Prologue to Sudhana's Southward Journey — Vow 9 *Accommodating All Sentient Beings* × The Gate of Revealing the Dharma through Reliance on Phenomena

I. Introduction

1.1 The Vow and the Question

Samantabhadra Bodhisattva-mahāsattva addresses Sudhana:

"Furthermore, good son! As for what is called accommodating all sentient beings … toward those afflicted by sickness, [the bodhisattva] becomes a skilled physician; for those who have lost their way, he points out the right road; in the dark of night, he becomes a lamp; for the destitute, he reveals hidden treasure. Thus does the bodhisattva benefit all sentient beings equally." ¹ (translation mine)

Of all ten great vows of Samantabhadra, accommodating all sentient beings is the most concrete in its practice-orientation. The vow's parade of agent–patient pairs — "becomes a physician," "points out the road," "becomes a lamp," "reveals the treasure" — yields, on its surface, a clean image: the bodhisattva occupies the position of giver, sentient beings the position of receiver; the bodhisattva accommodates, sentient beings are accommodated. This is the most immediate, and most easily settled-upon, reading of Vow 9.

But if reading stops here, then the entire structure of Sudhana's journey through fifty-three spiritual friends in the Gaṇḍavyūha collapses into a spiritual itinerary in which a low-ranking student progressively consults higher-ranking teachers. The eighth item in this series' Middle-Way Calibration list has already warned of precisely this danger: "the touristification of the fifty-three visits — reading them as spiritual sightseeing or dharma-quest adventures." ² Read as a stamp-collecting pilgrimage, the fifty-three visits forfeit their entire weight as Huayan dharmadhātu pedagogy and degenerate into an inspirational travelogue.

The question can therefore be sharpened: In Huayan perfect-teaching, is the "accommodating" of Vow 9 unidirectional, or bidirectional?

1.2 Thesis

This paper argues: in Huayan perfect-teaching, héng shùn zhòng shēng is a bidirectional structure. The spiritual friend is not merely a teacher; Sudhana is not merely a seeker. At every one of the fifty-three encounters both ends of the relation are being liberated — Sudhana from ignorance, the spiritual friend from "the unfulfilled vow." More precisely: the spiritual friend's vow of accommodating all sentient beings is actualized by the seeker who arrives, and Sudhana's southward journey is simultaneously the fulfillment of Vow 9 on behalf of all spiritual friends in the ten directions.

The argument unfolds in three layers.

The first is textual fact. The first four encounters of the Gaṇḍavyūha (Meghaśrī, Sāgaramegha, Supratiṣṭhita, Megha) all close with the same four-step formula: self-acknowledged limitation → contrast with the boundless → rhetorical self-deprecation → active referral to the next station. This formula is a hard fact of the sūtra text, not a later interpretive overlay. §III will use this four-step structure as narrative-layer evidence for the claim that the fifty-three-station relay is handed forward by the spiritual friends themselves.

The second is commentarial witness. Fazang's Huayan jing tanxuan ji 華嚴經探玄記, defining the gate of "revealing the Dharma through reliance on phenomena," states explicitly: "it is not that, by relying on this [phenomenon], something else is being signified." ³ Chengguan's Yanyi chao 演義鈔 explicitly anchors this profound gate to specific scenes from Sudhana's southward journey (the Golden World, Maitreya's Tower, the Brahmin Jayoṣmāyatana's pyre and sword-mountain). ⁴ These two passages together form this paper's doctrinal floor for the principle "phenomena are the Dharma; nothing else is being signified."

The third is the structural meshing of perfect-teaching. The pairing of Vow 9 with the tenth profound gate (tuō shì xiǎn fǎ shēng jiě mén) was already established in the architectural design of P11 〈Ten Great Vows under Ten Windows〉. This paper advances the argument by exhibiting the internal doctrinal reason for that pairing: héng shùn zhòng shēng corresponds to the gate of revealing-through-phenomena precisely because both demand that phenomena (the pedagogical scene, the seeker, the teacher) become the dharmadhātu's own channel of self-disclosure rather than instrumental intermediaries.

1.3 Positional Anchor

This paper takes Sudhana's first visit — to the bhikṣu Meghaśrī — as its core text for two reasons.

First, Meghaśrī is the first spiritual friend Sudhana meets after departing from Mañjuśrī's instruction and entering the southward pedagogical chain. Chengguan, in Yanyi chao fascicle 85, explicitly judges that Meghaśrī occupies the First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind (chū fā xīn zhù 初發心住). ⁵ Mañjuśrī occupies the consummation of the Ten Faiths (shí xìn mǎn wèi 十信滿位); Meghaśrī occupies the head of the Ten Abodes. This transition is the concrete display of "the consummation of faith entering abodehood" (xìn mǎn rù zhù 信滿入住), echoing the positional doctrine of P05 〈Practicing-Buddha, Not Stage-Buddha〉 on the proposition "consummation of faith is buddhahood."

Second, the dharma-gate Meghaśrī teaches — the "Gate of Universal Vision through the Light of Wisdom that Recollects the Realms of All Buddhas" — is a systematic buddha-recollection samādhi unfolded in twenty-one sub-gates. It is the standard Huayan template for buddha-recollection (recollection that universally beholds, through the light of wisdom, all buddhas of the ten directions and three times), and it must be sharply distinguished from the recitation-of-the-name nianfo of the Pure Land tradition. §3.1 will treat this distinction as a Middle-Way Calibration of "Huayan-style buddha-recollection vs. recitation-style buddha-recollection."

1.4 Bridge to the Next Paper

§VI will argue that Vow 9 (accommodating sentient beings) and Vow 10 (universal dedication of merit, 普皆迴向) are two phases of one and the same act. Héng shùn zhòng shēng abrades the giver–receiver distinction; pǔ jiē huí xiàng distributes evenly across the dharmadhātu the energy that remains once that distinction has been fully ground away. Without the bidirectional structure of Vow 9, Vow 10 collapses into a one-way merit-distribution ceremony; with the bidirectional structure of Vow 9, Vow 10 becomes the dharmadhātu's own self-circulating energy. P09 and P10 〈Pǔ jiē huí xiàng × The Gate of the Distinct Formation of the Ten Time-Periods Mutually Permeating〉 therefore form a continuous argument across two papers.

