The Four Peaceful Practices of the Lotus

I. Carrying Forward: Of What Kind Is the Precept Within the Gateway of Perfect Penetration?

This volume has, throughout, been pressing one question: the relation of the precept to concentration. The earlier Ethics as the Ground of Samādhi (SĪLA P24) read, in the latter part of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the four pure and clear instructions, and drew from them that the precept is the ground of concentration—its stone foundation. The preceding paper, Sīla in the Twenty-Five Gateways of Perfect Penetration (SĪLA P25), turned back to the earlier Gateways chapter of the same sūtra and saw that the precept is not merely a ground but is itself one gateway of perfect penetration into concentration—the precept is one gate among the gates of samādhi. Yet that paper closed with an unanswered, open question: granted that the precept is one gate among the gateways, what kind of precept does that gate contain?

The preceding paper had already laid out two terms to mark the boundary. The first is the restriction-precept: a precept in the form of prohibition, of "thou shalt not," whose face is a list of things to be avoided. The second is the practice-precept: a precept that unfolds along the course of cultivation and draws beings toward the Way, whose face is not a roster of prohibitions but a positive mode of cultivation in which one is to abide. P25 threw out the difference between these two as an open question, and noted that the Lotus Sūtra's "Chapter on Peaceful Practices" treats precisely this boundary by way of "the sphere of action and the sphere of intimacy." The present paper takes up that thread and answers it.

One thing must be set straight at the outset: this step is a change of scripture, not a continuation of fascicles. The previous two papers had their home ground in the Śūraṅgama; the present paper moves to the Lotus's "Chapter on Peaceful Practices." What is carried forward is not the textual sequence of any one sūtra but a single question—of what kind is the precept within the gateway of perfect penetration. The paper's answer is: it is a practice-precept. And the so-called restriction-precept is not some other precept erected outside the practice-precept; it is one face turned out from within the practice-precept. Below: first the structure of the chapter (§II), then three proofs establishing the claim (§III), then three mirrors of modern scholarship and the blank they share (§IV), then the middle-way corrections (§V), and finally the conclusion and the handoff to Huayan (§VI).

II. The Structure of the Chapter: The Four Peaceful Practices and the Two Faces of "Sphere of Action / Sphere of Intimacy"

The whole "Chapter on Peaceful Practices" is one answer to one question. Mañjuśrī asks: how may a bodhisattva, in the latter, hostile age, preach this scripture? (Mañjuśrī figures here only as the one who poses the question; his deeper Prajñā import belongs to another paper and is not unfolded here.) The Buddha's reply does not open with a string of "thou shalt not." It opens with a positive verb:

The Buddha said to Mañjuśrī: "If a bodhisattva-mahāsattva would, in the latter, hostile age, preach this scripture, he should abide in four things. First, abiding in the bodhisattva's sphere of action and sphere of intimacy, he can expound this scripture for the sake of beings."¹

Mark the verb that governs the whole passage: it is "should abide in," not "should keep away from." What the Buddha sets out is not a list of prohibitions but a mode of cultivation in which one is to abide. The four peaceful practices are the four "abidings"—of body, of speech, of mind, and of vow; and the bodily peaceful practice divides again into two faces—the sphere of action and the sphere of intimacy. This paper's claim hangs on the tension between these two faces.

The sphere of action, on its face, is phrased in wholly positive terms:

"If a bodhisattva-mahāsattva abides in the stage of patient endurance—gentle, agreeable, and not given to sudden violence, his mind also unstartled; and if again he does nothing toward the dharmas yet contemplates the dharmas in their true mark, neither acting nor discriminating—this is called the bodhisattva-mahāsattva's sphere of action."²

Abiding in patient endurance; contemplating the dharmas in their true mark—there is not one prohibitive "do not" here; it is all the positive content of "should abide in." Were the precept to stop here, that it is a practice-precept would be beyond dispute. The difficulty arises with the sphere of intimacy. Here the phrasing turns abruptly to the negative, a long string of "do not draw near":

