The Parable of the Conjured City

1. Introduction: The Tired Traveler and the Teacher's Conjured City

Anyone who has practiced for a long time eventually meets a particular stretch of road. It is not the bright excitement of first aspiration, nor the clarity that follows some breakthrough; it is the middle stretch, the one where the body simply refuses to go further. Sitting in meditation, the mind has settled, the body has loosened, sometimes a very deep stillness arrives. And then a voice in the heart says: "This is enough. Stop here. The road ahead is too far. I have already gotten what I came for."

This is not laziness, nor is it backsliding. It is something subtler — something wearing the mask of "already arrived."

The seventh chapter of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra, the "Parable of the Conjured City" (ṛddhinagara-upama), places this experience inside a story. A group of travelers must cross a five-hundred-yojana stretch of dangerous, deserted road to reach a place of treasure. Halfway through, exhausted, they want to turn back. Their guide, out of compassion, conjures by his power of skillful means a great city at the three-hundred-yojana mark, telling them they may rest inside. They enter, give rise to the perception "we have crossed over" and the perception "we are safe," and they actually do receive real rest. When their strength has returned, the guide dissolves the city and tells them: "The true place of treasure is just ahead. The city you saw was conjured by me, only for the sake of your rest."¹

The narrative work this parable performs inside the Lotus Sūtra is doubly demanding. On one hand, it must tell śrāvaka practitioners that the nirvāṇa they have attained is not the ultimate destination. On the other hand, it must avoid a cruel reading — "you wasted your effort; that was a trick." The whole project of the Lotus's opening the expedient and revealing the real (kāifāng quánshí, 開權顯實) unfolds on this delicate balance: the city is a real respite, not a deception; but it is also not the destination.

The question is: how can both be true? If the śrāvaka nirvāṇa is only a conjured city, where is its reality? If it has reality, in what sense is it "conjured"? Commentators across fifteen hundred years have answered this in remarkably different ways. In India, Vasubandhu's Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-upadeśa identifies the conjured city as the fourth in a system of seven parables, treating "the conceit of attainment where there is none."² In China, Zhiyi reads the five hundred yojanas through three contemplative gates and judges the entire chapter as the only one of the Lotus's "five sites of opening the three to reveal the one" that operates at the level of principle.³ The Sanlun master Jizang explains the conjuring with a four-word Madhyamaka formula: "nonexistent, yet suddenly there" (wú ér hū yǒu, 無而忽有).⁴ The Yogācāra master Kuiji defines the city's existential status in eight precise characters: "provisional cessation, with no real entity" (jiǎ zémiè, běn wú shítǐ, 假擇滅、本無實體).⁵

This paper builds on that traditional conversation to propose three theses.

Thesis I (§3.1): The seven parables of the Lotus do not form a single cumulative system of correction but a parallel toolbox for seven distinct kinds of conceit. The prodigal son treats sectarian-vehicle clinging (the vehicle dimension), the medicinal herbs treat clinging to a single teaching (the teaching dimension), and the conjured city treats clinging to a meditative state as nirvāṇa (the state-of-experience dimension). The three operate on different axes and do not form a single discursive line. Acknowledging this parallel structure is itself the precise location of the conjured city in Vasubandhu's seven-parable framework.

Thesis II (§3.2): The conjured city is a real expedient. Three independent paths — Jizang's Madhyamaka ("nonexistent yet suddenly there"), Kuiji's Yogācāra ("provisional cessation"), and the Awakening of Faith's Tathāgatagarbha ("delusive grasping at nirvāṇa → originally-already nirvāṇa") — converge on a single conclusion: the city is not a magical trick but a real provision within emptiness, functionally effective, then dissolved by the revelation of its expedient status. This thesis extends S7-P03's "upāya is not deception" by drawing a sharper distinction: the carts at the burning-house gate are gestural fiction (no carts ever stood there), while the city on the road is operative provision (the city actually appeared and actually functioned). The conjured city thus represents a more demanding form of upāya.

Thesis III (§3.3): Kuiji's reading of the conjured city continues the same restriction strategy he applied to the prodigal son and the medicinal herbs — limiting the Lotus's one-vehicle teaching to "indeterminate-lineage hearers who fell back and rose again with great-bodhi mind" (bùdìng zhǒngxìng tuì yǐ huánfā dà pútíxīn, 不定種姓退已還發大菩提心). The cumulative pressure of this same strategy applied across three parables pushes Kuiji's system to its internal limit. This paper does not pretend to dissolve the tension; it presents it honestly, following the methodology established in P05.

The order of exposition: §2 presents the textual evidence in two parts — Part A on the Lotus itself (Āgama precursors, the chapter's structure, and a Sanskrit-Chinese cross-comparison), and Part B on four commentarial voices (Vasubandhu, Zhiyi, Jizang, Kuiji). §3 is the analytical core, developing the three theses. §4 connects this paper to its predecessors in the series and reserves a hook for P11 on the Lifespan Chapter. §5 offers middle-way corrections, and §6 concludes with practice guidance and an open question.

2. Textual Evidence

A. The Lotus Sūtra Itself

A1. An Āgama Seed: The Raft Parable and an Honest Marker

In the Mahāyāna context, the conjured city is a richly staged parable — it has a time structure spanning incalculable kalpas, a genealogy of sixteen princes, and the dramatic gesture of a guide conjuring an entire city. In the Āgama corpus, however, the motif "nirvāṇa as a conjured city" does not appear. A systematic search across the Saṃyuktāgama and the Ekottarāgama yields every instance of the verb "to conjure" (huà zuò, 化作) — Māra conjuring himself as a young man, Śakra conjuring a lapis-lazuli hall — but none in connection with nirvāṇa. The two-character compound "conjured city" (huàchéng, 化城) is entirely absent.⁶

This is a fact worth marking honestly: the proposition "nirvāṇa is an expedient provision" is itself a Mahāyāna innovation with no direct Āgama precursor. Stating this does not weaken the conjured city's authority; if anything, it clarifies the parable's role in the unfolding of the dharma — it is a new figure created to treat the subtle attachment "taking the fruit as the end," serving a discursive task the Āgamas never explicitly undertook.

