華嚴經 品二十一 十行品Avataṃsaka Sūtra · The Ten Practices

Why the ten practices follow the verses of praise

The fourth assembly does not reach its principal exposition until this chapter. Of the two chapters before it, one tells how the Buddha ascended to the palace of the Yāma Heaven without leaving the tree of awakening, and one has ten bodhisattvas whose names all contain the word “forest” praise the Buddha in verse — both are still setting the stage. In this chapter the bodhisattva Merit Grove enters concentration, receives empowerment, comes out of concentration, and opens his mouth; and what he speaks is ten kinds of practice.

Chengguan sets up two senses for the reason this chapter comes: first, that what precedes is the preface and this is the principal exposition; second, that what precedes sets forth the buddha-wisdom that is “depended upon”, while this sets forth the practice that “depends”. Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle side, judges it just as plainly: since the part of the preface has been made manifest, the principal tenet ought to be disclosed. Zhiyan is the most sparing: since the assembly has gathered, the exposition should follow.

Li Tongxuan comes at it from the other end. He argues not from the order of the text but from the place: in the Yāma Heaven there is no sun or moon, the celestial light shines of itself, and day and night are told only by the opening and closing of the lotuses, so it is called the heaven of time-divisions; the bodhisattva of this station, knowing when a being’s mind and desire are ready to open, receives him at the fitting moment, and for one not yet ripe for deliverance first gives him a cause for future deliverance — and therefore the ten practices are spoken in this heaven. He also sets the supports of the ten abodes and the ten practices side by side: the ten abodes still rest on the summit of Mount Sumeru, whereas the ten practices are “carried out in dependence on space”, which figures that “practice is unattached”.

Taken together the four masters are saying one thing: praise is looking up, abiding is standing firm, and once one stands firm one must move — the ten practices are that movement. Brought home to oneself: a person who seeks only “not to fall back” will, as the days go by, turn into a keeper of what he has; the sūtra will not let one stop at keeping, and immediately gives ten ways of moving.

The word “practice”: not how much one does, but making and cultivating in accord with principle

The word “practice” in the ten practices is most easily read as ‘doing things’ or ‘the quantity of one’s cultivation’. Not one of the ancient worthies read it so.

Chengguan’s gloss is the tightest: “to follow conditions and accord with principle, making and cultivating, is called practice.” Following conditions, according with principle, making and cultivating — that is what practice means. Eight graphs, with two joints in them: one is “following conditions”, since practice arises upon objects and is not homework done behind closed doors; the other is “according with principle”, since practice has a direction and is not mere busyness. Without following conditions it becomes empty talk; without according with principle it becomes blind bustle.

Fazang takes apart the four graphs of the chapter title in the sixty-fascicle text, “Gathering of Merit-Flowers”: virtue is the substance of practice, flower is the function of practice, gathering is the aspect of practice. This taking-apart is very useful — practice has its own self (virtue), its function (flower), and its look (gathering). Zhiyan says instead, “merit is the substance of practice; gathering of flowers is a name taken from a simile,” and adds a clause: “it praises practice as surpassing and marvellous, able to serve as the support of the fruit.” What makes practice precious is that it can serve as the support of the fruit.

Clear away a common misunderstanding: do not think of the ten practices as ten things one ought to do, and do not think of them as ten subjects of cultivation. They are ten qualities of “practice” — one and the same act of giving may be the practice of joy or may not be; the difference lies not in the act but in which conditions are followed and which principle is accorded with. Here is where it comes home: the question to put to oneself is not ‘how much did I do today’ but ‘the thing I did today — did it accord with principle, or did it accord with my mood?’

As for the number “ten”, Chengguan says “their number exceeds the dust and sands; it is lodged in the round figure of ten as a means of setting them forth” — the number of practices is more than dust and sands, and lodging them in ten is a way of showing completeness. So there is no need to ask ‘why not nine or eleven?’ He also records the variant names in other scriptures: the Renwang calls them the ten stillnesses, because among the three trainings the mind of concentration is increased; the Fanwang calls them the long nurturing, because they nurture the root of the path. One and the same dharma of station, each name established from one sense.

Chengguan’s outline in seven parts: how this chapter is assembled

Chengguan outlines the chapter in seven parts: the part of samādhi, the part of empowerment, the part of arising, the part of the root, the part of exposition, the part of manifest attestation, and the part of the repeated verses. Zhiyan, on the sixty-fascicle side, also outlines seven parts, but his sixth is the part of benefit and his seventh the verses. Li Tongxuan dispenses with parts altogether and gives the chapter a long outline in fourteen segments, noting for himself that “since the sūtra itself has its own divisions, there is no need to trouble over outlining the text” — the sūtra already has its sections, and there is no need to outline them again.

What use is it for a reader to know these seven parts? The use is this: this chapter is not one stretch of talk but a whole rite. Entering concentration (the part of samādhi), the buddhas’ empowerment (the part of empowerment), coming out of concentration and speaking (the part of arising), the summary statement of the substance of practice (the part of the root), the exposition proper of the ten practices (the part of exposition), heaven and earth bearing witness (the part of manifest attestation), and the restating of it all (the part of the repeated verses). Not one of these steps is ornament; each is treated below in turn.

Chengguan also distinguishes one point in particular: this chapter does not follow the pattern of the two preceding assemblies. Those assemblies, besides the chapter of principal exposition of the station, had further chapters distinguishing practice and clarifying virtue; here, “where there is the virtue of practice, practice is taken as principal, and so it is omitted”, and moreover the virtue of practice is already fully matured and the part that follows is gathered into the advancing, so that the dharma of station of the fourth assembly is this one chapter alone. That is to say: both the practice and the virtue of the ten practices are fully spoken within this chapter.

Why he must enter concentration before speaking

The bodhisattva Merit Grove does not speak because he wishes to speak; he first enters the “bodhisattva samādhi of good reflection”.

Chengguan takes the name of the concentration apart graph by graph: it is called “bodhisattva” in order to mark off the concentration of the buddha-fruit — this is the concentration of the causal station, not of the fruition station; it is called “good reflection” because it “skillfully accords with phenomena and principle, discriminating without obstruction, and accomplishes matters without a mind bent on them” — it skillfully follows both phenomena and principle in discriminating, without being held up anywhere, and it accomplishes matters in the midst of having no mind bent on them.

These four graphs, “accomplishing matters without a mind bent on them”, are the crucial ones. Clear away a misunderstanding: do not suppose that “good reflection” means thinking things through very thoroughly. Thinking things through thoroughly is still having a mind bent on them; what the sūtra points to is discriminating clearly without falling into deliberate intent. Li Tongxuan takes another road here: he asks, from the classification of meditations, “why is it called the samādhi of good reflection?” and lists four kinds of meditation, the first being the meditation practised by the foolish — using the gradations of meditation to mark out that this concentration is no ordinary concentration.

Then why is it Merit Grove who enters concentration, and not someone else? Chengguan answers with two things: he is the head of the assembly; and further, it “figures that in speaking the ten practices the manifold virtues are established” — merits like a forest, which is exactly the look of what the ten practices accomplish. The name here is itself the doctrine: the one who speaks the ten practices must have a name that looks like a thicket of manifold virtues.

Where it comes home: anyone who really wants to speak about his own cultivation had best first ask, ‘is this something I have realized, or something I have thought up?’ The sūtra has written that one question as an act of entering concentration.

The part of empowerment: what the buddhas gave

Buddhas as many as the dust motes of ten thousand buddha-lands in each of the ten directions appear, all bearing the same name, Merit Grove. This passage has three matters in it.

The first is empowerment by speech. The buddhas first praise him, “good indeed”, then explain the grounds of the empowerment, and last charge him to expound the Dharma. The grounds list three powers: the power of the joint empowerment of the buddhas of the same name in the ten directions; the power of the past vows and the majestic power of the Tathāgata Vairocana; and the power of the good roots of the host of bodhisattvas. The three powers are raised together, and one may not take only one side: to credit it all to the Buddha’s power leaves the practitioner nothing to do; to credit it all to one’s own power leaves one ignorant of where the Dharma comes from. Chengguan counts the causes of the empowerment here as four matters — the companion buddhas empowering him together, the past vows of the host buddha, the present majesty of the host buddha, and the responsiveness of the great assembly; and he notes that this assembly omits the item of “the good roots that assist the transformation”, or perhaps gathers it into the word “all”.