"The bodhisattva-mahāsattva does not draw near to kings, princes, great ministers, or heads of office; does not draw near to the various heterodox wanderers, Brāhman ascetics, or Nirgranthas… nor again draw near to caṇḍālas… Yet should such persons come to him at times, he preaches the Dharma for them, with nothing hoped-for… He delights ever in sitting in meditation, in a quiet place gathering and disciplining his mind. Mañjuśrī! This is called the first sphere of intimacy."³

This string of "do not draw near" reads exactly like the prohibition-checklist of a restriction-precept. But two things must not be overlooked. First, this whole string of prohibitions is gathered under that single foregoing "should abide in"—it is not a separately erected master-list of prohibitions but the content inside the one positive mode, "abiding in the sphere of action and sphere of intimacy." Second, the list is immediately followed by an escape clause: "Yet should such persons come to him at times, he preaches the Dharma for them, with nothing hoped-for." This clause is decisive: if the very ones to be avoided do come before him, the bodhisattva still preaches the Dharma for them—only "with nothing hoped-for." Plainly, what is truly barred here is not the outward contact (contact made, he yet preaches) but the inward grasping—that "hoping-for." The object of restriction shifts from outer to inner, and the prohibition-checklist is thereby gathered into an inward discipline of the mind.

The second sphere of intimacy is more purely positive still, with not one prohibitive "do not" remaining:

"Furthermore, the bodhisattva-mahāsattva contemplates that all dharmas are empty, their true mark—not inverted, not moving, not regressing, not turning, like empty space, without own-being… He delights always in contemplating such a mark of the dharmas. This is called the bodhisattva-mahāsattva's second sphere of intimacy."⁴

Finally, the verse pronounces the two—sphere of action and sphere of intimacy—to be a single matter:

These, then, are named the sphere of action and the sphere of intimacy; by these two spheres one is able to preach in peace.⁵

The three words "enables peaceful preaching" are the keystone of the whole chapter. They judge the sphere of action and the sphere of intimacy to be that very competence by which the dharma-preacher, in a hostile latter age, "can preach, and preach in peace." The precept here is not an external restriction upon preaching (not "the rules one is obliged to keep in order to preach"); it is the very capacity and the abiding that make the preacher able to preach, and to preach in peace. The whole frame of the chapter is the answer to "in the latter, hostile age, how can one preach this scripture"; the precept here is no abstract code but the preacher's very mode of being—of dwelling secure, of not regressing, of being able to give light—in an age of hostility. This is the argumentative engine of the practice-precept.

III. The Core Argument: Restriction Turned Out from Within Practice

The foregoing section read out the structure; this section sets out three proofs to establish the claim that "the precept within the gateway of perfect penetration is a practice-precept, and that the restriction-precept is turned out from within practice."

First: the practice-precept / restriction-precept pair is exactly the indigenous counterpart of the Vinaya's two upholdings, precept-by-restraint and precept-by-action. This distinction is not the present paper's invention; the Vinaya tradition has long possessed it. Daoxuan, in the chapter on upholding-and-breaching of his Xingshichao (the Abridged and Supplemented Commentary on Practical Observance of the Four-Part Vinaya), sets out the two upholdings plainly:

"As for precept-by-restraint: by skillful means and right mindfulness one guards what was originally received, forbidding and warding off body and speech so as to commit no evils—this is termed 'restraint.' Restraining without transgression, the precept-essence is luminous and pure; conforming to what was originally received, this is termed 'upholding.' Upholding is accomplished through restraint—hence 'the precept upheld-by-restraint.'… Second, to set forth precept-by-action: the evils having now been left behind, one must in practice cultivate the good, of necessity spurring on the three modes of action and cultivating the conduct of the precept; where good arises and stands guard, this is termed 'action.'… As a treatise says: 'The mark of the precept is restraint; the mark of conduct is action.' And again: 'To cease from evil, then to practise the good—such is the order of the meaning.'"⁶

