藥師琉璃光如來本願功德經 義疏通講

The introduction of a sūtra usually does no more than set out the time, the place, and the audience. This passage sets them out too: the Bhagavān journeying among the countries and teaching, coming to the city of Vaiśālī, staying beneath the Tree of Musical Sound; eight thousand bhikṣus, thirty-six thousand bodhisattvas, kings and great ministers, brahmins and householders, devas, nāgas, yakṣas, humans and non-humans, surrounding him with reverence.

Then one person rises.

The only surviving commentary that follows Xuanzang’s version phrase by phrase is the Ancient Traces on the Medicine Buddha’s Original-Vow Sūtra, by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu. He first divides the whole sūtra by three gates — the title, the doctrinal classification, the text proper — and then divides the text proper into three parts: the part on the occasion of the teaching, the part of question-and-extensive-exposition, and the part on hearing the name, rejoicing, and practicing. This passage straddles the first two: in its first half the Buddha is teaching, in its second half someone is asking for the Dharma. And on whose behalf the asker asks decides whom this sūtra is for.

There Is Already a Simile Inside the Name

Begin with the title. The seven content-words of The Sūtra of the Original Vows and Merits of the Medicine Buddha, Beryl Radiance Tathāgata have been taken apart, in the reading handed down, into four clauses: 「能拔眾苦喻名藥師，無緣不徹稱琉璃光，所修妙行名為本願，所證勝果名為功德」—“Able to draw out the multitude’s suffering, he is named by simile the Medicine Master; there being no condition it does not pass through, it is called Beryl Radiance; the wondrous practice cultivated is named the original vows; the surpassing fruit realized is named the merits.” 〔T38n1770 0257a16〕

The word “simile” deserves a careful look — “Medicine Master” is not an office but a figure. A physician of the world can draw out the suffering of illness in a person’s body, and so he is borrowed to speak of a tathāgata who can draw out the suffering of beings. The figure is not something later hands added. It comes with the name.

“Beryl Radiance” takes a different sense: that nothing is impervious to it. Beryl as a substance is clear through within and without; light passes through and leaves no blind corner, and so it is said that there is no condition it does not pass through.

The original vows belong to the cause, and the merits to the fruit. Within one name, both cause and fruit stand.

So the theme of this sūtra is settled by the reading handed down in a single sentence: 「即以如來因果為宗，勸物歸依出苦為趣」—“It takes the cause and fruit of the Tathāgata as its theme, and the exhorting of beings to take refuge and to come out of suffering as its aim.” 〔T38n1770 0257a18〕 The theme is what it speaks of — the cause and fruit of a tathāgata; the aim is what it would have one do — take refuge, come out of suffering.

The title read through, the frame of the whole sūtra already stands. The twelve great vows that follow are the particulars of the cause; the benefits of hearing the name are the particulars of the fruit.

The Buddha’s Title, Opened Out into Six Senses

The first substantive word of the sūtra text is “Bhagavān.” This Sanskrit transcription is not passed over lightly: six senses are listed for it — sovereign freedom, blazing intensity, dignity, renown, auspiciousness, nobility.

The wording of the first sense repays attention: 「一自在義，永不繫屬諸煩惱故」—“first, the sense of sovereign freedom, because he is never bound to the afflictions.” 〔T38n1770 0257b07〕

Sovereign freedom is defined from the negative side. Not “able to do whatever he likes,” but “not tied down by anything.” Never bound to the afflictions — nothing can get a hold on him: that is what freedom means here.

The six senses are gathered up by a verse of the Treatise on the Buddha-Bhūmi: 「自在熾盛與端嚴，名稱吉祥及尊貴，如是六種義差別，應知總名為薄伽」—“Sovereign freedom, blazing intensity, and dignity; renown, auspiciousness, and nobility: such are the six distinctions of sense, and all together they should be known as bhaga.” 〔T38n1770 0257b12〕

Not one of the six is “great power.” Blazing intensity speaks of a fire of wisdom that burns and refines; dignity speaks of adornment with the marks and excellences; renown speaks of merit complete, with nothing unknown; auspiciousness speaks of benefit that must come to whoever draws near and makes offerings; nobility speaks of benefiting and gladdening sentient beings without ever slackening.

That one title should be opened out into six is deliberate: when the buddha’s name is spoken, these are the six things being said, not one blanket honorific.

A City and a Tree

The place of the teaching is glossed too.

The city called “broad and dignified” is Vaiśālī in Sanskrit, also written Vaiyālī, and of that name it is said 「表眾德滿」—“it signifies that the multitude of qualities is complete.” 〔T38n1770 0257b14〕 The name of the city means that the qualities are full.

The Tree of Musical Sound is more concrete: 「住樂音樹，微風歷動，宮商雅音從而出故，名樂音樹」—“He stayed beneath the Tree of Musical Sound: because a light breeze passes and stirs it, and elegant notes of the scale come forth therefrom, it is named the Tree of Musical Sound.” 〔T38n1770 0257b15〕 A light breeze passes, branch strikes leaf, and notes in accord with the scale come out of themselves — hence the name.

Set these two side by side and something appears. A place named “the qualities are full”; a tree that makes music of itself when the wind goes by. Before any teaching begins, the sūtra sets two things in front of the eye: that the qualities are full, and that the sound comes forth of itself.

This is not stage-setting. The Pure Beryl world that the twelve great vows will bring to completion is these two things enlarged.

Six Movements in Rising

The one who asks for the Dharma rises. The sūtra writes it out in detail: sustained by the Buddha’s awesome spiritual power, he rises from his seat, bares one shoulder, sets his right knee to the ground, faces the Bhagavān, bends his body and joins his palms.

Six movements, and each is given its account — the most densely worked place in this passage:

「從座而起者，表從真際起。偏袒一肩者，表作利樂事。右膝著地，住世間故。向薄伽梵者，趣出世故。曲躬者，離慢故。合掌者，專心故」—“That he rises from his seat signifies rising from the true limit. That he bares one shoulder signifies the doing of what benefits and gladdens. That he sets his right knee to the ground is because he abides in the world. That he faces the Bhagavān is because he tends toward the transcending of the world. That he bends his body is because he departs from pride. That he joins his palms is because his mind is single.” 〔T38n1770 0257b29〕

Watch the movement of these six clauses. To rise is to rise from the true limit — not to get up off a chair, but to set out from the actuality that has been realized. To bare one shoulder, to put the arm in view, is to be about to do what benefits and gladdens beings — as one rolls back a sleeve before starting work. The right knee on the ground is still abiding in the world; the face turned toward the Bhagavān tends toward transcending it. One movement stays in the world, one movement goes beyond it, and both are on one body at the same moment. Bending the body puts away pride; joined palms make the mind single.

A posture of asking has been read as a whole path: setting out from the actual, making ready for work, feet in the world, face toward what is beyond it, no pride left on the body, no scattering left in the mind.

Before the asking, this order comes first.

On Whose Behalf the Question Is Asked

Then comes what is asked. The sūtra: 「惟願演說如是相類諸佛名號，及本大願殊勝功德，令諸聞者業障銷除，為欲利樂像法轉時諸有情故」—“I pray only that you expound the names of the buddhas of this kind, and the surpassing merits of the great vows they made of old, so that the karmic obstructions of all who hear may be dissolved away — for the sake of benefiting and gladdening the sentient beings of the age when the Semblance Dharma turns.” 〔T14n0450 0404c22〕

What is asked is in fact three matters, counted out plainly: 「略問三事：一問佛名號、二問因大願、三問果功德」—“In brief he asks three matters: first, he asks after the names of the buddhas; second, he asks after the great vows that are the cause; third, he asks after the merits that are the fruit.” 〔T38n1770 0257c04〕 Names, the vows that are the cause, the merits that are the fruit: three questions answered by the three sections of the whole sūtra.

But the weight falls on the last clause: 「為欲利樂像法轉時諸有情故」—“for the sake of benefiting and gladdening the sentient beings of the age when the Semblance Dharma turns.” 〔T14n0450 0404c23〕

When is the age in which the Semblance Dharma turns? The answer is given by citing the Great Collection Sūtra, first listing six kinds of firmness: 「有六種堅固：一法身得住堅固、二解脫得住堅固、三禪定得住堅固、四多聞得住堅固、五福德得住堅固、六鬪諍得住堅固」—“There are six kinds of firmness: first, firmness in the abiding of the Dharma-body; second, firmness in the abiding of liberation; third, firmness in the abiding of meditative concentration; fourth, firmness in the abiding of wide learning; fifth, firmness in the abiding of merit; sixth, firmness in the abiding of strife and contention.” 〔T38n1770 0257c07〕 Each of the six is matched to five hundred years: 「此中初一佛在世時、後五滅後，如其次第各五百年」—“Of these, the first is the time when the Buddha is in the world and the latter five are after his passing, each in its order five hundred years.” 〔T38n1770 0257c09〕

Then the six stretches are drawn into three ages: 「總言三時：一者正法，謂彼五中初二堅固；二者像法，即次二堅固；三者末法，即後一堅固」—“Spoken of together as three ages: first, the True Dharma, that is, the first two firmnesses of those five; second, the Semblance Dharma, that is, the next two firmnesses; third, the Final Dharma, that is, the last one firmness.” 〔T38n1770 0257c11〕

And the difference between the three ages is said in one line: 「如次具有教、行、果三；有二無果；有教無二」—“In their order: the first possesses all three, teaching, practice, and fruit; the second has two but no fruit; the third has teaching but not the other two.” 〔T38n1770 0257c13〕

In the age of the True Dharma, teaching, practice, and fruit are all three present. In the age of the Semblance Dharma, teaching and practice remain, and the fruit is gone. In the age of the Final Dharma, only teaching is left.

So the situation of the age when the Semblance Dharma turns is quite clear: the Dharma is still here, people are still practicing, but the realizing of the fruit no longer appears. Sūtra and gloss meet here in one verdict: 「今為利樂千年之後像法有情，發此問也」—“Now it is for the benefit and gladdening of the sentient beings of the Semblance Dharma a thousand years hence that this question is raised.” 〔T38n1770 0257c14〕

This question is not asked for the eight thousand bhikṣus in that assembly. They are in the Buddha’s presence, with teaching, practice, and fruit all three complete. This question is asked on behalf of people a thousand years later, for whom the Dharma remains and the fruit does not appear — which is to say, the time in which we hold this sūtra and read it.

A sūtra’s words of request write down, at the outset, to whom it is addressed.

Two Excellents

The Buddha’s answer begins with praise: 「善哉！善哉！曼殊室利！」—“Excellent! Excellent! Mañjuśrī!” 〔T14n0450 0404c25〕

Two “excellents,” and the reading handed down refuses to treat them as a repeated exclamation, giving each its reason: 「所聞可記，初言善哉。應時宜故，重言善哉。欲令審文，故言諦聽。令解義故，言善思惟」—“Because what is heard is worth recording, the first ‘excellent’ is spoken. Because it accords with what the time requires, ‘excellent’ is spoken again. Because he would have him examine the letter, ‘listen attentively’ is spoken. Because he would have him understand the sense, ‘ponder it well’ is spoken.” 〔T38n1770 0257c21〕

The first “excellent” praises the matter asked as worth recording; the second praises the asking as coming at exactly the right time. One praises the matter, one praises the timing.

Then the charge: 「汝今諦聽，極善思惟，當為汝說」—“Listen now attentively, ponder it with the utmost care, and I shall speak it for you.” 〔T14n0450 0404c28〕 Attentive listening and careful pondering are given separate work as well — attentive listening is for examining the letter, careful pondering for understanding the sense.

Letter and sense are charged separately. First get the words exactly; then think the meaning through. The order cannot be reversed, and half of it will not do.

Eastward, Past Ten Gaṅgā’s Sands

The direct answer begins from a direction: 「東方去此過十殑伽沙等佛土，有世界名淨琉璃」—“Eastward from here, past buddha-lands as many as ten Gaṅgā’s sands, there is a world named Pure Beryl.” 〔T14n0450 0405a01〕

Gaṅgā is the name of a river; ten Gaṅgā’s sands means buddha-lands as many as the sands of ten such rivers. The distance is written as extreme, and the name as intimate — Pure Beryl is exactly the beryl of the title, the substance that is clear through within and without.

Then the ten epithets: 「佛號藥師琉璃光如來、應、正等覺、明行圓滿、善逝、世間解、無上丈夫、調御士、天人師、佛、薄伽梵」—“The buddha is named the Medicine Buddha, Beryl Radiance Tathāgata, Worthy One, Perfectly and Fully Awakened, Complete in Knowledge and Conduct, Well-Gone, Knower of the World, Unsurpassed Great Man, Tamer and Guide, Teacher of Devas and Humans, Buddha, Bhagavān.” 〔T14n0450 0405a02〕 The full explanation of the ten epithets is not opened out here; only the place to look is given: 「廣釋十號，如《瑜伽》等」—“For the extensive explanation of the ten epithets, see the Yogācārabhūmi and the rest.” 〔T38n1770 0258a01〕

The first matter asked — the names of the buddhas — is answered at this point. The manner of the answer is to give the distance first and the name after: that place is very far away; that name can be spoken now.

All That Is Sought, Obtained

The last sentence of this passage sets the whole thing out in sum: 「本行菩薩道時，發十二大願，令諸有情，所求皆得」—“when he was formerly walking the bodhisattva path, he made twelve great vows, that sentient beings might obtain all they sought.” 〔T14n0450 0405a05〕

The outline is marked here: 「答第二問中有三：略標、廣說、總結故」—“In answering the second question there are three: the brief setting forth, the extensive exposition, and the summary conclusion.” 〔T38n1770 0258a05〕 This sentence is the brief setting forth; the twelve vows one by one are the extensive exposition.

Which is to say that “obtain all they sought” is at this moment still only a heading. What makes it stand has to be handed over below, one vow at a time.

As to where these twelve vows first arose, two records of old are cited here: one that 「琉璃光菩薩遇智勝佛初發總願，寶頂佛所始發別願」—“The Bodhisattva Beryl Radiance, meeting the Buddha Wisdom-Surpassing, first made the general vow; and in the presence of the Buddha Jewel-Crest he first made the particular vows.” 〔T38n1770 0258a06〕, and one of 「青龍光佛所發十二誓願」—“the twelve vows made in the presence of the Buddha Blue-Dragon Radiance” 〔T38n1770 0258a08〕. The general vow and the particular vows are made in two places — first one comprehensive intention, then twelve definite pledges.

The introduction ends here. A passage that seems only to set the scene has in fact already handed over four things: what this sūtra is called, how many layers of sense are in the buddha’s title, on whose behalf the asker asks, and in how many sections the answer will come.

And that clause, “for the sake of benefiting and gladdening the sentient beings of the age when the Semblance Dharma turns,” is the place this passage leaves for readers of later ages. Teaching and practice remain, the fruit does not appear — the sūtra has counted this age in from its opening, and so has counted us in.

Transmission — Three Eyes, Each Following a Different Recension

The above is the sense of the passage itself. Below, three eyes cast their light from the side — the mirror is not the sūtra, only the same passage seen through three ways of reading; and about these three eyes one thing must be said first: they do not follow the same translation.

The Ancient Traces on the Medicine Buddha’s Original-Vow Sūtra is by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu, in two fascicles. The outline and the glosses cited above come from it in their whole frame: the division by three gates, the three parts of the text proper, the five accomplishments of question-and-extensive-exposition, the six senses of “Bhagavān,” the sense of the names Vaiśālī and the Tree of Musical Sound, the signification of the six clauses of deportment, the matching of the three ages of the Semblance Dharma, and the distribution of the two “excellents.” The sūtra text he follows agrees sentence for sentence with Xuanzang’s version, and it is the only commentary now extant that takes that version as its base and glosses it phrase by phrase. He also wrote the Study Notes on the Cheng weishi lun, and the Treatise on the Buddha-Bhūmi and the Yogācārabhūmi that he cites are the standard authorities of the Dharma-characteristics house — a single consistent thread, reading this sūtra of vows with a Yogācāra eye.

