華嚴經 品五 華藏世界品 · 華藏因果自體·藏海安布莊嚴Avataṃsaka Sūtra · The Flower-Treasury World · The Cause and Fruit of the Flower-Treasury Itself and the Arrayed Adornments of the Treasury Sea

First, Get Clear What This Passage Is About

What the bodhisattva Samantabhadra does in this passage is very simple — he describes the Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea from beginning to end: by whom it was cultivated, what holds it up, what mountains, ground, seas, rivers, and groves stand upon it, and at the end he sums it up in one sentence: the adornments are inconceivable. Seven times over, the whole passage runs ‘the prose finishes speaking, and then the verse says it over again’; the speaker throughout is Samantabhadra alone; there are no questions and answers, and no debate.

Chengguan outlines this chapter in three sections — first, setting forth the cause and fruit of the Flower-Treasury itself; second, setting forth the arrayed adornments of the treasury sea; third, setting forth the differentiation of the net of lands upheld thereby — and the present passage is the first two of them. The first section speaks of the “cause” and the “substance”; from the second section on it speaks of “adornment”: the encircling mountains, the jeweled ground, the fragrant seas, the fragrant rivers, the groves, and the summation, which Chengguan adjudicates as six sub-sections. What must be noticed is that these “sections” and “sub-sections” are divisions made by the commentators so that the movement of the text can be seen clearly; the sūtra itself puts no section names on them.

Set up one guard against misreading first, and afterward you will not read it crooked. This passage narrates, tier by tier, the wind-wheels, the fragrant seas, the lotus, the encircling mountains, the jeweled ground, the fragrant rivers, the groves; it reads very much like the drawing of a diagram of the structure of the cosmos, and it is easy to take it for a gazetteer of geography. Chengguan blocks that misreading at the very opening of the first section: as to the measure of the land relied upon, the teachings speak differently — the Lesser Vehicle speaks of one Sahā world only; the three vehicles distinguish great and small transformations, taking either the Highest Pure Form heaven as real or holding that there is a separate pure land in another quarter; whereas what is spoken of now is the realm of the ten buddhas of the One Vehicle, where great and small are unobstructed and pure and defiled interfuse, and it is “provisionally, in terms of a single aspect, spoken of as having bounds and limits.” That phrase, “provisionally, in terms of a single aspect,” is the key: to narrate the configurations tier by tier is a provisional teaching, so that a person may have somewhere to enter; it is not to say that this land really has a boundary that could be measured. In truth a single tier searched crosswise is already boundless, how much more so when, over and over, a mote of dust contains the Dharma realm.

One line to bring it down to earth: in reading this passage, do not ask ‘where are the wind-wheels’; ask ‘what doctrine is this tier upon tier of holding up saying’. The answer lies in every section that follows, where Chengguan gives the doctrinal correlation almost section by section — the wind-wheels correlate with vow, the encircling mountains with the precepts, the jeweled ground with concentration, the fragrant rivers with the merits that answer to mind.

The Depth and Breadth of the Cause: By Whom Was This Land Cultivated?

The very first sentence the sūtra opens with assigns the land to a person: this Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea is what the Tathāgata Vairocana adorned and purified in ages past, when he cultivated the practices of a bodhisattva. Chengguan outlines this sentence as “raising the fruit and assigning it to a person, to show the depth and breadth of the cause” — first the land of recompense is assigned to the person who cultivated the cause, and then it is shown how deep and broad that cause is.

Where does the depth and breadth lie? Chengguan sets out three layers. The first layer is length of time: what was cultivated was kalpas as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, not merely the three great incalculable eons that are usually spoken of. The second layer is the multitude of conditions met with: in every kalpa he drew near to buddhas as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea, not merely to Vipaśyin, Śākyamuni, and a few others. The third layer is the multitude of vows made: in the presence of every buddha he purely cultivated great vows as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea, not merely purifying a single land or making a single vow of non-arising. Only when the three layers are laid one upon another is it called deep and broad.

A question first: but the sūtras and treatises plainly say three great incalculable eons, and here it says kalpas as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands — is that not a contradiction? Chengguan answers plainly: the Yuqie, the Qixin, and the like speak with respect to the teaching of the three vehicles, where teaching in one quarter suits one kind of world only, and so they settle upon the three incalculable eons; here it is spoken with respect to the One Vehicle, running through the ten directions and every kind of world such as those shaped like trees, and so it says as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands. He also adduces the Baoyun jing as witness: the Buddha himself said that it was for beings of shallow understanding that he spoke of cultivating for three incalculable eons, whereas in truth he had passed through measureless asaṃkhyeya eons. Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle witness, adduces the same passage of that sūtra and adjudicates it as an account of “gathering the three vehicles home to the one.”

A guard against misreading: do not read ‘more kalpas’ as ‘harder and further off’. Chengguan at once dismantles that reading — time has no substance of its own; it is established in dependence upon dharmas, and since dharmas are endless, time too is without limit. How much more so when the moment and the kalpa are of themselves perfectly interfused, so that one ought not to grasp a number rigidly. The three layers of depth and breadth, then, are not a competition over who cultivated longer; they say that cause and fruit alike do not fall within a frame that can be measured.

Bringing it down to earth: this sentence is the foundation of the whole passage. Every adornment that follows — every tier of wind-wheel, every fragrant river — is not a landscape that grew of itself, but a fruit summoned by vow and practice. Reading of any adornment whatever, one may turn back and ask: whose vow, and which one, laid this out?

The Ten Tiers of Wind-Wheels: What Is It That Holds Up a Land?

The sūtra says that this world-sea is upheld by wind-wheels as many as the motes of dust of Mount Sumeru. Chengguan divides the prose of this section into three: first stating the number in general, then listing ten names summarily, and last singling out the topmost tier. Zhiyan too, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle witness, says “within the particular there are ten tiers of wind” — the two makers see the same structure.

What matters is the sentence Chengguan sets down at the opening: the cause of the wind-wheels is the great vows and the rest. The wind is not the wind of the natural world; it is the power of vows. Li Tongxuan puts it still more directly: because there is a wind-wheel of great vows, the myriad practices can be upheld, and by practice the recompense of the fruit is summoned, and so it is said that the cause can uphold the fruit; it is precisely because the power of vows firmly upholds that wind-wheels are obtained as recompense to uphold the land. He pushes it further, to the matter of faith: if, apart from the Buddha, one has a set of dharmas of one’s own, then faith is not accomplished, surpassing understanding is not accomplished, cultivation is not accomplished. What the two makers take as their emphasis differs — Chengguan gives weight to narrating the configuration of what is relied upon and correlating it with vow, Tongxuan to the continuity of vow, practice, and faith — and both are settled accounts of the ancient worthies, recorded in full without adjudication.

A question first: why say ten tiers — would one not do? The answer: ten in Huayan is not a fixed number but a token of endlessness; and the configuration of tier upholding tier shows precisely that vow and practice are held up one level by another, so that if what is below is not accomplished what is above cannot stand. In this section the name of every tier and the thing it upholds are different; reading down tier by tier, one sees ten modes of the power of vows.

Tier One · Equal Abiding: Upholding All the Adornments of Blazing Jewel-Flame

The lowest tier is called “Equal Abiding.” A question first: being the lowest tier, why is it named equal? Chengguan gives two reasons: first, that it upholds all the positions everywhere — this bottom tier must hold up every level above it, and cannot favor one position over another, and so it is called equal; second, that it accords with the real nature — it abides upon what is really so, and is not an abiding that leans to one side. So “equal” does not mean sitting in a row at the same height; it means bearing weight without picking and choosing, without leaning. What it upholds is “all the adornments of blazing jewel-flame”: from the very first there are blazing flames of light as adornment. A guard against misreading: do not read the lowest tier as the coarsest and shallowest; in a structure of upholding, the lowest tier is the one that bears the most weight. Bringing it down to earth: if a person’s vow is discounted for certain people and certain matters, that is not “equal abiding,” and however many adornments are heaped above, they will not stand.

