Prologue to Sudhana's Southward Journey — Perpetually According with Sentient Beings, and the Gate of Revealing the Dharma through Phenomena

8.9 Prologue to Sudhana's Southward Journey — Perpetually According with Sentient Beings, and the Gate of Revealing the Dharma through Phenomena

The previous chapter left an object of responsibility hanging in the air: if what you follow is the present-moment functioning of the imprinting awareness, then who is it that you are responsible for?

Here is the answer in a single phrase: all sentient beings.

But this responsibility is not a matter of looking down upon sentient beings from a distance. Samantabhadra's ninth great vow is called perpetually according with sentient beings (héng shùn zhòng shēng)—and notice that word "according." It is not a condescending act of charity handed down from above. It is a matter of walking in.

The way the Practices and Vows of Samantabhadra chapter unfolds this vow at the close of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra runs like this:

As for what is called perpetually according with sentient beings—that is to say, the entire dharma-realm, the realm of empty space, all sentient beings of every distinction in the oceans of lands of the ten directions … all of them I follow and accord with … toward those afflicted by sickness, I become a skilled physician; for those who have lost their way, I point out the right road; in the dark of night, I become a lamp; for the destitute, I reveal hidden treasure. Thus does the bodhisattva benefit all sentient beings equally.

On its surface, this vow-text composes a clear picture: the bodhisattva stands in the position of giver, sentient beings in the position of receiver. The bodhisattva accords; sentient beings are accorded with. This is the most immediate reading of perpetually according with sentient beings, and the easiest one to settle into.

But if you stop at this layer—if "according" is only a one-way affair—then the entire structure of the youth Sudhana visiting fifty-three spiritual friends in the Entry into the Dharma-Realm chapter becomes nothing more than the spiritual journey of a low-ranking student consulting one higher-ranking teacher after another. A stamp-collecting adventure in search of the Dharma.

This chapter argues for a different reading: in the Huayan perfect-teaching, perpetually according with sentient beings is a two-way structure. The spiritual friend is not a one-way teacher, and Sudhana is not a one-way seeker. At every visit, both ends of the teaching relationship are being liberated—Sudhana from ignorance, the spiritual friend from "the unfulfilled vow."

To put it more precisely: the spiritual friend's vow of according with sentient beings is fulfilled by the seeker who comes. Sudhana's southward journey is, at the same time, the fulfillment of this vow on behalf of all the spiritual friends in the ten directions.

The Starting Point: Mañjuśrī's Elephant-King Gaze

In the prologue to the Entry into the Dharma-Realm chapter, Mañjuśrī departs from the Jeta Grove monastery and travels southward to the Sāla Grove of the Banner of Adornment, east of Fortune City. A great assembly gathers there; Mañjuśrī teaches the youth Sudhana the Dharma and confers upon him the aspiration for supreme awakening.

This prologue forms the starting point of the fifty-three visits. Mañjuśrī himself stands at the consummation of the Ten Faiths—he is the fullness of "trust." To set out from Mañjuśrī's charge means that Sudhana has already passed through the fullness of faith and is about to enter the Ten Abodes.

The sūtra records a particular gesture that precedes Mañjuśrī's charge to Sudhana:

At that time, Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva turned his gaze upon the youth Sudhana as the king of elephants turns his entire body, and spoke thus: Excellent, excellent! Good son, you have already roused the aspiration for supreme awakening.

"As the king of elephants turns"—this phrase holds a special place in Huayan literature. When the king of elephants turns, his whole body turns; it is not only the head that swivels. What the image means here is this: Mañjuśrī's regard for Sudhana is the whole dharma-realm's whole-bodied regard upon a single person who has roused the aspiration. It is not one teacher turning his head to look at a student; it is the entire structure of the dharma-realm's regard coming to rest, complete, upon this one aspirant.

Mañjuśrī then directs Sudhana to travel south in search of spiritual friends, and gives him the "four maxims for the spiritual friend":

Good son! In seeking spiritual friends, do not give rise to fatigue; on meeting spiritual friends, do not give rise to satiety; toward all the instructions of spiritual friends, accord with them in everything; toward the skillful means of spiritual friends, see no fault.