II. Textual Foundations

Following this series' "sūtra first, treatise after" principle, this section presents canonical sūtra material first (§II.A) and commentarial material second (§II.B).

§II.A — Sūtra

2.1 Mañjuśrī Departs Fortune City — the Gaṇḍavyūha prologue

The prologue of the Gaṇḍavyūha narrates how Mañjuśrī departs from Jetavana and travels southward in due succession to the Sāla Grove of the Banner of Adornment east of Fortune City (fú chéng 福城). A great assembly gathers; Mañjuśrī teaches Sudhana the Dharma and confers upon him the aspiration for anuttarā samyaksaṃbodhi. This prologue constitutes the starting point of the fifty-three visits: Mañjuśrī himself occupies the consummation of the Ten Faiths, and his commission marks Sudhana's passage from "consummated faith" into the Ten Abodes. The sūtra reads:

"At that time, Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva turned his gaze upon Sudhana as the king of elephants turns his entire body, and spoke thus: 'Excellent, excellent! Good son, you have already roused the aspiration for anuttarā samyaksaṃbodhi, and now wish to draw near to spiritual friends, to inquire concerning the bodhisattva's practice and to cultivate the bodhisattva's path.'" ⁶ (translation mine)

The phrase "as the king of elephants turns his gaze" (xiàng wáng huí guān 象王迴觀) holds a special place in Huayan literature. When the king of elephants turns, his entire body turns — not only the head — and the image figures Mañjuśrī's regard for Sudhana as the dharmadhātu's entire-body regard upon a single aspirant. This image lays the groundwork for the "methodology of the spiritual friend" developed below.

2.2 Mañjuśrī's Instruction to Travel South, and the Four Maxims for the Spiritual Friend

Mañjuśrī immediately directs Sudhana to travel southward in search of spiritual friends, and gives him the "four maxims concerning 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." ⁷ (translation mine)

On the surface, these four maxims teach Sudhana "how to be a good student." But §3.5 will argue that they are simultaneously the mirror image of "how to be a good spiritual friend" — for in the bidirectional structure of héng shùn zhòng shēng, the positions of student and friend are mutually conditioning from the outset.

2.3 The First Visit, Bhikṣu Meghaśrī — Three Translations Compared

For Sudhana's first visit, all three Chinese translations of the Avataṃsaka render the bhikṣu's name with a "cloud" element, but the renderings of his name and of his dharma-gate diverge in small but decisive ways:

The Sanskrit original Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra gives Meghaśrī (megha = cloud, śrī = glory / virtue / radiance), so the 40-fascicle "Auspicious Cloud" is closest to a phonetic-semantic transcription, while the 80-fascicle "Virtue Cloud" is a freer semantic rendering.

The most striking divergence lies in the naming of the dharma-gate. The 80-fascicle has "the realm of wisdom-light"; the 60-fascicle has "universal-gate light contemplation"; the 40-fascicle uniquely contains the four characters píng děng jìng jiè 平等境界 — "equal realm." These four characters are absent from both the 80- and 60-fascicle versions, and they directly name the core of Meghaśrī's buddha-recollection: it is not the recollection of some particular buddha, nor of some particular buddha's realm, but the recollection of all buddhas' equal realm. These four characters push Meghaśrī's gate from "embracing all buddhas" to "manifesting the one suchness," and they constitute the most direct sūtra-evidence for §III's argument that "Huayan-style buddha-recollection ≠ recitation-of-the-name buddha-recollection." ⁸

2.4 Meghaśrī's Twenty-One Gates of Buddha-Recollection

When Meghaśrī expounds his realized dharma-gate to Sudhana, he unfolds it 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 power [of the buddhas]; that abides in the Dharma; that illumines the directions; that enters the unseen; that abides through all kalpas; that abides in all times; that abides in all lands; that abides in all worlds; that abides in all realms; that abides in cessation; that abides in remoteness; that abides in the vast; that abides in the subtle; that abides in adornment; that abides in capacity-for-action; that abides in the mind of sovereignty; that abides in one's own karma; that abides in supernatural transformation; that abides in space. ⁹

The twenty-one gates traverse the temporal axis (abiding through kalpas / through all times), the spatial axis (abiding in all lands / in space), the substance–function axis (cessation / supernatural transformation), and the self–other axis (one's own karma / causing all sentient beings [to recollect]). The dharmadhātu's universally-embracing scope, structured into this fourfold matrix, can no longer be reduced to any single recitation-of-the-name system. §3.1 will treat this distinction in detail.

2.5 The Closing Self-Deprecation — the "I have attained only this" Structure

Having enumerated the twenty-one gates, Meghaśrī immediately says:

"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?" ¹⁰ (translation mine)

He then immediately directs Sudhana to the next visit — Bhikṣu Sāgaramegha at the country of Sāgaramukha to the south. This four-step formula — self-acknowledged limitation → contrast with the boundless → rhetorical self-deprecation → active referral to the next station — is not Meghaśrī's idiosyncratic modesty but a closing format common to every spiritual friend in the fifty-three visits. §3.4 will display this hard fact through a comparative table of the first four visits (Meghaśrī, Sāgaramegha, Supratiṣṭhita, Megha) and argue its doctrinal function at the narrative layer of the gate of revealing-through-phenomena.