He also made his own comparison of the translations, and matched three versions to the sūtra’s three titles: 「經有三名：一、說藥師琉璃光如來本願功德經；二、說十二神將饒益有情結願神呪；三、說拔除一切業障」—“The sūtra has three titles: first, the Sūtra Spoken on the Original Vows and Merits of the Medicine Buddha, Beryl Radiance Tathāgata; second, the Spirit-Dhāraṇī Spoken on the Twelve Spirit Generals Benefiting Sentient Beings and Binding the Vow; third, the Uprooting of All Karmic Obstruction Spoken.” 〔T38n1770 0257a08〕 — the Song-period translation takes the third title, the Sui-period translation takes the first in brief, and 「今大唐貞觀年中玄奘三藏所譯之本，具取初名題一部也」—“The version translated by Tripiṭaka Master Xuanzang in the Zhenguan years of the present Great Tang takes the first title in full as the title of the whole work.” 〔T38n1770 0257a13〕; their fullness and brevity he judges as 「文義廣略，後二相似」—“In the breadth and brevity of letter and sense, the latter two are alike.” 〔T38n1770 0257a15〕

The two anonymous scrolls of commentary recovered at Dunhuang each follow another recension. The first (T85n2766, its opening already lost) follows the old-translation stratum of fascicle twelve of the Consecration Sūtra, and so its heading reads “eastward from here, ten Ganges’ sands of buddha-fields,” differing in character from the base text’s “ten Gaṅgā’s sands.” This line has a distinct reading of the clause “listen attentively”: 「汝今諦聽教其安三慧也」—“‘Listen now attentively’ teaches him to settle the three wisdoms.” 〔T85n2766 0306c07〕 — matching attentive listening, careful pondering, and cultivation to the three wisdoms of hearing, thinking, and cultivating. Against the former line, which assigns attentive listening to the letter and careful pondering to the sense: one sūtra sentence, two distributions; both are recorded, and no reconciliation is set up. This line is also readier with simile in explaining the name: 「藥師者借譬受名」—“As for the Medicine Master, the name is received by borrowing a simile.” 〔T85n2766 0306c20〕, 「世之藥師能除人病內病」—“The physician of the world can remove a person’s illness, and the illness within.” 〔T85n2766 0306c21〕

This line also did something the Ancient Traces did not: it drew a picture of that age in which the Semblance Dharma turns.

It says 「如來滅度千五百年後即是末法」—“Fifteen hundred years after the Tathāgata’s passing is the Final Dharma.” 〔T85n2766 0306b07〕, and that in that time 「五濁興行。五濁者。一劫濁。二」—“the five turbidities rise and spread. The five turbidities are: first, the turbidity of the kalpa; second,” 〔T85n2766 0306b09〕 the turbidity of lifespan, third of the afflictions, fourth of beings, fifth of views; and it states first that 「濁乃無量。一方化宜且說五種」—“Turbidities are measureless; as suits the teaching of one quarter, five kinds are spoken of for now.” 〔T85n2766 0306b10〕 — turbidities are without number, and five are named provisionally, as fits the capacity of one region.

Of the five, three are written very close to the bone.

The turbidity of lifespan — 「命濁者。保翫此身謂舉常然無常忽至死至無期」—“As for the turbidity of lifespan: one guards and dotes upon this body, supposing it will always be so; impermanence arrives of a sudden, and death comes with no appointed term.” 〔T85n2766 0306b12〕 — pressing in until it reaches what is to be dreaded. A person nurses and cherishes this body, taking it that things will stay as they are; impermanence arrives all at once, and the hour of death gives no notice.

The turbidity of the afflictions — 「煩惱濁者。煩或纏結繫縛行人排迴色聲沈流香味造惡為盛不能」—“As for the turbidity of the afflictions: vexation and delusion twine, knot, and bind the practitioner, who is pushed back and forth among sights and sounds and sinks adrift in scents and tastes, doing evil in ever greater measure and unable” 〔T85n2766 0306b14〕 to reform himself. Back and forth among sights and sounds, sinking down in scents and tastes, doing more evil and unable to change.

The turbidity of views — 「見濁者。起諸邪見專事天神奉養外道殺生求福為惡」—“As for the turbidity of views: one raises all manner of wrong views, serves the celestial spirits alone, supports the outer paths, and kills living beings in the seeking of blessings, doing evil” 〔T85n2766 0306b18〕 more grievously still. Seeking blessings by killing, and so making the evil heavier.

Having written out the five turbidities, it adds a sentence of its own: 「此時欲到人應怒力宣揚」—“This time is about to arrive; people should exert their strength and proclaim” 〔T85n2766 0306b20〕 it openly.

This is exactly the situation of Mañjuśrī’s question. The former line calculates, with the six firmnesses of the Great Collection Sūtra, when the Semblance Dharma is; this line describes what that time looks like. One gives the scale, the other gives the face.

The second scroll (T85n2767) follows Dharmagupta’s Sui version; what survives of it begins at the end of that version’s section on the land, and neither the introduction nor the twelve vows falls within it, so nothing from it can be cited for this passage. Searched and not found is recorded as not found.

Three eyes: one runs phrase by phrase against Xuanzang’s version, two against other recensions. So what is read alongside may be consulted, but cannot be taken as the gloss of this recension — that is where the measure lies.

And the sūtra’s own clause, “for the sake of benefiting and gladdening the sentient beings of the age when the Semblance Dharma turns,” is bound to no commentary at all. The four translations each write it in their own characters: one as “the age when the Semblance Dharma turns,” one as “the age to come when the True Dharma decays,” one as “beings of the Semblance Dharma to come.” The words differ; the age they point at is one.

The twelve great vows are the bone of this sūtra. The passage before gave only a single sentence of summary — he made twelve great vows, that sentient beings might obtain all they sought — and now they are handed over one at a time.

There is an old way of reading the twelve vows: not one by one, but two at a time. The Ancient Traces on the Medicine Buddha’s Original-Vow Sūtra, by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu, divides the twelve vows into six pairs, two vows to a pair, six pairs exhausting the twelve; and the names of the six pairs in order are benefiting pure and defiled, mundane and supramundane, preserving precepts and preserving the body, removing inner and outer suffering, loosing inner and outer bonds, and intent upon food and clothing. This passage holds the first two pairs.

Reading two at a time has this advantage: the tension inside a pair becomes visible.

A Vow Is Made First

First, one thing about vowing.

Another old line of commentary on this sūtra, before coming to the twelve vows, raises a question: which comes first, vow or practice? The answer is that the vow comes first — 「常言願為慕廓行則闐滿故明願先行在後也」—“It is commonly said that the vow yearns out the outline and practice then fills it in; therefore it is made plain that the vow comes first and practice after.” 〔T85n2766 0308c22〕

The vow yearns out the outline — it draws the shape first; practice fills that shape in, portion by portion. So the vow is before and the practice after.

That fixes where a vow stands. A vow is not the ornament of practice, nor a reflection gathered after practice is done. It is the line drawn first. Without that line, practice has no way of saying where it is filling to.

This is why the twelve vows can be the bone of a whole sūtra: they are the twelve lines the Medicine Buddha drew first, while still in the position of the cause.

And one more thing lies on the surface of the sentences: every one of the twelve vows is tied to “when I have attained awakening.” What is pledged is not to be done at once; it is tied to the moment of realizing awakening. The vow is set up first and the fruit is rounded off later, with the whole bodhisattva path lying between.

It is easy, reading vow-texts, to read them as promises. They are closer to pledges — the thing to be accomplished is settled in words first, and then measureless kalpas are spent accomplishing it.

Vow One: What Is Sought Is the Marks, and the Reason Is in the Last Clause

「第一大願：願我來世得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提時」—“The first great vow: I vow that in an age to come, when I have attained unsurpassed perfect awakening” 〔T14n0450 0405a07〕 — of the twelve vows, only the first uses the full title of unsurpassed perfect awakening; the other eleven read simply “when I have attained awakening.” Once in full at the opening, and thereafter in brief.

What vow one pledges is the buddha’s own body: 「自身光明，熾然照曜無量無數無邊世界」—“the light of my own body shall blaze forth and illumine measureless, countless, boundless worlds” 〔T14n0450 0405a08〕, and further 「以三十二大丈夫相、八十隨好，莊嚴其身」—“and with the thirty-two marks of a great man and the eighty accompanying excellences shall adorn my body” 〔T14n0450 0405a09〕.

Light illumining boundless worlds; marks and excellences adorning the body. Read this far, and it seems the vow is asking for the buddha’s own attainment.

Then the last clause turns: 「令一切有情，如我無異」—“I shall cause all sentient beings to be just as I am, with no difference.” 〔T14n0450 0405a10〕

Eight characters, and the direction of the whole preceding sentence is turned over. The marks and the light asked for have their reason not in the buddha’s own enjoyment but in causing all sentient beings to be as he is, with no difference.

To seek adornment, so that others may have that adornment too.

The order repays a glance as well: first the light illumining boundless worlds, then the marks adorning his own body. Light goes outward, the marks are on the body itself; one outward and one inward, and both are tied to that word “cause” in the closing clause.

The very first of the twelve vows sets up the fixed form: what is pledged is in the buddha, what it returns to is in beings.

Vow Two: A Body Like Beryl, and Its Use Is in the Dark

Vow two is the one vow in this passage richest in simile: 「身如琉璃，內外明徹，淨無瑕穢，光明廣大，功德巍巍，身善安住，焰網莊嚴，過於日月」—“my body shall be like beryl, clear and translucent within and without, pure and without flaw or stain, its light vast and great, its merits lofty, this body well established, adorned with a net of flame, surpassing the sun and moon.” 〔T14n0450 0405a11〕

The simile of beryl was already in the title; here it comes to rest on the body — clear and translucent within and without, with nothing anywhere that is not transparent. “Adorned with a net of flame” is a second figure: the light of the body interwoven as a net. And its measure is “surpassing the sun and moon” — brighter than sun and moon.

Thus far it is still the buddha-body being written. Then comes another turn: 「幽冥眾生，悉蒙開曉，隨意所趣，作諸事業」—“beings in gloom and darkness shall all receive opening and awakening, and shall go wherever their intention turns and do every kind of work.” 〔T14n0450 0405a13〕

Notice the two layers in that closing clause. The first layer is “all receive opening and awakening” — those in the dark are given light and understand. The second layer is the crucial one: “they shall go wherever their intention turns and do every kind of work” — they can go where they mean to go, and can get things done.

The use of light is not written as something fine to look at; it is written as the power to move. A person in the dark is not missing a view; he does not dare walk, and cannot work. Light comes, the road is recognizable, the work can be carried through.

This is where the two words “light and radiance” are most easily read too shallowly: in this vow, light is not a spectacle. It is a condition.

And at this same place another Tang translator heard the second layer. Yijing’s version has one clause more: 「鐵圍中間，幽冥之處，互得相見」—“In the space between the iron encircling mountains, in places of gloom and darkness, they shall be able to see one another.” 〔T14n0451 0413a12〕 — in the darkest place between the iron encircling mountains, the beings there can see one another.

The base text has no such clause, and neither do the Sui version or the old translation. But set the two side by side, and what was already inside the base text’s “beings in gloom and darkness shall all receive opening and awakening” comes out: when light comes, it is not only that one person sees the road; it is that people who were each shut in their own dark begin to see each other.

One translator heard “they can walk now,” another heard “they can see one another now.” Recorded without adjudication — and the sūtra’s own clause, “they shall go wherever their intention turns and do every kind of work,” has room for both.

A vow that speaks of the adornment of the buddha-body comes down where the hands and feet of beings can begin to move.

The Name of the First Pair: Pure and Defiled

Why are these two vows a pair? The name the outline gives is the gate of benefiting pure and defiled, and the reason: 「一饒益淨穢門，即初二願，淨土一切如我身故，乃至世界中間幽冥眾生皆逐意故」—“First, the gate of benefiting pure and defiled, that is, the first two vows: because in the pure land all are as my own body, and because even the beings in gloom and darkness in the interstices of the worlds all follow their intention.” 〔T38n1770 0258b20〕

At the pure end is “all are as my own body” — within that land, every person is no different from the buddha’s body; at the defiled end are “the beings in gloom and darkness in the interstices of the worlds” — even beings shut in the dark crevices between worlds follow, each of them, their own intention.

Another line of commentary, reading the old Consecration translation, matches them more bluntly: 「初願願作穢土佛身。第二願願作淨土佛身」—“The first vow is the vow to be a buddha-body of the defiled land. The second vow is the vow to be a buddha-body of the pure land.” 〔T85n2766 0308c29〕 One vow in the defiled, one in the pure.

Within one pair, one end stands in the pure land and one in the defiled dark. The vow does not pick its ground.

Vow Three: Let Not One Person Go Short

Vow three changes the subject: 「以無量無邊智慧方便，令諸有情，皆得無盡所受用物，莫令眾生有所乏少」—“with measureless, boundless wisdom and skilful means I shall cause all sentient beings to obtain goods of use that are never exhausted, and shall let no being suffer any lack or want.” 〔T14n0450 0405a15〕

The first two vows spoke of light, of marks, of translucency; this one speaks of “goods of use” — what is eaten, worn, and used.

And what it draws on is “wisdom and skilful means.” Not the conjuring of treasure, but wisdom and skilful means causing beings to have use without end. The instrument is wisdom; the object is daily life.

The arrangement of that sentence is worth turning over. What is to be solved is the most concrete kind of want, and what is brought to bear on it is “measureless, boundless wisdom and skilful means” — which shows that within the body of the vow, matters of food and clothing do not rank a step below matters of insight; they call on the whole force of wisdom just as much.

The closing clause is 「莫令眾生有所乏少」—“and shall let no being suffer any lack or want.” 〔T14n0450 0405a17〕 The Sui-period translation renders this clause 「莫令一人有所少乏」—“and shall let not one person suffer want or lack.” 〔T14n0449 0401c07〕 — one person.

Let not one person go short. A vow set at that height cannot be discharged with “sufficiency on the whole.”

A sūtra about the light of a buddha-body lets its third vow come down on human want. Compassion does not hold itself above ordinary matters; that is the measure of a vow.

Vow Four: Two Kinds of People Handled Together

Vow four deals with those who have gone off the way: 「若諸有情行邪道者，悉令安住菩提道中；若行聲聞獨覺乘者，皆以大乘而安立之」—“if among sentient beings there are any who walk wrong paths, I shall cause them all to be settled within the path of awakening; and if there are any who walk the vehicle of the śrāvakas or of the pratyekabuddhas, I shall establish them all in the Great Vehicle.” 〔T14n0450 0405a18〕

Two kinds of people. The first have taken the wrong road — they walk wrong paths; the second are on a road that is not wrong but narrow — they walk the vehicles of the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas.

The vow puts both kinds in one sentence: the ones who went wrong, settled within the path of awakening; the ones on the narrow road, established in the Great Vehicle.

One phrase from the outline deserves attention here: 「二世出世間門，即次二願，以人天乘無所乏故，乃至行邪道者隨其種姓安住三乘菩提道中，不定二乘皆以大乘而安立故」—“Second, the gate of mundane and supramundane, that is, the next two vows: because in the vehicle of humans and devas there is no lack, and because those who walk wrong paths are settled, each according to his lineage, within the path of awakening of the three vehicles, while those of the two vehicles who are of indeterminate lineage are all established in the Great Vehicle.” 〔T38n1770 0258b22〕

The four characters “each according to his lineage” keep this vow from being spoken of in one uniform way — those who walk wrong paths are settled, each according to his lineage, in the path of awakening of one of the three vehicles; and those established in the Great Vehicle are those of indeterminate lineage among the two vehicles. This is the Dharma-characteristics way of reading, and it does not take “all in the Great Vehicle” as one flat levelling.