"Forbidding and warding off body and speech so as to commit no evils" is precisely "commit no evils"—this is precept-by-restraint, and it is exactly the restriction-precept. "Spurring on the three modes of action and cultivating the conduct of the precept" is precisely "practise every good"—this is precept-by-action, and it is exactly the practice-precept. Daoxuan governs his whole treatise by these two gates, restraint and action; one sees that the traditional precept-learning never had only the "thou shalt not" face. The "doing" face of the precept—action, practice—has always been the precept's proper form. (The correspondence of precept-by-restraint and precept-by-action with two of the later three-fold pure precepts, the precept of restraint and the precept of cultivating-good, is handled in its own paper and not unfolded here.)

Further still, Daoxuan not only acknowledges the existence of precept-by-action; he establishes the heading of the offence-of-omission, and so raises the practice-precept from "an optional merit" to "a required charge":

"As for the offence-of-omission: it is precisely through a deluded mind and slothful negligence… that toward the excellent undertakings one wearies and does not cultivate or learn—and so it is named [the breach of] 'ceasing'… This takes the not-cultivating of the wholesome dharmas as its very subject."⁷

"Toward the excellent undertakings one wearies and does not cultivate"—committing no evil, yet wearying and failing to cultivate the excellent undertakings one ought to cultivate: the Vinaya itself judges this a breach. One sees that in the precept-learning's own reckoning, the practice-precept (precept-by-action) is no moral garnish upon the cake but a charge laid by the precept-essence; not to do good is itself to break the precept. This single sentence gives the claim its compelling force: that the precept is a practice is no lax recommendation but the command of the precept-essence.

Second: the two faces of the sphere of intimacy are the very site where restriction is absorbed by practice. Here a distinction must be drawn, for it is exactly here that this paper is most easily misread. What the scripture directly states is that all four peaceful practices hang upon the single verb "should abide in"; this the scripture says in so many words. What this paper takes upon itself as its own reading is a step further: that the string of prohibitive "do not draw near" in the sphere of intimacy is gathered into this mode of "abiding," so that the restriction-precept is here absorbed by the practice-precept from within. The former is the scripture's plain statement; the latter is this paper's interpretation. The paper does not disguise this as something the scripture has already said in its letter—it is the paper's own interpretive move.

What supports this reading are the two textual facts already disclosed above. First, the escape clause—"should such come at times, he preaches the Dharma for them, with nothing hoped-for"—shifts what is barred from outward contact to inward grasping (the "hoping-for"); the prohibition-checklist is thereby not the terminus but the raw material gathered into a discipline of the mind. Second, the verse—"by these two spheres one is able to preach in peace"—judges the sphere of action and the sphere of intimacy to be the conditions of the "can," not the limits of the "cannot." From within the prohibition-checklist, then, a positive precept is turned out.

Here one further point must be reaffirmed, lest the reading cross a red line: that the practice-precept absorbs the restriction-precept does not mean it abolishes the prohibition. Were one to derive from this paper that "the peaceful practices repeal the prohibitive precepts, and the practitioner need keep no precepts," that would be a misreading flatly contrary to the paper's intent. The prohibition is still there (it is still "do not draw near"); only it no longer stands as an isolated roster of prohibitions—it stands as an inner moment within a larger positive mode. The restriction is not abolished; the restriction is re-housed. (Among the traditional precept-texts, the one most weighted toward the prohibition-checklist and the restraint-face is the Brahmā-Net Sūtra's ten major and forty-eight minor precepts, a clear foil to the "Chapter on Peaceful Practices"; the detail of its precept-marks and precept-essence is owned by another paper, and noted here only in this one stroke.)