2.6 The Vow-Text of Vow 9

The ninth great vow, accommodating all sentient beings, is taught by Samantabhadra to Sudhana in the Practices and Vows chapter:

"Furthermore, good son! As for what is called accommodating all sentient beings — that is to say, the entire dharmadhātu, 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. Why so? 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." ¹¹ (translation mine)

The final four clauses of this vow-text are the canonical charter of the bidirectional structure: "to accord with sentient beings is to accord with all buddhas" — accommodating sentient beings and accommodating buddhas are one and the same act. The meshing of Vow 9 with the tenth profound gate (revealing-through-phenomena) is built on precisely this clause. It is anchored here; §III and §VI will return to it for detailed argument.

§II.B — Treatise / Commentary

2.7 Chengguan's Yanyi chao — Meghaśrī Occupies the First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind

In fascicle 85 of the Dafangguang fo huayan jing suishu yanyi chao 大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔, Chengguan provides a complete positional allocation of Sudhana's fifty-three visits. His general framework reads:

"Sudhana first encounters Mañjuśrī. From Meghaśrī to Gopā there are forty persons, allocated to the Three Worthies and the Ten Sages [i.e., the forty positions of the Ten Abodes, Ten Practices, Ten Dedications, and Ten Grounds]. From Māyā onward — Devī Prabhā and the rest — there are eleven, making fifty-two; and with Maitreya and Samantabhadra, fifty-four." ¹² (translation mine)

The forty spiritual friends from Meghaśrī to Gopā correspond exactly to the forty positions of the Ten Abodes, Ten Practices, Ten Dedications, and Ten Grounds. Meghaśrī stands at the head, and Chengguan explicitly assigns him to the First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind:

"Now this clearly elucidates the First Abode of Arousing the Mind … by the power of the perfumation of hearing upon the original-understanding nature … the Pure Practice chapter has already taught that the consummated mind of the Ten Faiths enters this First Abode." ¹³ (translation mine)

He further enumerates "ten meanings" explaining why a buddha-recollection dharma-gate is placed at the head of the fifty-five spiritual friends. The tenth meaning reads: "to indicate that the First Abode arouses its aspiration with the buddhas as its referent, and rejoices in making offerings." ¹⁴ (translation mine) This single phrase — "the First Abode arouses its aspiration with the buddhas as its referent" — is the key commentarial witness for P09's positional argument. It hooks Meghaśrī's "buddha-recollection" gate directly onto the positional doctrine of "First Abode aspiration-arousal," echoing P05 〈Practicing-Buddha, Not Stage-Buddha〉's analysis of the positional structure of "consummation of faith is buddhahood."

2.8 Chengguan's Huayan jing shu — Title-Exegesis of the Gaṇḍavyūha

In fascicles 54–55 of his Huayan jing shu 華嚴經疏, Chengguan exegetes the chapter title Entering the Dharma-Realm, distinguishing the relation between the "enterer" (Sudhana) and the "entered" (the dharmadhātu), and arguing why the number of spiritual friends is fixed at fifty-three. §3.3 will return to this passage. ¹⁵

2.9 Fazang's Tanxuan ji — Exegetical Outline of the Gaṇḍavyūha and the Four Meanings of "Southward"

In fascicle 18 of the Huayan jing tanxuan ji 華嚴經探玄記, Fazang exegetes the Gaṇḍavyūha and assigns four meanings to the "south" of Sudhana's southward journey: (1) the south governs brightness, and brightness figures wisdom; (2) the south governs growth, and nourishes the roots of goodness; (3) the south governs leftward turning, and accords with the flow of the Dharma-nature; (4) the south governs fire, and fire figures the non-discriminating wisdom of prajñā. ¹⁶ These four meanings push "southward" from a geographical bearing into a dharmadhātu-doctrinal one, providing the commentarial basis for §IV's discussion of dharmadhātu pedagogy.

2.10 Fazang's Tanxuan ji — Definition of the Gate of Revealing the Dharma through Reliance on Phenomena

The definition of the tenth profound gate, tuō shì xiǎn fǎ shēng jiě mén, comes from fascicle 1 of the Tanxuan ji:

"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." ¹⁷ (translation mine; emphasis added)

The clause "it is not that, by relying on this, something else is being signified" is the bright line that separates the gate of revealing-through-phenomena from any ordinary allegorical reading. In an allegorical reading, the phenomenon is a signifier and a signified lies behind it. In the gate of revealing-through-phenomena, the phenomenon is the Dharma; there is no two-storey "phenomenon → signified → Dharma" structure. The instant the phenomenon is seen, the Dharma is present. §3.3 will treat this clause as the doctrinal floor of the entire gate.

2.11 Chengguan's Yanyi chao — The Gate of Revealing-through-Phenomena Explicitly Anchored to Sudhana's Scenes

In fascicle 11 of the Yanyi chao, when discussing the eighth profound gate of the older ten-gates sequence (the gate of revealing-through-phenomena), Chengguan explicitly cites scenes from Sudhana's fifty-three visits as illustrations: the Golden World, Maitreya's Tower, and the pyre and sword-mountain of the Brahmin Jayoṣmāyatana. ¹⁸

The pyre-and-sword-mountain episode is particularly decisive. Jayoṣmāyatana commands Sudhana to climb the sword-mountain and enter the pyre in order to certify the bodhisattva's practice. Sudhana wavers; only after the gods' urging does he climb and enter, whereupon he attains the bodhisattva samādhi of well-abiding. Chengguan takes this scene as the paradigmatic display of "phenomenon-as-Dharma": the pyre is not an allegory for the wisdom of prajñā; the pyre is the on-site self-disclosure of prajñā's non-discriminating wisdom; climbing into the fire is not entering some spiritual symbol but is itself walking in prajñā. This is the most direct intra-traditional commentarial witness for "Sudhana's southward journey is the gate of revealing-through-phenomena," and §3.3 will treat it as P09's strongest commentarial proof for its title gate.

