. The Yingluo (with the Brahmā's Net as companion) crystallizes an ordination architecture distinctive to China: three grades of reception (culminating in the lower grade of self-ordination), an indestructible precept-substance (with mind as substance), and a near-universally receivable mind-basis (attained by whoever understands) — together forming an ontology of "reception" with no precedent in the prātimokṣa Vinaya. Yet this architecture was not built from nothing: it inherits the Bodhisattvabhūmi's seed of "no teacher, then self-reception before an image," and what the Chinese add is the graded hierarchy and the auspicious-sign validity-gate. This paper further proposes a reading: the auspicious sign may be understood as the substitute witness re-supplying the "reception from another" that self-ordination suspends. The apocryphal, Chinese-composed status of this architecture is just where its value lies — it is a genuine episode of Chinese doctrinal creativity, settling progressively across the two scriptures and the indigenous Sui–Tang commentaries.

The contemplative bearing. This architecture bears on the practitioner in three ways. First, receiving the precepts is not merely a rite but an ontological transformation of identity — "when beings receive the Buddha's precepts, they at once enter the rank of the buddhas," "[they] enter the number of bodhisattvas in the realm of the buddhas"; at the moment of reception one already stands within the company of the buddhas' children. Second, since the precept-substance "has a law of reception but no law of relinquishment," the deep sense of "not lost even by transgression" is not a license to transgress but this: even should one transgress, the substance is not thereby severed, so one should restore purity through repentance and continue thought after thought, rather than abandon the name of bodhisattva over a single breach — "one who has the precepts and transgresses is [still] a bodhisattva; one who never receives them is an outsider" names exactly this non-retreating mind. Third, the gate of reception is open to all who have the mind to understand, unrestricted by category of status; the receiving of this precept takes equality and the mind that turns toward the path as its gate, not the world's hierarchies of high and low.

An open question. If "the precepts of all bodhisattvas, ordinary or noble, have mind as their substance throughout," then what, at the level of being, is this "mind" that serves as the precept-substance? Is it the perfuming of a form-dharma? The continuity of a mind-dharma? Or a seed within the store-consciousness? This question of being the present paper deliberately suspends; it is precisely what the threefold debate over the precept-substance in the papers that follow (P16–P18) will open. China grew a single Indian fallback procedure into a great edifice of reception — three-staged, gated by the auspicious sign, founded on an indestructible substance; and what the "mind" that bears this edifice is finally made of is the road of the next stage.

有受法而無捨法，有犯不失，盡未來際。 (Translator's rendering: "A law of reception but no law of relinquishment; once received, not lost even by transgression, unto the very end of future time.")²¹

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References

Primary Buddhist Sources

• Pusa yingluo benye jing (菩薩瓔珞本業經, Yingluo Sūtra); ascribed to Zhu Fonian of the Later Qin; Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485.
• Fanwang jing (梵網經, Brahmā's Net Sūtra, "Chapter on the Mind-Ground Precepts of the Bodhisattva"); ascribed to Kumārajīva; Taishō vol. 24, No. 1484.
• Yogācārabhūmi, Bodhisattvabhūmi, Chapter on Śīla (瑜伽師地論·菩薩地〈戒品〉); translated by Xuanzang of the Tang; Taishō vol. 30, No. 1579.
• Pusa dichi jing (菩薩地持經, Bodhisattvabhūmi); translated by Dharmakṣema of the Northern Liang; Taishō vol. 30, No. 1581.
• Pusa shanjie jing (菩薩善戒經); translated by Guṇavarman of the Liu-Song; Taishō vol. 30, No. 1582.
• Sifenlü (四分律, Dharmaguptaka Vinaya); translated by Buddhayaśas et al. of the Later Qin; Taishō vol. 22, No. 1428.
• Wufenlü (五分律, Mahīśāsaka Vinaya); translated by Buddhajīva et al. of the Liu-Song; Taishō vol. 22, No. 1421.
• Pusajie yishu (菩薩戒義疏, Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts); spoken by Zhiyi, recorded by Guanding, of the Sui; Taishō vol. 40, No. 1811.
• Tiantai pusajie shu (天台菩薩戒疏, Tiantai Commentary on the Bodhisattva Precepts); abridged and supplemented by Mingkuang of the Tang; Taishō vol. 40, No. 1812.
• Sifenlü shanfan buque xingshi chao (四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔); by Daoxuan of the Tang; Taishō vol. 40, No. 1804.
• Vinaya Piṭaka, Mahāvagga (PTS edition, Vin i).