Tier Two · Bringing Forth Every Kind of Jeweled Adornment: Upholding the Maṇi-King Banner That Shines with Pure Light

The second tier is named “Bringing Forth Every Kind of Jeweled Adornment.” A question first: why is it “bringing forth” in the name, and not “possessing”? The answer: the mark of this tier is generation — not guarding the jewels already had, but being able to bring forth every kind of jeweled adornment without cease. What it upholds is “the maṇi-king banner that shines with pure light”: a banner is the configuration of what is set up as a standard, the maṇi-king is the king among jewels, and with the shining of pure light added, it is the setting up of what has been generated into a visible token. A guard against misreading: do not take “every kind of jewel” for a simile of craving splendor; in this passage jewels are without exception a substitute word for the configurations of merit, and every kind of jewel is every kind of merit. Bringing it down to earth: if the power of vows is really turning, it will keep bringing forth new merits, rather than taking stock over and over of the few one already has.

Tier Three · Jewel Majesty: Upholding All the Jeweled Bells

The third tier is named “Jewel Majesty.” A question first: how does majesty differ from the adornment spoken of before? The answer: adornment is the beauty that is manifest, majesty is the power that gathers in — there is majesty that inspires awe and virtue that draws people, and so beings can be brought to submit. What it upholds is “all the jeweled bells.” A bell is a thing that gives sound, and in this passage bells, clappers, and sounds mostly lead to the one sense of “proclaiming the Dharma” — the section on the fragrant rivers below says outright that maṇi serves as the net and gold as the clappers, covering the fragrant rivers everywhere and putting forth the Buddha’s voice; and there are also places not attached to proclaiming the Dharma, as in the fragrant-sea section, “every kind of music sounds, always vying to be played — it is the Buddha’s power of spiritual penetration that makes it so,” which sets forth the Buddha’s spiritual power only. A guard against misreading: do not read majesty as intimidation; when Chengguan speaks of the mountain peaks of the encircling mountains he says “standing out alone and aloof, subduing all evils by their majesty” — what majesty subdues is evil, not people. Bringing it down to earth: when the power of vows reaches a certain measure, there is naturally a power that gathers people in, and that power, sent forth, is the sound of the Dharma being spoken.

Tier Four · Equal Flame: Upholding the Maṇi-King Wheel with the Aspect of Sunlight

The fourth tier is named “Equal Flame.” A question first: the first tier has already spoken of the equal; why the equal again here? The answer: the former was “abiding,” and spoke of the configuration of abiding; here it is “flame,” and speaks of the function of shining. Abiding must be equal, and shining must be equal too — light cannot shine on one side only. What it upholds is “the maṇi-king wheel with the aspect of sunlight”: the aspect of sunlight together with the maṇi-king, forming a wheel. In this passage the wheel is the configuration of pervading and of turning. A guard against misreading: do not read “equal flame” as light of one and the same intensity; the equality lies in shining without picking and choosing, not in the uniformity of the effect shone forth. Bringing it down to earth: if compassionate care selects its objects, that is flame but not equal; equal without flame is a cold fairness — the sūtra sets the two words side by side, and neither can be missing.

Tier Five · Every Kind of Universal Adornment: Upholding the Flowers of the Wheel of Light

The fifth tier is named “Every Kind of Universal Adornment.” A question first: the second tier already had “every kind of jeweled adornment”; here one word, “universal,” is added — where lies the division between them? The answer: the former gives weight to “bringing forth,” which is from nothing to something; here the weight is on “universal,” which is from one place to all places. Whether the same adornment is spread wide or not is another matter. What it upholds is “the flowers of the wheel of light” — light forming a wheel, and the wheel appearing again as flowers, the configuration of adornment both pervasive and beautiful. A guard against misreading: do not read “universal” as quantity; universal is leaving nothing out, not piling things up. Bringing it down to earth: if merit works only within one’s own familiar circle, it is still at “every kind” and has not reached “universal.”

Tier Six · Universal Purity: Upholding All the Lion-Thrones of Flower-Flame

The sixth tier is named “Universal Purity.” A question first: the tiers before all speak of adornment and of flames of light, and here purity is suddenly spoken of — has the direction changed? The answer: it is not a change of direction, it is the drawing out of the floor. The more flourishing the adornment, the more a word “pure” is needed to guarantee that it is not an accumulation of defilement; and it is “universal” purity — not that one place is clean, but that no place is stained. What it upholds is “all the lion-thrones of flower-flame.” The lion-throne is the seat upon which one who preaches the Dharma sits; its appearing here means that purity has reached the measure at which the Dharma may be preached. A guard against misreading: purity is not the same as empty vacancy; what this tier upholds is precisely thrones of flower-flame, and here purity and adornment do not obstruct each other. Bringing it down to earth: to sit upon the lion-throne and preach, what one relies on is not fine speech but this tier of universal purity holding one up from below.

Tier Seven · Sound Pervading the Ten Directions: Upholding All the Pearl-King Banners

The seventh tier is named “Sound Pervading the Ten Directions.” A question first: how do wind-wheels have sound? The answer: in this passage sound is the configuration of preaching the Dharma. By this tier the majesty and the purity of the tiers before have been stored up to the full, and what is sent forth is a sound pervading the ten directions. What it upholds is “all the pearl-king banners” — the banner of pearl-kings is the token of the teaching that is set up. The pervading sound is below, the banner is set up above: first there is a sound that carries everywhere, and only then can a banner be raised to which one may turn for refuge. A guard against misreading: do not read “sound pervading the ten directions” as volume; pervading is that there is not one quarter that cannot hear, not that it is shouted loud. Bringing it down to earth: a teaching that can be heard only close by has not yet reached this tier.

Tier Eight · The Light of All Jewels: Upholding the Flowers of All Maṇi-King Trees

The eighth tier is named “The Light of All Jewels.” A question first: light has already appeared several times; why is “all jewels” marked here? The answer: the light before was mostly spoken of with respect to one configuration — pure light, the aspect of sunlight, the flowers of the wheel of light; here all jewels each send forth their own light, which is a general gathering. What it upholds is “the flowers of all maṇi-king trees,” and the tree will be discoursed on at length in the last part of this passage — the tree can put forth clouds, put forth sound, put forth jewels, and proclaim the vows of the buddhas. So what this tier upholds is not one flower only, but the flowers of a tree able to generate endlessly. A guard against misreading: do not read “the light of all jewels” as the greatest total quantity of light; that all jewels each send forth their own light without robbing one another is the point, and the simile of Indra’s net that follows carries on from just here. Bringing it down to earth: only when merit has ripened so that each thing can send forth its own light can one uphold a tree that will bear fruit.

Tier Nine · Swift Universal Upholding: Upholding All the Clouds of Fragrant Maṇi Sumerus

The ninth tier is named “Swift Universal Upholding.” A question first: all the tiers before speak of upholding; why is “swift” singled out here? The answer: if the power of upholding were slow, the adornment above would have moments of being momentarily unheld; swiftness says that this upholding has no interruption and no lag. What it upholds is “all the clouds of fragrant maṇi Sumerus” — the measure of Sumeru and yet as light as cloud. A guard against misreading: do not read swiftness as haste; swiftness here says that it continues of itself without a break. Bringing it down to earth: what the power of vows has most to fear is not being too small, but being broken off and resumed; what this tier speaks of is precisely the unbroken.

Tier Ten · Every Kind of Palace Roaming: Upholding All the Clouds of Fragrant Terraces of Jewel-Color

The tenth tier is named “Every Kind of Palace Roaming.” A question first: a palace is a place of abiding and roaming is the configuration of moving — are the two not in contradiction? The answer: that is precisely the sense this tier is to show — the place where one dwells does not obstruct roaming, and in roaming one does not lose where one dwells. By the topmost row of the wind-wheels, the configuration of upholding is no longer a rigid propping up, but movement that is constantly at rest. What it upholds is “all the clouds of fragrant terraces of jewel-color”: a terrace is a place that may be dwelt in, and its substance is like cloud. A guard against misreading: do not read the palace as a place of enjoyment; the palace here is the utmost expression of the configuration of abiding, while roaming blocks any grasping at that configuration of abiding. Bringing it down to earth: when cultivation comes to the later stages, abiding and roaming forth to transform beings are not two things, and this tier is the image of just that measure.

The Topmost Tier, the Fragrant Sea, and the Lotus: Where the Whole Land Comes to Rest

The topmost tier of wind-wheels is named “Supreme Majestic Radiance Treasury.” Chengguan gives the reason for its name very directly: because by its surpassing power it can uphold the fragrant sea, this name is established. What it upholds is “the sea of fragrant water adorned with universally shining maṇi,” and within the sea of fragrant water there is a great lotus flower named “Banner of Fragrance and Every Kind of Radiant Stamen,” and the Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea dwells within that flower — even on all four sides, pure and firm, with the vajra encircling mountains ringing it round about, and the earth, the seas, and the multitudes of trees each having their divided place.