Yijing’s version here reads 「亦令安住大乘法中」—“shall likewise be settled within the Dharma of the Great Vehicle” 〔T14n0451 0413a19〕, broader in force than “I shall establish them all in the Great Vehicle.” Both stand, each according to its own characters.

The Name of the Second Pair: Mundane and Supramundane

Vows three and four make a pair under the name of the gate of mundane and supramundane: vow three has charge of livelihood in the world — no lack in the vehicle of humans and devas; vow four has charge of the three vehicles that transcend the world — the wrong paths and the two vehicles each given their settling.

Within one pair, one vow has charge of food and clothing and one of insight.

The first pair divides pure from defiled; this one divides mundane from supramundane. Four vows through, and both sets of coordinates stand: whatever the place, pure or defiled; whatever the matter, mundane or supramundane — among these four vows there is no situation left outside.

Four Closing Clauses

Set the closing clauses of the four vows side by side:

Vow one closes with “I shall cause all sentient beings to be just as I am, with no difference”; vow two with “they shall go wherever their intention turns and do every kind of work”; vow three with “and shall let no being suffer any lack or want”; vow four with “I shall establish them all in the Great Vehicle.”

Four sentences, and the subject of every one is sentient beings.

The first halves of all four vows are writing about the buddha — light, marks, a body of beryl, a net of flame, wisdom and skilful means; the second halves all turn outward. Not one vow stops at the buddha-body’s own attainment.

This is not a coincidence of style. It is the fixed form of a vow: what is pledged is one’s own accomplishment, what is dedicated is another’s gain; the accomplishment is written in the first half and the reason in the second.

So the summary sentence of the passage before, “that sentient beings might obtain all they sought,” is no formality. It is the sum of the closing clauses of the twelve vows.

Read only the first halves of the twelve vows and they come out as an inventory of the merits of a buddha-body; read the four closing clauses together and one sees which way these twelve lines were drawn.

This has a practical use for anyone reading vow-texts. The sentences are long, and their first halves are mostly talk of marks and radiance, hard to come near, easy to slide past. Read each vow through to its closing clause and stop there, and at the end of four vows four very concrete things are left in hand: all sentient beings no different from the buddha, people in the dark able to move, no one short of anything, those who went astray each given a settling.

The sūtra itself puts the weight on the closing clause.

Transmission — Two Kinds of “Six,” Matched to Different Vows

The above is the sense of the passage itself. Below, two eyes cast their light from the side — the mirror is not the sūtra, only the same set of vows seen through two ways of reading; and about these two eyes one thing must first be made plain: they are not reading the same translation, and therefore their “six” is not the same six.

The Ancient Traces on the Medicine Buddha’s Original-Vow Sūtra (by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu) follows Xuanzang’s version and glosses it, and its outline is 「廣說門中有六對門」—“Within the gate of extensive exposition there are six paired gates.” 〔T38n1770 0258b19〕: benefiting pure and defiled, mundane and supramundane, 「三存戒存身門」—“third, the gate of preserving precepts and preserving the body” 〔T38n1770 0258b24〕, 「四除內外苦門」—“fourth, the gate of removing inner and outer suffering” 〔T38n1770 0258c01〕, 「五內外解縛門」—“fifth, the gate of loosing inner and outer bonds” 〔T38n1770 0258c06〕, 「六志食與衣門」—“sixth, the gate of intent upon food and clothing” 〔T38n1770 0258c08〕. The verdict on the first two pairs given above, and the distinction of “each according to his lineage” and “the two vehicles of indeterminate lineage,” come from here.

The one anonymous scroll of commentary recovered at Dunhuang (T85n2766, its opening already lost) follows the old-translation stratum of fascicle twelve of the Consecration Sūtra. It too reads the twelve vows as six, but as six couples, and the matching is wholly different: 「初上求佛果為一雙。第二功德智慧為一雙。第三自行化他為一雙。第四就慈悲體為一雙。第五制大魔化外道為一雙。第六就慈悲境為一雙也」—“The first, seeking the buddha-fruit above, makes one couple. The second, merit and wisdom, makes one couple. The third, practice for oneself and transformation of others, makes one couple. The fourth, taking the substance of kindness and compassion, makes one couple. The fifth, subduing the great Māra and converting the outer paths, makes one couple. The sixth, taking the object of kindness and compassion, makes one couple.” 〔T85n2766 0308c25〕

Two kinds of six that look like a mere difference of nomenclature, but whose root is in the translations: what is pledged in vows three and four of the Consecration version is not at all what is pledged in Xuanzang’s. There vow three pledges 「使我來世智慧廣大，如海無窮潤澤枯涸無量眾生普使蒙益」—“May it be that I, in an age to come, shall have wisdom vast and great, endless as the sea, moistening what is parched and dry, so that measureless beings all receive its benefit” 〔T21n1331 0532c09〕, and vow four pledges 「使我來世佛道成就，巍巍堂堂如星中之月」—“May it be that I, in an age to come, shall accomplish the buddha-path, lofty and stately as the moon among the stars” 〔T21n1331 0532c12〕 — the goods of use without end of Xuanzang’s third vow, and the turning of wrong paths and bringing of the two vehicles into the Great of his fourth, are not at these positions in that recension. The content of the vows differing, the pairing must differ too.

This line also sets up a threefold division within each vow: 「就初求穢土身中復分為三。第一標數。第二興願。第三迴施眾生也」—“Within the first, the seeking of a body of the defiled land, there is a further division into three. First, the marking of the number. Second, the raising of the vow. Third, the turning over and bestowing upon beings.” 〔T85n2766 0309a02〕 — every vow has three joints: the marking of the number, the raising of the vow, and the turning over and bestowing upon beings. The name of the third joint especially repays notice: the turning over and bestowing upon beings. This line has made “what is pledged returns to beings” into a fixed closing joint of every single vow — the very thing seen in the four closing clauses. The two outlines stand recorded together, and no reconciliation is set up.

When this line reaches that version’s second couple (merit and wisdom), it stops to train a few characters — and the ones it trains are precisely the two in the base text’s third vow, “wisdom and skilful means.”

On merit: 「其功德者亦名福德。福謂福利。善能資閏。福利行人故名為福」—“As for merit, it is also called blessing-virtue. Blessing means benefit of blessing: the good is able to nourish and enrich, and because it benefits and blesses the practitioner it is named blessing.” 〔T85n2766 0309a16〕; 「功謂功能。善有資閏利益之功故名為功」—“Merit means capacity: because the good has the capacity to nourish, enrich, and benefit, it is named merit.” 〔T85n2766 0309a19〕 Blessing is spoken of in terms of benefit, merit in terms of capacity — one speaks of what is gained, the other of what is possible.

Between them it inserts a simile, as brief as it is exact: 「如清冷等是水家德」—“As clearness and coolness and the like are the virtues belonging to water.” 〔T85n2766 0309a18〕 — clearness and coolness are not something added onto water; they are water’s own virtue. Merit as virtue is like that: not one more thing hung outside of practice, but the virtue that belongs to good conduct where it stands.

On wisdom it lists four houses and settles on none: 「言智慧者依如毘曇決斷名智。對諸忍故」—“As for wisdom: according to the Abhidharma, decisive judgment is named knowledge, since it stands over against the acceptances.” 〔T85n2766 0309a21〕; 「若依成實。無著名智別想識故」—“If according to the Tattvasiddhi, non-attachment is named knowledge, since it distinguishes conception from consciousness.” 〔T85n2766 0309a22〕; and below it raises the Bodhisattvabhūmi and the Daśabhūmika houses as well. The list complete, it sets down an even-handed sentence of its own: 「此智與慧通釋一物隨義別分非無差異」—“Knowledge and wisdom, explained in common, are one thing; distinguished according to sense, they are not without difference.” 〔T85n2766 0309a23〕 — spoken in common they are one thing; distinguished by sense, one cannot say there is no difference between them.

Four houses set side by side and none adjudicated, and at the end only the remark that the common and the distinct each have their portion. This line is known for its stories, yet on matters of terminology it is not vague in the least.

The other Dunhuang scroll (T85n2767) follows the Sui version; what survives of it begins at the end of that version’s section on the land, and the twelve vows are absent from it throughout, so nothing from it can be cited for this passage. Searched and not found is recorded as not found.

As for the old-translation stratum’s greater use of simile — sun, sea, and moon used together — Xuanzang’s third and fourth vows set up no figure at all, and say plainly only “let no being suffer any lack or want” and “I shall establish them all in the Great Vehicle.”

More figures or fewer is a matter of each translator’s hand. The direction in which the closing clauses of the four vows point, none of the four altered.

The first four vows wrote the buddha-body: light, marks, beryl, a net of flame, and only at the closing clause a turn toward beings. From vow five onward the sūtra changes its manner of writing — first the difficulty a person is in, and then the buddha’s name coming into it.

The difficulties written in these four vows come closer to the bone one after another: the precepts broken, the body maimed, illness heavy with no one to look after one, and the being oppressed and harassed as a woman.

The Ancient Traces on the Medicine Buddha’s Original-Vow Sūtra, by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu, matches these four into two pairs: vows five and six as the gate of preserving precepts and preserving the body — one preserving the precepts, one preserving the body; vows seven and eight as the gate of removing inner and outer suffering — one removing the suffering of outer conditions, one turning the suffering of inner condition. This passage is also the most finely trained stretch in that commentary: the thirteen terms of vow six he assigns one by one to the six faculties.

Vow Five: What to Do After It Is Broken

Vow five falls into two halves. The upper half is put positively: 「於我法中修行梵行，一切皆令得不缺戒，具三聚戒」—“who practice the holy life within my Dharma, I shall cause them all to obtain precepts unbroken, and to be complete in the threefold precepts.” 〔T14n0450 0405a22〕

There are two matters in that clause, not one: “precepts unbroken” is about nothing being missing, “complete in the threefold precepts” is about all being present. The reading handed down matched the two separately: 「不缺重戒，具三聚故」—“because the grave precepts are unbroken and the threefold precepts complete” 〔T38n1770 0258b25〕 — unbroken, with the weight on the grave precepts not being broken; complete, meaning all three classes of precepts are there.

Which three classes, the treatise this line relies on states plainly: 「謂律儀戒所攝戒藏，攝善法戒所攝戒藏，饒益有情戒所攝戒藏」—“that is, the treasury of precepts gathered under the restraint precepts, the treasury of precepts gathered under the precepts embracing wholesome dharmas, and the treasury of precepts gathered under the precepts benefiting sentient beings.” 〔T30n1579 0514b11〕 The restraint precepts are the keeping and guarding, the precepts embracing wholesome dharmas are the cultivating of good, the precepts benefiting sentient beings are the benefiting of others.

And of the three, one bears the load: 「此三種戒，由律儀戒之所攝持，令其和合」—“These three kinds of precept are held together and gathered by the restraint precepts, which make them accord.” 〔T30n1579 0711b26〕, 「若能於此精勤守護，亦能精勤守護餘二」—“If one can diligently guard this, one can diligently guard the other two as well.” 〔T30n1579 0711b27〕; and the reverse holds too — 「是故若有毀律儀戒，名毀一切菩薩律儀」—“Therefore if one breaks the restraint precepts, that is called breaking all the bodhisattva restraints.” 〔T30n1579 0711b29〕

So the words “the grave precepts unbroken” are not casually said. Let a grave precept go, and all three classes are shaken.

The lower half is where the real weight of this vow lies: 「設有毀犯，聞我名已，還得清淨，不墮惡趣」—“And should any have broken them, then upon hearing my name they shall regain purity and shall not fall into evil destinies.” 〔T14n0450 0405a23〕

“Should any have broken them” is a rare turn in a vow-text. It does not assume that people will hold. It assumes that some will not hold, and then leaves a road open for those who do not.

This section is not in all four recensions. Vow five of the old Consecration translation pledges only 「發大精進，淨持戒地令無濁穢」—“to raise great vigour, purely keeping the ground of the precepts so that it is without turbidity or stain” 〔T21n1331 0532c15〕, and goes on to careful guarding, firm holding, and not transgressing — nowhere in it is there a section on “after it is broken.”

A vow that pledged only “that all shall keep the precepts in purity” would sound more complete; but anyone who has actually kept precepts knows that the hard place is not the moment of resolve, it is the moment after the break. What a person most easily concludes at that moment is: since it is broken already, let it go.

That conclusion is exactly what vow five blocks.

Vow Six: Thirteen Terms, Matched Four to Four

Vow six sets out a long string: 「其身下劣，諸根不具，醜陋、頑愚、盲、聾、瘖、瘂、攣、躄、背僂、白癩、癲狂、種種病苦」—“their body lowly and their faculties not whole — ugly, dull and stupid, blind, deaf, mute, speechless, crippled in the limbs, unable to walk, hunchbacked, leprous, deranged, and afflicted with every kind of illness.” 〔T14n0450 0405a26〕

It reads like every disability heaped into one place. The reading handed down points out that this string has a structure.

First the general and the particular are divided: 「此中下劣，不具標句也」—“Here ‘lowly’ and ‘not complete’ are the sentences of general heading.” 〔T38n1770 0258b26〕 — “their body lowly” and “their faculties not whole” are the general heading, not items in the list. And the sense of that heading is 「雖具諸根，不勝妙故及有缺故」—“Though the faculties be complete, they are not fine and excellent; or else something is lacking.” 〔T38n1770 0258b26〕; lowliness is of two kinds, one where all the faculties are present but not good enough, one where something is missing outright.

Then each is matched to a faculty: 「言醜陋者，釋身下劣。言頑愚者，釋意下劣」—“‘Ugly’ glosses lowliness of body; ‘dull and stupid’ glosses lowliness of mind.” 〔T38n1770 0258b27〕 — ugliness is lowliness of body, dullness and stupidity lowliness of mind. 「盲聾等下，釋眼耳舌身根不具」—“From ‘blind and deaf’ onward glosses the incompleteness of the faculties of eye, ear, tongue, and body.” 〔T38n1770 0258b28〕 — blind to the eye, deaf to the ear, mute and speechless to the tongue, crippled and unable to walk and hunchbacked and leprous to the body. 「癲狂，釋意根不具」—“‘Deranged’ glosses the incompleteness of the faculty of mind.” 〔T38n1770 0258b29〕 As for the nose, it has no item of its own, and one clause gathers it in: 「種種病苦，攝鼻等病」—“‘Every kind of illness’ gathers in the illnesses of the nose and the rest.” 〔T38n1770 0258b29〕

The matching done, the most important sentence comes after: 「端正等四，如次翻上」—“The four beginning with ‘well-formed’ reverse the above in order.” 〔T38n1770 0258c01〕

The fruit-clause of the sūtra has four members: well-formed, quick of understanding, faculties whole and complete, without sicknesses and pains. These four are not a loose “all better now”; they reverse, one by one, the four classes above — well-formed reverses ugly, quick of understanding reverses dull and stupid, faculties whole and complete reverses blind and deaf and the rest, without sicknesses and pains reverses every kind of illness.

Four to four, with nothing left over.

Reading it this way has an advantage: it keeps “they shall all become well-formed and quick of understanding” from being a blanket promise. The vow answers item by item; whatever was said before is what is answered after.