2.12 Fazang's Wujiao zhang and Jin shizi zhang — In the One-Vehicle, Phenomenon Is Principle

In fascicle 4 of the Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang 華嚴一乘教義分齊章, Fazang stages a self-posed question and answer:

"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." ¹⁹ (translation mine)

The "reliance on phenomena" of the Three Vehicles is semiotic: the phenomenon stands here, the principle stands there, and the phenomenon is merely the principle's representation. The "reliance on phenomena" of the One Vehicle (Huayan perfect-teaching) is, by contrast, the phenomenon itself as the principle. This passage stands in perfect register with §2.10's "it is not that, by relying on this, something else is being signified" — the two are the inside and outside of one and the same doctrine. The Jin shizi zhang yunjian leijie 金師子章雲間類解, in commenting on the eighth gate, likewise quotes the Greater Commentary: "as in setting up an image or raising an arm — wherever the eye lights, there is the Way." ²⁰ §III and §VI will draw on this lineage as the perfect-teaching anchor for the principle "phenomenon is the Dharma."

III. Core Argument

This section is the doctrinal center of the paper, unfolding in five subsections. §3.1 treats the distinction between Huayan-style buddha-recollection and recitation-of-the-name nianfo; §3.2 treats the positional doctrine of Meghaśrī as occupying the First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind; §3.3 treats the doctrinal floor of the gate of revealing-through-phenomena; §3.4 — the doctrinal climax of the entire paper — uses the closing four-step formula of the first four visits to argue the bidirectional structure of héng shùn zhòng shēng; §3.5 unfolds Mañjuśrī's "four maxims for the spiritual friend" into their bidirectional mirror image.

3.1 Huayan-Style Buddha-Recollection ≠ Recitation-of-the-Name Buddha-Recollection

Meghaśrī's "Gate of Universal Vision through the Light of Wisdom Recollecting the Realms of All Buddhas" is the first easily-misread point of P09. In the history of Chinese Buddhism, the two characters niàn fó 念佛 ("buddha-recollection") have been almost wholly appropriated by the Pure Land tradition's recitation-of-the-name nianfo (vocally invoking the name "Namo Amitābha"). But Meghaśrī's gate, in its doctrinal structure, belongs to an altogether different category from recitation-style nianfo.

The twenty-one sub-gates listed at §2.4 make this clear. The recollecting subject is not the mouth, not the sound of a name, but "universal vision through the light of wisdom"; the recollected object is not some particular buddha (such as Amitābha) but "all buddhas" in their entirety, transverse across the ten directions and longitudinal through the three times; the manner of recollection is not single-pointed concentration on the name of one buddha but abiding through all kalpas, abiding in all times, abiding in all lands, abiding in space, abiding in the subtle, abiding in the vast — the entire architecture of the dharmadhātu simultaneously co-present within the recollection.

The 40-fascicle Huayan's additional four characters píng děng jìng jiè 平等境界 ("equal realm," §2.3) make the core of this gate even sharper: what is recollected is not the distinct aspects of the buddhas but the buddhas' equality. "Equal realm" and "universal vision through the light of wisdom" are two faces of one and the same matter — equality is what makes universal vision possible, and universal vision is what manifests equality.

❌ Middle-Way Calibration: To read Meghaśrī's gate as a precursor or variant of recitation-of-the-name nianfo is an interpretive error of temporal inversion. Recitation-style nianfo is the Pure Land tradition's expedient path, founded on the faith-structure of "the Other Power of [Amitābha's] original vow"; Meghaśrī's buddha-recollection is the Huayan one-vehicle perfect-teaching's universal dharmadhātu contemplation, founded on the dependent-origination structure of "one is all." The former aims at rebirth in the Pure Land; the latter aims at entering the dharmadhātu in the present moment. Both are authentic Buddha-Dharma, but they belong to distinct positions within the doctrinal classification (jiào pàn 教判) and must not be conflated. Conflation would dwarf the first visit of the Gaṇḍavyūha into a beginner's lesson in Pure Land practice and would deprive the entire fifty-three-visit dharmadhātu pedagogy of its starting point.

3.2 Meghaśrī Occupies the First Abode — The Concrete Display of "Faith-Consummation Entering Abodehood"

Mañjuśrī occupies the consummation of the Ten Faiths; Meghaśrī occupies the head of the Ten Abodes (the First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind). This transition is the most concrete textual display of xìn mǎn rù zhù 信滿入住, "faith-consummation entering abodehood." Chengguan's Yanyi chao fascicle 85 (§2.7) supplies the commentarial basis: "Now this clearly elucidates the First Abode of Arousing the Mind … the Pure Practice chapter has already taught that the consummated mind of the Ten Faiths enters this First Abode."

P05 〈Practicing-Buddha, Not Stage-Buddha — A Perfect-Teaching Reading of "Faith-Consummation Is Buddhahood"〉 has already argued that, in Huayan perfect-teaching, "becoming a buddha" is not the fruition of a particular position but the in-the-moment perfect completion of every position: faith-consummation is buddhahood, abode-consummation is buddhahood, practice-consummation is buddhahood, ground-by-ground is buddhahood — every position is the present-moment self-disclosure of the entire buddha-fruit. P09's account here of Meghaśrī occupying the First Abode is the concrete instance of P05's thesis: Sudhana departs Mañjuśrī (faith-consummation), climbs Wondrous Peak (First Abode), hears Meghaśrī's buddha-recollection (the realm of abodehood), and attains universal vision of all buddhas — the entire process is the present-moment completion of "faith-consummation entering abodehood," not a gradualist climb up a staircase.

The most decisive line is the tenth of Chengguan's "ten meanings" (§2.7): "to indicate that the First Abode arouses its aspiration with the buddhas as its referent, and rejoices in making offerings." Why does the relay of fifty-three visits open with a buddha-recollection gate? Because the very structure of "arousing the aspirational mind" in the First Abode is buddhas-as-referent — the mind takes the buddhas as its referent and arouses bodhi. Meghaśrī's twenty-one gates are precisely the complete unfolding of this "buddhas-as-referent aspiration-arousal": to behold all buddhas universally through the light of wisdom is the in-the-moment phenomenon of the First Abode.