Does this mean the Āgamas contribute nothing? Not quite. The Āgamas preserve a structurally isomorphic seed: the raft parable in the Ariṣṭa-sūtra (Madhyamāgama 200, fasc. 54). After correcting the monk Ariṣṭa's false view, the Buddha develops the raft simile at length:

"Suppose there is a vast stretch of deep water, its current swift, carrying much along; there is no boat, nor is there a bridge. A man comes who must cross for some business on the far shore… He thinks: 'Let me gather grass and wood on this bank, bind them into a raft, and cross by riding it.' He gathers grass and wood, binds them into a raft, crosses and reaches the far shore safely. Then he thinks: 'This raft has served me well; let me carry it on my shoulder or on my head as I go…' … In the same way, I have long taught you the dharma as a raft, meant to be let go, not to be grasped. If you understand that I have long taught the dharma as a raft, then even the dharma must be let go — how much more so what is not dharma?"⁷

The raft's core structure is isomorphic with the conjured city: the tool (raft / city) is an expedient provision toward a goal; once the goal is reached and the tool's function is exhausted, clinging to the tool itself becomes a burden. The corresponding passage in the Ekottarāgama ends with the famous line, "Even wholesome dharmas should be let go, how much more the unwholesome,"⁸ which became the most ancient scriptural warrant for the Mahāyāna principle that expedient means are abandonable.

There is, however, one decisive difference: the raft addresses attachment to teachings (dharma-grāha), the conjured city addresses attachment to attainment (phala-grāha). The abandonment of the raft is performed by the practitioner; the dissolution of the city is performed by the Buddha. The conjured city is thus the raft's logic specialized onto the deeper structure of "fruition." The Āgamas leave the isomorphic line of the raft; the Lotus pushes that line to its Mahāyāna limit — not only teachings may be let go, but even a fruit may be conjured.

A2. The Structure of the Chapter

Chapter 7 of the Lotus is among the longest in the sūtra. Structurally it consists of two asymmetric but deeply interwoven narratives: a front half on the ancient Buddha Mahābhijñā-jñānābhibhū (Dàtōng zhìshèng, 大通智勝) and a back half on the conjured city parable proper.

A2.1 The Ancient Buddha Narrative (Structural Scaffolding)

The chapter opens with a cosmic time narrative: "In the distant past, beyond incalculable, boundless, inconceivable asaṃkhyeya kalpas, there was a Buddha named Mahābhijñā-jñānābhibhū Tathāgata, and since his parinirvāṇa incalculably more kalpas have passed." The Buddha then illustrates this duration with the metaphor of the "three-thousand motes" (sānqiān chéndiǎn jié): grind all the ground-material of a three-thousandfold great-thousand world system into ink, pass a thousand worlds eastward and lay down a single dot, and so on until either all the ink or all the worlds are exhausted — grind every one of those passed-over worlds into dust, and each mote is one kalpa. Even this duration is exceeded by the time since Mahābhijñā-jñānābhibhū entered nirvāṇa.⁹

This Buddha had sixteen princely sons before his renunciation; the sixteenth, the present speaker says, "is I, Śākyamuni, who attained anuttarā-samyak-sambodhi in this Sahā world." Śākyamuni here names himself as having been a prince under that ancient Buddha, having once taught Mahāyāna in that assembly, having already formed karmic bonds with the countless beings now gathered before him in the Lotus assembly.

From the standpoint of Tiantai doctrinal classification, this passage belongs to the trace gate (jìmén, 迹門) category of "forming ancient bonds" (jiéyuán jiǔyuǎn), foreshadowing the greater "ancient realization" (jiǔyuǎn shíchéng) time structure of the origin gate (běnmén, 本門) in Chapter 16 (the "Lifespan" chapter). Following the series-plan notes principle, this paper treats the Mahābhijñā narrative only as structural scaffolding and reserves the formal analysis for S7-P11. Three points deserve marking here: (i) this is the first time in the Lotus that the category "ancient time" (jiǔyuǎn) is positively unfolded; (ii) the sixteen-prince genealogy establishes an ancient-bond lineage background, so that the conjured city parable is not a free-standing figure but the dramatic climax of that lineage; (iii) the "three-thousand motes" of the trace gate and the "five-hundred-thousand koṭi-nayuta motes" of the Lifespan chapter form a double mote structure, to be developed in P11 through the trace/origin distinction.

A2.2 The Conjured City Parable (Main Analytical Focus)

The parable proper reads:

"Bhikṣus! Suppose there is a dangerous, deserted road of five hundred yojanas, empty, without people, a place of terror. A great company wishes to cross this road to reach a place of treasure. There is a guide, intelligent, discerning, who knows well the passable and impassable signs of the dangerous road, and who will lead these people across. The people he leads, however, grow weary at mid-journey and say to the guide: 'We are exhausted, and we are afraid; we cannot go further. The road ahead is still long. We wish to turn back.' The guide, skilled in many expedients, reflects: 'How pitiable they are! How can they abandon the great treasure and wish to turn back?' Having thought thus, by the power of expedient means, at the three-hundred-yojana mark on the dangerous road, he conjures a great city and tells the company: 'Do not be afraid; do not turn back. Here now is a great city where you may rest and do as you please. If you enter this city, you will swiftly find ease. If you are able to go forward to the place of treasure, you may also depart.' At that moment the exhausted company rejoices greatly, marveling: 'We are now delivered from this evil road; we have swiftly found ease.' They then enter the conjured city, giving rise to the perception we have crossed over and the perception we are safe. At that time the guide, knowing the company has rested and is no longer weary, dissolves the conjured city and tells them: 'Come, let us go. The place of treasure is near. The great city you saw, I conjured it, only for your rest.'"¹⁰

The verse-prose explanation then maps each element of the parable onto the Lotus's central thesis:

"Bhikṣus! The Tathāgata is likewise. Being now your great guide, he knows that the evil road of birth-death and afflictions is long and dangerous, and that you must traverse and cross it. If beings hear only of the one Buddha-vehicle, they will not wish to see the Buddha, will not wish to draw near, and will think: 'The Buddha-path is long; only after long and painful practice can it be accomplished.' The Buddha, knowing their timid and inferior minds, by the power of expedient means, for the sake of rest on the middle way, speaks of two nirvāṇas. If beings dwell at these two stages, the Tathāgata then tells them: 'What you have done is not yet finished. The stage where you dwell is near to buddha-wisdom. Observe and reflect: the nirvāṇa you have gained is not real. It is only by the Tathāgata's power of expedient means that the one Buddha-vehicle has been distinguished as three.' As that guide, for the sake of rest, conjured a great city, and when he knew they had rested told them: 'The place of treasure is near; this city is not real, I conjured it.'"¹¹

The core line is "by the power of expedient means, for the sake of rest on the middle way, he speaks of two nirvāṇas." The "middle way" (zhōngdào, 中道) here is not Madhyamaka's middle way but the geographical middle of the journey — the city is conjured at the three-hundred-yojana mark of a five-hundred-yojana road. Yet later commentators in the Tiantai, Sanlun, and Yogācāra traditions would all read doctrinal weight into the phrase: it is temporally the mid-point, pedagogically the expedient stage, and positionally the resting place between the two extremes of ordinary beings and buddhahood.