Vow Seven: None to Save, Nowhere to Turn

Vow seven writes the worst situation of illness: 「眾病逼切，無救無歸，無醫無藥，無親無家，貧窮多苦」—“pressed hard by a host of illnesses, with none to save them and nowhere to turn, without physician or medicine, without kin or home, poor and full of suffering.” 〔T14n0450 0405b01〕

The four characters “none to save, nowhere to turn” are taken by the reading handed down as two headings, each governing the clause below it: 「無救者，標無醫藥也。無歸者，標無親等也」—“‘None to save’ heads what follows about having no physician or medicine. ‘Nowhere to turn’ heads what follows about having no kin and the rest.” 〔T38n1770 0258c02〕

None to save is that no one can pull you out of the illness — a matter of physician and medicine. Nowhere to turn is that even when the illness passes there is no place to go — a matter of kin and home.

When a person is gravely ill, what is missing is often not only the means of treatment, but who will take them in during it and where they will return to after. The sūtra writes these two layers apart, and does not fold them into one sigh of pity.

And what is given follows the same two layers: 「今得佛醫法藥聖財，故除病等乃至豐足」—“Now they obtain the Buddha as physician, the Dharma as medicine, and the noble wealth; and so illness and the rest are removed, on to ampleness.” 〔T38n1770 0258c03〕 — the Buddha is physician, the Dharma is medicine, the noble wealth is the goods of livelihood. The sūtra’s fruit-clause is exactly two layers as well: “their illnesses shall all be removed, body and mind shall be at ease” answers the first, “household and the goods of livelihood shall all be ample” answers the second.

The vow does not stop once the illness is cured.

That second layer was not heard by every translator. Among the four — the base text reads “household and the goods of livelihood shall all be ample,” and Yijing reads 「眾病消散，眷屬增盛，資財無乏，身心安樂」—“the host of illnesses shall disperse, kinsfolk shall increase and flourish, goods and wealth shall not be lacking, body and mind shall be at ease” 〔T14n0451 0413b02〕; both have it. But the Sui version’s fruit for this vow reads only 「此人若得聞我名號，眾患悉除無諸痛惱」—“If such a person gets to hear my name, the host of afflictions shall all be removed, without any pain or distress” 〔T14n0449 0401c22〕, and the old translation only 「我為此等攝大法藥，令諸疾病皆得除愈」—“for such as these I shall gather the great medicine of the Dharma, causing all illnesses to be healed” 〔T21n1331 0532c22〕 — illness removed and there it stops, with nothing of where one is to return to.

Two have it, two do not. Recorded without adjudication — and the comparison brings out the layering in the base text itself: having written “none to save” and “nowhere to turn” apart, it answers them apart in the fruit-clause too. Cured and with nowhere to go, this vow would not count itself complete.

Vow Eight: Weariness Is the Gate

Vow eight is the one of these four that must be read most closely word by word: 「若有女人，為女百惡之所逼惱，極生厭離，願捨女身」—“if there is a woman oppressed and harassed by the hundred evils of being a woman, so that she conceives an extreme weariness of it and vows to cast off the body of a woman” 〔T14n0450 0405b05〕; and after hearing the name, 「一切皆得轉女成男，具丈夫相」—“she shall be turned from woman to man, complete in the marks of a man.” 〔T14n0450 0405b07〕

What must be seen clearly is the conditional clause. Those upon whom this vow acts are not all women, but the one who 「極生厭離，願捨女身」—“conceives an extreme weariness of it and vows to cast off the body of a woman” 〔T14n0450 0405b06〕 — the sūtra itself sets a limit whose gate is her own willing. The vow is not laid here upon one who does not will it.

The commentators of old cite the Nirvāṇa Sūtra here as witness: 「一切女人皆是眾惡之所住處」—“All women are the dwelling place of the multitude of evils.” 〔T38n1770 0258c05〕 This sentence is raised in order to gloss the sūtra’s “oppressed and harassed by the hundred evils of being a woman.” So it was read of old; the words are recorded here as they stand, neither adjudicated in their stead nor softened on their behalf.

And the reason this vow makes a pair with vow seven lies in the words inner and outer: what vow seven removes is suffering pressed on by outer conditions — illness, poverty, having no kin; what vow eight turns is suffering of inner condition — 「二能轉內緣女身苦」—“the second is able to turn the suffering of a woman’s body, which is of inner condition.” 〔T38n1770 0258c04〕 Outer conditions can be taken away; inner condition has to be turned. Within one pair, one removes and one turns.

One Sentence That Keeps Coming Back

Put the four vows side by side and something appears that the first four did not have.

Vow five: upon hearing my name they shall regain purity. Vow six: upon hearing my name they shall all become well-formed and quick of understanding. Vow seven: 「我之名號，一經其耳，病悉得除」—“let my name but once pass their ear, and their illnesses shall all be removed.” 〔T14n0450 0405b02〕 Vow eight: upon hearing my name she shall be turned from woman to man.

Three of the four read “upon hearing my name,” one reads “let my name but once pass their ear” — four vows, four hearings of the name.

And in vows one through four there is not a single one.

This is the turn that happens halfway through the twelve vows. The first four spoke of what that world is like after he becomes a buddha; from vow five onward the sūtra begins to hand over how this reaches a person — by a name being heard.

If we ask what this sūtra actually wants a person to do, the answer starts growing from here. The whole later stretches on the benefits of hearing the name, on making offerings and being guarded, on rescue, deliverance, and the prolonging of life, are the unfolding of these four occurrences of “upon hearing my name.”

One and the same thing said four times over is no longer a turn of style. It is a pivot.

The Difficulties Are Written Very Plainly

One last matter of manner.

Vow two wrote the buddha-body with beryl, with a net of flame, with “surpassing the sun and moon” — figure upon figure. This passage, writing human difficulty, has not one simile in all four vows.

A broken precept is called a broken precept, blindness and deafness are called blindness and deafness, no physician and no medicine is called no physician and no medicine, being oppressed and harassed is called being oppressed and harassed.

Where the buddha is written, figures are used, because that is what a person has never seen; where the human is written, figures are not used, because that is what a person is already inside. What one is already inside needs no comparison.

Here is where the weight of this passage lies. The twelve vows are not twelve fine-sounding sentences — arriving at the middle, they touch, item by item, the places a person really cannot get past, and touch them precisely: not “if anyone suffers,” but the one who broke a precept, the one missing a faculty, the one ill with no one to care, the one who has had enough and wants a different body.

For a vow to come down upon a person, it must first be able to recognize that person.

Transmission — One Line Matches the Six Faculties, the Other Tells Stories

The above is the sense of the passage itself. Below, two eyes cast their light from the side — the mirror is not the sūtra, only the same set of vows seen through two ways of reading; and these two eyes differ not only in their pairing but wholly in their manner of exposition.

The Ancient Traces on the Medicine Buddha’s Original-Vow Sūtra (by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu) follows Xuanzang’s version and glosses it; the assignment to the six faculties, the four-to-four reversal, the two headings of “none to save, nowhere to turn,” and the matching of Buddha as physician, Dharma as medicine, and noble wealth all come from it in their whole frame. Its way of reading a vow is analytic: take a string of terms apart, put each in its place, and then see how the fruit-clause answers each in turn. The strength of this line is that it will not let a vow-text be vague — every character must have somewhere to land.

The anonymous commentary recovered at Dunhuang (T85n2766, its opening already lost) follows the old Consecration translation, and takes another road: it tells stories.

Glossing vigour, it raises the matter of the deer-king — 「昔有大杯樹多諸禽獸野火來燒三邊俱起」—“Of old there was a great cup-tree with many birds and beasts, and a wildfire came burning, rising on three sides at once” 〔T85n2766 0309b14〕 — the wildfire coming on from three sides, the beasts fleeing to the water’s edge with no way out, and that great deer spanning the two banks with its fore and hind feet so the beasts could cross over its back, its hide and flesh worn utterly away while 「以慈愍力忍之」—“by the power of kindness and pity it bore it” 〔T85n2766 0309b17〕; and at the very last 「一兔來氣力以竭自強」—“a hare came when its strength was already spent, and it forced itself” 〔T85n2766 0309b18〕, rousing one more breath so the hare could pass, whereupon 「背折墮水而死」—“its back broke and it fell into the water and died” 〔T85n2766 0309b19〕.

— Of vigour it lays down no definition; it makes you see that last hare.

Glossing faculties not whole, it raises the karmic causes one by one: 「盲者」—“the blind” 〔T85n2766 0309b23〕 come of 「先世重罪」—“grave sins of a former life” 〔T85n2766 0309b24〕 — destroying another’s eyes, destroying the eye of right view, stealing the lamp-flames of a stūpa; 「聾者何因」—“From what cause the deaf?” 〔T85n2766 0309b25〕 — 「答曰師文教訓不受不行而返瞋恚」—“Answer: not receiving and not practicing the instruction of a teacher’s words, but turning to anger instead.” 〔T85n2766 0309b26〕, and further cutting off another’s ears and stealing the goods of stūpa and monastery; speechlessness from cutting off a tongue, stopping a mouth, giving evil medicine, or hearing the instruction of teacher and parents and not using it. Derangement it lays to disturbing those who sit in meditation, and it raises two matters from human life: a brahmin who lost his rice-field and then his wife, and went mad on the spot and ran out naked; and a bhikṣuṇī whose seven children died one after another, until grief was too heavy and her mind gave way.

It also sets up a separate item called “naked derangement,” saying that there is one kind of madness everyone can see, and another kind that the person himself does not feel and others do not take for madness. Coming to this it records a debate: in South India a Dharma master on the high seat was expounding the five precepts, and when the followers of the outer paths rose together to challenge him, he only pointed his finger at that crowd and turned to another subject — smearing the body with ashes, eating from skulls filled with filth, pulling out the hair and lying on thorns, entering water in winter and roasting by fire in summer: these are the marks of derangement.

This line speaks of the vows by karmic causes and birth-stories; that line speaks of them by assigning the six faculties. One would have you see; the other would have you distinguish. One and the same vow-text, and each way of telling has its own use — and what they rest on was never the same translation to begin with.

As for the other Dunhuang scroll (T85n2767), it follows the Sui version, and what survives of it begins at the end of that version’s section on the land; the twelve vows are absent from it throughout, so nothing from it can be cited for this passage. Searched and not found is recorded as not found.

The sūtra itself does neither of these things. It neither analyses nor illustrates. It only writes the difficulties down one by one, and after each one sets the same sentence: upon hearing my name.

The twelve vows come to their close in this passage. After the close, the sūtra describes that buddha-land for the first time, and for the first time exhorts anyone to vow birth there.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha, composed by the śramaṇa Taehyŏn of Ch’ŏnggu, pairs the last four vows two by two: vows nine and ten as “the gate of loosing inner and outer bonds,” vows eleven and twelve as “the gate of intent upon food and clothing.” The section on the buddha-land he sets under an outline of its own, analysed into eight perfections of merit.

Vow Nine: A Net, and a Dense Forest

Vow nine is the one vow among the twelve that figures in simile the condition to be left behind: “causing sentient beings to escape the demon’s snare and net and to be freed from every entanglement and bond of the outside paths”; “should they have fallen into the dense forest of every kind of evil view, I will draw them out, gather them in, and settle them in right view, gradually causing them to cultivate the practices of a bodhisattva and swiftly to realize unsurpassed perfect awakening.”

In “the demon’s snare and net,” the snare is a noose and the net a covering — and the mark of a noose and a net is that one does not feel oneself caught. At the moment of walking in, the road is open.

“The dense forest of evil views” is more exact still. A dense forest is not a wall; it does not bar the way. It lets a person go on walking — only never out. That is precisely the plight of views: not that there is no road to walk, but that every road leads further in.

So the verb of this vow is not to break, but “to draw them out, gather them in, and settle them in right view” — to lead a person out and set him down somewhere else. The forest cannot be broken; the person can only be carried away from it.

And in the closing phrase, “gradually causing them to cultivate the practices of a bodhisattva,” the word gradually is worth marking. To be out of the forest is not yet to be home; there is a stretch of road still to be walked slowly.

Vow Ten: On What Strength Is the Release Founded

Vow ten writes of the hardest human situation there is: “taken up by the king’s law, bound with cords, beaten with the rod and the whip, shut fast in prison, or about to be put to death, together with measureless further calamities and humiliations, scorched and pressed by grief and sorrow, suffering in body and mind.”

Cords, the whip, the prison, the execution ground — it is written straight through to the end. This is the one suffering among the twelve vows with the least room to turn in. Of those before it, illness can be healed, poverty relieved, a crooked view set straight; here the source of the suffering is the authority of the human world itself.

So what this vow rests upon differs from the rest as well: “if they hear my name, then by the power of my merit and awesome spirit they will all be freed from every grief and pain.”

“By the power of my merit and awesome spirit.” The other vows say what follows upon hearing the name; this vow marks out expressly what the release is founded upon. For in the face of the king’s law a person has no strength of his own.

And it must be seen clearly what is promised. The closing phrase is “freed from every grief and pain” — not spared from execution. At the hardest place the sūtra does not say more than it says.

That is not for a reader to fill out. Escape from execution and release from grief and pain are two matters; the vow speaks only of the second.

Vows Eleven and Twelve: First Give, Then Speak of Dharma

The last two vows return to the two commonest matters of all: eating and clothing.

Vow eleven writes the cause first: “tormented by hunger and thirst, and committing every kind of evil deed for the sake of getting food.” A person does not go bad first and then grow hungry; he grows hungry and then does those things. The vow writes the provenance of the deed onto the hunger.

And what is given comes in two stages: “I will first satisfy their bodies with food and drink of the finest kind, and afterwards, with the savor of Dharma, establish them in ultimate peace and joy.”

Food first, Dharma after. The order is written down hard: fill the body first, then speak of the savor of Dharma.

Not every translation has this order. Vow eleven in the old Consecration translation says only “causing them to obtain every kind of sweet and delicious food and drink” — the food given, and there it ends. Another Tang translator did bring out this second layer: “and afterwards, with the savor of Dharma, cause them to abide in surpassing joy.” That food first and Dharma after are two stages, both Tang recensions heard; the old translation layer did not.

Vow twelve is clothing: “poor and without clothing, bitten by mosquitoes and gadflies, beset by cold and heat, harried day and night.” It does not dispose of the matter with the word poverty; it writes mosquitoes and gadflies, cold and heat, day and night. The reality of poverty is having no single layer of covering on the body, bitten and chilled and scorched around the clock.

Nor is what is given a single garment: “they will obtain at once, just as they like them, garments of every sort of the finest kind,” “and will obtain as well every ornament made of jewels, flower-garlands and perfumed unguents, drums and music and troupes of performers,” closing with “whatever their heart delights in, all of it will be made complete.”

Jewelled ornaments, flower-garlands, perfumed unguents, drums and music — none of these keeps out the cold. Giving as far as this, the vow is no longer merely keeping a person alive.

The First Sentence of the Twelve Vows and the Last

Here the twelve vows end: “these are the twelve sublime and supreme vows that the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata, Worthy One, Perfectly Awakened One, made when he practiced the bodhisattva path.”

Set the closing phrase of the first vow beside the closing phrase of the twelfth:

Vow one closes at “causing all sentient beings to be no different from me” — that beings should be as the Buddha is. Vow twelve closes at “whatever their heart delights in, all of it will be made complete” — that whatever a being himself likes to play with be given him in full.

It begins at equality with the Buddha and ends at granting what a person wants.

The one end is the highest there is: no different from the Buddha. The other end is the lowest: whatever he likes, give it to him. The twelve vows walk from that end to this one.

And the order of the walking is this: first the buddha-body is established (one and two), then the mundane and the supramundane (three and four), then precepts and faculties (five and six), then illness and the body (seven and eight), then views and punishment (nine and ten), and only last eating and clothing (eleven and twelve). The further on, the more concrete; the further on, the closer to the ground.