A further step: the Meghaśrī episode itself is the revealing-through-phenomena of "faith-consummation entering abodehood." Sudhana climbs the mountain and for seven days does not see Meghaśrī; on the eighth day he beholds the bhikṣu walking slowly in meditative pacing on a separate peak. This phenomenon-aspect is not an allegorical symbol of some spiritual matter — it is the present-moment self-disclosure of how the consummated mind of faith enters abodehood. The seven days of seeking-without-finding are the final stretch of "faith"; the eighth-day vision of the bhikṣu in slow meditative pacing is the in-the-moment establishment of "abode." Phenomenon is the Dharma; nothing else is being signified. This argument prepares the doctrinal floor for §3.3.

3.3 The Doctrinal Floor of the Gate of Revealing-through-Phenomena

Fazang's clause "it is not that, by relying on this, something else is being signified" (§2.10) is the most decisive doctrinal floor of this paper. Let us unfold its negative and positive faces in turn.

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 the "pyre" as an allegory of "the wisdom of prajñā," for instance, is to take the pyre as signifier and prajñā as signified — the two stand in a two-storey relation: you see the pyre, you think of prajñā, you cross over from pyre to prajñā. The core of allegorical reading is crossing over — the phenomenon is a bridge, and once across, the bridge is to be discarded.

Positive formulation. In the gate of revealing-through-phenomena, the phenomenon is not a bridge; the phenomenon is the present-moment presence of the Dharma. The pyre is not an allegory of prajñā; the pyre is the on-site self-disclosure of prajñā's non-discriminating wisdom. 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 full weight of Fazang's clause "it is not that … something else is being signified" rests on the word "else" (bié 別) — outside the phenomenon there is no other signified; the phenomenon itself is the sole locus of what would be signified.

Chengguan's Yanyi chao fascicle 11 (§2.11), citing Jayoṣmāyatana's pyre and sword-mountain, makes precisely this point. Jayoṣmāyatana commands Sudhana to climb the sword-mountain and enter the pyre; after the gods' urging, Sudhana climbs and enters, and attains the bodhisattva samādhi of well-abiding. If the pyre were an allegory of prajñā, Sudhana would only need to think of prajñā and not actually climb the fire — but the textual phenomenon-structure requires that Sudhana 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.

Fazang's Wujiao zhang fascicle 4 — "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" (§2.12) — is the doctrinal-classification formulation of this same principle. In the hermeneutics of the Three Vehicles, phenomenon and principle stand in a two-storey relation (here / there, signifier / signified); in the hermeneutics of the One Vehicle Huayan, phenomenon and principle stand in a one-storey relation (phenomenon is principle). The difference between these two hermeneutics is not merely a difference in scriptural-reading technique; it is a fundamental declaration of perfect-teaching doctrinal stance.

P09's title gate, tuō shì xiǎn fǎ shēng jiě mén, requires that the entire paper take this doctrinal floor as its standpoint. §3.4 will build upon this standpoint to argue that the structure of the fifty-three-visit narrative layer is not sign but Dharma.

3.4 The Bidirectional Structure of the Spiritual Friend's Closing Self-Deprecation (the Doctrinal Climax of this Paper)

The preceding sections have repeatedly forecast this subsection. We now enter the principal argument.

Textual fact. In the fifty-three visits, the first four spiritual friends — Meghaśrī, Sāgaramegha, Supratiṣṭhita, Megha — all close with the same four-step formula. Once these four closings are placed side by side, the fact itself speaks:

²¹

Structural observation. Each of the four steps is not rhetoric but a condition-declaration for the continuation of the pedagogical chain:

• Self-acknowledged limitation ("I have attained only this X gate"): not an opening platitude, but an admission of the spiritual friend's own limitation as a spiritual friend. Each friend is a specialist in one gate, not omni-competent.
• Contrast with the boundless ("as for the great bodhisattvas' … oceans"): not laudatory rhetoric, but a placement of oneself within a larger dharmadhātu structure, marking oneself as merely one local self-disclosure of the dharmadhātu.
• Rhetorical self-deprecation ("how could I know or speak"): not a polite hedge, but a logical conclusion — since one is only a part, one cannot of course exhaust the whole.
• Active referral ("to the south there is … there a … go and inquire of him"): not the introduction of a friend, but the handing forward of the pedagogical chain. Every spiritual friend "hands Sudhana forward" precisely because the conclusions of the first three steps require it.

Central thesis: the formula "I have attained only this" is not opening modesty but a closing condition-declaration for the relay. The spiritual friend's self-acknowledged unfulfillment is the reason for the referral; the referral is the mechanism of the pedagogical chain's continuation. The fifty-three-visit relay is handed forward by the spiritual friends themselves, station by station — it is not a unidirectional climb by Sudhana from low to high.

Sūtra-level evidence for the bidirectional structure. The above facts directly entail P09's central thesis. We may unfold this in three layers.

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's 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-spiritual-friend.

Second layer: Sudhana's southward journey actualizes Vow 9 on behalf of all the spiritual friends in the ten directions. For Vow 9'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 for directions. Sudhana, representing "all dharma-seeking sentient beings," visits the fifty-three spiritual friends in succession — this amounts to actualizing each spiritual friend's vow of accommodating sentient beings on their behalf. Without Sudhana's coming to inquire, the spiritual friends' vow of héng shùn zhòng shēng would remain merely latent; with Sudhana's coming to inquire, the vow becomes manifestly active. The seeker is summoned by the vow-power, and at the same time comes to fulfill it.

Third layer: the "active referral" step of the four-step formula is the hard evidence for both layers above. If the spiritual friend were merely a unidirectional teacher, the teaching would simply end when finished — there would be no reason to have to refer to a next station. If the spiritual friend were a high-ranking dharma-transmitter, there would still less be any reason to admit "I have attained only this." But the textual hard fact is that every spiritual friend closes with the four-step formula "I have attained only this → the bodhisattvas are boundless → how could I speak [of it] → go inquire of the next." This structure requires that the spiritual friend be local, limited, and obligated to hand off. And to be local, limited, and obligated to hand off is precisely to entail that the spiritual friend's fulfillment depends on the subsequent forward motion of the student. If Sudhana does not continue walking, the entire pedagogical chain breaks at the present spiritual friend, and his "I have attained only this" has nowhere to go. Sudhana's continuing southward journey is itself the fulfillment of the previous spiritual friend's identity as a spiritual friend.