The closing verse compresses the argument to its minimum:

"The Buddhas, by the power of expedient means, distinguish and teach three vehicles; there is only one Buddha-vehicle — two are spoken of as a place of rest." "The guide-Buddhas, to give rest, speak of nirvāṇa; knowing they have rested, he leads them into buddha-wisdom."¹²

The five characters xīchù gù shuō èr (息處故說二, "because there must be a place of rest, two are spoken of") are the tightest compression of the entire chapter's thesis: the "place of rest" is the conjured city; "two are spoken of" refers to the nirvāṇa with remainder (sopadhiśeṣa) and the nirvāṇa without remainder (nirupadhiśeṣa). The Buddha does not speak of two nirvāṇas because there are two independent nirvāṇas; he speaks of two because beings need a resting place.

A3. Cross-Comparison with Dharmarakṣa's Translation

Dharmarakṣa's earlier translation (Zhèngfǎhuá jīng 正法華經, T263) gives Chapter 7 the title "Ancient Times" (Wǎnggǔ pǐn 往古品) rather than "Conjured City Parable." The sequence is identical (both are Chapter 7), but the emphasis differs: Kumārajīva foregrounds the core parable, Dharmarakṣa foregrounds the temporal depth of the ancient-Buddha narrative.¹³ Four details are worth noting in cross-comparison. (i) The ancient Buddha's name: Dharmarakṣa has "Mahābhijñā Great-Wisdom" (Dàtōng zhònghuì), Kumārajīva "Mahābhijñā Surpassing-Wisdom" (Dàtōng zhìshèng). (ii) The unit of distance: Kumārajīva consistently uses yóuxún (yojana); Dharmarakṣa, inconsistently, uses "five hundred li" in the prose and "five hundred yójùn" in the verse. The likely explanation is that the original Sanskrit had yojana, which Dharmarakṣa rendered semantically as li in prose and phonetically as yójùn in verse — Kumārajīva unified this under the more precise phonetic yóuxún. (iii) Dharmarakṣa follows the parable with an explicit element-by-element gloss ("the guide means the Tathāgata; the great wilderness means the birth-death of the five destinies; the merchants mean the learners…"), closer in style to later commentarial exposition, whereas Kumārajīva leaves this interpretive work to the main body of the sūtra. (iv) Dharmarakṣa explicitly identifies the wilderness with "the five destinies of birth-death," giving the "five hundred yojanas" a direct textual anchor in the five destinies; Kumārajīva's "wilderness of birth-death" is less specific, leaving room for the later commentators to construct their own correspondences. The two translations agree in main structure and doctrine but differ in strategy: Dharmarakṣa is closer to the Indian śāstra tradition of explicit gloss; Kumārajīva leaves the hermeneutic space open, and the entire Chinese exegetical history of the conjured city is written in that open space.

B. The Commentarial Conversation

The conjured city has generated an unusually rich commentarial dialogue. This section takes four voices: Vasubandhu from India (who places the city within the seven-parable framework), and three Chinese masters — Zhiyi (reading the five hundred yojanas through the three contemplations), Jizang (reading the city through Madhyamaka's "nonexistent yet suddenly there"), and Kuiji (reading it through Yogācāra's "provisional cessation, no real entity"). The four are chronologically successive and doctrinally independent.

B1. Vasubandhu: The Fourth of Seven Parables, Addressing "Conceit of Attainment Where There Is None"

Vasubandhu's Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-upadeśa is the original Indic Yogācāra treatment of the Lotus. He maps the seven parables systematically onto a structure of "seven kinds of beings × seven kinds of conceit" (māna / abhimāna). The conjured city is the fourth parable, treating the fourth being — the "person of meditative absorption" (yǒu dìng rén, 有定人) — and the fourth conceit, "conceit of attainment where there is none" (shí wú wèi yǒu zēngshàngmàn, 實無謂有增上慢):

"Fourth, the conceit of attainment where there is none: having worldly samādhi and samāpatti, which are in fact not nirvāṇa, they give rise to the perception of nirvāṇa, a mistaken grasping. To correct this, the parable of the conjured city is taught… The fourth person is led by expedient means into the nirvāṇa city. The nirvāṇa city is the city of the meditative absorptions (dhyānas and samādhis). Having passed that city, they are then led into the great nirvāṇa city."¹⁴

Three elements of this definition are crucial. First, the target is not a vague "clinging to fruits" but a very specific experiential error: meditators who mistake the stillness of meditative absorption for nirvāṇa. The precision of this target gives the parable a unique psychological dimension — it addresses the very common blind spot of "entering deep stillness in sitting and taking that stillness to be the end." Second, Vasubandhu explicitly identifies the city: "the nirvāṇa city is the city of the meditative absorptions." In his system, the conjured city is literally the dhyāna city, not a generic placeholder for śrāvaka attainment. Third, the verb structure "having passed that city, led into the great nirvāṇa city" compresses the logic into two steps: enter the city (resting in meditation) → pass the city (transcending the conceit of meditation-as-nirvāṇa, entering great nirvāṇa).

This placement has a consequence developed in §3.1: the conjured city is not a further stage of the prodigal son or the medicinal herbs. Its target is categorically different. The prodigal son (second parable) treats sectarian-vehicle clinging; the medicinal herbs (third parable) treats single-teaching clinging; the conjured city (fourth parable) treats meditative-state clinging. Each treats one illness; together they form a parallel toolbox, not a single line of doctrinal progression.

B2. Zhiyi: The Three-Contemplations Reading of "Five Hundred Yojanas" and the Only "Principle" Exposition Among Five

In his Fahua wenju (Commentary on the Text of the Lotus), fascicles 7–8, Zhiyi develops an extraordinarily precise structural reading. Taking the "five hundred yojanas" as the key number, he gives a cross-tabular classification:

This reads the journey simultaneously as three layers of space (the three realms, the land-with-remainder, the land of real reward), three layers of affliction (view, dust-sands, ignorance), and three contemplative gates (emptiness, provisional, middle). The conjured city is set at the three-hundred-yojana mark — the entrance to the land-with-remainder — corresponding to "the two-vehicle fruit of cutting off view-and-thought delusions."