The vows have not left daily use in the least important place. It stands last because that is where the vows are truly to come down.

Reading vow-texts, we are used to holding “causing all sentient beings to be no different from me” higher than “whatever their heart delights in, all of it will be made complete.” The ordering of the twelve vows is not arranged that way.

Beyond Telling

The twelve vows told, the sūtra turns to write of that buddha-land, and its opening sentence is: “were I to speak for a kalpa, or for more than a kalpa, I could not exhaust them.”

The reading handed down sets an important sentence under this: “it discloses that as the great vows are, so too the fruit is without bound. The body should be reckoned according to the vows.”

The vows being boundless, the fruit too is boundless; and what the buddha-body is, is to be inferred by reckoning from the vows.

This sentence takes up again the purport laid down in the introduction — the cause and fruit of the Tathāgata as the doctrinal purport. The vows are the cause and the land is the fruit, and what cannot be exhausted in the telling is not how large the land is, but how deep that cause runs.

Eight Things

What is that land like? The reading handed down does not describe it phrase by phrase; it divides it into eight items, each item fastened to one sentence of the sūtra.

“There are no women there” is “first, the perfection of having no defilement to cling to”; “nor any evil destinies, nor any sound of suffering” is “second, the perfection of being free of the evils that are feared”; “beryl is its ground and golden cords mark out the bounds of its roads” belongs partly to “third, the perfection of the purity of what is relied upon” and partly to “fourth, the perfection of the roads being formed into a pattern”; “its walls and gate-towers, its palaces and pavilions, its galleries and windows and its lattices of netting are all made of the seven jewels,” taken with the sentence following, makes “fifth, the perfection of the adornment of palaces”; the two bodhisattvas are “sixth, the perfection of the great sages without cease”; the upholding of the treasury of the true Dharma is “seventh, the perfection of benefit and joy unbroken”; the exhortation to vow birth is “eighth, the perfection of vowing birth there without obstruction.”

The drift of the eight is worth watching: the first two say what is not there, the middle four say what is there, the seventh says who is at work there, and only the eighth turns toward the one reading.

To begin from absence is the manner of this passage. The sources of suffering are taken away one by one first, and what remains is the adornment.

“Likewise as the Western World of Ultimate Bliss”

This passage holds one sentence that occurs only once in the whole sūtra: “it is likewise as the Western World of Ultimate Bliss: in merits and adornments equal and without difference.”

The Eastern Pure Beryl, and the sūtra itself takes the Western Ultimate Bliss for the term of comparison.

The weight of this lies in the fact that it is not a later assimilation but the sūtra’s own saying. Yijing’s recension likewise has “likewise as the merits and adornments of the Western World of Ultimate Bliss” — both Tang recensions carry the sentence.

The manner of the comparison must also be seen clearly. The sūtra does not say that the East surpasses the West, nor that the West surpasses the East; what it says is “equal and without difference.” To raise a place a reader may already know in order to speak of a place he does not yet know — this is teaching at its least laborious.

And among the eight perfections this sentence is placed under “the perfection of the adornment of palaces”: it is not an exclamation but one concrete specification of that land.

Two Bodhisattvas, and One Exhortation

In that land are two foremost bodhisattvas: “the first named Sunlight Universally Shining, the second named Moonlight Universally Shining.”

Sun and moon. Vow two said earlier of the buddha-body that it is “adorned with a net of flames, surpassing sun and moon”; and here the two foremost attendants are named for sun and moon. The buddha-body surpasses sun and moon, and the two who serve the Buddha are named for sun and moon — within one passage the figure of light is never let go.

Their office is that “they are all able to uphold the treasury of the true Dharma of the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata.” The reading handed down names this item “the great sages without cease,” on the ground that “they are in the position of succession” — the place of the foremost has someone able to take it up, and so is not broken.

For the Dharma to be handed on, what is relied upon is not the vow itself but that there are persons who uphold it.

The last sentence is an exhortation: “good sons and good daughters who have faith,” “should vow to be born in that buddha’s world.”

The twelve vows told and the buddha-land written, only here does the sūtra speak for the first time to the one reading it. All before this has been what I shall do — the Buddha making his vows; this sentence is “should vow to be born” — the turn has come round to the one who listens.

A sūtra that has spoken so long of “vow” now puts that word into our hands.

Transmission — One Way Divides into Eight Items, the Other Is Still Telling Stories

The above is the meaning of the passage itself. Below, three auxiliary eyes shine upon it from the side — a mirror is not the sūtra, only the same passage seen through several ways of reading. And at the close of this passage the third eye joins for the first time.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha (composed by the śramaṇa Taehyŏn of Ch’ŏnggu) glosses Xuanzang’s recension. The six pairs, the eight perfections, the adjudication “the body should be reckoned according to the vows,” and the gloss “because they are in the position of succession” — the whole frame above comes from here. His way of reading the buddha-land is still analytic: he does not describe, he only divides into items, and every item bites down on one sentence of the sūtra — even a single sentence like “beryl is its ground and golden cords mark out the bounds of its roads” he splits into the perfection of what is relied upon and the perfection of the roads.

The anonymous commentary recovered at Dunhuang (T85n2766, wanting at its head) glosses the old Consecration translation, and its pairings differ from Ancient Traces altogether: it takes vows nine and ten as one pair, “subduing the deva-demons and crushing the outside paths,” and vows eleven and twelve as “setting forth the field of compassion.”

Under vow nine it sets a very sharp question: if the Buddha vows to subdue deva-demons and outside paths, is that intention not unwholesome? The answer is “the reason for subduing the deva-demons is fundamentally to raise up the Three Jewels.” Subduing demons is not for the sake of prevailing over anyone, but so that the Three Jewels may flourish. A question that looks as though it ought not to be asked was asked by that commentary, and answered.

Its exegesis of vow ten is more unexpected still: if the outside paths are to be converted, why speak of “what the king’s law inflicts”? The answer is that among the ninety-six paths, “it then says ‘what the king’s law inflicts,’ explaining it as the ninety-six kinds of path; the king too” is one of those paths — the king’s law counts as one path, and so the affliction of the king’s law also falls within the conversion of the outside paths. This reading Ancient Traces does not have; the two stand recorded together, with no reconciliation imposed.

That way of reading is still telling stories. Glossing this vow, it records a man slandered to the king by the queen; the king had his limbs severed one by one and his body cast into a graveyard. In the night tigers, wolves, and rākṣasas came to devour him; the Buddha came to his side, and at one shining of the light his body was made whole again, and Dharma was preached to him and he attained the way. Afterwards the king came to beg pardon and offered him half the kingdom, and the man said: this body of mine has been broken once and cast away once, and it was the Buddha who took it back; now to the end of this life I give the body away, and I shall not return.

— The suffering that the king’s law inflicts it does not explain. It lets you see the man who was carried back from the graveyard.

The other anonymous commentary from Dunhuang (T85n2767) glosses the Sui recension of Dharmagupta, and its surviving portion picks up exactly at the close of this passage: the first sentence of its glossing runs, “Sūtra: from ‘therefore’ down to ‘that buddha-land’ — fifth, exhorting people to vow birth there,” answering to the base text’s “should vow to be born in that buddha’s world.” The portion covering the twelve vows before this is not among what survives, and for anything earlier than this passage there is nothing to cite; from the next passage onward it becomes the third auxiliary eye.

Three auxiliary eyes: one dividing into items, one telling stories, one just arrived. And the sūtra itself neither divides into items nor tells stories — having finished writing that land, it says only one thing: you should vow to be born in that buddha’s world.

The twelve vows were made by the Buddha upon the ground of cause. From this passage onward the sūtra turns to another matter altogether — what happens when that name reaches a human being.

This long passage has five sections. Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha, composed by the śramaṇa Taehyŏn of Ch’ŏnggu, reads the five sections as the removing of five kinds of obstruction: “within it there are five, because they cause those who hear to remove five kinds of obstruction: to giving, to precepts, to cultivation, to the path of the ten wholesome deeds, and to birth in a place of joy.” Giving, precepts, cultivation, the ten wholesome deeds, birth in a place of joy — five gates.

And for every section he uses one and the same frame: first what the obstruction is, then where it lands a person, and only then what follows upon hearing the name — “this has three gates: first, the gate disclosing the obstruction’s own nature,” next the gate showing its harm, last the gate of the benefit of hearing the Buddha’s name.

Five sections, five obstructions, one form throughout.

The First Gate: Cannot Bear to Part with It

The first section writes of miserliness. The sūtra does not begin from the merit of giving; it begins from a person’s mind: “there are beings who do not tell good from evil, who harbor nothing but greed and stinginess, who know nothing of giving or of the fruit of giving.”

Then it gives a very exact simile: “seeing a beggar come, their heart takes no pleasure in it, and if they cannot help but give, then in the giving it is as though they were cutting the flesh from their own body, and they grudge it bitterly.”

As though cutting the flesh from their own body. Not that they do not give, but that giving hurts. This sentence describes the forced kind of giving — the hand has opened, the mind has not.

Then a layer deeper: “they will not use them even upon themselves — how much less could they give to father and mother, wife and child, servant and hireling, or the beggar who comes to the door?” Not even upon themselves. Miserliness carried to its limit is not stinginess toward another; it is stinginess toward oneself as well.

The harm is that “those beings, when their lives end here, are born into the realm of hungry ghosts or the destiny of animals.”

And the sentence of the turn deserves reading word by word: “because in a former human life they had once briefly heard the name of the Medicine Buddha, the Tathāgata of beryl radiance, now in the evil destiny they briefly call that Tathāgata’s name to mind.”

Twice the word briefly. Once briefly heard in a former human life; now briefly recalled in the evil destiny. The first tells us that the hearing at the time was not solemn; the second tells us that the present recollection lasts no longer than an instant.

The sūtra has not required that the hearing be attentive or the recollection pure. It says only: it happened once, and now it has come back to mind.

Reading here, one is inclined to add weight on the sūtra’s behalf, to feel that there ought to be a threshold. Two occurrences of the word briefly stand there, and nothing has been added.

And the course after hearing the name is gradual: first the recollection of former lives and the dread of the evil destinies, then delight in giving and praise for those who give, and at last “by degrees they become able to give even head and eyes, hands and feet, blood and flesh and the parts of the body to those who come asking — how much more all other goods.”

From “cutting the flesh from their own body” to “blood and flesh and the parts of the body given to those who come asking” — the same flesh, once the pain of what cannot be parted with, and now what can be handed over. The head and the tail of this section use the same word.

The Second Gate: Five Layers After the Break

The second section writes of breaking the precepts, and the way it writes is most unusual — five layers, each a step back from the last:

“though they have received the several points of training from the Tathāgata, they break the śīla”; “some, though they do not break the śīla, break the rules of deportment”; “yet destroy right view”; “but cast off wide learning and cannot understand the deep meaning of the sūtras the Buddha has spoken”; “some, though of wide learning, give rise to overweening pride, and because overweening pride covers over their minds they hold themselves right and others wrong, dislike and slander the true Dharma, and become companions of the demon.”

The precepts broken is the first layer. The precepts unbroken but the bearing spoiled is the second. Both of these sound and the view crooked is the third. The view not crooked but unwilling to learn widely, unable to read the sūtras, is the fourth.

And the fifth layer wants the most attention: learning widely, and then overweening pride.

The first four are lacks; the fifth is the disease that comes after fullness. Much is learned and pride is born of it, and once pride is up there follows “holding themselves right and others wrong,” and then dislike and slander of the true Dharma, and companionship with the demon. The sūtra puts this layer last not because it is the lightest but because it appears last — it can only grow after the other four have been made good.

This layer stands unusually close to one who reads sūtras. The first four are lacks we admit readily; the fifth can only be committed after learning enough.

The next sentence is heavier still: “and cause measureless koṭis of beings to fall into the great pit of peril.” Here it is no longer self-deception but the misleading of others.

The reading handed down assigns the five layers to three places: precepts and rules of deportment to the obstruction to the restraint precepts; right view, wide learning, and overweening pride to the obstruction to the precepts embracing wholesome dharmas; and the last sentence, the misleading of others, to “the obstruction to the precepts embracing sentient beings.”

These three names are precisely the “complete in the threefold precepts” pledged in vow five. What the vow set out to accomplish in the threefold precepts is here listed item by item on its reverse side. A sūtra says in its earlier part what it will give, and in its later part how that very thing gets lost.

The Third Gate: Miserly, Envious, Self-Praising, Disparaging

The third section lists four things: “miserly and greedy and envious, praising themselves and disparaging others: they will fall into the three evil destinies.”

The reading handed down matches these four one by one to the four measureless minds: “here miserliness and greed can obstruct the cultivation of loving-kindness, because they do not give joy. Envy obstructs sympathetic joy, because it does not rejoice with others. Self-praise and disparagement obstruct compassion, because they can vex and injure. And the three together obstruct the nature of equanimity, because they are defiled.”

Miserliness blocks loving-kindness — loving-kindness gives joy, miserliness does not give. Envy blocks sympathetic joy — sympathetic joy rejoices with others, envy does not. Self-praise and disparagement block compassion — compassion draws out suffering, disparagement adds to it. And all three block equanimity at once, because all three are defiled.

Three block one apiece, and together they block the fourth.

This matching turns a sentence that looks like mere reproach into a table one can consult: if loving-kindness will not arise, look and see whether you are miserly; if joy in another’s good will not arise, look and see whether you are envious. The name of the sickness and the name of the medicine correspond one to one.

The recompense is written very concretely: in the next life “born as oxen, horses, camels, and asses, constantly beaten with the whip, harried by hunger and thirst,” or human but born low and mean, made a servant and driven at labor.

And in the string of things gained after hearing the name, the last two clauses use similes: “breaking the shell of ignorance, drying up the river of the afflictions.” The graph 㲉 is an eggshell. Ignorance is like a shell that wraps a creature entirely — what is inside the shell does not know what is outside, because it has never seen it. The afflictions are like a river, flowing, apt to rise and cover.

The one must be broken, the other dried up. Dealing with a shell and dealing with water were never the same kind of effort.

The Fourth Gate: The Methods People Use to Harm

The fourth section writes the worst of what passes between people: “delighting in setting others at odds, quarreling and going to law with one another, troubling both themselves and others,” and then the summoning of the spirits of mountains, forests, trees, and graves, the killing of living beings to take blood and flesh for offerings, and “writing down the name of an enemy and making an image of him and laying an evil spell upon him with cursing arts,” and further, bewitchment and poison-sorcery and corpse-demons raised by spells.

The sūtra does not shy from these matters; it sets them down one by one.

And of the effect of hearing the name it says only one sentence: “none of those evils can do them harm.”

What it says next must be seen clearly. It does not say that those who work the cursing arts will meet with retribution. It says — “all of them, each toward the other, give rise to a mind of loving-kindness, to benefit and to ease, without any intent to injure or vex and without any mind of dislike and hatred”; each is glad and content, contented with what has fallen to him, no longer encroaching upon one another but doing one another good.

The side that meant harm is turned as well. What this section removes is “the obstruction to the path of the ten wholesome deeds,” and the accomplishment of the ten wholesome deeds does not lie in one party prevailing over the other, but in neither party harming any longer.

The Fifth Gate: Vowing Birth in the West with an Unsettled Mind

The fifth section is the most unexpected of all.

It speaks of the four assemblies and of good men and women of pure faith who are “able to receive and keep the eight-precept fast, whether for a year or for three months,” and who with this root of good vow “to be born in the Western World of Ultimate Bliss, before the Buddha of Measureless Life, there to hear the true Dharma, but not yet settled.”