Then come ten clauses each ending in “because”: to increase the Buddha’s wisdom, to enter deeply into the Dharma realm, to know the realm of beings, that what is entered be unobstructed, that what is practised be unhindered, to obtain measureless skillful means, to take in the very nature of omniscience, to awaken to all dharmas, to know all the faculties, to be able to uphold and expound all dharmas — and only when these ten matters have been spoken is the theme itself named: “to give rise to the ten kinds of practice of the bodhisattvas”. Chengguan outlines this passage as eleven clauses: the first ten state it particularly, the last one sums up. This way of outlining is worth remembering: the first ten clauses are ‘why it is to be spoken’, and only the last clause is ‘what is to be spoken’.

The second is empowerment by mind. The buddhas confer on the bodhisattva Merit Grove eleven kinds of wisdom: unobstructed wisdom, unattached wisdom, uninterrupted wisdom, teacherless wisdom, undeluded wisdom, undeviating wisdom, unerring wisdom, measureless wisdom, unsurpassed wisdom, untiring wisdom, and wisdom that cannot be taken away. Almost every one of the eleven names is stated by negation — they say not what has been given but what obstruction has been removed. Chengguan pairs them here with nine kinds of eloquence, and singles out the third alone, teacherless wisdom, saying: neither the assembly before nor the assembly after confers this wisdom, and it belongs to this assembly alone; moreover it “is the wisdom of original awakening, obtained of itself through the revealing cause, awakened to without a teacher; because it is disclosed by borrowing the condition of the Buddha, one may speak of its being conferred.”

That sentence is the doctrinal eye of the part of empowerment in this chapter. Since it is the wisdom of original awakening, obtained of oneself and not through a teacher, it is not something the buddhas give from outside; the sūtra says “confer” because it takes the condition of the Buddha to bring it to light. Clear away a misunderstanding: do not read “the buddhas conferred wisdom” as the buddhas loading wisdom into the bodhisattva’s mind. The sūtra states the reason plainly itself — “Why so? Because such is the power of this samādhi, and because the dharmas are of themselves so.” The dharmas are just so of themselves; it is no extra favour from the buddhas.

The third is empowerment by body. The buddhas each stretch out a right hand and stroke the crown of the bodhisattva Merit Grove, in order to increase his majestic power. Empowerment by mouth, by mind, and by body — the three acts complete: this is the fixed form of the part of empowerment in the assemblies of this sūtra.

Where it comes home: when a person really is able to speak profound Dharma, he generally does not feel that it is his own accomplishment. This passage writes that fact as a rite.

The part of arising and the part of the root: practice is inconceivable, equal to the Dharma realm and the realm of space

Merit Grove rises from concentration, and the first thing he says is not the names of the ten practices but the substance of practice: “A bodhisattva’s practice is inconceivable, equal to the Dharma realm and the realm of space.”

Here Chengguan works hardest. He says first: “practice is the ocean of practice cultivated by the profound mind” — practice is an ocean cultivated out of the profound mind. Then, that from “equal to the Dharma realm” onward he discloses the character of what is hard to conceive: “its depth equals the Dharma realm and its breadth matches space, and so mind and speech cannot reach it” — in depth equal to the Dharma realm, in breadth matching space, so that the mind cannot conceive it and words cannot say it.

Then he turns it over twice. In the first turn he pairs it by separating “phenomena” from “principle”: phenomenal practice that is identical with principle matches the measurelessness of the Dharma realm of phenomena and equals the boundlessness of space; principial practice that is identical with phenomena matches the stillness of the Dharma realm of principle and equals the absence of characteristics in space. In a word: seen from phenomena, practice is a measureless, boundless many; seen from principle, practice is a still and characteristicless emptiness. Neither of these two faces is a place that speech or thought can reach, and so it is hard to conceive.

The second turn matters more. Chengguan will not let “inconceivable” be read as sheer negation: “Again, if there were only negation, then the ordinary and the noble would be cut off from one another … when negation and fusion are not two, then the substance of conceiving and of not conceiving are alike in quiescence; only then is it called truly inconceivable.” — If one only keeps saying “inconceivable, inconceivable”, then the ordinary and the noble are sundered forever; not only must the ordinary mind and speech be negated, the ordinary mind and speech must also be fused, and then within it conceiving can never be exhausted. Clinging to neither side, negation or fusion, with conceiving and not conceiving alike quiescent — that is what is truly called inconceivable.

Clear away a very common misunderstanding: taking “inconceivable” as the end of the conversation — ‘this cannot be explained’. Chengguan means just the opposite: cannot be explained is only half; the other half is cannot be exhausted. Where it comes home: meeting a profound teaching, one should neither think one has thought it through, nor think that thinking about it is wasted effort.

Then why is the practice of a bodhisattva at the causal station beyond conceiving? The sūtra poses its own question and gives its own answer: “Why so? Because a bodhisattva-mahāsattva practises by learning from the buddhas of the three times.” Chengguan explains this question and answer: because it is the same as the buddha-fruit — a buddha exhausts the furthest bound of phenomenal practice and reaches the utmost limit of principial practice, cuts off every obstruction and realizes every principle, cause round and fruit full, fused without obstruction; and since what the bodhisattva learns is just this, how could it still be conceived?

Chengguan also takes the occasion here to set out how many layers the substance of practice has: if one takes what is depended upon, it is the samādhi of good reflection just spoken of; if one takes what is contemplated, it is the two truths fused together; if one takes that which contemplates, it is compassion and wisdom unobstructed; if one takes the aspect of the teaching, it is the four lines that follow; and “if one takes the particular substance of the ten practices, then the ten perfections are the substance.” This last clause is where the commentarial ground for pairing the ten practices with the ten perfections lies, and the next section treats it.

The names of the ten practices and their pairing with the ten perfections

The sūtra then states the number and lists the names: a bodhisattva-mahāsattva has ten kinds of practice, which the buddhas of the three times have expounded; and what are the ten? Joy, benefiting, non-opposition, unbending, without deluded confusion, good manifestation, non-attachment, hard to attain, good dharmas, the real — these are the ten.

First, a matter belonging to the base text itself. The name of the fifth practice appears in two forms within this chapter: the list of names reads “the practice without deluded confusion”, whereas the opening and the closing sentence of the exposition both read “the practice of parting from deluded confusion”. Two forms stand side by side within one and the same chapter, and this reader follows the base text graph for graph throughout, without evening them out on its behalf. Chengguan, when he outlines this practice, takes “the practice of parting from deluded confusion”. Again, the fourth practice appears three times in the base text with the graph written with the wood radical, whereas Chengguan’s commentary writes it with the hand radical and glosses it, “to bend is to be crooked, to be weak; that is, firm and strong vigour” — the gloss is bent, soft, and so “unbending” is vigour neither bent nor soft.

Now the pairing. Chengguan pairs each practice with the ten perfections: the first practice, that of joy, with the perfection of giving (dāna); the second, that of benefiting, with the perfection of morality; the third, that of non-opposition, with the perfection of forbearance; the fourth, that of unbending, with the perfection of vigour; the fifth, that of parting from deluded confusion, with the perfection of meditation; the sixth, that of good manifestation, with the perfection of wisdom; the seventh, that of non-attachment, with the perfection of skillful means; the eighth, that hard to attain, with the perfection of vows; the ninth, that of good dharmas, with the perfection of powers; the tenth, that of the real, with the perfection of knowledge. To the six perfections are added the four of skillful means, vows, powers, and knowledge, so that ten practices and ten perfections come out even. He also sets up a general rule: “explaining the names in terms of the ten perfections, each perfection has three.”