On the term "conjured city" itself, Zhiyi offers a philological gloss: "'Conjured' (huà) means 'made by supernatural power'; because it is made by supernatural power, it is 'nonexistent yet suddenly there' — hence 'conjured.' 'City' (chéng) is that which wards off danger and repels enemies. Internally it corresponds to the two-vehicle nirvāṇa, made by provisional wisdom. Because it is a provisional expedient establishment, it is called 'conjured city.'"¹⁵ In Zhiyi's system, the conjured city refers primarily to the nirvāṇas of the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha vehicles (with and without remainder), and its nature is "provisional expedient establishment."

Zhiyi's boldest declaration is to classify the conjured city chapter as the only one among the "five sites of opening the three to reveal the one" (wǔ chù kāisān xiǎnyī) that operates at the level of principle (lǐ):

"The 'Expedient Means' chapter opens the three and reveals the one through teaching… 'The Burning House' opens and reveals through practice… 'Faith and Understanding' opens and reveals through persons… 'Medicinal Herbs' illuminates expedient-and-real through differentiation-and-nondifferentiation… The present 'Conjured City' opens the three and reveals the one directly through principle. The place of treasure and the conjured city are both the two-and-one principles; the chapter breaks the two-vehicle conjured principle and reveals the one true principle of the place of treasure."¹⁶

In Zhiyi's reading, the conjured city does not treat teaching, practice, persons, or capacities: it treats principle itself, which gives it the highest doctrinal rank among the five sites. He further uses "the conjured city is dissolved, the treasure is reached" as the formal marker for the transition from the Prajñāpāramitā period into the Lotus-Nirvāṇa period — the former gathers the two vehicles into a single city (without yet opening the expedient); the latter dissolves that city (revealing the real). The dissolution and advance are the formal criterion for the "fifth time."

B3. Jizang: Madhyamaka's "Nonexistent Yet Suddenly There" and the Three-Times Teaching Structure

Jizang, of the Sanlun school, enters the chapter from an entirely different angle: the Madhyamaka logic of provisional establishment (prajñapti). His gloss on "conjured city" reads:

"Because it is nonexistent and yet suddenly there, it is called 'conjured'; because it wards off danger and repels enemies, it is called 'city.' To instruct those of lower capacity that the former fruit is not real is to open the gate of expedient means; to advance them to the place of treasure is to reveal the real meaning."¹⁷

The four characters wú ér hū yǒu ("nonexistent, yet suddenly there") are the heart of Jizang's reading. They compress a complete Madhyamaka argument: (i) all dharmas are intrinsically without self-nature; (ii) because they are without self-nature, they can be provisionally established in accord with conditions; (iii) the conjured city, as such a provisional establishment, possesses functional reality without substantial reality; (iv) it really functions, yet it has no essence. Jizang adds: "It is not really the ultimate, yet it is spoken of as ultimate — hence it is called 'conjured.' Because it is the same in the meaning of cutting off delusion and the same in realizing the unconditioned, it is called 'one.'"¹⁸ The "conjured" in "conjured city" is not deception but the ontological posture peculiar to Madhyamaka: establishing something functional where there is no self-nature.

For the target of the parable, Jizang uses a three-times teaching structure rather than Vasubandhu's seven-parable grid: "First, the time when the Mahāyāna was taught; second, the time on the middle way when the smaller teaching was given; third, the time when the Mahāyāna was again taught."¹⁹ The conjured city occupies this "middle-way smaller teaching" position — addressing those who in the middle of the journey become discouraged and take the two-vehicle nirvāṇa as ultimate.

Jizang also establishes an important parallel reading of the conjured city with the burning house:

"Question: When the children come out of the burning house, why do they not see the three carts, while on the middle of the road they do see the conjured city? Answer: According to the parable, the children are inside the house and the carts are outside the gate… Not seeing the carts shows that in principle there are no three vehicles — this illuminates the meaning of real wisdom. Seeing the city shows that in expedients there are three — this illuminates the meaning of provisional wisdom."²⁰

The carts of the burning house are "not seen upon emerging" (gestural fiction — no three carts ever actually stood at the gate); the city on the road is "seen on the middle way" (operative provision — though under middle-way insight it is also not graspable). Both are expedient means, but the former manifests "real wisdom" (showing that in principle there are no three vehicles) while the latter manifests "provisional wisdom" (showing that in expedient provision there are three). This parallel provides direct scriptural support for the thesis of §3.2.

B4. Kuiji: The Indeterminate-Lineage Restriction and "Provisional Cessation, No Real Entity"

Kuiji's Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng xuánzàn is the Tang-dynasty Dharma Characteristics school's systematic engagement with the Lotus. His treatment of the conjured city continues the same restriction strategy he applied to the prodigal son and the medicinal herbs — limiting the Lotus's one-vehicle teaching to "indeterminate-lineage śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas who fell back and rose again with great-bodhi mind" (bùdìng zhǒngxìng tuì yǐ huánfā dà pútíxīn, 不定種姓退已還發大菩提心):

"Among the ten causes, the first is: to draw in one class of indeterminate-lineage śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, causing them to enter parinirvāṇa by way of the Mahāyāna — hence the Lotus assembly largely teaches the one-vehicle for this class. The Lotus-śāstra names them 'those who, having fallen back, rose again with great-bodhi mind.' Śāriputra and the others had in former times sought the Great but fell back to cultivate the lesser fruit — they are called 'fallen-and-risen.' It is not that all indeterminate-lineage beings have fallen back and risen again — this should be called 'indeterminate lineage.'"²¹

"For the sake of transforming those who fell back and rose again with great-bodhi mind, the one real and the two provisional are spoken of." Kuiji explicitly restricts the Lotus one-vehicle to this specific subgroup, not to all śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas.

On the ontological status of the city itself, Kuiji offers an extraordinarily precise Yogācāra formulation:

"'Conjuring one city': the root treatise says 'the city of the meditative absorptions; having passed that city, they are led into the great nirvāṇa city.' Hence the Buddha speaks of establishment; because it has no real entity, it is said to be 'conjured'… This is the parable of nirvāṇa with remainder." "'Dissolving the conjured': drawing them into the Mahāyāna. The two-vehicle nirvāṇa is a provisional cessation (jiǎ zémiè); hence 'dissolving the conjured' — it is not that the conjured city is really dissolved by supernatural power."²²

The key terms are: the Buddha speaks of establishment, no real entity, the two-vehicle nirvāṇa is provisional cessation, not really dissolved by supernatural power. Kuiji's Yogācāra reading is this: the "two-vehicle nirvāṇa" to which the conjured city corresponds belongs, in the Yogācāra classification of four nirvāṇas, to nirvāṇa with remainder and nirvāṇa without remainder; these are "cessation through analytical discernment" (pratisaṃkhyā-nirodha) — a cessation revealed by the wisdom of person-emptiness — not tathatā itself. Hence they can be called "provisional cessation" (jiǎ zémiè) — provisionally established cessation. But "provisional" here does not mean "false." It means prajñapti-sat: provisional-in-the-ultimate, functionally real, genuinely able to allow the two vehicles to cut off the birth-death of distinctions, genuinely able to still the coarse afflictions — simply not the unabiding great nirvāṇa revealed by true suchness.