A question first: why make so long a circuit before setting the world-sea down at the end? The answer: because what this section is to show is that “one cause accomplishes one fruit.” Chengguan says it plainly: the causes of a land have a general and a particular aspect, and the general has already been spoken of; here, in order to show the particular sense, one cause is provisionally set forth as accomplishing one fruit, and so the wind-wheels uphold the fragrant sea, the fragrant sea puts forth the lotus, the lotus upholds the sea of lands, coming down tier by tier. He therefore divides this section into four sub-sections: the wind-wheels that uphold, the fragrant sea that is upheld, the sea putting forth the lotus, the lotus upholding the sea of lands.

For the names of the fragrant sea and the lotus, Chengguan gives two layers of explanation each. The explanation of the fragrant water sea in terms of configuration is: because the maṇi sends forth light that shines everywhere upon the floor and shores of the sea and upon the jewel-colored fragrant water, it is so named. Then he sets out the simile for the Dharma — the store consciousness is named sea, because it is furnished with virtues, deep and broad; flowing and pouring is named water, because it does not stay for an instant; and again, buddha-nature is named water and distant perfuming is named fragrance, because it is smelled but not yet realized, and the Nirvāṇa too says “there are people who smell the fragrance.” The explanation of the great lotus is likewise twofold: the stamens of the flower emit an extraordinary light, and it gives off a surpassing fragrance, standing high and subduing, and so it is named “Banner of Fragrance and Every Kind of Radiant Stamen”; and spoken of with respect to the Dharma, the myriad practices put forth are each of them the nature of awakening, and so it is called radiance, while the myriad practices all can perfume universally, which is the sense of fragrance.

A guard against misreading: do not read ‘smelling the fragrance without yet realizing’ as a kind of deficiency. This sentence is in fact the one closest to the reader — the relation of the great majority of people to buddha-nature is precisely this, that they have smelled the fragrance and not yet reached the substance, and it is for that reason that there is a whole road to walk. Bringing it down to earth: to read this long section from the lowest Equal Abiding up to the topmost Supreme Majestic Radiance Treasury is to read how the power of vows lifts up a land tier by tier; and when one comes back to oneself after reading, the question is, to which tier has my own vow been laid?

The Verses of the Wind-Wheel Section: Ten Verses Saying the Above Over Again

The prose finished, Samantabhadra receives the Buddha’s spiritual power, surveys the ten directions, and states it over again in ten verses. Chengguan first sets up a general rule: the matching of prose and verse has “ten cases and five pairs” — presence and absence, expansion and compression, separation and combination, earlier and later, and even skipping over, and versifying again what has been versified — and so the explanation of verse cannot follow one case throughout. As regards this section he sets out four cases: the causes of former lives and the present conditions, which the prose separates and the verse combines; the characteristics of the fruit accomplished, where the prose is compressed and the verse expanded; the wind-wheels among the present conditions, where the prose is expanded and the verse compressed; mountain, ground, sea, and trees, which the prose has and the verse does not.

How are the ten verses divided? Chengguan says that the first two verses versify the characteristics of the cause above, that is, they set out how the cause summons the fruit; the remaining eight versify the characteristics of the fruit, and are divided again into four parts: one and a half verses versify the wind-wheels, one verse the fragrant sea, three and a half verses the lotus, and two verses set forth the sovereign freedom of the lands.

A question first: the prose speaks of the wind-wheels in such detail — how does the verse dispose of them in a verse and a half? This is precisely what Chengguan calls the case of “the sūtra expanded and the verse compressed.” Where the verse versifies the wind-wheels, the upper line speaks of what is upheld and the lower of what upholds; the first half-verse is fruit upholding fruit, and the latter half sets forth in addition the cause that accomplishes it — the first half speaks of leaving obstruction behind, which is vow making it pure, and the latter half speaks of unobstructedness, which is vow letting it rest upon space. So the verse does not repeat the list of names of the prose; it brings forward only the doctrine of this matter of “upholding.”

In the three and a half verses that versify the lotus, Chengguan correlates them phrase by phrase with the three words of the flower’s name: the first verse and a half explain “every kind of radiant stamen,” showing that this flower has jewels for its substance; the next verse explains the sense of “fragrance,” saying with respect to the Dharma that buddhas come forth within the jewels and world-lords come forth from the buddhas, as fragrance issues from a substance and perfumes afar; the last verse explains the sense of “banner,” where proclaiming the names of the buddhas is the sense of standing high, and taming beings by every kind of skillful means is the sense of subduing. This is to take a name apart and find, word by word, where each word comes to rest in the verses.

A guard against misreading: do not read the restating verses as repetition for the sake of memorizing. Bringing it down to earth: the last two verses are the most famous two of this section — “Of all the motes of dust within the Flower-Treasury World, within each single mote the Dharma realm is seen; the buddhas manifest within the jewel-light gather like clouds — this is the sovereign freedom of the Tathāgata’s land,” together with the verse that refers all back to Samantabhadra’s cause. Beneath the former verse Chengguan plainly attaches a gate of the ten mysteries: the first verse speaks of sovereign freedom, because each single one accords with the nature, and that is the gate of simultaneous complete correspondence; while “the jewel-light manifesting buddhas” is the mutual interfusion of what supports and what is supported. The last verse refers all back to the universal cause, and therefore can embrace the whole. It is precisely these four lines that Fazang later cites word for word in his contemplation treatise, to establish the sense that a mote of dust contains the Dharma realm.

The Great Encircling Mountains: The Ring That Rings the Outermost Rim

From the second section on, the arrayed adornments of the treasury sea are spoken of. Chengguan divides them into six sub-sections: the encircling mountains on the four sides, the jeweled ground, the fragrant seas, the fragrant rivers, the groves, and the summation, each section having its verses. First come the encircling mountains.

Chengguan gives the doctrinal correlation as soon as he opens his mouth: the encircling mountains are the pure virtue of the precepts, accomplished by gathering in what is within and warding off what is without. This one sentence settles the reading of the whole section — that the mountains ring the outermost rim is just as the precepts are the outer ring of cultivation.

The prose divides in three: first raising in general what is relied upon, next displaying separately its substance and configuration, and last concluding that its virtue is endless. The place relied upon is the four sides of the ground, and the mountains dwell upon “the lotus flower of the sun-pearl king.” Here there is an old divergent account: some hold that above the great flower there is another lotus flower serving as what the mountains rest upon, and Chengguan says “the sense seems not to follow.” His own explanation is this — the great flower before was named “every kind of radiant stamen,” and the verses say that the flames of light form a wheel and that a pure light is sent forth from within all jewels, from which it may be seen that this flower has jewels for its substance; therefore the pearl-king that is like a sun-disc refers to this lotus flower, and is the general name of that great flower, and it is not that there is another flower. The sixty-fascicle witness has “the encircling mountains dwell relying on the ground of the lotus and the sun-jewel king,” which is precisely the “old sūtra” that Chengguan adduces.

As to the substance and configuration separately displayed, Chengguan says that earlier only the sense of firmness and sharpness was taken and vajra was spoken of, whereas here it is furnished with virtues and there are in summary ten characteristics: the first four are the perfection of its own substance, the latter six the adornment of its outer aspect. The first four he speaks of one by one: first, the body of the mountain, which serves as the general form — the maṇi round and bright, the sandalwood richly fragrant, all of them virtues of the precepts; second, the mountain peaks, standing out alone and aloof and subduing all evils by their majesty; third, the mountain wheel, of which there are two old senses — either the place where the mountain curves, or the mountain’s flank jutting out like a lion’s throne — and Chengguan, going by the verse below, takes “the wheel lies beneath the mountain and is what the mountain rests upon”; fourth, the condition that forms the mountain: the three items before each have their own substance, and here it is shown that vajra, containing flames of light within, forms their substance throughout, just as in the world earth and stone are mixed and form a mountain, and because vajra pervades it, it obtains the name of a golden wheel. The latter six are plain from the text itself.