This pairing is Chengguan’s outline; the sūtra itself nowhere says ‘the ten practices are the ten perfections’. But the sūtra has left one internal attestation: the first line of the eighteenth of the repeated verses is “the dāna-pāramitā already fulfilled” — at the place where the first practice is being restated in verse, the sūtra itself names the perfection of giving. In the whole sūtra text of the chapter the word “pāramitā” occurs only twice, the other being the general phrase “the perfections” within the eighth practice, that hard to attain. So this line is the only individual naming of a perfection, and it falls exactly on the first practice. This does not amount to the sūtra marking the ten perfections itself, but it is enough to show that the pairing is not made out of nothing.

Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle side, extends the pairing much further. Under his gate of tenet and purport he first gathers ten senses under the dharma of provisional placement in the three vehicles, saying that the ten practices belong to the station of the perfection of cause, to the second asaṃkhyeya, that of the practice of vigour, to the station of the wisdom of reflection among the six wisdoms, to the forbearance of practice among the six forbearances, to the nature-lineage among the six lineages … He also divides “general practices” from “specific practices”: the general are the ten practices of faith and the rest, and the specific are these ten perfections, and what this chapter clarifies is the specific and not the general. Only then does he set up his third gate, clarifying the Samantabhadra practice in terms of the perfect teaching — within these ten practices are gathered the practices of all the stations before and after.

Li Tongxuan, for his part, delivers a very hard judgement on sequence: “These ten practices are altogether a gateway of practice of one time and one thought, without before and after; do not form the view of before and after, of extension and contraction.” The ten practices are not ten steps to be climbed one at a time; they are ten faces within one time and one thought. This judgement runs on a different track from Chengguan’s and Fazang’s explanations, which follow practice by practice the sequence of the ten perfections; anciently there are these two accounts, and both are recorded without adjudication.

Where it comes home: in reading the ten practices, both ways of reading have their use. When you are checking whether your own cultivation has gone lopsided, read by the sequence of the ten perfections; when you catch yourself thinking ‘I have not yet reached the seventh practice’, remember that sentence of Li Tongxuan’s.

Practice one, joy: giving until one does not see any giving

The heading sentence of the first practice is “Sons of the Buddha! What is a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s practice of joy?”, and it is immediately followed by “this bodhisattva is a great donor: whatever he possesses he is able to give away”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of giving and outlines this practice in three: the questioning of the name, the explanation of its character, and the concluding of the name; and within the explanation of its character he first briefly distinguishes the substance and the character, and then expounds at length from “when he cultivates this practice” onward.

First a question: giving is giving things away — why is it called the practice of “joy”? The sūtra’s answer lies not in the giving but in the mind of the giving. “His mind is even, without regret or grudging; he does not look for reward, does not seek a good name, does not covet gain and support” — five clauses striking out five impurities: unevenness, regret afterwards, angling for return, wanting reputation, coveting offerings. Only when these have been struck out does it say why he gives: to rescue, to gather in, and to benefit all beings, and to learn, be mindful of, delight in, purify, increase, uphold, manifest, and expound the practice originally cultivated by the buddhas. Eight verbs strung to “the practice originally cultivated by the buddhas”, saying eight layers of one and the same thing — from learning it, thinking of it, and loving it, to making it pure, increasing it, upholding it, manifesting it, and expounding it.

Now look at that extremely hard situation. “Suppose that, thought after thought, measureless and countless beings come to where the bodhisattva is” — and what they beg for is not wealth but “give us the flesh of your body”. The bodhisattva gives it on the spot, making them joyful and satisfied; measureless hundreds of thousands of beings keep coming to beg, and the bodhisattva not only does not shrink back but is “doubly joyful”, and thinks: “these beings are my field of merit, they are my good friends; without waiting for me to ask, without waiting for me to invite, they come to teach me to enter into the Buddha’s Dharma.”

This is the eye of this practice. The beggar is not a burden but a teacher; the one who comes begging is teaching the bodhisattva to enter the Buddha’s Dharma. This is where the joy comes from — not forcing oneself to be cheerful, but really seeing where the other’s benefit lies. Clear away a misunderstanding: do not read this passage as ‘the bodhisattva is very good at enduring’. The words the sūtra uses are “doubly joyful”, not ‘bearing it with an effort’.

Then comes the vow. “May all the good roots I have already made, am now making, and shall hereafter make, cause me in the future … to receive a vast body, and with the flesh of that body to fill and satisfy all beings hungry and suffering”, and further, “even if there be one small being not yet fully satisfied, I vow not to give up my life, and the flesh cut from my body shall likewise have no exhaustion”; further still, he vows that the beings who eat his flesh may likewise attain unsurpassed awakening; and the last sentence weighs most: “If there be one being whose mind is not satisfied, I shall in the end not realize unsurpassed perfect awakening.”

Then comes the contemplation. The sūtra immediately “takes apart” this whole magnificent giving: the bodhisattva benefits beings in this way, and yet has no notion of a self, of a being, of existence, of a life, of the various kinds, of a pudgala, of a person, of a māṇava, of an agent, of an experiencer — all ten notions gone. He only contemplates the Dharma realm and the realm of beings, contemplates the dharma without bound, the dharma of emptiness, the dharma of nothing whatever, the dharma without characteristics, the dharma without substance, the dharma without place, the dharma without support, the dharma without doing. When he contemplates thus, “he does not see his own body, does not see the thing given, does not see the one who receives, does not see a field of merit, does not see deeds, does not see retribution, does not see fruit, does not see a great fruit, does not see a small fruit”.

The nine “does not see” clauses are the skeleton of this practice. The more magnificent what came before, the more thoroughly this must be emptied. Where it comes home: if after giving there is still an account in one’s mind — whom I gave to, how much I gave, whether he ought to be grateful — one is still inside “seeing”.

Last is a passage of contemplating the body. The bodhisattva contemplates that the bodies received by beings of the three times are destroyed on the spot, and sighs: beings are deluded, receiving countless bodies in birth-and-death, perilous and frail and not remaining, and yet unwilling “to use this unsolid body to seek that solid body”. That sentence is where the whole practice gathers: giving the flesh of the body is not asceticism but exchanging the unsolid for the solid. And so the closing sentence says: “Sons of the Buddha! This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s first practice, that of joy.”

Practice two, benefiting: discipline is not refraining but not clinging

Under the heading sentence of the second practice comes “this bodhisattva guards pure moral discipline; toward form, sound, smell, taste, and touch his mind clings to nothing”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of morality and judges the explanation of its character to be “first briefly and then at length, both disclosing that the three collections are contained within the nine precepts” — the three collections being the pure discipline of restraint, of gathering good dharmas, and of benefiting sentient beings.

First a question: since it is discipline, why is it called “benefiting”? Because discipline here is not the warding off of wrong but the giving of benefit to others. The sūtra says it plainly: not only does the bodhisattva himself cling to nothing in the five sense-objects, but “he expounds it thus for beings as well”; in keeping the precepts he does not seek majesty and power, high family, riches, fine appearance, or kingship — the five things most wanted in the human world all struck out — and only holds firmly to pure discipline.

Discipline is tested in an extremely hard situation. “Within a single day, suppose countless hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of great evil demons come to where the bodhisattva is”, each demon bringing measureless goddesses, “every one of them skilled in devising means in the matter of the five desires, upright and beautiful, enough to sway and confuse a person’s mind”, holding all manner of precious playthings, to come and confuse the bodhisattva’s intent upon the path. The bodhisattva’s response is a single thought: “these five desires are dharmas that obstruct the path, and even obstruct unsurpassed awakening.” And so he “does not give rise to a single thought of desire, and his mind is as pure as a buddha’s”. The sūtra then adds one exception and one limit: the exception is “only when it is for the skillful transforming of beings”, and the limit is that even then “he does not forsake the mind of omniscience”.

Further down it is stricter still: the bodhisattva will not, on account of desire, trouble a single being, and would rather give up body and life than do what troubles beings; since he first saw a buddha he has never given rise in his mind to a single thought of desire, how much less would he act on it. Clear away a misunderstanding: this passage is not about keeping or breaking the articles of the precepts; it is about how clean the mind is. The sūtra’s standard is “has never given rise in his mind to a single thought”, not ‘has not committed an offence’.