Kuiji's reading of "five hundred yojanas" is entirely different from those of Zhiyi and Jizang:

"'Having passed three hundred yojanas'… according to the correct explanation, the birth-death of distinctions has delusion, karma, and suffering; to depart from these three is to pass the three hundred yojanas. Nirvāṇa lies at the stage of the aśaikṣa."²³

Three hundred yojanas = the three elements of distinction birth-death (delusion, karma, suffering); two hundred yojanas = the two elements of transformation birth-death (ignorance, suffering); together they make five hundred. This classification uses strict Yogācāra causal analysis, without recourse to Tiantai's "five periods" or Jizang's "three times."

The internal consistency of Kuiji's system is clear; but that consistency will meet its own limit in §3.3, when the conjured city's embrace — in the line "In other lands I shall become a Buddha" — extends even to beings who are not "indeterminate-lineage fallen-and-risen" practitioners, and the restriction strategy is pushed to its breaking point.

3. Analytical Argument

3.1 Thesis I: The Seven Parables Are a Parallel Toolbox; the Conjured City Treats Meditative-State Clinging

The Lotus's seven parables are among the most cited figures in Mahāyāna literature, but there is a persistent misreading — treating them as a single cumulative system of correction, as if they jointly construct one unified "theory of breaking attachment." This section argues the opposite: Vasubandhu's seven-parable system is not a progressive structure along a single axis but a parallel toolbox addressing seven categorically distinct kinds of conceit. Recognizing this parallelism is the key to locating the conjured city precisely.

Returning to Vasubandhu's text, the seven parables correspond to seven beings and seven conceits as follows:

Close attention shows that the seven targets belong to entirely different dimensions. The first parable's target is the "seeker of power" — a being pursuing worldly results in saṃsāra, whose error is "taking suffering for pleasure." The second targets the śrāvaka's vehicle-clinging. The third targets the Mahāyāna person's teaching-clinging. The fourth targets the meditator's state-clinging. The fifth targets distracted forgetting of old Mahāyāna roots. The sixth targets misdirected merit. The seventh targets the absence of roots.

These seven do not sit on one dimension. They are not seven progressively deeper attachments; they are seven categorically different ones — seven drawers in a single pharmacy, each holding the remedy for a specific ailment. From prodigal son to medicinal herbs to conjured city, there is no continuous axis of "deeper and deeper breaking of clinging." There is only the parallel relationship of "treating different patients for different illnesses."

This parallelism has two direct consequences for locating the conjured city. First, the conjured city is not the "next stage" after the prodigal son and the medicinal herbs; it opens a different dimension altogether. The prodigal son asks "is the vehicle I have learned the ultimate vehicle?" — a question in the domain of vehicles (yānavāda). The medicinal herbs ask "is the teaching itself universally moistening?" — a question in the domain of teaching (deśanāvāda). The conjured city asks "is the state I experience nirvāṇa?" — a question in the domain of experience / state (avasthāvāda). The first two operate at the level of doctrine and teaching; the conjured city operates at a subtler, more interior level.

Second, the conjured city has a unique psychological dimension. Its target is "the person of meditative absorption" — practitioners who already have substantial meditative achievement. Vasubandhu is explicit: these people "have worldly samādhi and samāpatti." Worldly samādhi is not the dullness of ordinary distraction; it is genuine meditative attainment. Samāpatti is the psychological capacity to enter and stabilize in a particular absorption. The problem is not that they lack concentration; the problem is that after attaining it, they make an extremely subtle category error — mistaking the stillness of the absorption for nirvāṇa.

Vasubandhu's line "the nirvāṇa city is the city of the meditative absorptions" delivers the precise content of the conjured city: the conjured city is the dhyāna city, and the error it corrects is specifically "taking meditative states for nirvāṇa." "Having passed that city, they are then led into the great nirvāṇa city" — the verb "pass" (guò, overcome, transcend) matters. It is not "eliminate." The meditative states themselves are not the problem; the problem is the "nirvāṇa-perception" layered upon them. The precision of the parable is this: without denying the value of meditation, it corrects the subtle inversion of taking concentration for liberation.

This precision has an acute contemporary resonance. Anyone who has practiced sitting meditation for any length of time encounters, at some stage, a very deep stillness — the body releases, thoughts subside, the sense of time dissolves, a certain "just-this" quality appears. At that moment there are two paths: continue walking, treating the stillness as a rest stop along the road; or stop and treat the stillness as the destination. The conjured city treats precisely the subtle clinging on the second path.

Returning to the section's thesis: the seven parables are a parallel toolbox; the conjured city treats meditative-state clinging. Recognizing this parallelism lets us read the conjured city with the right precision. It is not a further stage of the prodigal son or the medicinal herbs; it is another dimension. Its intended audience is not the two-vehicle practitioner who does not know the Mahāyāna exists; it is the practitioner who has real meditative experience, real absorption — and who has mistaken that absorption for the destination. What the conjured city says is: the stillness you have reached is real, but it is not the end. It is a rest stop on the road, not where you are going.

3.2 Thesis II: The Conjured City Is a Real Expedient — Three Paths, One Conclusion

The conjured city invites two equally dangerous misreadings. One is the cruel reading — "the city is a trick, the śrāvakas wasted their practice" — as if the Buddha lured them into the city for rest and then announced that the whole thing was a lie. The other is the erasure reading — "the city is the destination, śrāvaka nirvāṇa is ultimate" — as if the dissolution step could be ignored and the entry alone preserved. This section argues the middle: the conjured city is a real expedient — not a deception, not a destination, but a genuine provision within emptiness that functions effectively and is then dissolved by the revelation of its expedient status. Three independent traditions — Jizang's Madhyamaka, Kuiji's Yogācāra, and the Awakening of Faith's Tathāgatagarbha — converge on this conclusion.