Modern Scholarship

• Groner, Paul. Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School. Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series, 1984; repr. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000. (And his studies on the Brahmā's Net, self-ordination, and the perfect-and-sudden precepts. Paywalled / in copyright; engaged through paraphrase.)
• Muller, A. Charles. The Brahmā's Net Sūtra. BDK English Tripiṭaka, Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai America, 2017. (In copyright; engaged through paraphrase.)
• Funayama Tōru (船山徹). Studies on Chinese-composed scriptures and the history of self-ordination (Japanese). (Engaged through paraphrase.)
• Satō Tatsugen (佐藤達玄). Studies on the Vinaya in Chinese Buddhism (Japanese). (Engaged through paraphrase.)
• Yamabe, Nobuyoshi (山部能宜). Studies on image-visualization, repentance, and the responsive efficacy of signs. (Engaged through paraphrase.)

Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Author / Translator	Taishō No.	Use in this paper
Yingluo	Pusa yingluo benye jing	(attrib.) Zhu Fonian, Later Qin	T24, No. 1485《菩薩瓔珞本業經》T24, No. 1485View on CBETA online reader ↗	Principal anchor: three grades, self-ordination, three gates of reception, indestructible precept-substance, mind as substance, universal eligibility
Fanwang	Fanwang jing (Brahmā's Net)	(attrib.) Kumārajīva	T24, No. 1484《梵網經》Brahmajāla-sūtra (Mahāyāna Bodhisattva-precepts)T24, No. 1484Trad. attrib. Kumārajīva — modern scholarship: Chinese composition, mid-5th c. CEBodhisattva-precepts source treated in NIAN P15 (見相得戒).View on CBETA online reader ↗	Companion anchor: the auspicious-sign gate, master-to-master transmission, the reception verse, "whoever understands the preceptor's words"
Bodhisattvabhūmi	Yogācārabhūmi, Bodhisattvabhūmi, Chapter on Śīla	trans. Xuanzang, Tang	T30, No. 1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	The Indic self-reception seed; the first quality of svabhāva-śīla, "reception from another"
Dichi	Pusa dichi jing	trans. Dharmakṣema, N. Liang	T30, No. 1581《菩薩地持經》T30, No. 1581View on CBETA online reader ↗	Parallel to the self-reception seed; prototype of the three-cluster terminology
Shanjie	Pusa shanjie jing	trans. Guṇavarman, Liu-Song	T30, No. 1582《菩薩善戒經》T30, No. 1582View on CBETA online reader ↗	Record of no self-reception fallback (honest cross-check)
Sifenlü	Dharmaguptaka Vinaya	trans. Buddhayaśas et al., Later Qin	T22, No. 1428《四分律》T22, No. 1428View on CBETA online reader ↗	Vinaya contrast: other-conferred / losable / restricted reception
Wufenlü	Mahīśāsaka Vinaya	trans. Buddhajīva et al., Liu-Song	T22, No. 1421《彌沙塞部和醯五分律》T22, No. 1421View on CBETA online reader ↗	Mahīśāsaka contrast: "come, monk" the Buddha's alone; motion-and-three-proclamations
Yishu	Pusajie yishu	spoken by Zhiyi, recorded by Guanding, Sui	T40, No. 1811《菩薩戒義疏》T40, No. 1811View on CBETA online reader ↗	Indigenous principal anchor: Zhiyi's explicit Yingluo citation defining the three clusters, the six receiving-texts, self-ordination, the auspicious-sign gate
Jieshu	Tiantai pusajie shu	abr. & suppl. by Mingkuang, Tang	T40, No. 1812《天台菩薩戒疏》T40, No. 1812View on CBETA online reader ↗	Tang consolidation of the four-character "three pure precept clusters"
Xingshi chao	Sifenlü shanfan buque xingshi chao	Daoxuan, Tang	T40, No. 1804《四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔》T40, No. 1804View on CBETA online reader ↗	A further Tang-era instance of the "three-cluster precept" term