The use of discipline is that it is turned toward the demons. The bodhisattva then thinks: all beings through the long night think upon the five desires, incline toward them, cling to them, steeped and drowned and not free; “I should now cause these demons and the goddesses, and all beings, to abide in unsurpassed discipline”. The very ones who came to confuse him are the ones he means to deliver. This turn is the second reason the practice is called “benefiting”.

Then comes a passage of very great importance, the breaking of clinging. The bodhisattva means to expound the Dharma for beings so as to remove inversion, but the sūtra at once takes apart the relation between “inversion” and “beings” into an eightfold paired negation: apart from beings there is no inversion, apart from inversion there are no beings; it is not that within inversion there are beings, nor that within beings there is inversion; nor is inversion beings, nor are beings inversion; inversion is neither an inner nor an outer dharma; beings are neither an inner nor an outer dharma.

Why take it apart in this way? Because once “inversion” is treated as a real thing lodged in beings, then delivering beings becomes the removing of a thing; and so it can never be removed, and there arises besides the clinging to ‘something removable’. Only after the taking-apart does the sūtra draw its conclusion: all dharmas are false and unreal, swift to arise and swift to cease, without solidity, like a dream, like a shadow, like an illusion, like a conjuration, deluding the foolish.

Last are nine pairs of self and other. “He is himself delivered and causes others to be delivered; is himself liberated and causes others to be liberated”, all the way to “is himself happy and causes others to be happy” — nine pairs, each of them self first and other after. This is the pattern of the practice of benefiting: benefiting is not setting oneself aside in order to complete others, but having something to give because one stands firm oneself. The closing sentence: “Sons of the Buddha! This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s second practice, that of benefiting.”

Practice three, non-opposition: forbearing until one does not feel one is forbearing

Under the heading sentence of the third practice comes “this bodhisattva constantly cultivates the dharma of forbearance, humble and reverent”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of forbearance and judges the explanation of its character to divide in two: first the brief distinguishing of the character of the practice, then the cultivation proper in the face of objects; and within the brief distinguishing there are three passages — cultivating the practice of forbearance, parting from the faults of forbearance, and the intent of cultivating forbearance.

First look at the ‘three threes’. The sūtra says: he does not harm himself, does not harm others, does not harm both; does not grasp at himself, does not grasp at others, does not grasp at both; does not cling to himself, does not cling to others, does not cling to both. Harming, grasping, and clinging — three matters, each set against the three faces of self, other, and both, making nine clauses. These nine clauses are the floor of forbearance: forbearance is not pressing something down but not even giving rise to the motives of harming, grasping, and clinging.

Now look at that list introduced by “namely”. This is one of the four places in this chapter where items are listed one by one, and it must not be passed over. Suppose there are beings numbering a hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of asaṃkhyeyas, and each being conjures up as many mouths, and each mouth utters as many utterances, namely: words that cannot be delighted in, words not of good dharmas, words that do not please the mind, words that cannot be loved, words not of the humane and worthy, words not of noble wisdom, words not in accord with the noble ones, words not to be approached by the noble ones, words deeply to be loathed, words not to be borne to hear — ten kinds of speech, with which they revile the bodhisattva.

These ten kinds of speech are not synonymous repetitions but ten angles: the first four say that it makes one unhappy (cannot be delighted in, not of good dharmas, does not please the mind, cannot be loved), the middle four say that it does not meet the standard of the noble ones (not of the humane and worthy, not of noble wisdom, not in accord with the noble ones, not to be approached by the noble ones), and the last two say that it has reached the extreme (deeply to be loathed, not to be borne to hear). From ‘uncomfortable to hear’ all the way to ‘impossible to listen to at all’. Then it goes further: each of these beings has as many hands, and each hand grasps as many weapons with which to press upon and harm him; and thus, through asaṃkhyeya kalpas, without ever a rest.

Reviling speech followed by bodily harm, and the time stretched to asaṃkhyeya kalpas — this is setting the situation of forbearance at its extreme.

Where is the crux of forbearance? The sūtra writes that at this moment the bodhisattva’s “hair stands on end and his life is about to be cut off” — no prettifying: forbearance really hurts. His thought is: “If, because of this suffering, my mind should be moved and confused, then I would be one who cannot tame himself, cannot guard himself … how then could I make the minds of others pure?” The crux is not whether he can bear it but whether the mind moves; and the reason the mind does not move is not to win a point for himself but “how then could I make the minds of others pure”.

Then come three turns. The first turn looks back: “From beginningless kalpas I have dwelt in birth-and-death and undergone all manner of suffering and affliction” — this suffering did not begin today. The second turn looks down: “This body is empty and still, without self and without what belongs to self, with nothing real to be found, its nature empty and not two; whether suffering or pleasure, there is nothing whatever, because dharmas are empty.” The third turn gives it outward: “I should understand this clearly and expound it widely for others, so that all beings may extinguish this view.”

Last are ten clauses of “for the sake of”. For the sake of being loving and mindful toward beings, of benefiting beings, of bringing beings peace and happiness, of pitying beings, of gathering beings in, of not abandoning beings, of his own awakening, of causing others to awaken, of a mind that does not turn back, of heading toward the Buddha’s path. Among the ten reasons the first six are for beings, the middle two are the awakening of self and other, and the last two are for the path. Where it comes home: if forbearance has only one reason, ‘I want to cultivate patience’, it will not last long; the sūtra gives ten. The closing sentence: “This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s third practice, that of non-opposition.”

Practice four, unbending: vigour is not straining, but not straining for oneself

Under the heading sentence of the fourth practice comes “this bodhisattva cultivates every kind of vigour”, followed at once by the third of this chapter’s lists introduced by “namely” (the first two being in the part of empowerment and in the third practice).

Look at the ten kinds of vigour one by one. Namely: foremost vigour, great vigour, excellent vigour, especially excellent vigour, supremely excellent vigour, supremely marvellous vigour, high vigour, unsurpassed vigour, unequalled vigour, universally pervading vigour. These ten names are a description raised step by step: from “foremost” to “great” to “excellent”, then pushed up three times to “especially excellent”, “supremely excellent”, “supremely marvellous”, then from “high” pushed to “unsurpassed”, then to “unequalled” — by now there is nothing left to compare with. But the last does not push higher; it goes wider: “universally pervading vigour”. The first nine speak of height, the tenth of breadth. There is a point to closing in this way: vigour at its extreme is not fiercer but more pervasive.

Then come six clauses with the word “nature”. His nature is without the three poisons, his nature is without arrogance, his nature does not conceal, his nature is without stinginess and envy, his nature is without flattery and deceit, his nature has shame and conscience of itself. Note that the word used is “nature” and not “does not” — it is not that he forcibly refrains from greed, hatred, and delusion, but that in his very substance these are absent. The cleanness of vigour is established here first.

Then one clause of “in the end he does not …” and twenty clauses of “only in order to … does he practise vigour”. It begins by striking out one thing: “in the end he does not practise vigour in order to trouble a single being.” Then it lists positively: in order to cut off afflictions, to pull up the root of delusion, to remove habitual tendencies; in order to know the realm of beings, to know how beings die here and are born there, to know beings’ afflictions, to know what beings’ minds delight in, to know beings’ objective realms, to know whether beings’ faculties are superior or inferior, to know beings’ mental conduct — seven clauses all on knowing beings; in order to know the Dharma realm; in order to know the root nature, the evenness, and the evenness of the three times of the Buddha’s dharmas; in order to obtain the light of wisdom of the Buddha’s dharmas, to realize the wisdom of the Buddha’s dharmas, to know the one real character of the Buddha’s dharmas, to know that the Buddha’s dharmas are without bound, to obtain the vast, decisive, skillful wisdom of the Buddha’s dharmas, and to obtain the wisdom that distinguishes and expounds the phrases and meanings of the Buddha’s dharmas.