Third: Zhiyi, at the level of the perfect teaching, gives the same reading. Tiantai Zhiyi, in his Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra (Fahua wenju), expounding the "Chapter on Peaceful Practices," judges the sphere of action and the sphere of intimacy to be two faces—principle and phenomenon—without depth or shallowness between them:

"Reaching toward the principle, stated in brief, it is named the sphere of action; appended to the phenomenal, stated at length, it is named the sphere of intimacy. The statement has its brevity and its length, but in principle there is no shallow or deep."⁸

The precept has its "phenomenal" face (the keeping-far of the sphere of intimacy) and its "principle" face (the contemplating of the true mark and of the emptiness of all dharmas, in the sphere of action and the second sphere of intimacy); the two differ only in that the statement is now brief, now extended, while in principle there is no high or low, deep or shallow between them—principle and phenomenon are mutually present. (Zhiyi's sentence is, before and after, fitted to a further correlation with "the robe and the seat of the Tathāgata," which is the home ground of another paper; this paper's citation takes only the one sense, "reaching-the-principle / appending-the-phenomenal, principle and phenomenon mutually present," and nothing besides.)

Most decisive is Zhiyi's three-fold reading of the sphere of intimacy. He divides it into three segments and gives the avoidance-list an explicit verdict:

"The text falls into three: 'keeping far from the ten vexations'—it is by way of distance that nearness is discussed, and this too is an aid to contemplation belonging to the precept-gate; 'gathering and disciplining his mind'—it is by way of nearness that nearness is discussed, and this too is an aid to contemplation belonging to the concentration-gate; 'contemplating that all dharmas are empty'—this is discussed as neither far nor near."⁹

Look at the central clause: "keeping far from the ten vexations… is an aid to contemplation belonging to the precept-gate." Even that string of seemingly pure prohibition, the "keeping far" list, the perfect teaching does not read as bare prohibition but judges expressly to be a cultivation belonging to the precept—an aid to contemplation appended to the precept-gate. That is, at the level of the perfect teaching, the prohibition-checklist is formally enrolled under the precept's "practice" face. (Of the three segments, the latter two—"gathering and disciplining the mind" belongs to the concentration-gate, "contemplating that all dharmas are empty" to the wisdom-gate—this paper notes only as one mark of the precept-concentration-wisdom three-fold structure; the mechanism of entry into concentration and the unfolding of the Lotus-samādhi belong elsewhere and are not taken up here.)

The three proofs, viewed together: the Vinaya's two upholdings prove the practice-precept to be the precept's proper form; the offence-of-omission proves the practice-precept to be commanded by the precept-essence; and Zhiyi proves that even the prohibition-checklist is judged a cultivation belonging to the precept. The conclusion is one and the same: the restriction-precept was always contained within the practice-precept; the precept within the gateway of perfect penetration is a practice-precept.

IV. Three Mirrors, and the Blank They Share

The claim of this paper may have its outline thrown into relief by three mirrors drawn from contemporary East Asian Buddhist studies. Each mirror catches one face, yet all three leave the same patch uncaught—and that uncaught patch is precisely what this paper would fill in.

Bryan D. Lowe, in Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017), shows that regularized contemplative practice and ritual procedure form the scaffolding of a culture of cultivation—that the "manner of doing" an act can itself carry a function like that of the precept.¹⁰ Where this answers to the present paper is in granting that a "way of conducting oneself" can indeed become a precept. But Lowe's concern rests at "how ritual works" (the efficacy of ritual), whereas what the present paper lands on is the form of the precept itself—the four peaceful practices are not a ritual with precept-like efficacy but are the very practice-precept upheld by the dharma-preacher in a hostile age.

William M. Bodiford, in Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 1993), surveying the history of the precept in East Asia, indicates that "the prohibitive precept of individual liberation" and "the bodhisattva's precept of cultivating-action" coexist as two tracks of precept-reception.¹¹ Where this answers to the present paper is in already naming, within the tradition, a precept of the "action / practice" kind. But Bodiford's reading lets the two remain two parallel tracks of precept-reception; the present paper goes one step further and reads, within the single sentence of the "sphere of intimacy" itself, the prohibitive surface and the practice-mode as simultaneously present—restriction and practice are not two precept-essences but the two faces of one precept.