On the surface, these four maxims are Mañjuśrī teaching Sudhana "how to be a good student." But within the overall structure of the sūtra, these four maxims simultaneously carry a tacit mirror version—how to be a good spiritual friend: toward those who come, give rise to no weariness; on seeing those who come, give rise to no satisfaction; toward the capacities of those who come, accord with them in everything; toward the skillful means of those who come, see no fault.

The sūtra states one side openly and leaves the other to silent comprehension—and this is not mere rhetorical expansion. The reason is simple: if a spiritual friend were to say outright "please come and fulfill me," the very dignity of the spiritual friend's position would be lost. The two-way nature is the fact; stated on one side, left tacit on the other—this is precisely the literary refinement of the sūtra.

The First Visit: Bhikṣu Meghaśrī

Sudhana leaves Mañjuśrī and begins his journey south. The first mountain he climbs is called Wondrous Peak, and the first spiritual friend he means to see is named Meghaśrī.

Meghaśrī holds an extremely important position in the Huayan school's doctrine of stages. In fascicle 85 of his Yanyi chao, Chengguan judges clearly: Meghaśrī occupies the "First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind." Mañjuśrī occupies the consummation of the Ten Faiths; Meghaśrī occupies the head of the Ten Abodes—and this transition is the most concrete textual display of "the consummation of faith entering abodehood."

Sudhana climbs Wondrous Peak to seek Meghaśrī, and for seven days he does not see him. On the eighth day, on a separate peak, he sees a bhikṣu walking slowly in meditative pacing. The seven days of climbing without finding are the final stretch of "faith"; the eighth-day vision of the bhikṣu in slow pacing is the in-the-moment establishment of "abode." This is not a metaphor—the phenomenon itself is the Dharma; nothing else is being signified.

The dharma-gate Meghaśrī opens for Sudhana is called "the Gate of Universal Vision through the Light of Wisdom that Recollects the Realms of All Buddhas," and it unfolds in twenty-one sub-gates: the gate of buddha-recollection that universally illumines through the light of wisdom; that causes all sentient beings to recollect the buddhas; that abides in the Dharma; that abides through all kalpas; that abides in all lands; that abides in space … traversing the axis of time (abiding through all kalpas, through all times), the axis of space (abiding in all lands, in space), the axis of substance-and-function (cessation, supernatural transformation), and the axis of self-and-other (one's own karma, causing all sentient beings to recollect).

The dharma-realm-embracing sweep of these twenty-one gates can no longer be reduced to any single recitation method.

The forty-fascicle Avataṃsaka has a telling four-character addition in its name for this gate: "the Gate of Universal Vision through Unobstructed Wisdom that Recollects the Equal Realm of All Buddhas." Those two words, "equal realm," point to the core—this buddha-recollection is not the recollection of some particular buddha or some particular buddha's realm; it is the recollection of all buddhas' equality. Because of equality there can be universal vision; because of universal vision, equality is made manifest.

⚠️ Here we must guard against a common misreading. In the history of Chinese Buddhism, the two words "buddha-recollection" (niàn fó) have been almost wholly appropriated by the Pure Land tradition's "recitation of the name" (vocally invoking "Namo Amitābha"). But Meghaśrī's buddha-recollection belongs, in its doctrinal structure, to an altogether different category from recitation of the name. The former is the Huayan one-vehicle perfect-teaching's universal contemplation of the dharma-realm, built on the dependent-origination structure of "one is all"; the latter is the later Pure Land tradition's expedient path, built on the faith-structure of "the Other Power of the original vow." Both are authentic paths of the Dharma, but they belong to different positions within the doctrinal classification, and the two must not be conflated. To read Meghaśrī's gate as a precursor or variant of recitation of the name is an interpretive error of temporal inversion—it would dwarf the first of the Entry into the Dharma-Realm visits into a beginner's Pure Land lesson, and would deprive the entire fifty-three-visit pedagogy of the dharma-realm of its starting point.