The order of this long string is worth noting: first cutting off one’s own delusion, then knowing beings, then knowing the Dharma realm, and finally knowing the Buddha’s dharmas and being able to speak them. The direction of vigour runs from inside outward, from cutting off to knowing, and from knowing to speaking. Clear away a misunderstanding: do not read vigour as ‘time invested’. The sūtra says not a word about time; everything it says is ‘for the sake of what’.

Two questions and two answers are where this practice is tested. The first question: can you, for each single being of countless worlds, remain in the Avīci hell for countless kalpas undergoing every suffering, so that they may see buddhas, gain happiness, and even reach nirvāṇa, and only then become a buddha yourself? The answer: “I can.” — two words in the sūtra, with not a trace of elaboration.

The second question is more extreme still: there are measureless asaṃkhyeyas of great oceans, and you are to dry them up with the tip of a single hair; there are measureless asaṃkhyeyas of worlds, all to be ground into dust; those drops and motes are to be counted one by one. For the sake of beings you must pass so many kalpas, thought after thought undergoing suffering without a break. This time the sūtra does not even write “I can”, but writes the bodhisattva’s response directly: not only does he give rise to no thought of regret, but “his joy and exultation increase all the more, and he deeply congratulates himself on gaining a great benefit”, and the reason for the congratulation is “because there is such power in me, I can cause those beings forever to escape all suffering”.

Where it comes home: true unbending lies not in gritting one’s teeth and holding on but in not feeling it a loss at all. The closing sentence: “This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s fourth practice, that of unbending.”

Practice five, parting from deluded confusion: concentration is not not hearing, but hearing and not being confused

Under the heading sentence of the fifth practice comes “this bodhisattva accomplishes right mindfulness; his mind is not scattered”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of meditation and judges the explanation of its character to be “first the general disclosure of being without deluded confusion, then the particular clarification of being without deluded confusion”, adding of this general passage that “though the clauses are six, the senses are ten, the first general and the rest particular”.

First look at the general clause. He accomplishes right mindfulness; his mind is not scattered, is firm and unmoving, supremely pure, vast and measureless, and without confusion — one general and five particular. The character of concentration here is not ‘thinking of nothing’ but ‘mindfulness right and unconfused’.

The first “namely” of the fifth practice: upholding utterance without confusion. Because of right mindfulness, he well understands all the speech of the world and can uphold the utterance of the dharmas that transcend the world. Namely: he can uphold the utterance of dharmas that are form and dharmas that are not form; can uphold the utterance that establishes the own-nature of form; and so on to being able to uphold the utterance that establishes the own-nature of feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness — he can uphold the utterance of the own-nature of all five aggregates, and his mind is without deluded confusion. This clause is very important: this concentration is not a leaving behind of language, but a remaining unconfused within the finest language of the characteristics of dharmas.

Then come eight clauses of “his mind is without deluded confusion”: dying here and being born there, entering the womb and leaving the womb, giving rise to the intent upon awakening, serving good friends, diligently cultivating the Buddha’s Dharma, becoming aware of the works of demons, leaving behind the deeds of demons, cultivating bodhisattva practice through kalpas beyond speech — from the great passages of birth and death to daily training, eight situations each named. Note two of them: “becoming aware of the works of demons” and “leaving behind the deeds of demons” — to recognize a demon and to be able to leave it also counts as concentration.

The second “namely” of the fifth practice: the dharmas heard. The most profound Dharma, the vast Dharma, the adorned Dharma, the Dharma of every kind of adornment, the Dharma of expounding every kind of name-body, phrase-body, and syllable-body, the Dharma of bodhisattva adornment, the unsurpassed Dharma of the light of the Buddha’s spiritual power, the pure Dharma of right aspiration and decisive understanding, the Dharma that clings to nothing in the world, the Dharma that distinguishes everything in the world, the exceedingly vast Dharma, the Dharma that parts from the film of delusion and illumines all beings, the Dharma of what is common and not common to all worlds, the unsurpassed Dharma of bodhisattva wisdom, the Dharma of the freedom of omniscience. Having heard them, “through asaṃkhyeya kalpas he does not forget them or lose them; his mind is constantly mindful of them, without a break.”

Why can he not forget? The sūtra answers itself: because when the bodhisattva cultivates he never troubles a single being so as to make him lose mindfulness, does not destroy the true Dharma, and does not cut off good roots. — Because he does not make others lose mindfulness, he does not lose it himself. This is cause and effect, not coincidence.

The third “namely” of the fifth practice: seven kinds of sound. Loud and great sounds, coarse and turbid sounds, sounds that terrify to the utmost, pleasing sounds, displeasing sounds, sounds that jangle and confuse the ear-consciousness, sounds that ruin the six faculties. Among the seven is “pleasing sounds” — what is agreeable to the ear is also on the list of what confuses the mind. This point is often passed over: what can disturb concentration is not only noise but also what is too pleasant to hear.

The fourth “namely” of the fifth practice: eleven kinds of non-confusion. Right mindfulness not confused, the objective realm not confused, samādhi not confused, entering the most profound Dharma not confused, carrying out the practice of awakening not confused, giving rise to the mind of awakening not confused, being mindful of the buddhas not confused, contemplating the real Dharma not confused, the wisdom that transforms beings not confused, the wisdom that purifies beings not confused, resolving the most profound meaning not confused. Then four clauses paired with obstructions: because he does not do evil deeds he has no obstruction of evil deeds; because he does not give rise to afflictions he has no obstruction of afflictions; because he does not slight the Dharma he has no obstruction of Dharma; because he does not malign the true Dharma he has no obstruction of retribution.

The most important sentence comes later. These sounds fill asaṃkhyeya worlds and are unbroken through measureless, countless kalpas; they “are all able to ruin and confuse the bodies, minds, and every faculty of beings, and yet they cannot ruin this bodhisattva’s mind”. Why can they not ruin it? Not because he does not hear them, but because within samādhi he “reflects upon and contemplates all sounds; he well knows the characteristics of the arising, abiding, and ceasing of sounds, and well knows the nature of the arising, abiding, and ceasing of sounds”, and so “he does not give rise to greed, does not give rise to hatred, does not lose right mindfulness; he well takes up their characteristics without being stained by them” — knowing that all sounds are nothing whatever, not to be found, without a maker and without any original limit, the same as the Dharma realm.

This is the eye of this practice. Clear away a misunderstanding: parting from deluded confusion is not stopping up one’s ears. The sūtra’s route is hearing, contemplating, knowing their arising, abiding, and ceasing, and knowing that they are the same as the Dharma realm — he hears more clearly than anyone, and therefore is not confused. Where it comes home: the remedy for distraction is not to hide, but to see clearly how the thing that disturbs you arises, abides, and ceases.

At the last the bodhisattva obtains “the most profound samādhi that parts from sound”, obtains countless hundreds of thousands of samādhis in a single thought, and on hearing sounds his samādhis “gradually grow the more expansive” — sound itself becomes the augmenting condition. The closing sentence: “This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s fifth practice, that of parting from deluded confusion.”

Practice six, good manifestation: he can manifest because there is nothing to be attained

Under the heading sentence of the sixth practice comes “this bodhisattva’s bodily action is pure, his verbal action is pure, his mental action is pure”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of wisdom and cites the three kinds of prajñā stated in the Yuqie — the wisdom that penetrates reality, the wisdom of decisive skill in the five sciences and the three collections, and a third.

First a question: since it is prajñā, why is it called “good manifestation”? Because the look of prajñā here is “manifesting”. The sūtra says: he abides in nothing to be attained and manifests bodily, verbal, and mental action that has nothing to be attained. On one side, “abiding in nothing to be attained”; on the other, “manifesting” — he can manifest precisely because there is nothing to be attained. Were there something to be attained, manifesting would become display; with nothing to be attained, manifesting is skillful means.