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Series Cross-References

Within Volume IV SĪLA, preceding

• SILA-P12 The Three-Body Architecture of Bodhisattva Sīla — the home subject for the detailed analysis of the content of the three clusters; the present paper takes only their name, order, and term-history as background, and does not restate the content of the three clusters.
• SILA-P14 The Bodhisattvabhūmi Chapter on Śīla — the home subject for the four qualities of svabhāva-śīla and the foremost quality, "reception from another"; the present paper makes "reception from another" the hinge of P14↔P15 (§3.4).
• (SILA-P13 Nāgārjuna on Śīla-Pāramitā — not cross-referenced here; a different axis.)

Within Volume IV SĪLA, forthcoming

• SILA-P16–P18 The Precept-Substance Studies — the home subject for the ontology of the precept-substance (form / mind / seed, the threefold debate) toward which the present paper's "mind as substance" only points; the ontological question is forward-referenced here (§3.3, and the open question of §VI).

Cross-paper recurring anchors

• The pattern "no Pāli / Vinaya precedent for a Mahāyāna structure" (P13's pāramī-framing, P14's nine-fold taxonomy, P15's self-ordination).
• The two-tier honesty discipline of asymmetric mapping (the interpretive vs. the text-self-evident).

Cross-volume polyphonic anchors

• The bodhisattva-vow and receiving motifs across the NIAN and DĀNA gates — the moment of "receiving" as an ontological turn — where a clean one-line anchor exists; not forced.

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CBETA collation: The primary Chinese textual anchors of the present paper — the Pusa yingluo benye jing (T1485《菩薩瓔珞本業經》T24, No. 1485View on CBETA online reader ↗, the three grades and three-time seal at p. 1020c04–14, the three gates of reception at p. 1020b29–c03, the indestructibility and mind-as-substance passages at p. 1021b07–22, universal eligibility at p. 1020b23–25); the Fanwang jing (T1484《梵網經》Brahmajāla-sūtra (Mahāyāna Bodhisattva-precepts)T24, No. 1484Trad. attrib. Kumārajīva — modern scholarship: Chinese composition, mid-5th c. CEBodhisattva-precepts source treated in NIAN P15 (見相得戒).View on CBETA online reader ↗, the auspicious-sign gate and master-to-master waiver at p. 1006c05–13, "enter the rank of the buddhas" at p. 1004a19–21, "whoever understands the preceptor's words" at p. 1004b09–10); the Yogācārabhūmi / Bodhisattvabhūmi (T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, the self-reception seed at p. 0521b04–18, "reception from another" at p. 0510c16, trans. Xuanzang); the Pusa dichi jing (T1581《菩薩地持經》T30, No. 1581View on CBETA online reader ↗, the parallel self-reception passage at p. 0917a20–28, Dharmakṣema); the Pusa shanjie jing (T1582《菩薩善戒經》T30, No. 1582View on CBETA online reader ↗, the eight-criteria preceptor-examination at p. 0992a29–b20, Guṇavarman); the Sifenlü (T1428《四分律》T22, No. 1428View on CBETA online reader ↗) and Wufenlü (T1421《彌沙塞部和醯五分律》T22, No. 1421View on CBETA online reader ↗) reception-skandhakas; and the commentaries Pusajie yishu (T1811《菩薩戒義疏》T40, No. 1811View on CBETA online reader ↗, Zhiyi / Guanding, Sui), Tiantai pusajie shu (T1812《天台菩薩戒疏》T40, No. 1812View on CBETA online reader ↗, Mingkuang, Tang), and Sifenlü shanfan buque xingshi chao (T1804《四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔》T40, No. 1804View on CBETA online reader ↗, Daoxuan, Tang) — have all been collated against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka (Taishō base text). The Pāli Mahāvagga material (PTS Vin i) is engaged only through scholarly paraphrase and is never quoted. Modern scholarship — Paul Groner (Saichō, 1984 / 2000), A. Charles Muller (The Brahmā's Net Sūtra, BDK 2017), Funayama Tōru, Satō Tatsugen, and Yamabe Nobuyoshi — is in copyright and engaged through paraphrase; no verbatim citation.