A guard against misreading: do not read ‘the mountain peaks subduing all evils by their majesty’ as though the precepts were meant to frighten people. What is subdued is evil, not people; and standing aloof means that it makes no compromise with evil, not that it is aloof from others. Bringing it down to earth: in reading this section, one may take the ten characteristics as a physical examination chart for the virtue of the precepts — the body, the peaks, the wheel, and the condition that forms the mountain are the four inward items, and the remaining six are the adornment that shows outwardly; if the inward four are not established, the outward six are mere decoration.

The Verses of the Encircling Mountains: From the Substance of the Mountains to Their Wondrous Function

The verses of the encircling-mountain section are likewise ten. Chengguan divides them in two: the first six verses set forth the substance, configuration, and adornment of the mountains, versifying the separate display above; the latter four set out the wondrous function and sovereign freedom of the mountains, showing also that what supports and what is supported are unobstructed, and versify the concluding text above.

Within the first six there are five parts again. The first verse versifies the encircling mountains in general — the opening line speaks of what is encircled, the next two lines of what encircles, and the last line sets out the cause. And it is just here that Chengguan sets down his most important passage upon the opening line, “the great sea of worlds is without bound.” He says that “without bound” has two senses: first, that it merely shows the many in general terms and so says “without bound,” while in fact there are bounds and limits; second, that to say what lies outside the encircling mountains is the “boundless that has bounds,” which does not obstruct principle and yet is phenomenal. And what he himself takes is a third sense — that what is now called boundless is the “bounds that are boundless,” which does not ruin the characteristic and yet is principle.

A question first: where do these three accounts differ? The answer: in the relation between “characteristic” and “principle.” The first takes boundlessness as a descriptive term, and that is a provisional teaching; the second admits bounds and speaks of boundlessness outside the bounds, principle not obstructing phenomena; the third is that this very characteristic of having bounds is, in its own substance, principle — the characteristic need not be ruined and principle is already manifest. The division proper to Huayan is the third — not that one must demolish the characteristic of having bounds in order to see the boundless, but that upon the very characteristic of this ring of mountains the boundless is seen.

The remaining four parts: the second verse versifies the mountain wheel, the third the substance of the mountains, the fourth the condition that forms the mountains, and the fifth and sixth versify the fragrant waters and the other adornments above with robes and the rest added. As for the wondrous function and sovereign freedom of the latter four verses, Chengguan says the text is plain and may be known.

A guard against misreading: do not read ‘the latter four verses are wondrous function’ as though the first six were static and the latter four dynamic. What wondrous function and sovereign freedom show is that what supports and what is supported are unobstructed — the configuration of the land and the bodies of buddhas and bodhisattvas do not obstruct one another, and this is a side that necessarily opens once substance and configuration are established. Bringing it down to earth: the verse line “the pure body of the Buddha Vairocana enters wholly within them and is universally seen” is where this unobstructedness of support and supported comes to rest in this section — the adornment of the mountains is not something outside the Buddha’s body.

The Jeweled Ground: The Expanse of Ground the Mountains Enclose

The second sub-section is the jeweled ground. Chengguan’s doctrinal correlation is: the jeweled ground on the face of the terrace is the realization of the nature of mind, and is accomplished by concentration. The section before correlated the encircling mountains with the precepts; this section correlates the jeweled ground with concentration — the order is well arranged.

The prose divides in three: first marking where it lies, next displaying separately its substance, configuration, and adornment, and last the summation. Within the separate display there are ten clauses, which Chengguan correlates one by one: the first clause is the substance of the ground, marked as vajra and explained as firm and unruinable — and here he points out in passing a great matter: the ground of the whole Flower-Treasury is vajra, and therefore the ground of the place of awakening above penetrates through to the Flower-Treasury. The second clause is the ground’s characteristic of levelness and purity. The remaining eight are all adornment: third, ornamented with jewel-wheels; fourth, stored with jewel-treasuries; fifth, interspersed with different jewels; sixth, strewn with jewel-dust; seventh, spread with lotus flowers; eighth, set severally with fragrant maṇi; ninth, filled with the implements of adornment; tenth, covered with a jewel-net.

Of the ninth clause, where the sūtra says “all the adornments in all the buddha-lands of the three times are taken as its ornamental trim,” Chengguan says that this is to show that the implements of adornment are endless — if one says only “the various adornments,” adornment may be much or little; but to take the adornments of the buddha-lands of the three times as adornment is to have no limit at all. The tenth clause he treats by a question and an answer: what use has the net? To manifest everywhere the reflected images of the buddhas. What is the character of this net? It is spread out like the net of the lord of the gods. Then he pushes the matter one layer further — the net of the lord of the gods manifests over and over without end, and this accomplishes what was said above, “manifesting everywhere all the realms of the Tathāgata,” while each single one of those realms above is likewise endless.

A question first: why should what concentration accomplishes be signified by “ground”? The answer: the mark of ground is that it can bear and does not shake. The sūtra says it is pure and level, without high or low, incapable of being ruined — read these words over onto concentration, and they are not sinking, not agitated, not rising and falling with objects. A guard against misreading: do not read “without high or low” as a dead flatness; in the same section there are wheels, treasuries, flowers, and nets upon the ground, and every kind of difference stands plain — what is level is the power of bearing, not the configurations. Bringing it down to earth: the precepts are the ring of mountains at the outer rim, concentration is the expanse of ground underfoot — one may not enter the mountains, but the ground is used simply by standing.

The Verses of the Jeweled Ground: From the Separate Display to the Summation

The verses of the jeweled-ground section are likewise ten. Chengguan divides them in two: the first seven versify the separate display above, the latter three the summation.

Within the first seven there are three parts again. The first four verses versify the eight passages of adornment above, but the order is somewhat uneven — and Chengguan explains this particularly: the order is uneven in order to show that there is no superiority or inferiority among those eight passages; that some are stated again and some at length is to show that the doctrine has no fixed quarter. He also says a very candid thing: fearing prolixity, he will not match them one by one, and the reader may get it by intent. The next two verses versify the implements of adornment as clouds. The last verse versifies “like the net of the lord of the gods” — and here Chengguan pushes the sense of Indra’s net to the end: since one jewel gathers in all, the motes of dust of that land in turn each embrace all, and this is the “over and over.”

As for the latter three verses versifying the summation, Chengguan says they conclude by assigning it: the first verse assigns it to the place of awakening, the second to the Buddha’s power, the third sets out the person who is able to know. This third verse is “Only those of great wisdom, who cultivate the great vows of Samantabhadra and enter the realm of the buddhas, are able to know, within this sea of buddha-fields, all such spiritual transformations as these.”

A question first: why single out “the person who is able to know” at the end? The answer: a great sweep of adornment has been spoken of, and without this verse the reader would take it for a landscape objectively existing; to single out the person who is able to know is to draw the whole passage back to cultivation — the spiritual transformations of this sea of lands are not seen by everyone, but are known by the person of great wisdom who cultivates the vows of Samantabhadra and enters the realm of the buddhas. A guard against misreading: this is not to say that the realm has a threshold that keeps people out; quite the contrary, it points out where the door is — the door is the vows of Samantabhadra. Bringing it down to earth: if one cannot read this passage, one need not blame one’s own want of imagination; Chengguan has said it already — the crux lies in vow, not in understanding.

The Seas of Fragrant Water Within the Ground: Seas That Open Again Upon the Ground

The third sub-section is the fragrant seas. The fragrant seas here differ from the one upheld by the topmost wind-wheel in the first section — that one was the general sea, and these are the many within the great earth. Chengguan here makes the relation of the two clear: since the great sea above is the store consciousness, what is now spoken of is that within the flower of the mind the seeds are gathered, and no single seed is apart from the sea of the store consciousness, and therefore there are many fragrant seas; and since each single one is furnished with the virtues of the nature, all of them have adornment.

A question first: does explaining lands by the store consciousness and seeds in this way turn Huayan into consciousness-only? The answer: one must see clearly that this is Chengguan’s explanation and not an adjudication by the sūtra — the sūtra says only that within the ground there are seas of fragrant water as many as the motes of dust of unspeakably many buddha-fields, and there is not a single term of consciousness-only in it. Chengguan borrows the simile of seeds and the store consciousness to make plain why ‘the one general sea’ and ‘the many particular ones’ are not apart from one another. His weight falls on ‘not one of them apart’ and ‘each one furnished with virtue’, not on setting up a theory of consciousness.