The sūtra then pushes on: he knows the three kinds of action are nothing whatever, and because they are without falsity he has no bondage; whatever he manifests is without own-nature and without support; he abides in the mind that is as it truly is, knows the own-nature of measureless minds and the own-nature of all dharmas, nothing attained and without characteristics, most profound and hard to enter; he abides in the true suchness and Dharma-nature of the right position, and by skillful means brings forth what has no retribution of deeds; neither arising nor ceasing, he abides in the realm of nirvāṇa and in the nature of quiescence; he abides in the nature that is truly without own-nature, where the way of speech is cut off, transcending the worlds, without support. Then three clauses of “entering”: entering the dharma that parts from discrimination and is without bond and clinging; entering the real dharma of supremely excellent wisdom; entering the world-transcending dharma that the worlds cannot know. It gathers into one sentence: “This is the bodhisattva’s skillfulness in means, manifesting the characteristic of arising.”

Three “withouts” are the skeleton of this practice. All beings have no own-nature as their nature; all dharmas have the unconditioned as their nature; all lands have no characteristic as their characteristic. Beings, dharmas, and lands — each takes its “without” as its “nature” or “characteristic”. Then it speaks of speech: all the three times are only speech; all speech has, among dharmas, no place of support; all dharmas have, within speech, likewise no place of support. — Dharmas and speech do not depend on one another; this clause empties the very business of “expounding the Dharma” as well.

Then comes a passage very plain in its wording and yet very weighty. “The Buddha’s dharmas are not different from worldly dharmas, and worldly dharmas are not different from the Buddha’s dharmas; the Buddha’s dharmas and worldly dharmas are neither jumbled together nor different.” Not different, and yet not jumbled. Clear away a misunderstanding: not different does not mean mixed into one. The sūtra immediately goes on to say “he knows that the substantial nature of the Dharma realm is even” — it is upon the evenness of substantial nature that they are said not to be different, not that worldly affairs are the same as the Buddha’s Dharma.

Then come five questions. If I do not ripen beings, who will ripen them? If I do not tame beings, who will tame them? If I do not transform beings, who will transform them? If I do not awaken beings, who will awaken them? If I do not purify beings, who will purify them? Five questions asked and answered by himself: “this is what befits me, this is what I ought to do.” This is the most direct passage in the whole chapter — there is no second person to hand it to.

Then comes a description of the plight of beings. If I myself understand this most profound Dharma, then I alone would be liberated; while beings, blind and eyeless, enter the great dangerous road, bound fast by afflictions; like a gravely ill person constantly suffering pain, sunk in the prison of craving and unable to get out, never free of the hells, hungry ghosts, animals, and the realm of Yama … dwelling among the eight difficulties, stained by every defilement, deluded by wrong views, not walking the right path. Only one who sees this clearly can then say what follows: “If these beings are not yet ripened, not yet tamed, and I should abandon them and take realization of unsurpassed perfect awakening for myself, this would not be right.”

This practice closes with a passage of merit. When the bodhisattva abides in this practice, gods, demons, Brahmās, śramaṇas, brahmins, and even gandharvas, asuras and the rest — any who merely see him, dwell with him for a while, honour and make offerings to him, or even merely “hear of him for a moment so that it passes once through their minds” — for all such, what is done is never in vain, and they will certainly accomplish unsurpassed awakening. Where it comes home: the effect of “good manifestation” lies not in what he says but in the very fact of others meeting him. The closing sentence: “This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s sixth practice, that of good manifestation.”

Practice seven, non-attachment: not even attached to being unattached

Under the heading sentence of the seventh practice comes “Sons of the Buddha! With a mind of non-attachment, this bodhisattva is able, thought after thought, to enter asaṃkhyeya worlds”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of skillful means and says: relying on two kinds of skillful means, by dedicating and directing he does not abide in birth-and-death, and by delivering he does not abide in nirvāṇa; abiding in neither, it is called non-attachment.

First look at the passage on offerings. The bodhisattva goes to where asaṃkhyeya tathāgatas are, and with asaṃkhyeyas of flowers, incense, garlands, unguents, powdered incense, garments, precious things, banners and pennants, and marvellous canopies, each in asaṃkhyeya number, he makes offerings. Yet the purpose of offerings so lavish is “for the sake of the ultimate dharma of non-doing, for the sake of abiding in the inconceivable dharma” — doing for the sake of non-doing.

Then comes a long string of “no clinging”. No clinging toward where the buddhas are, no clinging toward the buddha-lands, no clinging toward the marks and signs of a buddha, no clinging in seeing a buddha’s light and hearing a buddha expound the Dharma, no clinging toward the assemblies of the ten directions, and joy at hearing the Dharma with yet no clinging toward the Buddha’s Dharma either. The order of this string runs from outside inward: first the buddha’s land, then the buddha’s bodily marks, then the buddha’s light and expounding, and last not clinging even to the Buddha’s Dharma itself.

Seeing impure worlds he has no aversion either — why? “Because this bodhisattva contemplates in accordance with the dharmas of the buddhas.” Among the dharmas of the buddhas: neither defiled nor pure, neither dark nor light, neither different nor the same, neither real nor false, neither at peace nor in peril, neither right path nor wrong path. Six pairs doubly dismissed, and the discrimination of pure and impure has no footing left.

Then come nine clauses of “no clinging” (six in the form “and yet toward …”: three reading “gives rise to no clinging” and three “his mind clings to nothing”, with three further clauses of “his mind clings to nothing” that lack the “and yet toward”). He transforms beings and yet does not cling to beings; he upholds all dharmas and yet does not cling to dharmas; he gives rise to the mind of awakening and abides where the buddhas abide and yet does not cling to the abode of the buddhas; though there is speech, his mind clings to nothing in speech; he enters the destinies of beings and yet clings to nothing in the destinies of beings; he knows samādhi and can enter and abide in it and yet clings to nothing in samādhi; he goes to measureless buddha-lands, entering, seeing, or abiding in them, and yet clings to nothing in the buddha-lands — and there is added the clause “nor has he the least attachment when he leaves and goes away”.

Note the sentence pattern: each clause is ‘he does it, and does not cling’. It is not not doing, but doing and not clinging. Clear away a very common misunderstanding: reading non-attachment as not bothering with things. The sūtra’s non-attachment is built precisely upon “being able to enter”, “being able to abide”, “being able to practise” — one cannot speak of not clinging to what one has never done.

A passage contemplating ordinary people, after the prediction. Ordinary people are deluded and foolish, without knowledge and vision, without faith and understanding … “hearing that dharmas are empty, their minds are greatly terrified; they leave the true Dharma far behind and dwell in false dharmas; they abandon the level road and enter the road of peril; they turn their backs on the Buddha’s intent and follow after the intent of demons.” These pairs are the weightiest words in the passage: refusing the broad level road and taking the road of peril, refusing the Buddha’s intent and following the demons’ intent. Seeing this, the bodhisattva “increases great compassion and gives rise to every kind of good root without clinging” — not clinging even to the giving rise to good roots.

The passage of the hair’s tip. “With the tip of a hair he measures the whole Dharma realm, and in the space of a single hair’s tip he exhausts kalpas beyond speech beyond speech in transforming and taming all beings; as in the space of one hair’s tip, so in the space of each and every hair’s tip.” And “even for the space of a snap of the fingers he never clings to a self or gives rise to the notion of a self or of what is mine”. Then ten clauses of “does not cling”: not clinging to body, dharmas, mindfulness, vows, samādhi, contemplation, quiescent concentration, the objective realm, the transforming and taming of beings, nor to entering the Dharma realm either. The first eight are the content of his own cultivation, the ninth is the delivering of beings, and the tenth does not cling even to “entering the Dharma realm”. This is peeling away layer by layer to the very bottom.

The reason lies in the five similes. He contemplates the whole Dharma realm as an illusion, the buddhas as shadows, bodhisattva practice as a dream, the Buddha’s expounding of the Dharma as an echo, and every world as a conjuration (since it is sustained by the retribution of deeds); and further, differentiated bodies as an illusion (since they arise from the power of activity), all beings as the mind (since there are all manner of defilements), all dharmas as the true limit (since they cannot be altered). The first five similes say that ‘the objects clung to are of themselves not real’, and the last three clauses each give a reason why. The ground of non-attachment is not willpower but having seen.