— Vowing birth in the West, and the mind still will not settle.

This is a sūtra of an eastern buddha, and here it makes provision for one who vows birth in the West. And the one provided for is not the person of firm faith either: it is the person who has made the vow and yet sways, who is not himself sure he will get there.

The measure of this provision is very fine — not for one who does not believe, nor for one whose belief is steady, but for the one who has already vowed and whose heart still hangs. If you stand in that place, this section is written for you.

To such a one the sūtra says: if he hears the name of the Medicine Buddha Tathāgata, then “at the time of death eight bodhisattvas will come by their spiritual powers and show him the road,” and in that world he will be born spontaneously, transformed, among the flowers of massed jewels.

What the eight bodhisattvas come to do is to show him the road. Not to receive him eastward, but to point the way west.

One buddha’s name, used upon another buddha’s pure land; and what it makes good is exactly the “not yet settled.”

After the Five Sections

The five sections walked through, look back at the key.

The people written of in the five sections are all different: the miser, the precept-breaker, the envious, the one who lays curses to harm, the one who has vowed and cannot settle his mind. Five sicknesses, five destinations.

And what works in every section is one and the same thing — hearing the name. In the first section it is “had once briefly heard”; in the second, “should hear the name of this Medicine Buddha, Beryl Radiance Tathāgata”; in the third, “had once heard the name of the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata”; in the fourth, “should hear the name of this Medicine Buddha, Beryl Radiance Tathāgata”; in the fifth, “hears the name of the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata” — and at the close of the fifth, a woman’s hearing of the name is set apart in a sentence of its own. Six sentences of hearing the name in this passage.

Five different gates, and one and the same key.

This is exactly the pivot laid down as the twelve vows entered their second half: from vow five onward, hearing the name becomes a standing sentence of the vow-text — four times in vows five through eight, three more in vows ten through twelve; vow nine alone has no such sentence (getting out of the dense forest depends on being drawn out, not on hearing the name). There it was still only one sentence within a vow; here it has become the bone of five sections.

And what the sūtra asks of “hearing” stays light throughout — briefly heard, once heard, come to hear. So light that one doubts whether it can be enough. The sūtra offers no defense of it; it simply sets out the five hardest situations there are and places the same sentence after each of them.

Transmission — Two Different Sūtras, Divided Into Five the Same Way

The above is the meaning of the passage itself. Below, three auxiliary eyes shine upon it from the side — a mirror is not the sūtra, only the same passage seen through three ways of reading. And this passage is where the three auxiliary eyes are complete for the first time: through the four preceding units, the scroll that glosses the Sui recension had no text at all.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha (composed by the śramaṇa Taehyŏn of Ch’ŏnggu) glosses Xuanzang’s recension. The five obstructions, the three gates, the pairing with the threefold precepts, the pairing with the four measureless minds — the whole frame above comes from here. His way of reading this passage is to set up one frame and apply it over and over: all five sections use the three gates of the obstruction’s own nature, its harm, and the benefit of hearing the Buddha’s name, so that a reader who has reached the third section already knows how the fourth will open out. The use of writing this way is that it makes the sameness of structure among the five sections visible — five different sicknesses, one structure of pathology.

The other anonymous commentary recovered at Dunhuang (T85n2767) glosses the Sui recension of Dharmagupta, and its surviving portion begins precisely with this long passage. It too divides the passage into five: “it divides into five. First, curing much greed. Second, curing the breaking of precepts. Third, curing envy. Fourth,” curing estrangement; fifth, curing the unsettled.

Set the five of the two houses side by side:

Removing the obstruction to giving answers to curing much greed; removing the obstruction to the precepts, to curing the breaking of precepts; removing the obstruction to cultivation, to curing envy; removing the obstruction to the ten wholesome deeds, to curing estrangement; removing the obstruction to birth in a place of joy, to curing the unsettled.

The boundaries of the five sections agree between the two houses entirely.

The weight of this lies here: the recensions the two glossed are not the same translation, and the terms they use are not the same — one says “removing the obstruction to such and such,” the other says “curing such and such” — and yet they set the knife down in the same places. The division is no private opinion of one house; it is the grain of the sūtra itself.

Where they differ is in density. Ancient Traces uses the same three gates for all five sections; this scroll sets up its own number for each — “as to the first text, the text divides into six. First, another” begging and being grudged, second, not relieving kin and cause, third, taking birth according to deed, fourth, hearing the name and being rescued, fifth, all receiving the fulfilment of the vow, sixth, delighting in bounty without weariness; “second, curing the breaking of precepts: the text divides into eight”; “third, curing envy: the text divides into four”; “fourth, curing estrangement: the text divides into four”; “fifth, curing the unsettled: the text divides into seven.” Six, eight, four, four, seven — a number to each section, and no frame applied.

One road sees sameness of structure by using a single frame; the other sees difference by subdividing section by section. The two outlines stand recorded together, with no reconciliation imposed.

This scroll also tells stories. Glossing “not telling good from evil” in the first section, it cites an affair from the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya: a bhikṣu was practicing meditation beside a pool, and the dragon in the pool, revering his virtue, coiled about him to guard him; the bhikṣu felt disgust in his heart and wanted to drive the dragon away. — A grudging heart need not be about property alone.

As for the scroll that glosses the Consecration recension (T85n2766), its surviving text runs from the history of the Abhidharma treatises down to the exegesis of the twelve vows; for this long passage on the benefits of hearing the name there is no text. Searched and not found, and so recorded as not found.

And the sūtra itself sets up no frame and makes no subdivisions. It only writes out five kinds of person, and after each of them places one and the same name.

The passage before wrote of five kinds of person delivered by hearing the name — the name of the Medicine Buddha, the Tathāgata of beryl radiance. This passage first teaches how to make offerings, and at its close turns out a question nobody could have looked for — the Buddha asks Ānanda himself: do you believe it?

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha, composed by the śramaṇa Taehyŏn of Ch’ŏnggu, reads this long passage as “the gate of exhorting people to benefit,” divided below into five gates. This passage holds the first three: the pledge that wakens, the Tathāgata’s confirmation, and the loss and gain of slighting or believing; the last two (setting up the image and the aids to it, and question, answer, and the resolving of difficulties) belong to the passage following.

First a Man Makes a Pledge of His Own

The opening is not the Buddha speaking. It is Mañjuśrī making a vow: “I pledge that in the age when the Semblance Dharma turns,” by every kind of skilful means, to cause people to hear this name — “and will even in their sleep waken their ears with the Buddha’s name.”

Mark where this sentence stands. The twelve vows before were the Buddha’s and the benefits of hearing the name were the Buddha’s to relate; here one of those who has been listening takes up a pledge of his own.

And what he pledges is exceedingly concrete: even a sleeping person is to have that name reach his ear. Not waiting for anyone to come and ask, but sending it in while a person is off his guard.

The reading handed down names this gate one that “wakens” — a warning that reminds, an awakening that rouses. Here the name is not an object recited; it is the sound that wakes someone.

The second thing he pledges concerns how this sūtra itself is to be treated: received, kept, and recited, expounded for others, copied by oneself or by others taught to copy; offered to with flowers and incense, banners and canopies; and further, “take silk of five colors and make a bag to hold it in,” with a clean place swept and sprinkled, a high seat spread, and the sūtra set upon it.

What a sūtra is to be treated as, the sūtra states for itself. Not shelved, but given a bag, a seat, a place.

And what answers to this follows at once: “at that time the four great heavenly kings, together with their retinues” and measureless hundreds of thousands of gods all come to that place to make offerings and to guard it. Wherever the sūtra circulates, “know that in that place there will be no more untimely death” — and even vital essence robbed away by evil ghosts is restored as before.

What is guarded is not the person but the place. This section answers to the pledge of the twelve generals later on: at one end the gods guarding where the sūtra is, at the other the yakṣas guarding whoever holds the name.

Offering, Worked from the Outside Inward

After the Buddha confirms it, the method of offering is taught. And the method has stages; the commentators divide it into three layers.

The first layer is goods: making and setting up the image, spreading a clean seat, scattering flowers and burning incense, adorning with pennants and banners. This layer can be seen and handled, and it can be paid for.

The second layer is right practice: “for seven days and seven nights receive and keep the eight-precept fast,” eating pure food, bathing, putting on new clean garments; and then the one sentence that matters most — “toward all sentient beings raise up benefit and ease, and the even mind of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.”

At this layer the offering is no longer before the buddha but upon one’s own mind. And the four things to be raised up are precisely the four that the passage before said miserliness and envy block. One passage speaks of the obstruction, the other of the cultivation, and the names are the same set.

The third layer is the three deeds: “with drums and music and hymns of praise, circumambulate the buddha-image to the right,” reciting this sūtra, pondering its meaning, expounding and disclosing it — body, speech, and mind all put to use.

The three layers come down from the outward inward: set it out first, then change the mind, then bring body, speech, and mind all in. The sūtra does not say that the first layer may be omitted, nor that finishing the first layer is enough.

Reading a method of offering, one is inclined to read only the first layer — the most concrete, and the easiest to make into a rite. But the sentence in the middle of the three is the pass to be got through: a mind without stain or turbidity, a mind without anger or harm. However grand the display, if that sentence is not got past the offering stops at the first layer.

And the third layer is called “the three deeds” because at that point even “expounding and disclosing” counts as an offering — to teach this sūtra to another is the same thing as burning incense and scattering flowers, done another way.

Everything Sought Is Granted — and Then?

Next comes the benefit. Its first sentence is written very plainly: “whatever they wish for and vow, all of it will be granted: seeking long life, they gain long life; seeking wealth, they gain wealth; seeking office, they gain office; seeking a son or a daughter, they gain a son or a daughter.”

Long life, wealth, office, children — four things that people in the world actually want. The sūtra strikes out none of them and is shy of none of them.

Nor does the benefit stop there. The commentators divide it into three layers: after what is sought being granted comes what is loathed being extinguished — bad dreams, ill omens, strange birds, a hundred prodigies, all of which “will vanish away and be unable to trouble him”; water, fire, sword, poison, precipices and savage beasts, venomous snakes and evil scorpions, and even 「若他國侵擾，盜賊反亂」—“if another country invades and harasses, or bandits rise in revolt” 〔T14n0450 0407a05〕, which the commentator gathers into this same layer. Third comes parting from the suffering of broken precepts — those who have taken the five precepts, the ten, the bodhisattva precepts, the precepts of monk and nun, and 「於所受中或有毀犯，怖墮惡趣」—“among what they have taken have broken some, and dread falling into the evil destinies” 〔T14n0450 0407a10〕; and 「或有女人，臨當產時，受於極苦」—“a woman about to give birth, undergoing extreme pain” 〔T14n0450 0407a12〕.

The order of the three is worth watching: first what is desired is given, then what is disliked is taken away, and only last does it come to the one who has broken precepts and the woman in labour. It begins from what a person most wants and ends at what a person can least bring themselves to say.

From Five Precepts to Five Hundred

After the three layers of benefit the sūtra begins a new section, and those it reaches are people who have received precepts and have transgressed them.

Worth notice is the way it lists the precepts: “whether the five precepts, the ten precepts, the four hundred bodhisattva precepts, the two hundred and fifty bhikṣu precepts, or the five hundred bhikṣuṇī precepts” — from the five precepts of the layman all the way to the five hundred of a bhikṣuṇī.

One sentence takes in the householder and the renunciant, the newly received and the fully ordained. No station is excluded from the possibility of transgression, and therefore no station is excluded from this gate.

And what is promised is that one who “dreads falling into an evil destiny,” if he can single-mindedly recollect the buddha’s name and make reverent offerings, “will assuredly not undergo birth in the three evil destinies.”

This again is the matter of vow five. From the vow-text, to the benefits of hearing the name, to this place, the sūtra leaves a door open for the precept-breaker a third time; a thing that appears three times in one sūtra is not mentioned in passing.

The section that follows comes closer still to the body: “or there may be a woman who at the time of childbirth undergoes extreme suffering,” and if she can with a whole heart invoke the name, bow and praise, and make reverent offerings, all her sufferings are removed; and the child born to her is “complete in the parts of the body, upright in form and color, a joy to those who see him, keen of faculty and clever, at peace and little ill.”

The twelve vows wrote of the suffering of incomplete faculties; here is written the doorway of that matter — the very moment a child is born. The vow has come down into the birth-room.

Do You Believe It

At this point the passage turns.

The Buddha stops speaking of merits and turns to Ānanda with a question: “As I have extolled all the merits of that Buddha, the World-Honored Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata — this is the very deep field of practice of the buddhas, hard to understand and hard to fathom. Do you believe it?”

A sūtra more than half told, and the speaker turns back to ask the listener whether he believes — this is uncommon in the sūtras.

Ānanda’s answer uses a very strong simile: “these orbs of sun and moon could be made to fall, the king of mountains, Sumeru the Wondrously High, could be made to topple, but what the buddhas say is never otherwise.”

The strength of the simile lies in its concession. He does not say that the Buddha’s word is immovable like sun and moon; he says that sun and moon may fall and Sumeru may topple — the hardest things in the world are given away first — and then says that there is something less movable still.

Someone Will Reason This Way

Ānanda then states the doubt on another sort of person’s behalf, and states it without any softening:

There are people wanting in the faculty of faith who, hearing this, will reckon it up — “how should merely reciting the name of one buddha, the Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata, gain so great a benefit of merit as that?”

Reciting one buddha’s name — how could that be worth so much?

This is exactly the doubt left by the “briefly heard” of the passage before. With the threshold set that low, a person will naturally mutter to himself. The sūtra does not evade it; it lets Ānanda say the sentence out in full, and states the consequence as well: through this unbelief one turns to slander, and through the long night loses great benefit.

The Buddha’s answer has two faces. One is that for a person who receives and keeps it with a whole heart and gives rise to no doubt, “that he should fall into an evil destiny — there is no such case.” The other is an admission of difficulty: “all śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, and the bodhisattvas who have not yet ascended the grounds, are none of them able to believe and fathom it as it is — save only the bodhisattva bound by one more birth.”

Śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas not yet ascended the grounds: none of them can believe and fathom it as it is. Only one in the position of succession can.

The Gate of Practice Is Very Low, the Gate of Understanding Very High

Set these two things side by side and the most important thing in this passage comes out.

To do it takes only a brief hearing, only a whole-hearted recollection of one name; even the precept-breaker still has a door. To understand it, even a bodhisattva not yet ascended the grounds is not enough.

One sūtra, one matter: the place of entry as low as it can possibly be, the place of understanding so high that śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas cannot reach it.

These two ends are in fact two faces of one thing. Precisely because what is relied upon is not one’s own power of understanding, the place of entry can be that low; and precisely because it is not established by understanding, thinking it through is the hardest thing of all — to think it through would be to measure by understanding a thing that does not depend on understanding.

The sūtra does not urge anyone to grasp it first and practice after. It states the difficulty of belief in the open, and still leaves the door standing at “briefly heard.”

This is no contradiction. The sūtra goes on to state three difficulties: “a human body is hard to obtain; faith, reverence, and honor toward the Three Jewels are also hard to obtain,” and to hear this buddha’s name is “harder still than these.”

Three hard things, each harder than the last; and the hardest of them — hearing this name — is exactly the one that can happen without being understood first.

The order repays a pause. Common sense would rank them: hearing the name easiest, faith and reverence next, a human body hardest. The sūtra reverses it and puts hearing the name in the hardest place.

Where is the difficulty? Not in the reciting, but in the meeting. A human body, right faith, and hearing the name are three occasions, not three abilities. That this sūtra can be opened at all means the first two have already been passed.

So the Buddha says to Ānanda, “that you are able to receive it now, know that it is all the awesome power of the Tathāgata.” Being able to believe is not something one has reasoned out; it is something one has been held up in.