3.2.1 Jizang's Path (Madhyamaka): "Nonexistent Yet Suddenly There" and Functional Reality

Jizang's gloss on "conjured" is the simplest entry into this thesis: "because it is nonexistent and yet suddenly there, it is called 'conjured.'"²⁴ Four characters compress a complete Madhyamaka argument: (i) all dharmas are intrinsically without self-nature; (ii) because they are without self-nature, they can be provisionally established according to conditions; (iii) as a provisional establishment, the conjured city has no self-nature and yet really functions (it really allows the travelers to rest); (iv) therefore it possesses functional reality without substantial reality.

Jizang continues: "It is not really the ultimate, yet it is spoken of as ultimate — hence 'conjured.' Because it is the same in cutting off delusion and the same in realizing the unconditioned, it is called 'one.'"²⁵ The precise point is this: the two-vehicle nirvāṇa to which the conjured city refers is real at the level of "cutting off delusion" (the śrāvakas really cut off their afflictions) and real at the level of "realizing the unconditioned" (they really realize a certain unconditioned). Where it is not real is only in the dimension of ultimacy — it is not the final destination. The "provisional" in the conjured city does not lie in its function but in its position.

In Madhyamaka's logic, prajñapti ("provisional designation") is never a synonym for "lie." A provisional designation can have genuine function — "cart" is a provisional name established on the assemblage of wheels, axle, and frame, but the cart so named really carries people; its "provisionality" lies only in having no independent "cart-essence" apart from the parts. The conjured city is the same: it has no "conjured-city-essence" independent of the Buddha's expedient power, but it really lets the exhausted travelers rest.

3.2.2 Kuiji's Path (Yogācāra): "Provisional Cessation, No Real Entity"

Kuiji defines the city with extraordinary precision: "Because it has no real entity, it is said to be 'conjured'… this is the parable of nirvāṇa with remainder." "The two-vehicle nirvāṇa is a provisional cessation… it is not that the conjured city is really dissolved by supernatural power."²⁶

The Yogācāra term pratisaṃkhyā-nirodha ("cessation through analytical discernment") is one of the unconditioned dharmas — a cessation revealed by the discernment of wisdom. "Provisional cessation" (jiǎ zémiè) is Kuiji's precise ontological designation for the two-vehicle nirvāṇa: it is "a cessation provisionally established in the ultimate" — really disclosed by the wisdom of person-emptiness (pudgala-nairātmya-jñāna), but limited in content to the cutting off of birth-death-by-distinctions and not reaching the unabiding great nirvāṇa disclosed by dharma-emptiness. "Provisional" here does not mean "false" (asat); it means ultimately-posited (prajñapti-sat) — functionally real in the ultimate dimension, genuinely effective, yet not the final ontological basis.

Kuiji's emphatic line — "it is not that the conjured city is really dissolved by supernatural power" — is particularly important. The "dissolution" is not the Buddha really making the city disappear through psychic force. The dissolution is the Buddha's utterance "this city is conjured" itself. In other words, the act of dissolving is the act of disclosing through speech. The moment the travelers hear "this city is not real, I conjured it," their clinging to the city is deconstructed on the spot. This deconstruction requires no supernatural power; it requires only the truthfulness of the speech.

Seen through Yogācāra, the correspondence is: provisional cessation (nirvāṇa with remainder) = conjured city. It really bears a function (letting the two vehicles cut off the birth-death of distinctions); it is not a deception; and it is not ultimate. To disclose its expedient character is to turn the two vehicles away from it and toward the unabiding great nirvāṇa.

3.2.3 The Awakening of Faith's Path (Tathāgatagarbha): "Delusive Grasping at Nirvāṇa → Originally-Already Nirvāṇa"

The Awakening of Faith offers a third path from the angle of Tathāgatagarbha. Its diagnosis of two-vehicle nirvāṇa is: "because the teaching is not ultimate, they see the five aggregates as arising-and-ceasing, fear birth-and-death, and delusively grasp at nirvāṇa." Its correction: "The self-nature of the five aggregates is unarisen, hence there is no ceasing; they are originally-already nirvāṇa."²⁷

This diagnostic-and-corrective structure is isomorphic with the conjured city:

The decisive term in the Awakening of Faith is "originally-already nirvāṇa" (běnlái nièpán). The real place of treasure is not at some distance further along the road; it is the beings' own tathatā, already present. The two-vehicle nirvāṇa symbolized by the conjured city is "delusively grasped" (wàngqǔ) — not "falsely constructed" (wàngjiǎ). The object of the grasping can itself be real (the stillness of fully ceased distinctions); what is delusive is only the grasping-as-ultimate. The correction is not to abolish the stillness; it is to disclose the originally-already-present nirvāṇa that the two vehicles have been carrying all along without recognizing.

3.2.4 Convergence, and the Precise Burning-House / Conjured-City Distinction

Jizang (emptiness supports provision), Kuiji (provisional cessation as ultimately posited), and the Awakening of Faith (delusive grasping versus originally-present) — three traditions starting from three radically different metaphysical points (Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, Tathāgatagarbha) arrive at a single conclusion on "the conjured city is a real expedient." This convergence is worth marking in its own right: the thesis is not one school's convenient reading but a structural consensus across the three major Mahāyāna traditions.

More importantly, this allows us to draw a precise distinction between the burning house and the conjured city. S7-P03 established the thesis "expedient means is not deception" for the burning house — but the burning house's expedient structure is gestural fiction: no three carts ever actually stood at the gate; the father spoke of carts only to get the children to emerge. The conjured city's expedient structure is operative provision: the city actually appeared, the travelers actually entered, and they actually received rest. Both are upāya, but at different levels of demand:

The burning house's upāya is "to make you move, I point at a fictional goal." The conjured city's upāya is "to let you rest, I really provide you a functioning experience along the way, and then dissolve it."

What the conjured city requires of the Buddha's expedient power is more demanding. It is not merely "pointing at" something; it is "really producing" something, letting the two vehicles genuinely experience cutting off delusion, stillness, and ease — and then taking on the second-step responsibility of "dissolving." This is upāya at a higher level of difficulty, and it is the conjured city's unique doctrinal position within the seven-parable system.

Returning to the section's thesis: the conjured city is a real expedient. It is not a deception (Jizang's "nonexistent yet suddenly there" confirms its functional reality), and it is not a destination (Kuiji's "provisional cessation" confirms its non-ultimacy); it is a two-step movement of genuine provision within emptiness, effectively functioning, then dissolved through the revelation of expedience. P03's "expedient means is not deception" is upgraded in P06 to "expedient means can be a real manifestation" — this is P06's doctrinal advance on P03.