Returning to the closing four clauses of Vow 9: "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" (§2.6). The equation "to accord with sentient beings is to accord with all buddhas" can now be seen plainly. The spiritual friend accords with Sudhana (transmission of the teaching), which is to accord with the buddhas (because Sudhana receives the Dharma on behalf of the buddhas); simultaneously, Sudhana accords with the spiritual friend (acceptance of the teaching), which is to accord with the buddhas (because the spiritual friend is the buddhas' present-moment self-disclosure). The "according-with" of both ends arises within one and the same phenomenon — and this is precisely the narrative-layer display of the gate of revealing-through-phenomena: the meeting, the teaching, and the referral of every visit — this very phenomenon — is the dharmadhātu's own héng shùn zhòng shēng vow being actualized in the present moment, with nothing else being signified.

§3.4 — Summation. Sudhana's southward journey is not the spiritual itinerary of a low-ranking student progressively consulting higher-ranking teachers. It is the dharmadhātu's self-disclosure to itself, once with each meeting between Sudhana and a spiritual friend. "Who teaches whom and who receives from whom" ceases to be a meaningful question. The meaningful question becomes: what does the dharmadhātu disclose by means of this phenomenon? The answer: it discloses the bidirectional structure of accommodating all sentient beings — the spiritual friend is fulfilled by Sudhana, and Sudhana is guided by the spiritual friend; both ends are being liberated.

3.5 The Bidirectional Mirror of the Four Maxims for the Spiritual Friend

Mañjuśrī's "four maxims for the spiritual friend" at §2.2 are, on the surface, unidirectional: the student's stance toward the teacher. But if §3.4's bidirectional structure holds, then the four maxims must possess a mirror version — the spiritual friend's stance toward the seeker. In the sūtra Mañjuśrī states only one side; the other is supplied by the overall structure of the text.

The mirror of the first maxim — "toward those who come, do not give rise to weariness" — is the temporal extension of Vow 9's "toward those afflicted by sickness, become a skilled physician": just as the seeker before endless spiritual friends must not weary, so the physician before endless illness must not weary. The mirror of the second is the most striking — the student's "no satiety toward the teacher" is "do not cease seeking the Dharma"; the teacher's "no satisfaction toward the seeker" is "do not cease teaching the Dharma." The former is: even after the consummation of the Ten Faiths one must still enter the Ten Abodes; the latter is: even after Meghaśrī has finished expounding his twenty-one gates, he must still refer onward to Sāgaramegha. No-satiety facing no-satisfaction — this is precisely the bidirectional dynamic of the pedagogical chain's continuation.

The mirror of the third maxim — "toward the capacities of those who come, accord with them" — is the pedagogical-theoretical version of héng shùn zhòng shēng. The mirror of the fourth maxim — "toward the skillful means of those who come, see no fault" — is the most subtle. When the spiritual friend regards a student's skillful means, he should not pass judgment ("this student's awakening is insufficient" / "that student's question is mistaken"), just as the student regarding the spiritual friend should not judge ("this teacher's instruction is inadequate" / "that teacher's expedient is wrong"). The bidirectional "see no fault" requires both ends to step out of judgment-mode and into mutual-fulfillment-mode.

The mirror of the four maxims is not a rhetorical expansion added by this paper, but the implicit face of §3.4's bidirectional structure within Mañjuśrī's instruction. As the guide standing at the consummation of the Ten Faiths, Mañjuśrī states the student's side openly; the spiritual friend's side is left to the silent comprehension of the sūtra's overall structure — for 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 bidirectionality is the fact; explicit on one side, tacit on the other — this is precisely the sūtra's literary refinement.

IV. Cross-Disciplinary Correlations

This section uses three cross-disciplinary references to illuminate the bidirectional-structure thesis established in §III. All three are heuristic analogies; ⚠️ none constitutes theoretical equivalence. ²²

4.1 ⚠️ Pedagogy: Paulo Freire's "Dialogical Education"

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire critiques "banking education": the teacher "deposits" knowledge into the empty account of the student, who passively receives. Freire proposes in its place a "dialogical education," in which teacher and student are mutual subjects in dialogue: both are taught, and both teach. As Freire famously puts it, "no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught; people teach each other in the world, mediated by the world."

⚠️ This pedagogical model resembles, on the surface, the bidirectional structure of Sudhana's southward journey: both ends are mutual subjects, mutually conditioning. But the underlying difference is decisive. Freire's dialogical pedagogy is grounded in the critical theory of political liberation; its aim is to break structures of oppression. The bidirectional structure of the Meghaśrī episode is grounded in the perfect-teaching doctrine of dharmadhātu dependent origination; its aim is to disclose the present-moment self-presence of phenomenon-as-Dharma. The former is sociological action; the latter is dharmadhātu pedagogy. The analogy reaches only as far as the shared point of "bidirectional mutual fulfillment," and cannot be pushed further.

4.2 ⚠️ Systems Theory: The Mutual Definition of Autopoiesis

The Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela proposed the concept of autopoiesis: living systems are characterized by component elements that mutually produce and mutually define one another, with no absolute boundary between system and environment — only "structural coupling." In cognitive science, this concept has been extended into "embodied cognition": cognizer and cognized world co-emerge; it is not the case that a subject unidirectionally represents an object.