This section has one famous collation remark. The sūtra reads “there are seas of fragrant water as many as the motes of dust of unspeakably many buddha-fields,” and Chengguan says: going by the place below where the world-species are stated and by the Sanskrit witness, both have “ten unspeakables”; here the graph “ten” is missing, either an omission by the translator or a fault of transmission, and the same holds below where the species are stated. He supplies another place where the text passes something over: going by the summation that follows, it ought here to say “each single fragrant sea has such and such adornments,” and the text now passes it over; and if one takes the sense according to the text, the word “all” means all the seas, which in general take wondrous jewels for their floor, and so on.

For the separate display of the prose, Chengguan says there are twenty clauses. The first ten set forth the substance and configuration of the seas: first the floor, second the shores, third the net, fourth the water, fifth the flowers, sixth the settled silt, seventh the sound, eighth the light, ninth the retinue of persons manifesting spiritual penetrations, tenth the broad conclusion that it is endless. The ten clauses from “the ten jewels” onward gather in the other adornments; and he points out with care that only the white lotus belongs within the water, while the rest are all upon the shores. As for the name “the ten jewels,” he cites one old listing — gold, silver, beryl, giant clam, carnelian, coral, amber, true pearl, rose-stone, and the rest — and says that the first seven are just what are usually called the seven jewels. The puṇḍarīka is the white lotus, and moreover at the very time of its blooming. As for the name of the śīla banner, he says it should be śailā, translated as fine jade; and if one says śīla, that is translated as purity — both senses pass alike.

A guard against misreading: do not take these twenty clauses for an inventory of products. The first ten are the sea in itself, the latter ten the various establishments upon the sea and its shores — the one is substance, the other function; if this layer is not distinguished, one will feel that the sūtra is merely piling up nouns. Bringing it down to earth: what most repays reflection in this section is that one missing graph “ten.” Chengguan did not supply the graph for the sūtra; he merely set the two possible causes side by side and went on explaining the text as it stood — this is the measure of the ancient worthies in handling a doubtful point in a text.

The Verses of the Seas of Fragrant Water: Ten Verses Against Twenty Clauses

The verses of the fragrant-sea section are likewise ten, while the prose has twenty clauses, so verse and prose cannot be matched one for one. Chengguan here points out two discrepancies as well: there is one place that the prose has and the verse has not, while “the sun-flame wheel of light” is what the sūtra has not and the verse has.

He divides the ten verses in two. The first three versify the ten clauses above: the first verse versifies the floor; the second the shores and the net — he notes in passing that “tassel” is of the kind of net; the third versifies the remaining seven clauses, which may be seen by savoring it closely. The latter seven versify the ten clauses below, and their order too is somewhat uneven: the first versifies the stairways and the balustrades, the second the groves, the third the blooming of the flowers, the fourth the configuration of the banners, the fifth the cities and the pearls, the sixth the walls and the towers — and here he glosses one graph in passing, that “winding” means coiling about — the seventh concludes by referring the adornment home to the Buddha, wherein the first is the cause in ages past and the second the power present now.

A question first: verse and prose do not match — is that a problem of the translated witness? The answer: Chengguan already set up the general rule in the first section — the matching of prose and verse has ten cases and five pairs, and it cannot be argued by one case throughout. Presence and absence, expansion and compression, separation and combination, earlier and later, are all the normal state. A guard against misreading: so in reading the verses one need not hunt through the prose for a correspondence to every line, and failing to find one does not mean something is missing. Bringing it down to earth: the last verse of this section refers the adornment of the whole sea of fragrant water home to Vairocana’s adorning and purifying in ages past and to the Tathāgata’s sovereign power — answering, head to tail, to the first sentence of the whole passage, ‘this is what the Tathāgata Vairocana cultivated in ages past when he practiced as a bodhisattva’.

The Fragrant Rivers: The Rivers That Circle the Fragrant Seas to the Right

The fourth sub-section is the fragrant rivers between the seas. Chengguan’s doctrinal correlation is: the fragrant rivers are the merits that answer to each single mind at the same moment, flowing and pouring. Before, the encircling mountains were correlated with the precepts and the jeweled ground with concentration; here the fragrant rivers are correlated with the answering of merit to mind — not the setting up of another kind of practice, but a statement of how merit moves along with mind.

The prose likewise divides in three: first raising the number, next setting out the adornment, last the broad conclusion. In the setting out of the adornment Chengguan points to a phrase: the sūtra says “all of them take vajra for their banks,” and this “all of them take” says that the matters of adornment of every river are without difference; he describes that scene thus — they all use the substance of jewels and the adornment of jewels, holy spirits gathering and roaming there, clouds of light reflecting one another, the myriad images floating in brightness. The content of the ten clauses, he says, may be known, and he does not match them one by one.

At the broad conclusion he has a piece of reasoning: since the little rivers that circle the little seas already have adornments as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, all the more are the various numbers stated earlier made manifest. And then comes a judgment in the next sentence — this concluding text is not merely with respect to phenomena; all of it is the unobstructedness of one and many.

A question first: why must the rivers “turn to the right”? The sūtra says only that they turn to the right and encircle, and gives no explanation. Here a measure is kept: where the sūtra says nothing, the commentary sets up no particular sense either, and we do not add one for it. A guard against misreading: do not read the rivers as subordinate and secondary just because they circle at the edge of the seas. Chengguan draws his greatest conclusion precisely from the smallest river — the little river already has adornments as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, how much more the rest. Bringing it down to earth: the way to read this section is ‘seeing the endless by way of the small’. What it answers to in cultivation is this: the merit of a single moment of mind that answers here and now is not the less for being small.

The Verses of the Fragrant Rivers: Ten Verses Following Configuration by Configuration

The verses of the fragrant-river section are likewise ten. Chengguan correlates them verse by verse: the versifying of the banks whose substance is vajra, then a verse and a half versifying maṇi adorning the banks, the third verse versifying the clouds of light and the voices, the next three all versifying the swirling eddies putting forth reflected images, the seventh versifying the net and clappers draped over them together with the general manifesting of all the adornments — and here he points out an advance in level: what was manifested before was adornment in the realm of phenomena, and what is spoken of here is the practice of the path; the eighth verse versifies the manifesting of the buddhas’ support and supported, the ninth the waves putting forth wondrous sound, the tenth the water putting forth clouds of light. At the end he adds one remark: there are places abbreviated by implication as well, which may be got by intent.

A question first: what are “the swirling eddies putting forth reflected images”? The sūtra says that from the places in the rivers where the current swirls and eddies, every kind of form of the causal practices cultivated by all the buddhas comes forth. The verses then say that at those swirling places bodhisattvas constantly leap forth like clouds, going into the vast lands until the whole Dharma realm is filled. So the swirling eddy is not a phenomenon upon the surface of the water; it is the place where the configurations of causal practice and the bodies of bodhisattvas come forth. A guard against misreading: do not read it as a passive mirroring, like a reflection in water; the words the sūtra uses are “come forth” and “leap forth,” which is generation from within. Bringing it down to earth: the place where merit flows and pours is precisely the place where the causal practices of the buddhas are manifested — cultivation is not waiting to see a buddha, but seeing within the flowing and pouring.

The Ground Between and the Groves: Between River and River

The fifth sub-section is the groves. Chengguan first points out that the tenor of the text in this section differs from the sections before: those all listed ten items to show endlessness, whereas this section does not list ten items but raises two things only — the white lotus and the jewel trees — and unfolds them to show the many; the two things separately displayed are flowers and trees, one of the water and one of the land, while in truth the items contained are very many.

Upon a single tree Chengguan counts five functions: first, putting forth clouds of adornment; second, the jewel-kings shining; third, flower-fragrance filling all; fourth, putting forth sound and proclaiming the Dharma; fifth, raining jewels over the whole ground. The fourth in particular is to be noticed — those trees send forth subtle and wondrous sound, proclaiming the great vows cultivated by all the tathāgatas throughout all kalpas. So much adornment has been spoken of in the whole passage, and only here does the mouth of the tree say ‘whose vow, and which one, those adornments are’, answering to the opening, “in the presence of each single buddha purely cultivating great vows as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea.”

As for the fifth, “raining jewels over the whole ground,” it is the eight maṇi jewel-kings that follow. And here Chengguan sets down the weightiest adjudication of the section: these eight items run through the three worlds — the first six manifest the receptacle world, the next one manifests the world of right awakening, and the last one manifests the world of sentient beings.