"I Have Attained Only This" — the Four-Step Closing Structure

Having listed the twenty-one gates, Meghaśrī goes on to say:

Good son! I have attained only this Gate of Universal Vision through the Light of Wisdom Recollecting the Realms of All Buddhas. How could I know the boundless wise and pure practice-gates of all the great bodhisattvas? … How could I understand or speak of their meritorious practice? Good son! To the south is a country called Sāgaramukha, where there is a bhikṣu named Sāgaramegha. Go and inquire of him.

Meghaśrī lists his twenty-one gates of universal vision, yet he says he has "attained only this"—only this one dharma-gate. Then he hands Sudhana on to the next spiritual friend: Bhikṣu Sāgaramegha.

This structure is not one man's modesty. Sudhana's first four spiritual friends—Meghaśrī, Sāgaramegha, Supratiṣṭhita, and Megha—all close with the same four-step structure. Set the four side by side, and the fact itself begins to speak:

Not one of the four steps is mere rhetoric. Each is a condition-declaration for the continuation of the teaching chain:

Self-acknowledged limitation—each spiritual friend is a specialist in one gate, not omni-competent.

Contrast with the boundless—he places himself within a larger structure of the dharma-realm, marking himself as merely one local self-disclosure of it.

Rhetorical self-deprecation—since he is only a part, he cannot of course exhaust the whole.

Active referral—the relay of the teaching chain. Every spiritual friend "hands Sudhana on" precisely because the conclusions of the first three steps require it.

The central claim: "I have attained only this" is not opening modesty but a closing condition-declaration for the relay. The relay of the fifty-three visits is handed forward by the spiritual friends themselves, station by station—it is not Sudhana climbing one-way from low to high.

The Two-Way Structure: the Spiritual Friend Is Fulfilled by Sudhana

This four-step structure leads directly to three layers of textual evidence for the two-way structure.

The first layer. If no one comes to inquire, the very identity "spiritual friend" does not arise. Meghaśrī dwells on Wondrous Peak cultivating the buddha-recollection samādhi—this is his identity as a bhikṣu. But the event "Meghaśrī becomes Sudhana's first spiritual friend" must wait upon Sudhana climbing the mountain in search of him before it can arise. Without Sudhana, Meghaśrī is simply a bhikṣu cultivating in solitude; with Sudhana, Meghaśrī becomes "the spiritual friend Meghaśrī." The student's seeking is the condition for the teacher's identity as a spiritual friend.

The second layer. Sudhana's southward journey fulfills Samantabhadra's ninth vow on behalf of all the spiritual friends in the ten directions. For the ninth vow's "toward those afflicted by sickness, become a skilled physician" to land, there must be a sick person who walks up to one; for "for those who have lost their way, point out the right road" to land, there must be a lost traveler who comes asking the way. Sudhana, representing "all dharma-seeking sentient beings," visits the fifty-three spiritual friends in turn—which is to say he fulfills each spiritual friend's vow of according with sentient beings on their behalf. Without Sudhana coming to inquire, the spiritual friend's vow of according with sentient beings remains latent; with Sudhana coming to inquire, the vow turns into present activity. The seeker is summoned by the vow-power, and at the same time comes to fulfill it.

The third layer. The "active referral" step of the four-step structure is the hard evidence for the two layers above. If the spiritual friend were merely a one-way teacher, the teaching would simply end when finished—there would be no reason he must refer to a next visit; and if the spiritual friend were a high and powerful transmitter of the Dharma, there would be still less reason for him to admit "I have attained only this." But the hard fact of the sūtra is this: every spiritual friend closes with the four-step "I have attained only this → the bodhisattvas are boundless → how could I speak of it → go inquire of the next one." This structure requires that the spiritual friend be local, limited, and obligated to hand off. Local, limited, obligated to hand off—this means precisely that the spiritual friend's "fulfillment" must depend on the student's continuing forward. Sudhana's continuing southward journey is itself the fulfillment of the previous spiritual friend's identity as a spiritual friend.

Return now to the closing four clauses of the ninth vow:

If the bodhisattva is able to accord with sentient beings, this is to accord with making offerings to all buddhas; if he reveres and serves sentient beings, this is to revere and serve the Tathāgatas; if he causes sentient beings to give rise to joy, this causes all Tathāgatas to rejoice.