⚠️ Sudhana and the spiritual friend, in each visit, are mutually defined as "seeker" and "teacher," in a manner reminiscent of the mutual production of elements in an autopoietic system. But the limit of this analogy lies in the fact that autopoiesis is a self-organization theory of biological systems, involving cycles of matter, energy, and information; the bidirectional structure of Huayan is the present-moment self-disclosure of dharmadhātu phenomena, and does not depend upon a material substrate. To read the dharmadhātu as a "large-scale autopoietic system" is a category mistake.

4.3 ⚠️ Performance Theory: Interaction Ritual Chains

In Interaction Ritual Chains, the sociologist Randall Collins argues that the energy unit of social action is not the individual but the "interaction ritual": two or more bodies attune to one another under a common focus, generating emotional energy, which then flows through ritual chains across the social field.

⚠️ Sudhana's meeting, hearing-the-Dharma, and being-referred-onward at each spiritual friend resembles, on the surface, an interaction ritual; the fifty-three visits resemble a ritual chain. But Collins's theory presupposes the prior existence of individuals and the subsequent emergence of interaction; the bidirectional structure of Huayan presupposes that phenomenon is Dharma, with no prior–posterior division. The analogy holds only at the surface image of "the chain"; the doctrinal substrate is wholly different.

4.4 The Common Limit of the Three Analogies

These three cross-disciplinary references point to one and the same blind spot in the modern disciplinary architecture: the modern disciplines tacitly presuppose the ontology "first there are two independent subjects, then a relation between them." Freire must first have an "instructor" and a "student" as two independent subjects before he can speak of their dialogue; Maturana must first have a "system" and an "environment" as two independent boundaries before he can speak of their coupling; Collins must first have an "individual" and another "individual" as two independent bodies before he can speak of their interaction. All three are "first-two-then-united" structures.

The bidirectional structure of the Huayan Gaṇḍavyūha is, by contrast, "first-united-then-two": the dharmadhātu is originally one suchness; once a phenomenon stirs, it is provisionally manifested as the two ends "spiritual friend" and "Sudhana," but the two ends instantaneously fulfill each other within the phenomenon, and once the phenomenon completes itself, it returns to the dharmadhātu. The three analogies touch the surface of "bidirectionality" but cannot touch the underlying "first-united-then-two" — because no corresponding position for that underlying structure exists in modern disciplinary ontology.

The greatest value of cross-disciplinary correlation is precisely this: by means of the instruments of the modern disciplines, to throw into relief the irreducibility of Huayan doctrine.

V. Middle-Way Calibration

❌ Calibration 1: Do not conflate Huayan-style buddha-recollection with recitation-of-the-name nianfo (treated in §3.1).

❌ Calibration 2: Do not read the fifty-three visits as spiritual tourism.

系列規劃 v2.2 lists this as the eighth pedagogical hazard. §3.4's bidirectional-structure argument is the strongest counter to this misreading: if the fifty-three visits are a bidirectional structure, then they are not Sudhana's stamp-collecting dharma-quest adventure at all, but the dharmadhātu's successive self-disclosure to itself. Every visit is a dharmadhātu event, not a tourist attraction.

❌ Calibration 3: Do not read "phenomenon is Dharma" as mysticism.

§3.3 emphasizes Fazang's clause "it is not that, by relying on this, something else is being signified." But this clause is easily turned into a mystical slogan — "the phenomenon, just as it is, is the Dharma; no need to deliberate." This is a mistake. "Phenomenon is Dharma" is a strict perfect-teaching doctrinal stance, requiring the practitioner to establish that stance 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 reduces the gate of revealing-through-phenomena to a cheap intuitive declaration and forfeits the entire supporting framework of perfect-teaching doctrinal classification.

❌ Calibration 4: Do not read the "bidirectional structure" as egalitarianism.

§3.4 argues that Sudhana and the spiritual friend mutually fulfill each other, but "mutual fulfillment" does not mean "positional equality." Each spiritual friend is a specialist in one gate, occupying some particular position; Sudhana is still a seeker, occupying the First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind — the positional difference between them is stated explicitly in the sūtra. The bidirectional structure says that "both ends are being liberated," not that "both ends occupy the same position." To read the bidirectional structure as modern egalitarianism is to erase Huayan's positional doctrine with one stroke and to drain the entire sequence "First Abode → Equal Enlightenment" of meaning.

❌ Calibration 5: Do not read Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows as "ten independent practices".

Vow 9 (accommodating sentient beings) and Vow 10 (universal dedication of merit) are two phases of one and the same act (see §VI). To read the ten vows as ten independent items of practice is to dismember "exhalation" and "inhalation" into two independent breathing techniques. The ten vows are one complete breath, not ten breaths.

VI. Conclusion

This paper has anchored on the ninth of Samantabhadra's Ten Great Vows — accommodating all sentient beings — and taken Sudhana's first visit to Bhikṣu Meghaśrī in the Gaṇḍavyūha as its core text, in order to argue that héng shùn zhòng shēng in Huayan perfect-teaching is a bidirectional structure: the spiritual friend is not a unidirectional teacher, and Sudhana is not a unidirectional seeker; both ends of every visit are being liberated, and the spiritual friend's vow of accommodating sentient beings is actualized by the seeker who arrives.

The argument has unfolded in three layers: textual fact (the four-step closing formula of "self-acknowledgment → contrast → self-deprecation → referral" common to the first four visits); commentarial witness (Fazang's Tanxuan ji "it is not that, by relying on this, something else is being signified," together with Chengguan's Yanyi chao citation of Jayoṣmāyatana's pyre, and Fazang's Wujiao zhang "in the One Vehicle, phenomenon is principle"); and the structural meshing of perfect-teaching (the internal pairing of Vow 9 with the tenth profound gate). These three layers jointly establish: at every one of Sudhana's southward visits, the phenomenon itself is the Dharma; the phenomenon itself is the present-moment actualization of the vow of accommodating sentient beings; nothing else is being signified.