3.3 Thesis III: The Cumulative Pressure of a Single Restriction Strategy

Kuiji's readings of the prodigal son (S7-P04), the medicinal herbs (S7-P05), and the conjured city (S7-P06) share a single restriction strategy: limiting the Lotus's one-vehicle teaching to "indeterminate-lineage beings who fell back and rose again with great-bodhi mind" (bùdìng zhǒngxìng tuì yǐ huánfā dà pútíxīn). This section argues that the cumulative pressure of the same strategy applied across three parables pushes Kuiji's system to its internal limit — and that the limit is reached most sharply in the conjured city. This paper does not pretend to dissolve the tension; following P05's method, it presents the tension honestly as a structural problem any Yogācāra reading of the Lotus must face.

3.3.1 The Same Restriction Across Three Parables

Kuiji's Xuanzan, fascicle 4, reads: "To draw in one class of indeterminate-lineage śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, causing them to enter parinirvāṇa by way of the Mahāyāna — hence the Lotus assembly largely teaches the one-vehicle for this class. The Lotus-śāstra names them 'those who, having fallen back, rose again with great-bodhi mind'… it is not that all indeterminate-lineage beings have fallen back and risen again; this should be called 'indeterminate lineage.'"²⁸ The same restriction appears again in the conjured city commentary of fascicle 8: "For the sake of transforming those who fell back and rose again with great-bodhi mind, the one real and the two provisional are spoken of."²⁹

Placed side by side:

This is a single strategy across three parables — not an accident but a deliberate maintenance of internal consistency with Kuiji's five-lineage metaphysics. If the Lotus one-vehicle universally embraced all śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas (including "determinate-lineage two-vehicle practitioners"), the separate establishment of the five lineages would collapse. Kuiji's solution is to preserve the lineage distinction and limit the Lotus one-vehicle to "a one-vehicle spoken with hidden intent for those who fell back and rose again."

3.3.2 The Conjured City Pushes the Strategy to Its Limit

The difficulty is that in the verse-prose explanation of the conjured city chapter, the Buddha says something that stretches far beyond the scope of "fallen-and-risen":

"After my parinirvāṇa, there will be other disciples who have not heard this sūtra, who do not know and do not awaken to what the bodhisattvas practice, who will give rise to the perception of parinirvāṇa toward the merits they have obtained, and will enter nirvāṇa. In other lands I shall become a Buddha, under a different name…"³⁰

The Buddha says: after my parinirvāṇa, there will still be disciples who have not heard this sūtra, who do not know what the bodhisattvas practice, who take their own merit-attainment to be "attained parinirvāṇa" and enter nirvāṇa; in other lands, under a different name, I will again become a Buddha for them. The addressees here evidently include two-vehicle practitioners "who give rise to the perception of parinirvāṇa toward their own attainments" — practitioners who never once gave rise to the great mind and are not necessarily "fallen-and-risen." The Buddha's promise to this group is "in other lands I shall become a Buddha": even if in this lifetime they do not turn, the Buddha will continue to guide them through expedient means across longer spans of time.

This places direct internal pressure on the restriction strategy: if the conjured city's referent is limited to the fallen-and-risen, who exactly is the "other lands, other names" passage addressing? If they are also indeterminate-lineage, why must the Buddha wait until "other lands" to teach them? If they are determinate-lineage, then determinate-lineage two-vehicle practitioners are also enclosed within the conjured city's promise — which is equivalent to saying that even "determinacy" is relative, openable across larger scales of space and time.

Kuiji of course sees the tension. His response is "speech with hidden intent" (mìyì shuō): "Hence this one-vehicle is spoken with hidden intent… it is not an outright denial of the absence of determinate lineage."³¹ The Lotus's one-vehicle is an utterance of hidden intent, not a definitive utterance; the separate establishment of the five lineages still holds; the conjured city's promise is an expedient-with-hidden-intent and does not break the lineage doctrine. This is a logically self-consistent response, but it carries a price: the Lotus one-vehicle is read as an expedient about an expedient — the one vehicle itself becomes only a teaching device, not an ultimate position.

3.3.3 Presenting the Divergence Without Forcing Resolution

This paper does not attempt to adjudicate the disagreement. Kuiji's internal consistency is real: between his metaphysical position on five lineages and his hermeneutic of the Lotus one-vehicle, he maintains systematic coherence through "speech with hidden intent." The position this paper takes is that the price of this coherence — reading the Lotus one-vehicle as "with hidden intent" rather than definitive — stands in real tension with the Lotus's own tone: "There is only one Buddha-vehicle; there are no two, nor are there three."

Continuing P05's method: present the divergence rather than pretend to dissolve it. Kuiji's restriction strategy holds with high consistency across the prodigal son, the medicinal herbs, and the conjured city; the conjured city pushes that consistency to its limit, because its verse-prose explanation directly touches the question of "the final fate of determinate-lineage two-vehicle practitioners." The reader must decide: accept Kuiji's hidden-intent reading to preserve the lineage distinction, or let the Lotus's "no two, no three" rewrite the lineage doctrine. This paper's function is to place the conditions of that choice clearly on the table.

4. Continuity with the Series

4.1 The Conjured City Loop: Observe Exhaustion → Deliberate → Conjure → Resume

S2-P02 extracted a four-step loop from Avalokiteśvara's practicing the deep prajñāpāramitā: observe the faculties → respond to the capacity → correspond → disclose. S7-P05 applied this loop to the medicinal herbs and obtained "observe the faculties → cover universally → respond to capacity → ripen." The conjured city gives the third variant:

Observe exhaustion (the guide sees the travelers weary) → Deliberate (reflect on expedient means) → Conjure (conjure the great city for rest) → Resume (dissolve and lead onward to the treasure).

What is distinctive here is step three. In the Avalokiteśvara loop and the medicinal herbs loop, step three is "correspond" or "respond" — the match between the Buddha's response and the disciple's capacity. In the conjured city loop, step three is a more active verb: conjure. The guide does not merely respond; he actively establishes something that is not really existent. Step four, "resume," is also stronger than in the earlier loops: it is an explicit act of dissolution, requiring the guide to bear the responsibility of the speech-act "this city is not real." The conjured city loop is thus the Avalokiteśvara loop specialized onto the dimension of expedient provision — it displays a four-step movement of expedient → provision → function → dissolution, and it is the only variant in which "dissolution" is explicitly placed inside the structure.