"To accord with sentient beings is to accord with all buddhas"—this equation can now be seen clearly. The spiritual friend accords with Sudhana (transmission of the teaching), which is to accord with all buddhas (because Sudhana receives the Dharma on the buddhas' behalf). At the same time, Sudhana accords with the spiritual friend (acceptance of the teaching), which is to accord with all buddhas (because the spiritual friend is the buddhas' present-moment self-disclosure). The "according" of both ends arises within one and the same phenomenon.

The Gate of Revealing the Dharma through Phenomena: the Phenomenon Is the Dharma

The profound gate this chapter corresponds to is called "the Gate of Revealing the Dharma through Reliance on Phenomena that Generates Understanding." Fazang, in fascicle 1 of the Tanxuan ji, gives the definition:

As for the Gate of Revealing the Dharma through Reliance on Phenomena that Generates Understanding … it means: by relying on this phenomenon-aspect, that Dharma is immediately revealed. It is not that, by relying on this, something else is being signified.

"It is not that, by relying on this, something else is being signified"—this clause is the bright line that separates the gate of revealing-through-phenomena from any ordinary allegorical reading.

Negative formulation: revealing-through-phenomena is not allegory. In an allegorical reading, the phenomenon is a signifier, and a signified lies behind it. To read a "pyre," for instance, as an allegory of "the wisdom of prajñā"—the pyre is the signifier, prajñā the signified. The core of allegorical reading is "crossing over": you see the pyre, you think of prajñā, you cross from pyre to prajñā. Once across the bridge, you discard the bridge.

Positive formulation: the phenomenon is the present-moment presence of the Dharma. The phenomenon of revealing-through-phenomena is not a bridge. The pyre is not an allegory of prajñā; the pyre is the on-site self-disclosure of the non-discriminating wisdom of prajñā. There is no two-storey process of "first see the fire, then think of prajñā"—to see the pyre is to see prajñā, and the two are simultaneous. The whole weight of Fazang's clause "it is not that … something else is being signified" rests on that word "else": outside the phenomenon there is no "other" signified; the phenomenon itself is the sole locus of what would be signified.

In fascicle 11 of the Yanyi chao, when Chengguan discusses this profound gate, he expressly cites Sudhana's twenty-seventh visit—the Brahmin Jayoṣmāyatana's pyre and sword-mountain—as his proof. Jayoṣmāyatana commands Sudhana to climb the sword-mountain and enter the pyre in order to certify the bodhisattva's practice. Sudhana wavers for a moment; only after the gods' urging does he climb and enter, whereupon he attains the bodhisattva samādhi of well-abiding.

If the pyre were an allegory of prajñā, then Sudhana would only need to "think of" prajñā and would not have to truly climb the fire. But the phenomenon-structure of the sūtra is that Sudhana must actually climb the fire in order to attain the samādhi. The phenomenon is not a substitutable sign; the phenomenon is the Dharma's own present-moment locus.

In fascicle 4 of the Wujiao zhang, Fazang has a doctrinal-classification formulation that puts this distinction most clearly:

The Three Vehicles rely on a different phenomenon-aspect to signify a different principle; in the One Vehicle, the phenomenon-aspect that is relied upon is the very principle that it manifests.

The hermeneutics of the Three Vehicles: phenomenon and principle stand in a two-storey relation (this and that, signifier and signified). The hermeneutics of the One Vehicle (the Huayan perfect-teaching): phenomenon and principle stand in a one-storey relation—the phenomenon is the principle.

Carry this bright line back to Sudhana's southward journey: the meeting, the teaching, and the referral of every visit—this very phenomenon is the dharma-realm's own vow of according with sentient beings being fulfilled in the present moment, with nothing else being signified. The fifty-three visits are not spiritual tourism. Every visit is a dharma-realm event.

Three Places Where It Is Easy to Go Astray

The first is touristification—reading the fifty-three visits as a "stamp-collecting" dharma-quest adventure—and this is the most immediate misreading. This chapter's argument for the two-way structure is the strongest counter to it. The fifty-three visits are not sightseeing stops; every visit is the dharma-realm's successive self-disclosure to itself.