Charlotte D. Eubanks, in Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 2011), proposes that the preacher's body and the scripture's text constitute a continuum, that the bodily conduct of the one who preaches is load-bearing.¹² Where this answers to the present paper is in granting that the preacher's bodily conduct is load-bearing (precisely where the dharma-preacher of a hostile age is able to give light). But Eubanks reads that bodily conduct as "the medium of transmission"; the present paper reads the same bodily conduct as the precept the preacher upholds—the peaceful practice is at once the medium and the precept, and the precept is the more fundamental of the two layers.

The blank the three mirrors share is this: no one has read the four peaceful practices as "a practice-precept constituted within the very text of the prohibition-checklist." Lowe rests at the efficacy of ritual, Bodiford at the two tracks of reception, Eubanks at the medium of transmission; not one reads "a positive precept being born from within the prohibition-checklist." This is what the present paper fills in: the practice-precept is not erected outside the restriction-precept; it is turned out from within it.

V. Middle-Way Corrections

This paper's argument passes several easily-slipped boundaries, each of which must be marked, lest it overreach or be misread.

⚠️ The "positive mode" of the sphere of intimacy is this paper's reading, owned as such, and not to be passed off as the scripture's letter. The sphere of action is phrased positively ("abiding in patient endurance…"); the sphere of intimacy is phrased negatively ("do not draw near…"). To read the sphere of intimacy as a practice-mode is this paper's interpretive act, not something the scripture has stated outright. The paper marks the layers expressly: what the scripture directly states is that the four peaceful practices all hang upon "should abide in"; what the paper takes upon itself is that "the prohibition of the sphere of intimacy is gathered into this mode of abiding." The two are of different orders and must not be run together.

❌ "The peaceful practices abolish the prohibitive precepts; the practitioner need keep no precepts" is a misreading flatly contrary to this paper's intent. That the practice-precept absorbs the restriction-precept does not abolish the prohibition. The prohibition is still there; it is only re-housed as an inner moment within a larger positive mode. Whoever derives "no need to keep precepts" from this paper has gotten it wrong. To reframe is not to negate.

⚠️ The Zhiyi citation takes only the "reaching-the-principle / appending-the-phenomenal, principle and phenomenon mutually present" sense. That sentence is fitted, before and after, with a three-track correlation to "the robe and the seat of the Tathāgata," which is the home ground of another paper; the present paper neither imports nor unfolds it, taking only its sense that "the precept has a phenomenal and a principle face, without depth or shallowness."

⚠️ The Lotus-samādhi, the mechanism of entry into concentration, and the unfolding of the rite of repentance are not this paper's to develop. The peaceful practices were drawn by Tiantai into the half-walking-half-sitting Lotus-samādhi, and the sphere of intimacy itself contains the concentration-gate content of "gathering and disciplining the mind" and "delighting ever in sitting in meditation"; all of this has its own home ground elsewhere. This paper takes only the one leaf of the precept-angle from Zhiyi's three-fold division—"keeping-far = an aid belonging to the precept-gate"—and does not develop the concentration-gate or the repentance-gate.

⚠️ Mañjuśrī figures here only as the questioner. The "Chapter on Peaceful Practices" opens with Mañjuśrī's question, "how can one preach this scripture"; this paper takes only that structural fact, and does not develop Mañjuśrī's symbolic role or his deeper Prajñā import.

VI. Conclusion: The Practice-Form of the Precept, and the Handoff to Huayan

One: closing the paper. Three papers of this volume run down a single line: the precept as the ground of concentration (P24) → the precept is not only a ground but is itself one gateway of concentration (P25, the gateway of perfect penetration) → the precept within that gateway is a practice-precept, and the restriction-precept is turned out from within practice (P26).