Author: 釋慧鏡 Shi Huijing Project: Pointing at the Moon · Six Practice Gates License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Repository: github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates

Pointing at the Moon · The Six Practice Gates · Volume IV SĪLA · Paper 15 · Part IV close · May 2026

Footnotes

1. Pusa yingluo benye jing (Yingluo Sūtra), fascicle [下]: "When one first enters the ocean of the Three Jewels, faith is the root; when one dwells in the household of the Buddha, the precept is the root" — marking faith as the gate of entry and the precept as the abode. Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1020b22–23. ↩

2. Pusa yingluo benye jing, fascicle [下], the three grades of reception (higher = present-presence reception, middle = preceptor reception, lower = self-ordination) sealed by the three-time formula. Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1020c04–c14. This is the principal anchor of the ordination architecture in the present paper. ↩ ↩²

3. Yogācārabhūmi, fascicle 40, Chapter on Śīla of the Bodhisattva Ground, the first of the four qualities of intrinsic-nature śīla being "reception from another." Taishō vol. 30, No. 1579, p. 0510c16. See in detail the previous paper, P14. ↩ ↩²

4. Pusa yingluo benye jing, fascicle [下], "namely the three gates of reception: the precept of gathering wholesome dharmas … of embracing beings … of restraint." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1020b29–c03. The sūtra's own term is "three gates of reception / three embracing receptions"; the four-character "three pure precept clusters" scores zero hits in the whole sūtra; the order of the three members runs gathering-wholesome → embracing-beings → restraint, inverting the standard sequence of the Dichi. ↩

5. Zhiyi, Pusajie yishu (Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts), fascicle [上], "the name of these three-cluster precepts comes from the Vaipulya and the Dichi … the Yingluo Sūtra says …" Taishō vol. 40, No. 1811 (spoken by Zhiyi of the Sui, recorded by Guanding), p. 0563b27 + p. 0563c06. Zhiyi explicitly cites the Yingluo to define the content of the three clusters — direct evidence of indigenous Chinese commentarial uptake. ↩

6. Mingkuang, Tiantai pusajie shu (Tiantai Commentary on the Bodhisattva Precepts), fascicle [下], "seeking the three pure precept clusters for the sake of unsurpassed awakening — the three pure precept clusters, what dharma do they not embrace?" Taishō vol. 40, No. 1812 (abridged and supplemented by Mingkuang of the Tang), p. 0599c13–14; also p. 0587c08, "truly receiving the three pure precept clusters." This is evidence of the Tang consolidation of the four-character term. Note: T1812《天台菩薩戒疏》T40, No. 1812View on CBETA online reader ↗ is ascribed to "the Tiantai monk Mingkuang of the Tang, abridging and supplementing," and is not a work of Zhiyi; it must be distinguished from Zhiyi's T1811《菩薩戒義疏》T40, No. 1811View on CBETA online reader ↗. ↩

7. Daoxuan, Sifenlü shanfan buque xingshi chao (Abridged and Supplemented Commentary on Practice from the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya), "now, in raising the aspiration to receive the precepts, in order to complete the three-cluster precept, one approaches the three gates of liberation." Taishō vol. 40, No. 1804, p. 0026a29. A further Tang-era instance of the "three-cluster precept" term. ↩

8. Pusa yingluo benye jing, fascicle [下], the dictum that "spouses and the six kinds of kin may serve as mutual preceptors," loosening the qualification of the conferrer. Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1021b10–13. ↩