The second is mysticism—"the phenomenon is the Dharma, no need to deliberate"—which turns the gate of revealing-through-phenomena into a cheap claim of direct intuition. "The phenomenon is the Dharma" is a strict perfect-teaching doctrinal stance, requiring the student to establish it jointly through the three layers of scripture, deliberation, and realization—not to leap over scripture and proclaim "I see the fire, therefore I see prajñā." The shortcut of mysticism strips this gate of the supporting framework of perfect-teaching doctrinal classification.

The third is egalitarianism—the two-way structure says "both ends are being liberated," not "both ends occupy the same position." Each spiritual friend specializes in one gate and occupies a particular stage; Sudhana is still a seeker, occupying the First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind. The difference in stage is stated explicitly in the sūtra. Mutual fulfillment does not mean positional equality. To read the two-way structure as modern egalitarianism is to erase Huayan's doctrine of stages with one stroke, draining the entire sequence "First Abode of Arousing the Mind → Equal Enlightenment" of its meaning.

Practice Pointers

There are two layers of exercise you can take up after reading this chapter.

The first layer: a reading exercise. The next time you read any passage of Sudhana's southward journey—whether it is Meghaśrī's Wondrous Peak, Sāgaramegha's Sāgaramukha, or the later Brahmin Jayoṣmāyatana's pyre and sword-mountain, or Maitreya's Tower—please do not read the passage as allegory in your mind. Let the phenomenon rest just as a phenomenon. Sudhana truly climbs the mountain, truly climbs the fire, truly enters the tower. These phenomena do not "symbolize" something else; these phenomena themselves are the Dharma.

The second layer: a way of seeing people. Every encounter happening around you in which "someone teaches you a thing" or "someone asks you about a thing" is not merely the contact of two separate individuals. Try to see the two-way structure of that encounter—the one who teaches is fulfilled by the one who asks, and the one who asks is guided by the one who teaches. Both ends are being liberated. This seeing does not cancel society's differences in standing (the teacher is still the teacher, the student is still the student), but it does cancel the structure of "one-way bestowal of favor."

When you can see in this way, Samantabhadra's ninth vow is no longer a task you must specially "go and do"; it is the structure already at work in every encounter of your life.

Closing

This chapter ends here.

Sudhana's southward journey is not the spiritual journey of a low-ranking student climbing toward higher-ranking teachers. It is the dharma-realm disclosing itself, once, through every meeting between Sudhana and a spiritual friend. Who teaches whom and who receives from whom is no longer a meaningful question. The meaningful question is: what does the dharma-realm disclose by means of this phenomenon?

The answer is present in every one of the fifty-three visits, between every spiritual friend's "I have attained only this" and every "to the south there is … go and inquire of him"—present in the moment, with nothing else being signified.

The original awakening of suchness discloses itself in these encounters, one after another. It stands neither above Sudhana nor above the spiritual friend—It stands within the very phenomenon of their meeting. Every visit is Its present-moment self-disclosure.

The next chapter is the last formal Huayan vow of the entire eight-part work: universal dedication of merit. The ninth vow grinds away the distinction between "giver and receiver," so that every visit becomes the dharma-realm's self-disclosure to itself; the tenth vow takes the energy that remains once the distinction has been wholly ground away and distributes it evenly across the dharma-realm, so that no portion of merit any longer belongs to any individual. Without the two-way structure of the ninth vow, universal dedication is only a one-way distribution of merit; with the two-way structure of the ninth vow, universal dedication can become the dharma-realm's own circulation of energy. Chapter ten takes "the Gate of the Distinct Formation of the Ten Time-Periods Mutually Permeating" as its window—the inexhaustibility of space was handled in chapter six (Indra's net); the inexhaustibility of time is the work of this gate. Universal dedication is completed within the inexhaustibility of time.

Every chapter in this series stops somewhere. The place where it stops is not an oversight; it is reverence. A three-dimensional pen cannot reach a ten-dimensional object. All it can do is mark clearly the place where the pen is set down—so the reader knows that, past this line, one must rely on one's own dharma-eye.

The pen of this chapter stops here.