In essentials: the four peaceful practices, governed by "should abide in," reframe the precept from a prohibition-checklist of "what not to do" into the positive abiding-mode by which the dharma-preacher of a hostile age "can preach in peace"; the Vinaya's two upholdings, precept-by-restraint and precept-by-action, together with Daoxuan's offence-of-omission, prove this practice-precept to be commanded by the precept-essence; and Zhiyi, judging the keeping-far to be "an aid to contemplation belonging to the precept-gate," gives the perfect teaching's same verdict. The restriction-precept is not abolished but re-housed within the practice-precept.

For practice: precept-keeping is not exhausted by checking oneself, item by item, against a list of "what not to do." The list is still to be checked; but beyond the checking, and more fundamental than it, is the abiding in a positive mode by which, in a hostile age, one "can preach in peace, not regress, and give light." The fullness of the precept lies not in keeping the prohibitions without a leak, but in whether that "able-to-be-at-peace" abiding has truly arisen.

As to the open question: the practice-precept disclosed by the "Chapter on Peaceful Practices" is horizontal—a mode of being relative to the situation of the dharma-preacher in a hostile age. It has not yet told us how the precept's practice-form, within the stages of the bodhisattva path, unfolds in graded measure as one advances through the stations.

Two: the handoff to Huayan. The next paper will pass from the Lotus Sūtra into the Avataṃsaka Sūtra's "Chapter on the Ten Bhūmis," moving from the "situational posture" of the Lotus practice-precept (horizontal) to the "graded measure, the staged stations" of the precept across the Huayan ten bhūmis (vertical)—how the one practice-precept deepens bhūmi by bhūmi, set forth in graded measure, across the course of the ten stations. The present paper does no more than point in this direction; it does not enter the content of the ten bhūmis. As for the whole volume's final summation, that belongs elsewhere and is no part of this paper.

---

Series Cross-References

Continuing from (within this volume)

• SĪLA P24 Ethics as the Ground of Samādhi — the precept as the ground of concentration (the Śūraṅgama's four pure and clear instructions).
• SĪLA P25 Sīla in the Twenty-Five Gateways of Perfect Penetration — the precept is itself one gate among the gates of samādhi; the present paper answers the open question its close threw out, "what difference between the practice-precept and the restriction-precept?"
• SĪLA P12 (the three-fold pure precepts) — the correspondence precept-by-restraint ≈ the precept of restraint, precept-by-action ≈ the precept of cultivating-good; that paper owns it, cited here in one line, undeveloped.

Read alongside (other volumes · cited by reference here, undeveloped)

• DĀNA P22 Sadāparibhūta's Bodily Prostration — Zhiyi's three-track correlation of "the robe and the seat of the Tathāgata," and the unfolding of the vow-peaceful-practice into Sadāparibhūta; that paper owns it.
• KSAMA P13 The Lotus-Samādhi Rite of Repentance / NIAN P23 (the four samādhis) — the peaceful practices' inclusion in the half-walking-half-sitting / Lotus-samādhi; those papers own it.
• NIAN P15 — the precept-marks and precept-essence of the Brahmā-Net Sūtra's ten major and forty-eight minor precepts; that paper owns it.

Pointing ahead

• SĪLA P27 (the Avataṃsaka's "Chapter on the Ten Bhūmis," the precept's graded stations) — passing from the "situational posture" of the Lotus practice-precept (horizontal) to the "graded measure, the staged stations" of the precept across the Huayan ten bhūmis (vertical).

---

---

正法眼藏，不立文字——The value of the Dharma lies in the Dharma itself, not in the identity of the one who expounds it.