The last sentence sets the measure hard: that buddha’s practices and vows and skilful means cannot be told out in a kalpa or more than a kalpa — “the kalpa might swiftly be exhausted, but that buddha’s practices and vows and his skilful means have no end.”

The kalpa runs out; the vows do not. This sentence means the same as “I could not exhaust them” after the twelve vows, said again across the greater part of a sūtra.

Transmission — One Way Matches Gates, the Other Matches Rules

The above is the meaning of the passage itself. Below, two auxiliary eyes shine upon it from the side — a mirror is not the sūtra, only the same passage seen through two ways of reading.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha (composed by the śramaṇa Taehyŏn of Ch’ŏnggu) glosses Xuanzang’s recension. The five gates, the three offerings, the three benefits, and the division into four gates — the whole frame above comes from here. His reading of this passage is again analytic: he sets no simile and cites no treatise, only fitting the sūtra sentence by sentence into the gates. And the names of the gates he sets up are themselves adjudications: he calls Mañjuśrī’s section “the gate of the pledge that wakens,” and the section where the Buddha questions Ānanda “the gate of the loss and gain of slighting or believing” — the gain or loss of a whole passage hanging upon believing or not believing.

The anonymous commentary recovered at Dunhuang (T85n2767) glosses the Sui recension of Dharmagupta. Its outline-name for this passage agrees with that of Ancient Traces — likewise “second, the Tathāgata’s confirmation”; and under it he further sets up “second, showing the rules for it; the text divides into” four, matched expressly to the method of offering.

This is the second time the two run into the same thing: in the passage before, both houses divided it into five; in this passage, both name one gate alike. The recensions they gloss are different and their wording is different, and their readings come down in the same place.

As for the scroll that glosses the Consecration recension (T85n2766), its surviving text ends with the exegesis of the twelve vows; for this passage there is nothing. Searched and not found, and so recorded as not found.

And at the close of this passage there remains one matter on which the recensions differ, needing nothing said beyond the texts themselves: the base text of this passage has no spell. One canon inserts here a whole section of the Medicine Buddha dhāraṇī — entering samādhi, sending forth light, proclaiming the spell, spelling water and having the sick drink it. The content of that section is equivalent to the dhāraṇī section found in Yijing’s expanded recension of the Seven Buddhas; and the eye that glosses Xuanzang’s recension phrase by phrase nowhere glosses this dhāraṇī — where it writes the graph for “spell,” two places are restating the sūtra’s own second title, and the remaining five are all about the cursing arts by which people harm one another; not one of them is this spell.

The base text has no spell, another recension has one, and the mirror does not gloss it. The three matters stand recorded together, and none is adjudicated.

At the close of the passage before, the Buddha said that this teaching is hard to believe. In this passage someone else opens his mouth — a bodhisattva in the assembly rises, named Rescue-and-Deliverance. What he sets out is not doctrine; it is a set of things that can be done with the hands.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha, by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu, marks this passage as “the gate of setting out images and rendering aid” and “the gate of question and answer resolving difficulties”: the first sets out the method, the second resolves the difficulty. And this is also the place where his gloss runs densest — at the Yama passage he gives a reading word by word.

When a Person Is Dying

The sūtra writes the marks of illness first, and writes them very close: long sick and wasted thin, unable to eat or drink, throat and lips parched, seeing all directions dark, the marks of death appearing before him; and beside him, father and mother, kin, friends and acquaintances weeping in a ring about him.

All directions dark — that sentence is not about the light in the room. It is about the world in that man’s eyes.

Then the sūtra says: his own body lies where it lay, yet he sees the messengers of Yama leading his consciousness into the presence of Yama the Dharma King; and sentient beings each have a co-born spirit, which sets down in full whatever they have done, whether offense or merit, and carries the whole of it to the Dharma King, who examines and reckons, and passes sentence according to offense and merit.

Those Four Things — Who Is It That Sees Them

The easiest way to handle this is to take it for a description of the dark road.

The reading handed down does not read it so. It says: the sick person’s mind-consciousness manifests four image-objects — first the messenger of Yama, second his own consciousness, third King Yama, fourth the co-born spirit.

All four are image-objects manifested by that sick person’s own mind-consciousness. The messenger is one; his own consciousness is one; the Dharma King is one; and so is the co-born spirit that has been keeping his accounts all his life.

This judgment moves the whole passage from the outside to the inside. It is not that a troop of officers has come to take a man into custody; it is that a man, at the hour when the marks of death appear before him, has these four arise in his own mind.

Why the co-born spirit is called co-born is glossed as well: it is handed down that the root consciousness comes together with the body, and it is therefore named co-born — the root consciousness that arose at the same moment as this body. The account it keeps is nowhere else; it is within his own consciousness. What is meant by “sets it down in full” is that consciousness has perfumed the record into itself. And a sūtra is cited as witness: born together and named together, one spirit born along with him.

As for the name Yama, in Chinese it is “quiescing” — for he brings the guilty to awareness so that they cease from all evil. His office is not to punish; it is to bring a man to see, so that he stops. Therefore, though he belongs to the realm of ghosts, he is still called Dharma King.

The most terrifying scene of all is read as one man’s last reckoning of accounts inside his own mind.

The reading does not thereby make the matter light. If those four came from outside, a man might still hope to dodge them; if they arise within his own consciousness, there is nowhere to dodge to — the ledger has been on his own person the whole time. Whether this is severe: read in this way it is more severe, not less.

Lamp and Banner

What the kin are able to do the sūtra lists as five: take refuge in that buddha — the Tathāgata of beryl radiance — invite the assembly of monks, recite this sūtra through, light lamps of seven tiers, and hang up five-colored life-prolonging banners. The commentator counts them out: the supporting conditions here are five — taking refuge in the Buddha, inviting the saṅgha, turning the Dharma, lighting lamps, and hanging banners.

Why should it be these two, lamp and banner? The gloss is taken from the graphs themselves: the lamp is light; the banner is leading. Because darkness and sinking are what must be rescued, banner and lamp are needed.

The lamp is taken for its brightness, the banner for its “leading” — for guiding. And what is to be rescued is two things: darkness and sinking. He cannot see: a lamp. He has gone under: a banner, to bring him up.

As for why seven tiers and why five colors, the commentator says something exceedingly honest:

As for seven tiers and five colors, no reason is stated. If one reasons it out by sense, it is for subduing the offenses of the seven branches and harmonizing the five directions.

Those four words — no reason is stated — are worth holding on to. The sūtra has not said why seven and why five; the commentator does not speak in the sūtra’s stead. He marks off “if one reasons it out by sense,” and only then offers the seven branches of offense and the five directions. The man who reasons declares of himself that he is reasoning.

To say one does not know when one does not know; to declare the inference before one infers — that is the measure of reading a sūtra.

The Consciousness Returns as from a Dream

After merit is made, it may come about that his consciousness is able to return. The sūtra uses one figure here, and uses it twice: going out, it is as though in a dream that he sees clearly for himself; coming back, when his consciousness returns it is like waking from a dream, and he remembers and knows for himself the fruits and recompense that wholesome and unwholesome deeds obtain.

Out and back again, both by way of a dream.

And the weightiest sentence, once he is back, is this: because he has himself borne witness to and seen the fruit and recompense of deeds, even at the peril of his life he will not again commit any evil deed.

Because he has seen it with his own eyes, from that time on he will not make evil karma even when his life is at stake.

This one sentence lays bare what the whole method of prolonging life is for. What is prolonged is not only that breath — the man who has been brought back is not the man who went. If he merely lives a few more years and goes on making the same karma, what has been saved is a life and not a person.

Forty-Nine, and So Far as One’s Strength Allows

Ānanda then asks how they are to be made. Bodhisattva Rescue-and-Deliverance answers with great concreteness: seven days and seven nights holding the eight-precept fast, offerings to the bhikṣu saṅgha, homage at the six times of day and night, reading and reciting this sūtra forty-nine times, lighting forty-nine lamps, making seven images with seven lamps set before each, each lamp as great in measure as a cartwheel so that for forty-nine days the light is not broken off, a banner forty-nine spans long, and living creatures of every kind set free to the number of forty-nine.

Forty-nine, five times over inside a single prescription — and together with “or forty-nine days” in the passage above, six times within this one unit.

Reading this far, an ordinary person will have one thought: it cannot be done. Forty-nine lamps the size of cartwheels, seven images, forty-nine days unbroken — that is not within the strength of an ordinary household.

The commentator saw that thought coming, and at this place cited a line of scripture: for one who is poor, a single lamp too brings it to completion. And he pointed out that the sūtra itself had already said “so far as their strength allows.”

Forty-nine is the measure of completeness, not the threshold of entry. One lamp also completes it.

This is the passage at which a reader is most easily frightened off by the height of the doorstep, and the ancients had long since set a sentence here for that.

When we come to numbers, we easily take the number itself for the condition. The sūtra gives a complete scale; the commentator gives a floor. Only when the two are read side by side is the measure of this passage right.

Seven Calamities, and the Thing to Be Done First

The method of prolonging life once told, the sūtra extends the same set of acts to a country. When calamity comes upon a kṣatriya anointed king, seven kinds are listed: pestilence among the people, invasion by another country, revolt within his own borders, portents among the stars, eclipse of sun and moon, wind and rain out of season, rain withheld past its season.

Plague, attack from without, revolt within, the stars, eclipses, the rains failing, long drought. Of the seven, the first three are the affairs of men and the last four the seasons of heaven.

And what the sūtra asks that king to do first is not to set up an altar and make offerings. It is this: he should raise a mind of loving-kindness and compassion toward all sentient beings and pardon those held in bonds — let the prisoners out first.

Pardon the men in the gaols, and only then follow the method of offering set out above. The order of it is written very plainly: one real deed first, and then the offering can be joined on.

Nor is what is thereby brought about anything occult: wind and rain come in season and the grain ripens, all beings are without illness and are glad, and in the land there are no violent yakṣas to trouble sentient beings. What is sought is a harvest and quiet, not a marvel.

The next sentence then widens the range: empress and consorts, crown prince and princes, great ministers and counsellors, the women of the inner palace, the hundred officials, the common people — afflicted by illness or meeting with distress, they too set up five-colored spirit-banners, light lamps and keep them burning, and release living creatures.

From king down to commoner, the same set of acts. The sūtra sets up no separate method for a king.

The Nine Untimely Deaths, and the Weightiest Answer

Last come the nine untimely deaths. What Ānanda asks is a very sharp question: how can a life already spent be increased? The span has run out — how can anything be added to it?

The answer does not say that the allotted years can be altered. It asks back: have you not heard the Tathāgata say that there are nine untimely deaths?

What is called increase is the not dying untimely. A lifespan not yet used up and cut off midway is what “untimely” names; and cultivating merit is not the lengthening of a fixed allotment, but the taking away of the cut, so that a man may live out his lifespan and not pass through suffering and affliction.

This answer deserves attention, because it does not in fact grant the thing Ānanda asked after. Ānanda asked whether a life already spent can be added to; the answer is that most of what looks like a spent lifespan is no such thing. The allotment is not altered; only the untimely cutting-off is taken away — the sūtra holds itself very tight at this point.

Among the nine, the first alone is set out at length, taking nearly half the space. It in fact writes two matters: first, that though the illness is slight there is no medicine and no one to nurse, or a physician is met with who gives the wrong medicine, so that when a man truly ought not to die he dies untimely; second, that he believes in demons and in those outside the way and in masters of baleful arts, divining and enquiring after the source of misfortune, killing living beings to make petition, calling up sprites and goblins in the hope of lengthened years — and in the end he cannot get it.

To kill in the hope of a longer life is the longest-written item among the nine. The sūtra does not merely say that it does not work; it says that the thing itself has become that untimely death.

The remaining eight take a clause apiece: execution by the law of the king, dissolute living and the robbing of vital essence by non-human beings, fire, water, wild beasts, a fall from a cliff, poison and imprecation and curse, hunger and thirst. Every one of them is a thing that actually happens among men; not one is stated as a marvel.

The nine listed out, the sūtra adds one line more: besides these there are yet measureless untimely deaths, hard to set out one by one. Nine is not an exhaustive count; it is a giving of examples.

At the end of the passage it comes back to Yama: he presides over the record of the registers of the world, and those who are unfilial or commit the five heinous deeds, who revile and dishonor the Three Jewels, who ruin the law of ruler and subject or break faith and precepts, he examines and punishes according to the gravity of the offense. And the closing words of Bodhisattva Rescue-and-Deliverance are still those same acts: light lamps and make banners, release living creatures and cultivate merit, that they may pass beyond suffering and distress and not meet with the many calamities.

The passage opens in fear and closes in exhortation. What it hands over in between is a few things that a pair of hands can do.

Transmission — One Way Reads It as Consciousness, the Other Divides It into Gates

What stands above is the meaning of this passage itself. Below, two further eyes cast their light on it from the side — the mirror is not the sūtra; only the same passage of scripture, seen through two ways of reading.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha (by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu) follows Xuanzang’s recension, and this passage is the place where his gloss runs densest. The name and sense of Yama, the judgment of the four image-objects, the gloss on the co-born spirit, the five supporting acts, the sense taken from lamp as light and banner as leading, and the “no reason is stated” at seven tiers and five colors — the whole framework above comes from here.

What marks his reading of this passage is that he reads the dark road as consciousness. The judgment of four image-objects looks with the eye of consciousness-only at a text that appears to be about ghosts and spirits — not denying the matter, but pointing out where it appears: in the sick person’s own mind-consciousness. This is the same eye with which he referred the ten epithets back to the Yogācārabhūmi and cited the Treatise on the Buddha-Stage in glossing Bhagavān.

And his most admirable stroke is, of all things, that sentence “no reason is stated.” A commentator, at the very place where it is easiest to expatiate — the symbolism of numbers — first declares that he has no ground for it, and then marks what follows as inference. To be able to infer and to say of oneself that one is inferring is harder than inferring cleverly.

The anonymous commentary recovered at Dunhuang (T85n2767) follows Dharmagupta’s Sui recension. At this passage it sets up the gate “eighth, receiving grace in the face of calamity; the text divides into three,” and beneath it such further headings as “second, Ānanda sets it forth in full; the text divides” and “third, the Tathāgata confirms it in accord; the text divides into” — still the way of dividing the text passage by passage into fine sections, and its headings outnumber those of Ancient Traces.

And at the Yama passage, the surviving text of this line makes no judgment of image-objects. One line reads it as manifested by consciousness; the other only outlines the text. Both are recorded together; no reconciliation is set up.

As for the scroll that follows the Consecration Sūtra recension (T85n2766), its surviving text ends with the gloss on the twelve vows, and it has nothing at this passage. What is not found is recorded as not found.

And the sūtra itself judges neither that these are consciousness nor that they are outside — it says only that the man lay where he lay, and that he saw them.

Within a single passage the most terrifying picture and the most practical measures are set side by side: on the one hand being led before the Dharma King to have one’s account reckoned, on the other seven lamps, one banner, a few creatures set free. The sūtra does not explain how the two are joined; it simply hands over what is to be done.

By the time a sūtra reaches this point, everything that had to be said has been said: the twelve vows are told, the benefits of hearing the name are told, the method of offering is told, the method of prolonging life is told, and even the nine untimely deaths have been listed out.

Then twelve yakṣa generals stand up.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha, by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu, marks this passage as “the accomplishment of the yakṣa generals’ gaining benefit and requiting kindness” — and that heading has to be carried back to the introduction to be seen. At the opening he divided the whole sūtra’s part of question-and-extensive-exposition into five accomplishments, and the fifth was named the yakṣas’ requital of kindness. That seat stood empty for a whole sūtra, and only here does someone sit down in it.