A question first: what are the three worlds? The answer: the receptacle world is the land relied upon, the world of sentient beings is the beings that dwell in it, and the world of the wisdom of right awakening is the buddhas. Huayan speaks of one being all; one of the most concrete places where this comes to rest is ‘the three worlds manifest together within a single item’. A guard against misreading: do not take the eight jewel-kings for the names of eight pieces of treasure; the names themselves are an array of doctrine — the first six speak of the configuration of lands, the seventh of the spiritual transformations of the buddhas, the eighth of the karmic recompense of sentient beings, and one set of eight gathers the three worlds complete.

In speaking of the world of sentient beings Chengguan gives several concrete instances: the forests of sword-leaves and the like manifest the recompense of evil karma, the trees of heavenly wish and the like are the recompense of good karma, and in the forests of men and women, born at dawn and falling at dusk — all of these are a sea of karmic recompense. Bringing it down to earth: when one reads the eighth, “the maṇi jewel-king that manifests the sea of the karmic recompense of all sentient beings,” the splendor of this whole long passage really does come back to the human person — what that jewel-king manifests is nothing else than our own karma.

First · The Lotus-Wheel Maṇi Jewel-King

The first of the eight jewel-kings is “the lotus-wheel maṇi jewel-king.” A question first: why begin from the lotus? The answer: the lotus is the principal configuration of this whole chapter — within the fragrant sea upheld by the topmost wind-wheel a great lotus comes forth, and within the flower dwells the Flower-Treasury World-Sea; what the encircling mountains rest upon is likewise the lotus flower of the sun-pearl king. Coming to the jewel-kings upon the ground, the first is still named with the lotus, which is to carry that first configuration down to the last and smallest detail. The added word “wheel” is the sense of pervading and of turning. A guard against misreading: do not read it as a gemstone in the shape of a flower. Bringing it down to earth: when the beginning and the end of a stretch of adornment use one and the same configuration, the reader knows that nothing laid out in between has departed from that one flower.

Second · The Fragrant-Flame Light-Cloud Maṇi Jewel-King

The second is “the fragrant-flame light-cloud maṇi jewel-king.” Fragrance, flame, light, and cloud are used in a row of four words. A question first: what order is there in these four words? The answer: fragrance is distant perfuming — Chengguan said in speaking of the sea of fragrant water that buddha-nature is named water and distant perfuming named fragrance, which is smelled but not yet realized; flame is the configuration of blazing; light is shining; cloud is covering everywhere and being able to rain. From perfuming to blazing, to shining, to covering everywhere, is one road of the opening out of merit from within to without. A guard against misreading: do not read the four words as a heap of synonyms. Bringing it down to earth: this one jewel-king places “perfuming” at the very front, which agrees exactly with the real state of cultivation — all shining and all covering begin from that first faint smelling of the fragrance.

Third · The Maṇi Jewel-King of Every Kind of Adornment

The third is “the maṇi jewel-king of every kind of adornment.” A question first: the two before each have a concrete configuration, and this one says only “every kind of adornment” — is it not too general? The answer: it is not generality, it is a general gathering. One general configuration is set among the eight jewel-kings, and the other seven are all its particular configurations. This is the same as what Chengguan does in speaking of the jeweled ground — there he points out that if the sūtra said only “the implements of adornment,” adornment might be much or little, and so the adornments of the buddha-lands of the three times must be taken as adornment before endlessness is shown. A guard against misreading: do not skip the one that is the general configuration and remember only the concrete few. Bringing it down to earth: it is so in cultivation as well — if the portion that holds all together is lost, the several particular merits become a scattered collection.

Fourth · The Maṇi Jewel-King That Manifests Inconceivable Adorning Colors

The fourth is “the maṇi jewel-king that manifests inconceivable adorning colors.” A question first: every kind of adornment has already been spoken of; why speak again of adorning colors here? The answer: the division lies in “manifests” and in “inconceivable.” The former spoke of the adornment it possesses in itself; this one speaks of the colors and forms it manifests, and moreover manifests inconceivably — inconceivable meaning beyond thought and beyond speech, and not a hyperbole for ‘very many’. A guard against misreading: do not read the inconceivable as ‘not clearly stated, therefore not worth stating’; when Chengguan speaks of the adornment of the fruit in the summation section, he lists “according with the nature, without arising and without characteristic” as one of the five characteristics, from which it is plain that the inconceivable has its precise reference. Bringing it down to earth: when one meets an adornment beyond one’s own understanding, the right response is neither doubt nor astonishment, but to know that it manifests in accordance with the nature.

Fifth · The Maṇi Jewel-King of the Sunlight Robe-Treasury

The fifth is “the maṇi jewel-king of the sunlight robe-treasury.” Sunlight is shining, the robe is covering, the treasury is containing. A question first: how do shining and covering stand together in one jewel? The answer: in this passage “robe” and “cover” appear again and again — the jeweled-ground verses say “wondrous robes billow and cover it wholly throughout,” the fragrant-sea verses say “wondrous robes hang down as adornment,” and the fragrant-river verses say that pure pearl-kings spread out like clouds and “cover over all the fragrant rivers entirely.” The image of covering in this chapter is consistently that of protecting and pervading, not of shutting out. So that it shines and yet can cover is precisely light that does not sting but can shelter. A guard against misreading: do not read “robe-treasury” as a storehouse for keeping clothes; treasury here is the sense of containing. Bringing it down to earth: true shining comes with protective mindfulness, and this one jewel-king joins the two within a single name.

Sixth · The Maṇi Jewel-King That Pervades the Ten Directions and Universally Lets Down Clouds of Nets of Light

The sixth is “the maṇi jewel-king that pervades the ten directions and universally lets down clouds of nets of light” — the longest name of the eight. Pervading the ten directions is the utmost of the horizontal, universally letting down is the spreading out from above downward, the net of light is the configuration of a net, and cloud is what can cover and can rain. A question first: why use a “net”? The answer: the places in this chapter that speak of nets are very many — for the jeweled ground, wondrous maṇi jewels serve as a net spread out like the net of the lord of the gods; for the fragrant seas, the maṇi jewel-king of Vairocana serves as a net; for the fragrant rivers, maṇi serves as the net and gold as the clappers. The mark of a net is that its knots are linked and its eyes reflect one another, which is precisely the configuration of “over and over” that Chengguan speaks of: “since one jewel gathers in all, the motes of dust of that land in turn embrace all.” A guard against misreading: do not read the net of light as a cover clapped down over things; a net is see-through, reflecting over and over without obstructing. Bringing it down to earth: this one jewel-king is the last of the six that belong to the receptacle world, and it is also the one that gathers the first five into the configuration of endlessness upon endlessness.

Seventh · The Maṇi Jewel-King That Manifests the Spiritual Transformations of All the Buddhas

The seventh is “the maṇi jewel-king that manifests the spiritual transformations of all the buddhas.” Chengguan adjudicates this one as manifesting the world of the wisdom of right awakening — among the eight items this alone manifests the Buddha. A question first: why “spiritual transformations” and not the Buddha’s body? The answer: the verses of the last part of this passage give the answer themselves — all the conjured buddhas are like conjurings, and seeking whence they come, it cannot be found; all the transformations of the ten directions are all of them like reflected images in a mirror. To manifest the Buddha by spiritual transformation blocks from the very start any reading of the Buddha’s body as really existent. A guard against misreading: do not read spiritual transformation as a display of powers; here spiritual transformation is the configuration the Buddha manifests in answer to capacity, and its substance cannot be got. Bringing it down to earth: to see the Buddha’s spiritual transformations within a jewel upon the ground is exactly the manner of Huayan — no need to seek upward toward another quarter; it manifests within the adornment underfoot.

Eighth · The Maṇi Jewel-King That Manifests the Sea of the Karmic Recompense of All Sentient Beings

The eighth is “the maṇi jewel-king that manifests the sea of the karmic recompense of all sentient beings,” which Chengguan adjudicates as manifesting the world of sentient beings. A question first: how should a ground of the Flower-Treasury, utterly pure, manifest a sea of the karmic recompense of beings? The answer: precisely in order to show the three worlds manifesting together. Chengguan gives instances here — the forests of sword-leaves and the like are the recompense of evil karma, the trees of heavenly wish and the like are the recompense of good karma, and in the forests of men and women, born at dawn and falling at dusk, all are a sea of karmic recompense. That such configurations manifest upon a pure ground all the same does not defile that ground; rather, the adornment of that ground includes from the first this portion, ‘showing forth the karma of sentient beings’. A guard against misreading: do not suppose that manifesting karmic recompense is manifesting defilement; what is manifested is the real state of things, and what can manifest the real state is a pure jewel. Bringing it down to earth: this is the last and the most intimate jewel of this whole long passage — the adornment of the Flower-Treasury World must in the end be able to show forth the karma of each one of us, or else it is only a beautiful view with no bearing on people.