Last, one question and one answer. How is it that amid the beings’ various sounds, deeds, clingings, contrivances, conjunctions, driftings, doings, objective realms, various births and various deaths, he can “abide therein and transform them, not letting his own mind be shaken or turn back, nor giving rise to a single thought of stained clinging”? The sūtra answers itself: “Because he has obtained the state of clinging to nothing and depending on nothing, so that benefiting himself and benefiting others are pure and complete.” The closing sentence: “This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s seventh practice, that of non-attachment.”

Practice eight, hard to attain: not abiding in either extreme and yet able to ferry across

Under the heading sentence of the eighth practice comes “this bodhisattva accomplishes good roots hard to attain, good roots hard to subdue …”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of vows and judges the explanation of its character to divide in two: the former clarifies the practice of one’s own portion, the latter the practice of surpassing advance; and he notes that in this practice “supernormal powers are omitted”.

Look at the ten kinds of good root one by one. Good roots hard to attain, hard to subdue, supremely excellent, indestructible, that none can surpass, inconceivable, inexhaustible, of the power of freedom, of great majestic virtue, and of one and the same nature with all buddhas. The first six speak of their difficulty and excellence, the seventh of their inexhaustibility, the eighth and ninth of their power and virtue, and the tenth weighs most — “of one and the same nature with all buddhas”. What makes what is hard to attain hard to attain comes down at the last to being of the same nature as the buddhas.

All three “it is like” similes of this chapter’s prose fall within this practice. This is the densest place in the chapter for figures of speech, and each is treated in turn.

The first simile, the ferryman. “It is like a ferryman: he does not abide on this shore, does not abide on the far shore, does not abide in midstream, and yet he is able to ferry the beings of this shore over to the far shore, because his going and returning have no rest.” The sūtra makes its own correlation: the bodhisattva does not abide in birth-and-death, does not abide in nirvāṇa, nor does he abide in the midstream of birth-and-death, and yet is able to ferry beings across to the far shore, to a place of peace and ease, without fear and without sorrow.

The three non-abidings are the crux: not abiding on this shore (not following birth-and-death) is easy to understand, and not abiding on the far shore (not grasping nirvāṇa) is often heard of; what is hard is not abiding in midstream — not halting at the position of ‘I am ferrying living beings across’. The reason the ferryman can keep on carrying people across is precisely that he halts at neither end.

Then come five pairs of paired negation concerning the realm of beings: not forsaking one being and clinging to many, not forsaking many and clinging to one; neither increasing nor decreasing, neither producing nor extinguishing, neither exhausting nor extending, neither discriminating nor making it two. The reason is that “the bodhisattva enters deeply into the realm of beings as into the Dharma realm, and the realm of beings and the Dharma realm are not two”.

The second simile, drilling wood to bring forth fire. “It is like drilling wood to bring forth fire: the works of the fire are measureless, yet the fire is not extinguished.” The correlation: the bodhisattva’s work of transforming beings has no exhaustion, and yet in the world he abides constantly and is not extinguished. Then five layers of paired negation: neither final nor not final, neither grasping nor not grasping, neither dependent nor without dependence, neither a worldly dharma nor a buddha-dharma, neither an ordinary person nor one who has gained the fruit.

This simile pairs with that of the ferryman: the ferryman simile says “not abiding”, the drilling simile says “not extinguished”. Because he does not abide, he is not trapped; because he is not extinguished, the use of him is inexhaustible.

The third simile, space. “It is like space: in the ten directions, whether past, future, or present, it cannot be found when sought, and yet it is not that there is no space.” The correlation: the bodhisattva contemplates that all dharmas cannot be found, and yet it is not that there are no dharmas.

This simile treats one ailment in particular: hearing “cannot be found” as “does not exist”. Space cannot be got hold of, but who can say there is no space? Immediately after making the correlation the sūtra strings together a series of “does not lose”: as it truly is and without alteration, he does not lose what he does, and everywhere manifests the cultivation of all bodhisattva practices; he does not forsake his great vow, tames beings, and turns the wheel of the true Dharma; he does not destroy cause and effect, nor does he go against the even and marvellous Dharma. — Cannot be found, and yet cause and effect are not destroyed: this is the sentence of this practice most to be remembered.

In between there is also a passage of “does not speak”. When the bodhisattva cultivates he does not speak of the dharma of the two vehicles, does not speak of the Buddha’s Dharma; does not speak of the world, does not speak of worldly dharmas; does not speak of beings, does not speak of the absence of beings; does not speak of defilement, does not speak of purity. Why so? “Because the bodhisattva knows that all dharmas are unstained, ungrasped, unturning, and unretreating.” Nor does he give rise to the thought “I am now cultivating this practice, I have cultivated this practice, I shall cultivate this practice”; he does not cling to the aggregates, elements, and sense-fields, to the inner and outer world, to his great vows, or to the perfections. The reason is that within the Dharma realm there is no dharma called “heading toward the śrāvaka vehicle”, “heading toward the pratyekabuddha vehicle”, “heading toward the bodhisattva vehicle”, “heading toward unsurpassed perfect awakening”, “heading toward the realm of ordinary people”, “heading toward defilement, toward purity, toward birth-and-death, toward nirvāṇa” — even direction itself does not stand.

This practice closes with a deeply moving passage. Worldly beings do not know how to repay kindness, meet one another as foes, cling to wrong views, are foolish and without wisdom, follow after evil companions — “this is exactly the place where I cultivate bodhisattva practice”. Conversely, suppose there were people who knew kindness, who were clever, who had understanding, and good friends filling the world: “I would not cultivate bodhisattva practice there.” Why? “Toward beings I have neither favour nor distance, and nothing I hope for; I do not seek so much as a single thread or hair, or a single word of praise.”

Where it comes home: that the hard place is the very site of practice, anyone can say; the sūtra goes one step further — the easy place I will not even go to. The reason is not bravado but that “for one who acts as a bright guide among beings, the dharma should be just so: not grasping, not seeking”. The closing sentence: “This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s eighth practice, that hard to attain.”

Practice nine, good dharmas: making a pool of cool water

Under the heading sentence of the ninth practice comes “this bodhisattva makes himself a cool pool of Dharma for all the worlds’ gods, humans, demons, Brahmās, śramaṇas, brahmins, gandharvas, and the rest”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of powers, outlines it in three passages — the questioning of the name, the explanation of its character, and the concluding praise — and cites the two powers of the Weishi (the power of deliberation and the power of cultivation) and the three powers of the Benye.

The cool pool of Dharma is the skeleton of this practice. The simile appears once at the opening of the practice and once again at its close: “A bodhisattva abiding in this practice makes himself a cool pool of Dharma for all beings, because he is able to reach the source of all the Buddha’s Dharma.” One simile appearing at both opening and close, and everything in between says how that pool came to be. The pool has three properties: cool (able to relieve fever and affliction), Dharma (what it holds is Dharma), and pool (all may come and draw from it).

The ten dhāraṇīs and the ten inexhaustible eloquences. These are the body proper of this practice, paired item by item: because he obtains the dhāraṇī of pure light, he expounds the Dharma and confers predictions with inexhaustible eloquence; because he obtains the dhāraṇī of complete meaning, his eloquence in meaning is inexhaustible; because he obtains the dhāraṇī of awakening to the real dharma, his eloquence in dharma is inexhaustible; because he obtains the dhāraṇī of glossing and explaining words, his eloquence in wording is inexhaustible; because he obtains the dhāraṇī of the gate of the unobstructed, of boundless phrases and inexhaustible meaning, his unobstructed eloquence is inexhaustible; because he obtains the dhāraṇī of the buddhas’ consecration, by which they consecrate his crown, his joyous eloquence is inexhaustible; because he obtains the gate of the dhāraṇī of awakening not by another, his eloquence of light is inexhaustible; because he obtains the gate of the dhāraṇī of the same eloquence, his eloquence of sameness is inexhaustible; because he obtains the gate of the dhāraṇī of glossing within every kind of meaning-body, phrase-body, and syllable-body, his eloquence in glossing is inexhaustible; because he obtains the dhāraṇī of boundless turning, his boundless eloquence is inexhaustible.