9. Zhiyi, Pusajie yishu, the six base-texts for receiving (the Brahmā's Net base, the Dichi base, the Gaochang base, the Yingluo base, the newly-composed base, the Zhizhi base), p. 0568a06; "if, after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, there is no preceptor within a thousand li, and one receives by self-vow before the images of the buddhas and bodhisattvas — this is named the lower-grade precept," p. 0569a04. Taishō vol. 40, No. 1811. Zhiyi states directly the lower-grade self-ordination of the Yingluo's three grades. ↩

10. Brahmā's Net Sūtra (Fanwang jing), fascicle [下], "before the images of the buddhas and bodhisattvas one receives by self-vow … repenting before the Buddha for seven days, on obtaining the auspicious sign one then attains the precepts … if one does not obtain the sign, then though one receive before the image, one does not attain [them]." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1484, p. 1006c05–10. The auspicious sign is the hard validity-gate of self-ordination. ↩

11. Brahmā's Net Sūtra, fascicle [下], "at the time of receiving before a preceptor one need not see an auspicious sign … because the preceptor stands in a master-to-master transmission, no auspicious sign is required." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1484, p. 1006c10–13. The lineage-witness of master-to-master transmission stands opposite the responsive-sign witness of the auspicious sign. ↩

12. In the root text of the Brahmā's Net the "auspicious sign" is only those two characters; the specific signs (the Buddha rubbing one's crown, seeing light, seeing flowers) are supplied by Zhiyi and other commentators and do not belong to the root text. See Zhiyi, Pusajie yishu, "before an image one receives by self-vow and must see the auspicious sign to attain it; under master-to-master transmission, one need not see a sign." Taishō vol. 40, No. 1811, p. 0577a11. ↩ ↩²

13. Brahmā's Net Sūtra, fascicle [下], the ten major and forty-eight minor precepts run from p. 1004b11 to p. 1009b25; the present paper marks this only as the location of the precept-list and does not enumerate it. Taishō vol. 24, No. 1484. ↩

14. Yogācārabhūmi, fascicle 40, Chapter on Śīla of the Bodhisattva Ground, "if one does not meet a person endowed with the [requisite] qualities, then before an image of the Tathāgata one should receive the bodhisattva's pure precept-restraint by oneself … the second and third are likewise so declared." Taishō vol. 30, No. 1579 (trans. Xuanzang), p. 0521b04–18. The Indic self-reception seed of the Bodhisattvabhūmi, without an auspicious sign and without grades. ↩

15. Pusa dichi jing, the parallel passage, "if there is no such person endowed with the [requisite] qualities … the bodhisattva should receive by oneself before an image of the Buddha." Taishō vol. 30, No. 1581 (trans. Dharmakṣema), p. 0917a20–28. ↩

16. Pusa shanjie jing, whose section on receiving centers upon the master's conferral through "examining the preceptor by eight criteria," with no discrete self-reception fallback. Taishō vol. 30, No. 1582 (trans. Guṇavarman), p. 0992a29–b20. The self-reception seed thus occupies only two of the three Chinese recensions of the Bodhisattvabhūmi. ↩

17. Prātimokṣa full ordination is always other-conferred (the Buddha's "come, monk" or the saṅgha's motion-and-three-proclamations act); the Buddha's "come, monk" is the Buddha's sole prerogative, and the Vinaya explicitly forbids monks to imitate it by self-declaration. See the Wufenlü (Mahīśāsaka Vinaya), fascicle 016, Taishō vol. 22, No. 1421; and the Sifenlü (Dharmaguptaka Vinaya), No. 1428. "Self-vowed reception / reception before a buddha-image" scores zero hits in the reception-skandhakas. ↩ ↩²

18. The Vinaya's mechanisms of precept-loss: automatic loss with removal from communion upon pārājika defeat, and the active relinquishment of the precepts to return to lay life; the Vinaya further distinguishes valid from invalid relinquishment. See the Sifenlü, fascicle 001, Taishō vol. 22, No. 1428. ↩

19. The Vinaya's qualifications for reception: age twenty, parental consent, not a debtor, not a slave, not a paṇḍaka, with the thirteen bars excluding others. See the reception-skandhaka of the Sifenlü, Taishō vol. 22, No. 1428. ↩