The positional doctrine of the Meghaśrī episode. Meghaśrī occupies the First Abode of Arousing the Aspirational Mind. The episode is the concrete display of "faith-consummation entering abodehood." Chengguan's phrase "to indicate that the First Abode arouses its aspiration with the buddhas as its referent, and rejoices in making offerings" hooks Meghaśrī's buddha-recollection gate directly onto the positional structure of First-Abode aspiration-arousal, echoing P05's thesis that "consummation of faith is buddhahood." Meghaśrī's twenty-one gates of buddha-recollection and the recitation-of-the-name nianfo of the Pure Land tradition belong to wholly different categories — the former is universal dharmadhātu contemplation, the latter is the Other-Power original-vow path; the two cannot be conflated.

The doctrinal weight of the bidirectional structure. The mirror version of Mañjuśrī's "four maxims for the spiritual friend" (§3.5) is not a rhetorical expansion added by this paper but the implicit face of §3.4's bidirectional structure within Mañjuśrī's instruction. The sūtra states one side openly and leaves the other to silent comprehension precisely because, were the spiritual friend to say outright "please come and fulfill me," the very dignity of the spiritual friend's position would be lost — but the fact remains as it is. The literary refinement of the sūtra lies in tacit structural communication rather than explicit verbal statement.

Bridge to P10. Vow 9 (accommodating sentient beings) and Vow 10 (universal dedication of merit) are two phases of one and the same act. Héng shùn zhòng shēng abrades the giver–receiver distinction so that every visit becomes the dharmadhātu's self-disclosure to itself; pǔ jiē huí xiàng then distributes evenly across the dharmadhātu the energy that remains once the distinction has been ground away, so that no merit any longer belongs to any individual. Without the bidirectional structure of Vow 9, Vow 10 collapses into a one-way merit-distribution ceremony; with it, Vow 10 becomes the dharmadhātu's own self-circulating energy. P09 and P10 thereby form a continuous argument across two papers — the former grinds away distinctions, the latter disperses energy; the former is entry, the latter is exit; the former is the gate of revealing-through-phenomena, the latter is the gate of the distinct formation of the ten time-periods mutually permeating (shí shì gé fǎ yì chéng mén 十世隔法異成門). The S8.5 "Sudhana's Southward Journey" sub-series takes this paper as its prologue; the eight following papers will treat each visit in turn (Meghaśrī has been treated here; Sāgaramegha, Supratiṣṭhita, Megha through Maitreya and Samantabhadra will be unfolded in the sub-series), each standing on the same doctrinal floor — phenomenon is Dharma, and the two ends mutually fulfill each other.

Closing words. Sudhana's southward journey is not the spiritual itinerary of a low-ranking student climbing toward higher-ranking teachers. It is the dharmadhātu's self-disclosure to itself through every meeting between Sudhana and a spiritual friend. "Who teaches whom and who receives from whom" ceases to be a meaningful question. The meaningful question becomes: what does the dharmadhātu 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 very moment, with nothing else being signified.

References

Sūtras (Taishō)

• T0278 Dafangguang fo huayan jing (60-fascicle Avataṃsaka), trans. Buddhabhadra, T9.
• T0279 Dafangguang fo huayan jing (80-fascicle Avataṃsaka), trans. Śikṣānanda, T10.
• T0293 Dafangguang fo huayan jing (40-fascicle Avataṃsaka / Gaṇḍavyūha and Practices and Vows of Samantabhadra), trans. Prajñā, T10.

Treatises and Commentaries (Taishō)

• T1733 Fazang, Huayan jing tanxuan ji 華嚴經探玄記, T35.
• T1735 Chengguan, Dafangguang fo huayan jing shu 大方廣佛華嚴經疏, T35.
• T1736 Chengguan, Dafangguang fo huayan jing suishu yanyi chao 大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔, T36.
• T1866 Fazang, Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang 華嚴一乘教義分齊章, T45.
• T1880 Jingyuan, Jin shizi zhang yunjian leijie 金師子章雲間類解, T45.

Cross-Disciplinary References

• Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970.
• Maturana, Humberto R., and Francisco J. Varela. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980.
• Collins, Randall. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Canonical Index

Cross-Series References

• P05 〈Practicing-Buddha, Not Stage-Buddha — A Perfect-Teaching Reading of "Faith-Consummation Is Buddhahood"〉: §1.3, §3.2, §VI (Meghaśrī as First Abode as the concrete instance of "faith-consummation entering abodehood").
• P11 〈Ten Great Vows under Ten Windows〉: §1.2 (the overall architecture of the Vow 9 × tenth-profound-gate pairing).
• P10 〈Pǔ jiē huí xiàng × The Gate of the Distinct Formation of the Ten Time-Periods Mutually Permeating〉: §1.4, §VI (Vow 9 and Vow 10 as two phases of one act).
• S8.5 Sudhana's Southward Journey sub-series (forthcoming): §VI (this paper as the sub-series prologue).

Footnotes

Pointing-at-the-Moon Research · Avataṃsaka Series · S8-P09

Author: Shi Huijing 釋慧鏡

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International

All sūtra and commentarial citations in this paper draw on the CBETA collated electronic edition of the Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō.

GitHub: pointing-at-the-moon/dharma-research

YouTube: @PointingattheMoon

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Translator's Note

This is a complete English translation of the Chinese original (S8-P09 v1.0). All sūtra and commentarial passages have been freshly translated from the Taishō Chinese (no existing English translations were consulted), and each such passage is marked (translation mine). Huayan technical terminology is given in italicized pinyin with traditional Chinese characters in parentheses on first occurrence (e.g. héng shùn zhòng shēng 恆順眾生); later occurrences use the English equivalent or pinyin alone. Proper names of bhikṣus and locations follow Sanskrit reconstructions (Meghaśrī, Sāgaramegha, etc.) where the Sanskrit is secure, and pinyin (Deyun, Gongdeyun, Jixiangyun) where the Chinese rendering itself is the object of comparison (as in the §2.3 three-translation table). The §3.4 comparative table preserves the four-step structure of the Chinese original column-for-column.