Part Eight · Manifestation · The Avataṃsaka Sūtra

What was the first thing the Buddha did after his awakening?

The āgamas and the Avataṃsaka Sūtra give different answers. The āgama version goes like this: beneath the bodhi tree the Buddha contemplated the dharma he had realized, found that "this dharma is subtle, contrary to the world," and at first did not wish to speak it; only after the king of the Brahmā heaven petitioned him three times over did he go to the Deer Park and turn the wheel of the four noble truths for his five former companions. The Avataṃsaka version is different: at the very moment of his awakening the Buddha entered the sāgara-mudrā-samādhi, the Ocean Seal Samādhi—the self-display of the original awakening of suchness, in which all the myriad images are imprinted simultaneously in a single instant—and from within that absorption he taught, to an assembly of great bodhisattvas and the eightfold host of nāgas and devas, a perfect-teaching scripture that "encompasses the nine time periods, host and retinue fully present." The place of the teaching was the bodhi seat on the earth, but what appeared there was the lotus-store world ocean—the dharma-realm itself, displayed in its full panorama.

Then—and this is the crucial "then"—the Buddha "stepped back" to the Deer Park, set the Avataṃsaka teaching aside, and exchanged it for the four noble truths, which human beings could understand.

This word "stepped back" is the doorway into Part Eight.

To step back is not to fail. It is a structural judgment—the scripture just spoken could not be received by this audience. Not because the audience was insufficiently intelligent, but because between the processing bandwidth of the human conceptual mind and the object the Avataṃsaka speaks of, there is a gap of orders of magnitude. So the Buddha lowered the dimension and broadcast once more.

What Part Eight sets out to write is precisely the part that was stepped back from.

You have already walked seven parts to arrive here. Trust, understanding, practice, inquiry, cutting, illumination, gathering-in—seven words, from the butterfly-effect of a single aspiration all the way to the crown-touching entrustment of the Lotus. In every part there was a Buddha speaking to you; in every part the scale of your understanding was being adjusted for you.

From Part Eight onward, this structure changes.

The Avataṃsaka is not the posture of speaking to you. The Avataṃsaka is the posture of letting the dharma-realm unfold itself. There is no longer the tone of a father speaking to a child, no longer the metaphor, narrative, and prophecy—the forms that were tuned so that you could receive them. In their place is a language that unfolds directly at the native density of the dharma-realm itself.

It will be hard to read. Reading it, you will have the feeling of "what on earth is this talking about." This is not a problem with the text; it is a feature of the structure—the Avataṃsaka does not speak to you; the Avataṃsaka lets you hear the dharma-realm.

The governing posture of Part Eight is the Ocean Seal Samādhi.

Fazang, the third patriarch of the Huayan school in the Tang dynasty, gave the Ocean Seal Samādhi its most concentrated definition in his Cessation of Delusion and Return to the Source, in sixteen Chinese characters:

It is the original awakening of suchness; when delusion is exhausted and the mind clears, all the myriad images appear simultaneously.

Read these sixteen characters word by word. The Ocean Seal is not some advanced level of meditative attainment—the Ocean Seal simply is the original awakening of suchness. It does not need to be achieved; it is the awakened nature inherent in every sentient being from the start. When deluded thoughts are exhausted, the water of the mind grows clear; when the water of the mind grows clear, all phenomena are imprinted in the same single instant—not the first image, then the second, then the third, but all the myriad images disclosed at once, the way that after the wind dies on the great ocean the moon, the stars, the boats, and the shore are reflected on the water's surface all together.

This is the Avataṃsaka's basic description of reality. Not a goal waiting for someone to reach it, but a structure that has never once been departed from.

Part Eight has twelve chapters in all. Its spine is the ten great vows of Samantabhadra; its windows are the ten profound gates.

The ten great vows—paying homage to all Buddhas, praising the Tathāgatas, making extensive offerings, confessing and repenting karmic obstructions, rejoicing in merits, requesting the turning of the dharma-wheel, requesting the Buddhas to remain in the world, constantly following the Buddha in study, constantly according with sentient beings, and universally transferring all merit—are the ten paths of cultivation and realization that the Buddha, in the closing fascicle of the Chapter on the Practices and Vows of Samantabhadra, spoke through the mouth of Samantabhadra the bodhisattva. They are not ten separate things, but ten faces of one complete structure.

The ten profound gates are the ten windows left to us by the Huayan patriarchs Zhiyan, Fazang, and Chengguan—simultaneous mutual correspondence, unobstructed freedom of wide and narrow, the mutual containment of one and many without losing their difference, the mutual identity and self-mastery of all dharmas, and so on, ten windows in all. Each window fails in a particular way, so that from the trajectory of the failure the reader can triangulate that object which cannot be described directly.

From the first chapter through the tenth, each chapter carries one vow and one gate: the first chapter is paying homage to all Buddhas together with the gate of simultaneous mutual correspondence; the second chapter is praising the Tathāgatas together with the gate of unobstructed wide-and-narrow freedom—and so on, down to the tenth chapter's universal transference of merit together with the gate of the differentiated formation of the ten time periods. The eleventh chapter looks back to see how these ten windows together point at the same single object. The twelfth chapter draws the whole eight-part work to a close—seeing, through the eight words trust, understanding, practice, inquiry, cutting, illumination, gathering-in, manifestation, one and the same dharma-realm.

The whole road has a structural surprise waiting for you at the end.

The tenth vow is the universal transference of merit—transferring all merit to the dharma-realm. But the way the ten vows are arranged in the scripture is a ring whose head and tail join: it begins with paying homage to all Buddhas, passes through nine vows, and after the universal transference the next cycle opens once more from paying homage to all Buddhas. Paying homage to all Buddhas—this is exactly the earliest bodily form of "a single aspiration" at the opening of Part One, Trust. The bow.

The whole road is not a straight line. It is a circle.

Walk to the end of the Avataṃsaka and you will return to the very place where you first bowed down. Only this time, you will know why that bow—the first bow, made when you had just generated the aspiration—was from the very beginning an immeasurable bow. In the closing fascicle of the Chapter on the Practices and Vows, paying homage to all Buddhas is unfolded like this: in the very instant of bowing to one Buddha, innumerable bodies are manifested at once, paying homage to innumerable Buddhas. You do not need to ask first, "Which Buddha am I bowing to now?" In the moment of the bow, all the Buddhas of the ten directions and three times are already complete within this single bow. This single bow already is innumerable bows—and this is exactly the bodily realization of "simultaneous mutual correspondence."

One last thing must be said in advance.

The object the Avataṃsaka speaks of is not far away. It does not appear in some place that shows up only after you finish reading Part Eight—it is already complete in the very instant you read this line. The original awakening of suchness has never once left your present moment; the only thing that has left is your recognition of it.

The work of Part Eight is simply to point that recognition out.