Pointing at the Moon ｜ Six Practice Gates · SĪLA 戒 ｜ CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Scriptural citations collated against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka ｜ github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates

Pointing at the Moon · The Six Practice Gates · Volume IV SĪLA · Paper 26 · Part VIII #3 · June 2026

Footnotes

1. Lotus Sūtra (Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng), fasc. 5, "Chapter on Peaceful Practices," no. 14 (trans. Kumārajīva), T09n0262《妙法蓮華經》Saddharma-puṇḍarīkaT9, No. 262Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 406 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0037a13-16. Chinese: 「佛告文殊師利：『若菩薩摩訶薩，於後惡世欲說是經，當安住四法。一者、安住菩薩行處及親近處，能為眾生演說是經。』」 ↩

2. Lotus Sūtra, fasc. 5, T09n0262《妙法蓮華經》Saddharma-puṇḍarīkaT9, No. 262Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 406 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0037a17-20 (the bodily peaceful practice · sphere of action). Chinese: 「若菩薩摩訶薩住忍辱地，柔和善順而不卒暴，心亦不驚；又復於法無所行，而觀諸法如實相，亦不行不分別，是名菩薩摩訶薩行處。」 ↩

3. Lotus Sūtra, fasc. 5, T09n0262《妙法蓮華經》Saddharma-puṇḍarīkaT9, No. 262Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 406 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0037a20-b11 (the first sphere of intimacy, excerpted). The variant graphs of the base text 【大】 are cited without emendation: 悕 (in 無所悕望, "with nothing hoped-for") and 揵 (in 尼揵子, the Nirgranthas). The escape clause—「或時來者，則為說法，無所悕望」, "should such come at times, he yet preaches the Dharma for them, with nothing hoped-for"—is the load-bearing text of this paper's reading: what is barred is the inward grasping, not the outward contact. ↩

4. Lotus Sūtra, fasc. 5, T09n0262《妙法蓮華經》Saddharma-puṇḍarīkaT9, No. 262Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 406 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0037b12-17 (the second sphere of intimacy · contemplating all dharmas empty). Chinese: 「復次，菩薩摩訶薩觀一切法空，如實相，不顛倒、不動、不退、不轉，如虛空，無所有性……常樂觀如是法相，是名菩薩摩訶薩第二親近處。」 ↩

5. Lotus Sūtra, fasc. 5, T09n0262《妙法蓮華經》Saddharma-puṇḍarīkaT9, No. 262Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 406 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0037c08-09 (the keystone verse, "enables peaceful preaching"). Chinese: 「是則名為，行處近處，以此二處，能安樂說。」 ↩

6. Daoxuan, Sìfēnlǜ shānfán bǔquē xíngshìchāo (Abridged and Supplemented Commentary on Practical Observance of the Four-Part Vinaya), chapter on upholding-and-breaching, T40n1804《四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔》T40, No. 1804View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0091a17-23. Daoxuan organizes the whole work by the two gates of restraint and action (not by chapters literally titled 〈止持門〉〈作持門〉). The clause 「論云：戒相止，行相作」 ("a treatise says: the mark of the precept is restraint, the mark of conduct is action") is Daoxuan quoting an unnamed treatise; it is cited here as his quotation of a treatise, and not pinned to any specific śāstra. ↩

7. Daoxuan, Xíngshìchāo, T40n1804《四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔》T40, No. 1804View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0091a28-b02 (the offence-of-omission, 止犯). Chinese: 「言止犯者，良以癡心怠慢……於諸勝業厭不修學，故名為止……此對不修善法為宗。」 ↩

8. Zhiyi, Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng wénjù (Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra), fasc. 8b, on the "Chapter on Peaceful Practices," T34n1718《妙法蓮華經文句》T34, No. 1718Zhiyi (Sui, ca. 587 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0119b25. Chinese: 「詣理略說名行處，附事廣說名近處，說有廣略、理無淺深。」 ↩

9. Zhiyi, Fǎhuá wénjù, T34n1718《妙法蓮華經文句》T34, No. 1718Zhiyi (Sui, ca. 587 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p0120a26 (the three-fold division of the sphere of intimacy). Chinese: 「文為三：遠十惱亂，即遠故論近，亦是附戒門助觀；修攝其心，即近故論近，亦是附定門助觀也；觀一切法空，即非遠非近論。」 ↩

10. Bryan D. Lowe, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2017), ISBN 9780824858581. ↩

11. William M. Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1993), ISBN 9780824814823. ↩

12. Charlotte D. Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), ISBN 9780520265615. ↩