The General Configuration of the Ground Between

Besides the eight jewel-kings, the prose of this section also gives the general configuration of the ground between: each piece of that ground is as many as the motes of dust of the four continents; the puṇḍarīka flowers adorned with the multitude of jewels fill it round about, and are likewise as many as the motes of dust of the four continents; the groves of jeweled trees are ranged in rows in due order. Chengguan says something very interesting at the conclusion — from “of such kinds as these” onward, merely concluding the one item of a single tree raining jewels already gives as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands; and matching this against the other four functions above, such as putting forth clouds, each single one is likewise so, and then within a single tree there are already the adornments of many seas of lands. Then, matching this again against the puṇḍarīka flowers, they are the same as the trees: flowers and trees each have the motes of dust of the four continents, and each single one is thus. Things of the sort of flowers and trees ought further to be as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, and so they become an endless adornment.

A question first: what is this layered multiplying meant to explain? The answer: that “endless” is not a descriptive term but a conclusion forced out by unfolding and multiplying. A guard against misreading: do not read it as a game with numbers; Chengguan wants a person to multiply it through personally and then to run up, in his own mind, against the fact that ‘it cannot be counted to the end’. Bringing it down to earth: where it cannot be counted to the end is exactly where the words “inconceivable” stand.

The Verses of the Groves: The Fivefold Import

The verses of the grove section are likewise ten. Chengguan’s way of matching them: the first six versify the jewel trees, the next one versifies the white lotus, and the last three conclude with the ground of the adornment — by the power of the Buddha and the rest, showing that substance and function are unobstructed, manifesting and yet ever thus.

What is really admirable is the fivefold import that he sets out in a row beneath the last three verses. The first: the first verse is the receptacle world, the next is the wisdom of right awakening, the last is sentient beings — the intent being to show that within each single item the adornment of the three worlds is manifest, and that the text merely abbreviates them by implication. The second: the first sets forth that a single fruit can manifest, the next takes all adornments as instances, the last sets forth that every mote of dust is thus — from the compressed to the expanded, from the coarse to the fine. The third: the first sets forth the power of the Buddha, the next displays the power of vows, the last accords with the power of delight. The fourth: the first is the fruit and the last the cause, while vow runs through both cause and fruit. The fifth: the first is self and the last other, while vow runs through both self and other. At the end he gathers it up in one sentence: only thus is it shown that the adornment of the Flower-Treasury is in every case beyond words and beyond thought, and not to be sought by the feelings.

He sets out one further reading with respect to nature and characteristic: the first verse sets forth that being the nature it is without nature and its substance is originally unarisen; the next that being characteristic it is without characteristic and manifests without coming or going; the last that without ruining the characteristic each sees differently. This answers exactly to three lines in the verses — “their nature is originally unborn and cannot be grasped,” “he neither comes nor goes,” and “each of them sees the land to come for which he has received the prediction, and according to their delight all are pure.”

A question first: how can a single verse have five or six readings — is that not to fall into vagueness? The answer: Chengguan himself gives the criterion — “only thus is it shown that the adornment of the Flower-Treasury is in every case beyond words and beyond thought.” The many readings are not an indeterminacy of explanation; they are to let the reader notice, among the many, that no one of them is the final settled understanding. A guard against misreading: do not pick the one reading that pleases one’s own eye and call the rest forced. Bringing it down to earth: the last verse, “Within each single mote of dust of this ground, all the sons of the Buddha cultivate the practice of the path, and each of them sees the land to come for which he has received the prediction, and according to their delight all are pure” — this is the sentence in which the whole passage of adornment comes to rest upon the person who cultivates: within every mote of dust of that ground there are people cultivating the practice of the path, and each of them sees his own land to come.

The Summation: The Adornments Are Inconceivable

The sixth sub-section is the summation. Chengguan says: although all the sections above have been speaking of adornment, they have not been able to speak it to the end, and so now every single realm is shown in general — spoken of or not spoken of, all are furnished with merit and adornment as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, and therefore the sūtra says “all the realms.”

The prose divides in two: first marking that the adornment is hard to fathom, then asking “why is this?” and explaining the reason. The reason is “every single one is adorned by pure merits as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea.” Chengguan says that these words “pure merits” contain two senses: first, that the many adornments of the fruit are themselves pure merits; second, that each single adornment of the fruit is born from the cause of many pure merits. Regarding the fruit from the standpoint of the cause, four propositions may be formed — many causes and one fruit, one cause and many fruits, and so forth. Therefore whatever single item is raised is called hard to conceive. He also cites the verse line “it is only from what the Tathāgata did in ages past that they are born, by spiritual penetration and the power of vows” and says: this is the cause.

As for the adornment of the fruit, Chengguan sets out five characteristics: first, making it many, supplying all everywhere; second, making it constant, never wanting or cut off; third, making it wondrous, delighting the minds of the multitude; fourth, according with the nature, without arising and without characteristic; fifth, sovereign freedom, fused and unobstructed. The verses are furnished with all five of these senses, and therefore it is called hard to conceive, how much more so when cause and fruit are mutually identical.

A question first: why set up these five characteristics at the very end? The answer: because the six sections before all spoke of ‘what there is’, while these five characteristics speak of the nature that makes those adornments adornment — many, constant, wondrous, according with the nature, sovereign. The first three characteristics are spoken with respect to phenomena, the fourth with respect to principle, and the fifth speaks of principle and phenomena unobstructed. A guard against misreading: do not read “hard to conceive” as “no need to conceive.” Chengguan first lays out the four propositions of cause and fruit and the five characteristics of the adornment of the fruit, and only then says that it is hard to conceive — hard to conceive is the conclusion of thinking to the very end, not an excuse for not thinking. Bringing it down to earth: having read the whole passage, one may take these five characteristics and go back over it — which section shows the many, which the constant, which the wondrous, which the according with the nature, which the sovereign.

The Verses of the Summation: From the Function of the Adornment of the Fruit to Setting Out the Fruit Against the Cause

The verses of the concluding section are ten. Chengguan divides them broadly in two: the first six set forth the surpassing function of the adornment of the fruit, the latter four set out the fruit over against the cause.

Within the first six there are three parts again: the first four verses set forth the functions of the adornment separately, the next one refers them home to the present condition, and the last one concludes the many kinds in general. For the latter four, setting out the fruit against the cause, he matches cause and fruit verse by verse: the first is that since practice, vow, and spiritual penetration are the cause, one obtains the fruit of transformations like mirror images; the second, that since the universal practice and surpassing wisdom are the cause, one obtains the fruit of purifying multitudes of lands within a single mote of dust; the third, that since drawing near to good friends over a long time is the cause, one obtains the fruit of manifesting all at once in an instant; the fourth displays the intent of purifying lands, so that people may take it as a model and practice accordingly.

Of the last verse, “The lands of the buddhas are like space, without equal, without arising, without any mark; for the benefit of sentient beings they are adorned and purified everywhere, and by the power of original vows they dwell therein,” Chengguan takes it apart into two halves for reading: the first half is the adornment of the realm of wisdom, which is precisely no adornment — the land of self-enjoyment is all-pervading and without equal, the land of the nature of dharmas is in substance unarisen, and both are without characteristic; the latter half is the adornment that is no adornment, answering out of compassion — adorning throughout the Dharma realm, the abiding that is no abiding, ever abiding within the land. Having finished explaining this verse he says, “the explanation of the adornments is concluded,” and the whole passage ends here.

A question first: after two sections of adornment so densely wrought, the last verse says that the lands are like space and without characteristic — is that not to throw away all that went before? The answer: quite the contrary; this verse is the insurance of all the adornment before it. Without this verse, the wind-wheels, fragrant seas, encircling mountains, and jeweled ground before would become a really existent structure that could be grasped; with this verse, those adornments are “the adornment that is no adornment” — not that there is first a vacancy and then adornment added, but that the very substance of the adorning is no adornment, and being no adornment it adorns throughout the Dharma realm. A guard against misreading: neither should one turn back and deny the characteristics before because the last verse says without characteristic; what Chengguan says is “the abiding that is no abiding, ever abiding within the land,” and abiding and not abiding do not obstruct one another. Bringing it down to earth: the senses of the two sections of the whole passage meet in this one verse — the depth and breadth of the cause (“by the power of original vows”) and the absence of characteristic in the substance of the fruit (“without equal, without arising, without any mark”) are gathered complete within a single sentence.