The Five Accomplishments Are Walked Through

After the introduction the text has kept walking inside that frame: the bodhisattva’s request, the Dharma King’s approval, the great assembly’s gladness to hear, the Tathāgata’s teaching of the Dharma — four accomplishments appearing in order. The fifth, named the yakṣas’ requital of kindness, never appeared from beginning to end.

Now it appears, and it begins with a list of names: Gongpiluo, Fazheluo, Miqiluo, Andiluo, Eniluo, Shandiluo, Yindaluo, Boyiluo, Mohuluo, Zhendaluo, Zhaoduluo, Pijieluo — twelve names, and the sūtra sets down every one of them without abbreviation.

Each one of these twelve yakṣa generals has seven thousand yakṣas as his attendants. Twelve times seven thousand: this is the largest company anywhere in the sūtra.

And the first thing said after the names is not what they intend to do, but what they have received: by the Buddha’s power they have been able to hear the name of the World-Honored One, the Tathāgata of beryl radiance, and they have no more dread of the evil destinies.

Benefit first, and only then requital. That order is what the heading means: an accomplishment of requiting kindness, not an accomplishment of guarding the Dharma.

What Standing a Yakṣa Has

To see the weight of this passage, one has to remember in what standing yakṣas have appeared earlier in this sūtra.

The introduction, listing the assembly, puts yakṣas in the series “gods, nāgas, yakṣas, humans, non-humans and the rest,” ranked after the gods and the nāgas. Among the twelve vows, yakṣas are not among those the vows are made for. And in unit 07, where the sūtra tells the marks of a realm at peace, one item is that in the land there are no violent yakṣas or other spirits to trouble sentient beings — there, the yakṣa is on the side of what is guarded against.

Now this same company stands up and says: to the end of this bodily life we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Saṅgha, and we vow to shoulder all sentient beings, working for their good, their benefit and their ease.

To shoulder is to take the load onto one’s own back.

A sūtra written this far, and the first to vow of their own accord to guard others are not the gods, not the bodhisattvas, but the very class that the earlier text listed as liable to trouble sentient beings.

They Guard a Person, Not a Place

The scope of their vow is written out finely: in whatever village, town, kingdom or empty forest — so long as there is someone who circulates this sūtra, or who upholds this name and reveres it with offerings, they and their attendants will guard that person, so that all are set free from every suffering and distress, and whatever is wished and sought is fulfilled.

Set this beside the earlier text and it becomes interesting. Unit 06 says that the four great heavenly kings with hundreds of thousands of gods will all come to that place, making offerings and standing watch — what is guarded is the place where the sūtra is; here the twelve generals say they will guard that person — what is guarded is the one who upholds the name.

The one keeps a place, the other follows a person. And “in whatever village, town, kingdom or empty forest” amounts to saying: wherever the man goes, the guard goes.

A Cord, Knotted and Then Untied

Then comes the only cord-knotting method in the whole sūtra: if there are those beset by sickness and distress who seek deliverance, they too should read and recite this sūtra, and with a five-colored cord knot the generals’ names; and when they have obtained their wish, then untie the knot.

Knot their names with a cord of five colors; and when the wish is full, undo the knot.

There is one thing in this small observance worth pausing over: it carries its own ending. The sūtra does not say that once knotted it stays tied for good; it says that when the wish has been obtained, then the knot is untied. The matter done, the knot comes off.

Five colors appear five times in this sūtra: once as a bag to hold the sūtra, three times as banners for prolonging life, and here as a cord for knotting a name. One and the same set of colors, in three uses: one holds a scripture, one leads the way, one records a wish.

And this knotting and untying is also the ground of the sūtra’s second name. In the next passage the Buddha himself brings out three names, and the second is “Setting Forth the Twelve Spirit Generals’ Benefiting of Sentient Beings, the Spirit-Spell of the Knotted Vow” — the knot in “knotted vow” points precisely here.

The Buddha’s Second Excellent

At the end of the passage comes the Buddha’s approval: “Excellent! Excellent! Great yakṣa generals!”

In the whole sūtra the Buddha says “Excellent! Excellent!” only twice. The first time is in the introduction, in praise of Mañjuśrī for making the request; this time it is at the close, in praise of the yakṣas for standing guard.

One falls on the one who asks for the Dharma, one on those who guard it. Between them lies the whole sūtra.

And the content of the praise is not a commendation of how remarkable they are; it is a conditional sentence: if you would requite the kindness of the World-Honored One, the Tathāgata of beryl radiance, you should constantly benefit and bring ease to all sentient beings in just this way.

If you wish to requite that buddha’s kindness, then you should constantly do just this: benefit and bring ease to all beings.

The way to requite kindness is to go and benefit others. It is not to turn back and make offerings to that buddha — that buddha has no need of them; the kindness is to be repaid upon living beings.

This one sentence closes the passage very steadily: the yakṣas, having heard the name, are freed from dread; being freed from dread, they vow to guard others; and the Buddha tells them that this is requital itself.

Transmission — One Eye Says Nothing, the Other Says Why There Is Nothing to Say

What stands above is the meaning of this passage itself. Below, three eyes cast their light on it from the side.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha (by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu) follows Xuanzang’s recension, and at this passage brings out only three divisions — 「此中有三：初經家列名、次藥叉誓願、後如來讚許」—“there are three within this: first the compiler’s listing of the names, next the yakṣas’ vow, last the Tathāgata’s approval” 〔T38n1770 0262c09〕 — and then says 「文相可知」—“the shape of the text can be known” 〔T38n1770 0262c11〕. He glosses no name one by one, and cites neither sūtra nor treatise.

The names of the twelve generals are transcriptions of Sanskrit sound, and anyone wishing to expatiate would find much to say here; he says not a word. Set beside the word-by-word density of unit seven — the name and sense of Yama, the four image-objects, lamp as light and banner as leading — this is the briefest stretch of the mirror in the whole edition.

And the anonymous Dunhuang commentary that follows the Sui recension (T85n2767) carries a full section here — and what it writes is precisely why there is nothing here to gloss.

It says of these names 「是鬼神語天竺諸人亦自不解」—“this is the language of the spirits, which the people of India do not themselves understand” 〔T85n2767 0327a27〕; and therefore 「此三譯家皆悉不翻」—“all three translators left them untranslated” 〔T85n2767 0327a27〕 — the translators, reaching this point, kept the sounds and rendered none of them. (Which three the commentary means it does not say, and this edition does not supply the answer.) As for why the three recensions keep those sounds a little differently, it gives the reason too: 「諸來三藏音有楚夏」—“the tripiṭaka masters who came had accents of Chu or of Xia” 〔T85n2767 0327a28〕.

That statement can be checked. Set the twelve names of the three recensions side by side (Topic II of the Apparatus): of the twelve, only the first, 宮毘羅, and the tenth, 真達羅, are written the same way in all three; the other ten each go their own way — where the base text has 「伐折羅」 the Sui and Yijing have 「跋折羅」, where the base text has 「毘羯羅」 the Sui has 「鼻羯羅」, and so on. And the order and the number do not vary by a hair. The order holds because it is the same string of names; the graphs differ because the men writing the sounds down did not speak alike. Nobody miscopied. One sound passed through three mouths.

⇒ The two commentators followed different translations and arrived at the same verdict: there is nothing here to be explained. One shows it by silence; the other says the reason out loud. Where Taehyŏn said “no reason is stated” at the seven tiers and five colors, here he does not even say that much — full where fullness is due, brief where brevity is due, and this time the measure has a second witness.

That scroll also glosses the title — 「能大將領鬼神故名大將」—“because they are able to lead the hosts of spirits as great commanders, they are named great generals” 〔T85n2767 0327a25〕 — and records their retinues, 「各有七千夜叉以為眷屬」—“each has seven thousand yakṣas as his retinue” 〔T85n2767 0327b02〕. It judges this passage 「第五大將解衛」—“the fifth, the generals’ deliverance and guard” 〔T85n2767 0327a22〕, closing on it as the fifth just as Ancient Traces closes on it with the yakṣas’ requital — two different sūtras, and the fifth falls in the same place. (One more such convergence waits in unit nine.)

The scroll following the Consecration recension ends with the gloss on the twelve vows and has no text here. What is not found is recorded as not found.

Three eyes: one with a full section, one that passes on quickly, one with nothing.

And what the sūtra asks of a person here was never to understand. What it says is 「以五色縷，結我名字」—“with a five-colored cord, knot my names” 〔T14n0450 0408b12〕, and then 「得如願已，然後解結」—“when what was wished for has been obtained, afterward untie the knot” 〔T14n0450 0408b12〕. A name whose sense you cannot open can still be knotted onto a cord and carried; when the matter is done, the knot comes undone. Twelve names, seven thousand attendants apiece, a cord knotted and untied, two Excellents — the sūtra keeps the last passage to say for itself.

A sūtra walks to its end, and Ānanda asks two things: by what name is this Dharma-gate called? And how are we to uphold it?

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha, by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu, marks this passage as “the part on hearing the name, rejoicing, and practicing” — the last of the three parts of the whole sūtra set up in unit one (the occasion of the teaching, question-and-extensive-exposition, hearing the name and rejoicing and practicing) is walked through here. His commentary too writes “end” after this passage and the scroll is finished: mirror and sūtra close at the same moment.

Three Names

The Buddha gives three names: this Dharma-gate is named “Setting Forth the Original Vows and Merits of Bhaiṣajyaguru Vaiḍūryaprabha Tathāgata” — the Tathāgata of beryl radiance; it is also named “Setting Forth the Twelve Spirit Generals’ Benefiting of Sentient Beings, the Spirit-Spell of the Knotted Vow”; it is also named “The Uprooting of All Karmic Obstructions”; thus should it be upheld.

Three names for one sūtra, and each points at something different.

The first name points at cause and fruit: the original vows are the cause, the merits the fruit. This is the line drawn when the title was expounded in the introduction — the cause and fruit of a tathāgata taken as the theme.

The second name points at guarding: twelve spirit generals, benefit for sentient beings, the spirit-spell of the knotted vow. And the knot in “knotted vow” is the five-colored cord of the passage just before — the names knotted, and untied when the wish is full. A name taken from a piece of string.

The third name points at what is removed: the uprooting of all karmic obstructions. What Mañjuśrī asked for in the introduction was exactly that those who hear should have their karmic obstructions dissolved — a question and an answer with a whole sūtra between them.

Three names: one says where it comes from, one says who keeps watch over it, one says what it takes away.

We are used to remembering one title for one sūtra; this passage is a reminder that the title was originally one choice out of three.

Why the Name Is Given Three Times

The matter has in fact shown its face once already, in unit one.

In expounding the title, the reading handed down brought out “the sūtra has three names,” and matched those three names against three translations: the version translated in the Song age took the third name, the Sui version took the first in abbreviated form, and Xuanzang’s version took the first name in full as the title of the whole work.

That is to say, the titles of the successive translations each took one of the three names of this passage.

A sūtra announces three names of itself at its close, and the translators of later ages each took the one that weighed most with them. Head and tail bear witness here: only on reading the last passage does one understand where the title on the first line came from.

Four Words: Thus Should It Be Upheld

Ānanda asked two things, and the Buddha’s answer appears to answer only one — he gives three names.

The commentator points out that the second is answered too, and answered in the four words 「應如是持」: as for the words “thus should it be upheld,” they answer the second question; for one should uphold it in accordance with the dharma that the three names set forth.

To uphold it in accordance with the dharma these three names point at — that is the method of upholding.

This raises the weight of the “name.” A name is not an appellation, not lettering on a cover. The three names point each at one thing — cause and fruit, guarding, the removal of obstruction — and to act in accordance with those three things is what is called upholding this sūtra.

To ask after the name and to ask after the upholding were one question all along.

That Last Company of People

The text closes on the assembly’s gladness and practice. And this roll of names is worth setting beside the introduction’s.

The introduction lists the assembly: kings, great ministers, brahmins, householders, gods, nāgas, yakṣas, humans, non-humans and the rest.

Here the list runs: kings, great ministers, brahmins, householders, gods, nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, humans, non-humans and the rest.

The end lists more fully than the beginning — the introduction raised only three classes, gods, nāgas and yakṣas, while here the eight classes are all present.

The same company, seated from first to last. In between they have heard twelve vows, five kinds of benefit from hearing the name, a method of offering, a method of prolonging life, nine kinds of untimely death; and one group among them — the twelve yakṣa generals — stood up in the passage before this one and made a vow.

The last sentence of the sūtra is that they were greatly gladdened, and received it in faith and put it into practice. This is the common formula of the circulation section in all sūtras; but read after this particular sūtra, the word “faith” carries weight: in the passage just before, the Buddha had said that even śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas who have not yet ascended the stages, cannot believe and understand it as it is.

And this company believed. The Buddha says it is hard to believe; the assembly receives it in faith — the sūtra sets these two sentences not far apart, and offers no explanation.

The Small Line at the End of the Scroll

After the title at the end of the scroll, the canon keeps one further line that does not belong to the sūtra. The source layer of this edition sets it down as it stands, marked as an inline note:

〔弟子賈崇俊願平安　廣德二年十二月十五日　發心寫藥師經一卷〕

A man named Jia Chongjun, on the fifteenth day of the twelfth month of the second year of Guangde, set his mind on copying one scroll of the Medicine Buddha Sūtra, and prayed for peace.

This is not scripture. It is a line left by the man who copied the scripture. And it happens to fall just here — after a passage about how the sūtra is to be upheld.

The sūtra gave three names and said that thus should it be upheld; and more than a thousand years ago one man upheld it in the way that was his: he copied a scroll, wrote down the day, and wrote down what he wished for.

What he wrote was the three graphs 「藥師經」 — not the full title. The scroll we read today bears the full name; the scroll in his hands bore the short one. And the Dunhuang recension recorded in the collation notes also gives the end-of-scroll title here in the short form rather than the full. One copyist’s abbreviation and one old manuscript’s title fall in the same place.

Transmission — Three Eyes All Call This the Third

What stands above is the meaning of this passage itself. Below, three eyes cast their light on it from the side — and there is one thing here that can only be seen at the very end.

Ancient Traces on the Sūtra of the Original Vows of the Medicine Buddha (by Taehyŏn, śramaṇa of Ch’ŏnggu) follows Xuanzang’s recension, judges this passage to be “from here below is the third, the part on hearing the name, rejoicing, and practicing,” glosses the one sentence “thus should it be upheld,” and thereupon ends his scroll. His commentary writes “end” after this passage — it stops where the sūtra stops.

The anonymous commentary recovered at Dunhuang (T85n2767) follows Dharmagupta’s Sui recension, and at this passage writes “from here below is the third, setting forth reliance”; its surviving text ends not far beyond, so that its scroll too ends where the sūtra ends.

The two eyes follow different translations and write in different ways, and yet both alike make the section of circulation the third part of the whole sūtra.

This is now the fourth time. In unit five, two commentaries alike divided the benefits of hearing the name into five sections, and the boundaries matched; in unit six, two commentaries alike named one gate “the Tathāgata confirms it”; in unit eight, two commentaries alike closed on the generals’ section as the fifth; and here, two commentaries alike make the circulation the third part. Four collisions in one place.

The dividing of a text is not the private opinion of one house. In the same sūtra, two men reading different translations walk to the same place and stop.

As for the scroll that follows the Consecration Sūtra recension (T85n2766), its surviving text ends with the gloss on the twelve vows and has nothing at this passage — it begins from the history of the Abhidharma treatises and breaks off at the vows, damaged at both ends. What is not found is recorded as not found.

And at the very last the sūtra does only one thing: it says its own name, and then says, hold it as that name points.