20. The Pāli Vinaya's Mahāvagga passages on upasampadā likewise present it as the saṅgha's other-conferred act, not accomplished by self-vow (PTS Vin i 12 / 22 / 56, conveyed through scholarly paraphrase, not directly quoted). ↩

21. Pusa yingluo benye jing, fascicle [下], "thus know that the bodhisattva precepts have a law of reception but no law of relinquishment; not lost even by transgression, unto the very end of future time." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1021b07–08. ↩ ↩²

22. Pusa yingluo benye jing, fascicle [下], "the precepts of all bodhisattvas, ordinary or noble, have mind as their substance throughout … because the mind is inexhaustible the precept too is inexhaustible. Beings of the six destinies, on receiving the precepts, so long as they understand the words, attain them and do not lose them." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1021b20–22. The textual root of "mind as precept-substance"; the present paper takes it only in the sense of "the ground of reception." ↩

23. Pusa yingluo benye jing, fascicle [下], "to have [the precept] and transgress is superior to lacking it and never transgressing; one who has the precepts and transgresses is [still] a bodhisattva, one who never [receives] them is an outsider." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1021b15–16. ↩

24. Pusa yingluo benye jing, fascicle [下], stating that the newly aspiring laymen and laywomen, even those of impaired faculties, even the various identities held in low regard by the world and barred by the prātimokṣa code of individual liberation, all "attain the precepts, because all have the mind that turns toward [the path]." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1020b23–25. The original text lists various identities by name; out of tact toward the living tradition, the present paper summarizes the category as "the various identities barred by the code of individual liberation," preserving the sense without enumerating them one by one. ↩

25. Brahmā's Net Sūtra, fascicle [下], "when beings receive the Buddha's precepts, they at once enter the rank of the buddhas; their station being now the same as the Great Awakened One's, they are truly sons of the buddhas." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1484, p. 1004a19–21. ↩

26. Brahmā's Net Sūtra, fascicle [下], "whoever can understand the preceptor's words receives and attains the precepts in full, and is in every case called one of foremost purity." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1484, p. 1004b09–10. The criterion of attainment is understanding, not category of status. ↩

27. Pusa yingluo benye jing, fascicle [下], "one who receives the precepts enters the number of bodhisattvas in the realm of the buddhas and transcends the suffering of birth-and-death through three kalpas; therefore one should receive them." Taishō vol. 24, No. 1485, p. 1021b13–14. ↩

28. Paul Groner, Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School (Berkeley Buddhist Studies, 1984; repr. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000), and his various studies on the Brahmā's Net, self-ordination, and the perfect-and-sudden precepts. The present paper draws on his account of the receiving-mechanism and the history of ordination, engaged through paraphrase (the originals being under copyright). ↩

29. Funayama Tōru (船山徹), studies on the formation of Chinese-composed scriptures and the history of self-ordination (largely in Japanese). The present paper draws on his source-historical work on Chinese composition and self-ordination; this use is distinguished from the earlier paper P12's use of him for "transmission-history," to avoid double-billing. ↩

30. A. Charles Muller, The Brahmā's Net Sūtra (BDK English Tripiṭaka, Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai America, 2017), and his studies of East Asian commentaries such as Taehyŏn's Beommanggyeong gojeokgi. The present paper draws on his account of the Brahmā's Net's translation and commentarial reception. ↩

31. The scholarly consensus holds the Yingluo and Brahmā's Net to be Chinese compositions (apocrypha): Sengyou's Chu sanzang ji ji already doubts the provenance of the Brahmā's Net, and the Yingluo's ascribed translator is likewise unreliable. The present paper takes "Chinese composition" as positive evidence of Chinese doctrinal creativity, describing only, and rendering no judgment on authenticity or relative merit. ↩

32. For the background to the history of Vinaya in China, see further the studies of Satō Tatsugen (佐藤達玄) on Chinese Buddhist precepts (Japanese); for the nexus of the auspicious sign with sign-vision, image-visualization repentance, and responsive efficacy, see further the studies of Yamabe Nobuyoshi (山部能宜) on image-visualization and repentance-vision. Both are brief side-references in the present paper. ↩