Lineage

The outline of this passage has three lines from of old. Chengguan, on the eighty-fascicle witness, divides the first section into four sub-sections (the wind-wheels that uphold, the fragrant sea that is upheld, the sea putting forth the lotus, the lotus upholding the sea of lands), and the second section into six (the encircling mountains on the four sides, the jeweled ground, the fragrant seas, the fragrant rivers, the groves, the summation). Zhiyan, on the sixty-fascicle witness, makes seven sub-sections — the wind and the ground, the jewel-king ground, the cakra (that is, the encircling mountains), upon the great earth, the fragrant rivers, the jeweled trees within the rivers, the short prose; his seven sub-sections embrace the range of both of Chengguan’s sections, and he further divides the one sub-section on the wind-wheels into five of his own: wind, water, flower, world-vajra, vajra mountains. Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle witness, sets up another line: he first discourses on the causes of a land as two kinds — the cause that is the support being suchness, the pure consciousness, and mirror wisdom; the cause that generates being the various wondrous practices and vows — and with respect to the cause that generates he briefly sets out three kinds: vast merit, great vows, wondrous practice. The divisions of the three makers differ; all are settled accounts of the ancient worthies, recorded in full without adjudication.

The reckoning of the number of verses differs as well. Zhiyan, on the sixty-fascicle witness, says of the first section “the verses are twenty in number,” while Chengguan, on the eighty-fascicle witness, says “the ten verses divide in two” — the witnesses they follow are different.

The ten items and the four sub-sections do not tally. In the first section Chengguan first lists the ten items that ought to belong to the measure of the land relied upon: the wind-wheels relied upon, the wind upholding the fragrant sea, the sea putting forth the lotus, the lotus upholding the sea of lands, the encircling mountains that ring the terrace, the jeweled ground on the face of the terrace, the fragrant seas within the ground, the fragrant rivers between the seas, the trees and the rest between the rivers, the summation of the many adornments; whereupon he judges, “in the present text only one river is missing,” and so divides it into four sub-sections only. Later he says once again, “only one river is missing, because below there is a separate display of it” — meaning that although the first section lacks it, the second section displays it separately, and so it is not truly missing. This is one of the eyes of the outline of this passage, and it is recorded.

The two makers on the sense of the wind-wheels. Chengguan says that the cause of the wind-wheels is the great vows and the rest, while the proper intent of his commentarial text lies in narrating the configuration of what is relied upon; Li Tongxuan, for his part, takes as his account that the wind-wheel of great vows can uphold the myriad practices and that by practice the fruit is summoned, and pushes it up to the level of faith — the nature of dharmas, compassion and wisdom, subtle understanding and the myriad practices all rest upon the Buddha in order to be cultivated, and if, apart from the Buddha, one has a separate dharma of one’s own, then faith is not accomplished, the ten kinds of surpassing understanding are not accomplished, cultivation is not accomplished. What the two makers give weight to is different; recorded without adjudication.

The divergent accounts of the lotus flower of the sun-pearl king and of the mountain wheel. As to the “lotus flower of the sun-pearl king” upon which the encircling mountains rest, there were two old accounts: first, that it is the general name of the great flower before; second, that above the great flower there is another lotus serving as what the mountains rest upon. Beneath the latter account Chengguan sets down the four words “the sense seems not to follow,” and himself takes the former, his reason being that the verses say the flames of light form a wheel and that a pure light is sent forth from within all jewels, from which it may be known that that flower has jewels for its substance. As to the character of the mountain wheel, there were likewise two old senses — one pointing to the place where the mountain curves, the other to the mountain’s flank jutting out like a lion’s throne — and Chengguan, going by the verse below, takes “the wheel lies beneath the mountain and is what the mountain rests upon.” Both sets of divergent accounts are recorded in full.

The variant text of the sixty-fascicle witness. The 60 has “the Lotus-Treasury World-Sea” where the 80 has “the Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea”; the buddha’s name is “the Buddha Rocana” where the 80 has “the Tathāgata Vairocana”; the number of kalpas is “kalpas as many as the motes of dust of asaṃkhyeya worlds” where the 80 has “kalpas as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea”; what is cultivated is “vows and practices” where the 80 has “great vows.” The names of the ten tiers of wind-wheels correspond broadly in the two witnesses, while what is upheld differs in kind — in the 80 what is upheld is in every case an implement of adornment (jewel-flame, jewel-banner, jewel-bells, jewel-wheel, wheel-flowers, lion-throne, pearl-king banner, tree-flowers, Sumeru clouds, fragrant-terrace clouds), whereas in the 60 eight of the ten upheld are “ground,” and the remaining two are not “ground” — the eighth has “it upholds all times: a day, a half-month, a month, a year,” of which the 80 has no account of divisions of time, and the tenth has “it is able to uphold all existence.” The topmost wind-wheel is named “Supreme Majestic Radiance Treasury” in the 80 and “Supreme Treasury” in the 60; the great lotus is named “Banner of Fragrance and Every Kind of Radiant Stamen” in the 80 and “Adorned with the Radiance of the Banner of Fragrance” in the 60. As to what the encircling mountains rest upon, the 60 has “the encircling mountains dwell relying on the ground of the lotus and the sun-jewel king,” which is the “old sūtra” that Chengguan adduces. In the sentence on the fragrant rivers the 80 has the two words “turn to the right” and the 60 does not. All of the above is recorded in full without adjudication. The verbatim collation of the remaining sections of the sixty-fascicle witness has not been provided within the range recorded, and is marked lacking as it stands in fact, not filled out with conjectured text.

The three kinds of Flower-Treasury in the One Vehicle. Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle witness, sets up three kinds of Flower-Treasury: first, that the world of the lotus-terrace treasury, though it pervades the Dharma realm, manifests as increasing and decreasing according to the capacity of bodhisattvas upon the grounds, and, lodged in the Highest Pure Form heaven, only one realm is spoken of; second, that of this very Flower-Treasury pervading the Dharma realm ten are spoken of to show endlessness — that is, endlessly many Flower-Treasuries, each one of them pervading the Dharma realm; third, that the various kinds of world such as those shaped like trees each have a Lotus-Treasury, all of them like that realm and all pervading. This is an adjudication by a commentator on the sixty-fascicle witness, and it is recorded.

Where it is carried on. The collation remark set up at the end of this passage, “here the graph ‘ten’ is missing,” Chengguan expressly says “the same holds below where the species are stated,” pointing precisely to the world-species section that follows — the two sections are to be read together. What follows this passage is the third section, “The Differentiation of the Net of Lands Upheld”, whose opening sentence is “Sons of the Buddha! What worlds dwell herein? I shall now tell of them,” which Chengguan outlines in three parts: telling the assembly and consenting to speak, stating the two topics in pairs, and explaining the two topics at large. Reading straight on, the substance of the one Flower-Treasury narrated in this passage is precisely the place in which the twenty tiers of world-species that follow dwell.

Fazang later, in his work on the contemplation gate, cites verbatim the last four lines of the wind-wheel verses of this passage — “Of all the motes of dust within the Flower-Treasury World, within each single mote the Dharma realm is seen; the buddhas manifest within the jewel-light gather like clouds — this is the sovereign freedom of the Tathāgata’s land” — to establish the sense that a mote of dust contains the Dharma realm. The sūtra text enters the contemplation gate untouched, and the attribution is clear.

As for the Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang raising “the Flower-Treasury World” as an instance of the characteristics of the teaching of the One Vehicle, the “world-seas of the ten buddhas” named in the Huayan yisheng shixuan men, and the “adornment of the marks and signs of the Lotus-Treasury” among the ten bodies spoken of in the Huayan fajie xuanjing — the first is an instance in the classification of the teachings, while of the latter two one is a general expression and one a sense of the buddha-body, differing in kind from the sense of the array of the receptacle world in this passage; they are recorded but not made attachments of this passage. The treatises of the consciousness-only line have not been examined for this passage; this is marked lacking as it stands in fact, and no attachment is forced.