The Ten Faiths The Ten Abodes The Ten Practices The Ten Dedications The Ten Grounds

Part 4 · The Ten Dedications

The Bodhi Path · 1 papers

The more intensively one practices, the thicker the accumulation; and the thicker the accumulation, the harder one question presses: where is all this good to be put?[ from the book's part intro ]

論Study the papersfootnotes · abstracts

06DedicationThe preceding paper, BODHI-P05, left the bodhisattva amid dense accumulation — the Ten Practices, by the altruistic six perfections, laying up measureless roots of good. But "accumulation" at once presses a question: with so much good accumulated, where does it go? Were it to settle into one's own blessing-fruit, would that not fall back into the "taking realization, taking fruit" that BODHI-P01 refuted? This paper argues: the Ten Dedications (the last of the three worthy ranks) are precisely the position of "turning the accumulated good" — the six-perfection roots of good the Ten Practices accumulated do not, here, stagnate into self-fruit, but are dedicated to three places: dedicated to beings, to bodhi, to the real (suchness). This "dedication" is the Mahāyāna's pivot: it keeps the accumulated good from settling into private fruit, ever turning it toward benefiting others, toward buddhahood, toward suchness, and thereby makes the bodhisattva's "practice" stand firm and non-regressing (practice-non-regress), completing the three worthy ranks, poised to enter the first ground's path of seeing. In the Avataṃsaka's Chapter on the Ten Dedications, the ten names are listed (the Dedication of Rescuing All Beings while Departing from the Mark of Beings … the Dedication of Entering the Measureless Dharma-Realm, taught in common by the buddhas of the three times); within the per-dedication expositions the three directions are shown dispersed — dedicating the roots of good of giving "to beings," dedicating the roots of good planted "to the buddhas" (bodhi), dedicating all roots of good "in accord with the mark of suchness" (the real); and it repeatedly says the bodhisattva "accomplishes indestructible deeds, heads for omniscience, and in the end does not regress," "arouses the non-regressing mind, gathering the mind-jewel." From this the paper argues three things: dedication as "turning" (cutting off the stagnation into self-fruit); the unity of the threefold dedication (downward to beings, upward to bodhi, deep into suchness); and dedication and practice-non-regress (with no self-fruit to regress into, the practice does not regress). An honest mark: "threefold dedication" is the doctrinal synthesis of the Dasheng yizhang, the Huayan Tanxuan ji, and the like, not a verbatim phrase of the Avataṃsaka; "practice-non-regress · the last of the three worthy ranks" is the stational classification of the Keyūra, the Renwang, the Cheng weishi lun, and the like (and the treatises differ in how they parse the stations), not a sentence of this chapter; this paper argues from these two classificatory frameworks (also those the axis's PLAN adopts) while marking their nature, the treatise-texts lying beyond this round's source (T0279), to be ratified by the author (see Section V). The conclusion: dedication is not loss but turning; it is the crucial turn that keeps accumulated good from falling into self-fruit and makes the bodhisattva's practice non-regressing, the three worthy ranks here brought to their close.

書Read in the book

The Bodhi Path · in the bookcontinuous prose · apparatus removedRead from here →

Handing It OverPart 4 · Ch. 1

Same part, two ways in — papers keep the scholarly apparatus; the book is continuous prose for reading. Same source.