4.2 Continuity with S7-P03 (Burning House) and S7-P05 (Medicinal Herbs)

P03 treated "expedient means is not deception" (the carts of the burning house are gestural fiction); P05 treated "one teaching, differentiated capacities" (the one rain universally moistens, reception differs); P06 treats "the real expedient" (the conjured city is an actual manifestation). The three parables form a cumulative structure:

The burning house's expedient is "pointing"; the medicinal herbs' is "pouring"; the conjured city's is "making." The difficulty increases through the sequence — pointing requires intention, pouring requires equanimity, making requires responsibility. The conjured city represents upāya's highest level of demand in this series.

4.3 Preparing P11 (Lifespan Chapter): From Trace-Gate Ancient Time to Origin-Gate Ancient Time

The front half of the conjured city chapter is the Lotus's first positive unfolding of the category "ancient time" — Mahābhijñā-jñānābhibhū's "three-thousand motes" kalpas. This is trace-gate ancient-bond-formation; in Chapter 16 (the Lifespan Chapter), the Buddha will display, within the origin gate, an even vaster time structure: the "five-hundred-thousand koṭi-nayuta asaṃkhyeya" motes of "ancient realization." The two form a double-mote structure across trace and origin. This paper marks the line structurally and reserves the formal treatment for P11.

4.4 Resonance with the Diamond Sūtra Series

The two-step movement of the conjured city — conjure and then dissolve — structurally corresponds to the jífēi ("is / is not") formula of the Diamond Sūtra: first affirm (let the function unfold) → then negate (disclose its absence of self-nature). The conjuring is the "affirm" moment (the actual manifestation); the dissolution is the "negate" moment (the disclosure of non-ultimacy). S5-P01 mapped the jífēi formula onto the Yogācāra three natures (trisvabhāva); the conjured city can be read as the dramatization of that mapping within the Lotus narrative — jífēi not as abstract logic but as a journey that actually takes place.

5. Middle-Way Corrections

❌ The conjured city is a deception, the śrāvakas wasted their practice

This is the cruelest misreading. It reads "the city is not real" as "the city is false" and concludes that the two vehicles' practice was meaningless. §3.2 has already argued against this through three converging paths: Jizang's "nonexistent yet suddenly there" confirms the city's functional reality; Kuiji's "provisional cessation" confirms its ultimate-positing; the Awakening of Faith's "delusive grasping / originally present" confirms its structural isomorphism with the diagnostic/corrective mode. The afflictions the śrāvakas cut off are really cut off; the nirvāṇa with remainder they realize is really realized. Non-ultimate is not non-real.

❌ The conjured city is the destination; śrāvaka nirvāṇa is ultimate

This is the opposite extreme — reading the city as the destination and erasing the Mahāyāna horizon entirely. It ignores the second step — "dissolve and lead onward" — built into the chapter's structure. The city is a real way-station, but the function of a way-station is to enable further travel, not to end it. To read the city as destination is to stop at step three and forget step four.

❌ The conjured city is a placebo; the chapter is a therapeutic narrative

⚠️ This misreading is generated by the contemporary trend of reading Buddhist practice as psychotherapy. The chapter can easily be read as "the Buddha's compassionate lie" — as if the Buddha were a therapist prescribing a placebo to exhausted pilgrims. But this reading downgrades the conjured city from a real expedient within emptiness to a subjective-psychological operation. The two-vehicle nirvāṇa with remainder to which the conjured city corresponds is, in Yogācāra's classification of four nirvāṇas, the unconditioned of pratisaṃkhyā-nirodha — it has a real ontological status, not merely a subjective-experiential one. The conjured city corrects not psychological distress but positional error on the path of practice.

❌ Dissolving the city is the Buddha taking back a gift he earlier gave

This is the slide into personalist theism — reading the Buddha as a subject who "gives" and "takes back" and the city as an object granted and then revoked. But the city was never an object; it was a provision (prajñapti). "Dissolving" is not the withdrawal of an object; it is the disclosure of a fact: "this city is conjured." Kuiji says it most clearly: "It is not that the conjured city is really dissolved by supernatural power." The dissolution is not an action; it is a speech-act. It is not a retrieval; it is a disclosure.

6. Conclusion

Essential restatement. In Vasubandhu's seven-parable framework, the conjured city is the fourth parable, correcting the "conceit of attainment where there is none" of the "person of meditative absorption" — the precise blind spot of taking worldly samādhi for nirvāṇa. The Lotus's seven parables are a parallel toolbox, not a cumulative system. The city is a real expedient: Jizang's Madhyamaka, Kuiji's Yogācāra, and the Awakening of Faith's Tathāgatagarbha converge on the conclusion that it is a functioning provision within emptiness, really established, effectively operating, and then dissolved by the revelation of its expedient status — neither a deception nor a destination. Kuiji's restriction strategy of "indeterminate-lineage fallen-and-risen" runs consistently through the prodigal son, the medicinal herbs, and the conjured city; the conjured city pushes that consistency to its limit, displaying an honest tension between Yogācāra's separate establishment of the five lineages and the Lotus's universal embrace of the one vehicle.

Guidance for practice. The practice implication of this paper is very concrete. Anyone who sits for long enough will, at some point, meet a stretch of unusually deep stillness. In that moment, the conjured city gives two instructions: first, the stillness is real — do not doubt its reality; second, the stillness is not the end — do not take up residence there. The first sentence protects you from falling into the nihilistic reading, "I have gained nothing." The second protects you from falling into the conjured-city reading, "I have already arrived." Together they form the expedient of passing through the city without clinging to it.

Open question. The two-step movement of conjure and dissolve presupposes that the Buddha has a "conjuring" capacity — but what is the ontological status of that capacity itself? Is it an active face of the emptiness of all dharmas, or an independent function within buddha-nature? Madhyamaka and Yogācāra answer this sharply differently: the former grounds the expedient power in emptiness's condition-following provision; the latter grounds it in the functioning of the four wisdoms (especially the wisdom of accomplishing what is to be done). This question will be reopened in the S8 Avataṃsaka series when treating dharmadhātu pratītyasamutpāda — when "non-obstruction of phenomena and phenomena" becomes the structure of the dharmadhātu, the boundary between that which conjures and that which is conjured will be cancelled in a different way. What the conjured city gives here is the most compressed form of the question: from where does the expedient come? How can it be simultaneously a manifestation and real?

References

Primary Buddhist Sources

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Modern Scholarship

This paper does not rely on modern scholarship as citational support; all arguments are grounded directly in the Taishō primary sources (see PAPER_STYLE.md §2.1 on citation principle).

Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Cross-Reference Index

Footnotes

Pointing at the Moon · Dharma Research · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 All primary-source citations verified against CBETA electronic Tripiṭaka. GitHub: pointing-at-the-moon/dharma-research