Between each pair the relation is ‘because he has obtained this all-holding, that eloquence is inexhaustible’. A dhāraṇī is “holding”, eloquence is “speaking” — one can speak to the end only if one can hold. Note the order: first the three of meaning, dharma, and wording, then the unobstructed added — this is precisely the order of the four unobstructed eloquences; the six that follow are developments proper to this sūtra.

Then come the fifth and sixth occurrences of “suppose” in this chapter’s prose (there are three within the ninth practice, the seventh being “suppose that words of every kind beyond speech beyond speech came to challenge me”, further on). The first situation: suppose countless beings of every kind of retribution beyond speech gather in one place, an assembly so vast as to fill worlds beyond speech; each being there has asaṃkhyeyas beyond speech of mouths, and each mouth sends forth a hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of sounds, all sounding at once, each with different words and each with a different question — and the bodhisattva “in a single thought is wholly able to receive them and to answer them all, causing them to remove their doubts”. The second situation goes further: suppose that in the space of a single hair’s tip, thought after thought, there appear assemblies at the seat of awakening beyond speech beyond speech, and so in the space of every hair’s tip; exhausting kalpas of the future, “those kalpas may be exhausted, but the assemblies are not exhausted”.

The bodhisattva’s response is four “withouts”: without fright and without timidity, without doubt and without error. And he thinks: suppose all beings, with such verbal activity, came together to question me, I would expound the Dharma for them without break and without end; “in a single thought I would receive them all, in a single sound answer them all, causing them everywhere to awaken with nothing left out”. Four reasons are listed: he obtains the consecration of omniscience, obtains the unobstructed treasury, obtains the full light of all dharmas, and is fully endowed with the wisdom of omniscience.

Then comes an important sentence. After the bodhisattva abides in the practice of good dharmas, he is able to purify himself and also, by skillful means that cling to nothing, to benefit all beings everywhere, and yet “he does not see a single being who has been brought out”. Delivering to the utmost and yet seeing no delivering — this sentence empties once more all the eloquence and answering that went before.

The “namely” of the ninth practice: the ten kinds of body. The body that enters the boundless Dharma realm and is not of the destinies (because it extinguishes every world); the body that enters the boundless Dharma realm and is of the destinies (because it is born in every world); the unborn body (because it abides in the even dharma of non-arising); the unceasing body (because all ceasing and all speech cannot be found); the unreal body (because he has attained what is as it truly is); the unfalse body (because he manifests according to what is fitting); the unshifting body (because it parts from dying here and being born there); the indestructible body (because the nature of the Dharma realm is indestructible); the body of a single characteristic (because the way of speech in the three times is cut off); the signless body (because he is well able to contemplate the characteristics of dharmas).

The ten bodies fall into pairs: not of the destinies and of the destinies (one extinguishing the world, one born in the world), unborn and unceasing, unreal and unfalse, unshifting and indestructible, of a single characteristic and signless. Each pair has one side negating and one side disclosing. Look especially at “the unreal body, because he has attained what is as it truly is” — precisely because he has attained what is as it truly is, his body is said to be unreal; this is the reverse of the ordinary understanding.

Then come the ten similes. A dwelling for all beings (because he nurtures good roots), a rescue (because they gain great peace and ease), a refuge (because he serves as a great place of support), a guide (because they gain unsurpassed escape), a teacher (because they enter the real Dharma), a lamp (because they see clearly the retribution of deeds), a light (because they illumine the most profound and marvellous Dharma), a torch for all the three times (because they understand the real Dharma), an illumination for all worlds (because they enter the ground of light), a beacon for all destinies (because he manifests the freedom of the Tathāgata). The first seven are said with respect to “all beings”, while the last three change the object — the three times, the world, the destinies. From the person to time to place, the scope opens out layer by layer.

Where it comes home: the power of the practice of good dharmas lies not in what it can subdue but in its being something people can rely on. The closing sentence: “Sons of the Buddha! This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s ninth practice, that of good dharmas.”

Practice ten, the real: what he can say, he can do

Under the heading sentence of the tenth practice comes “this bodhisattva accomplishes foremost truthful speech: as he speaks he is able to do, and as he does he is able to speak”. Chengguan pairs it with the perfection of knowledge and says: if taken in terms of the two wisdoms — enjoying the delight of Dharma and ripening sentient beings — both are “as he practises he can speak, as he speaks he can practise”.

First look at those eight graphs. “As he speaks he is able to do, as he does he is able to speak” — what he has said he can do, and what he has done he can say. The two clauses are two faces of one thing: the first guards against empty words, the second against cultivating with one’s head down and being unable to say it clearly. The “real” of the practice of the real has here its first sense: between word and deed there is no seam.

Then come four samenesses with the buddhas of the three times. He learns the true speech of the buddhas of the three times, enters the lineage of the buddhas of the three times, is equal to the good roots of the buddhas of the three times, and obtains the non-dual speech of the buddhas of the three times. Speech, lineage, good roots, speech — the four are linked one to the next, and in the end it returns to “speech”.

Then come the ten wisdoms. The wisdom that knows what is and is not the case for beings, the wisdom of the retribution of deeds past, future, and present, the wisdom of whether the faculties are keen or dull, the wisdom of the various elements, the wisdom of the various understandings, the wisdom of the paths leading to all destinations, the wisdom of the meditations, liberations, and samādhis and their defilement and purity and whether the time for arising is right or not, the wisdom of recollecting former abodes in all worlds, the wisdom of the divine eye, and the wisdom of the exhaustion of the outflows. These are the wisdoms of the Tathāgata’s ten powers. The sūtra immediately adds a clause: “and yet he does not forsake any bodhisattva practice.” Having obtained the wisdom of the Buddha’s ten powers he still does not forsake bodhisattva practice — this is the most important turn in the practice. Why so? “Because he wishes to transform all beings and cause them all to be pure.”

Then come the superior mind and six clauses of “I am”. “If I do not cause all beings to abide in the unsurpassed path of liberation, and yet I myself first accomplish unsurpassed perfect awakening, then I would go against my original vow, and this would not be right.” — First cause all beings to gain unsurpassed awakening and nirvāṇa without remainder, and only then become a buddha. The weightiest sentence is the reason: “It is not that beings invited me to give rise to the aspiration; it is that I of myself act as an uninvited friend to beings.”

Then six declarations about himself: I am supremely excellent (because I cling to nothing in any world); I am supreme (because I abide in the unsurpassed ground of the tamer); I am free of the film over the eye (because I understand that beings are without bound); I am one whose work is done (because my original vow is accomplished); I am one who transforms well (because of the adornment of bodhisattva merit); I am a good support (because I am gathered in by the buddhas of the three times). All six are declarations about himself, and yet each is tied to a “because” — this is not self-aggrandizement but the stating of grounds. Clear away a misunderstanding: this is not conceit. The same bodhisattva has just said that he does not seek “so much as a single thread or hair, or a single word of praise”.

Then comes the freedom of the body. Thought after thought he travels throughout the worlds of the ten directions; thought after thought he goes to buddha-lands beyond speech beyond speech; thought after thought he sees buddhas beyond speech beyond speech and the pure lands they have adorned. And “within his body he manifests all lands, all beings, all dharmas, and all buddhas” — lands manifested within the body: this is the characteristic language of this sūtra.

There are also four similes: he contemplates that bodhisattvas are like an illusion, that all dharmas are like a conjuration, that a buddha’s appearing in the world is like a shadow, and that all worlds are like a dream. They run with the five similes of the seventh practice while pairing differently, and may be read against them.

This practice closes at the high point of the whole chapter. “Because beings all cling to duality, the bodhisattva-mahāsattva abides in great compassion and cultivates such a quiescent dharma; he obtains the Buddha’s ten powers, enters the Dharma realm of Indra’s net, accomplishes the Tathāgata’s unobstructed liberation and the great lion’s roar of the valiant one among humans” — the Dharma realm of Indra’s net is that net of jewels in the palace of Śakra, where one jewel manifests all jewels and all jewels enter one jewel. Chengguan cites this very sentence of the chapter, and does so in order to attest that “one practice gathers in all practices, one station gathers in all stations”.

That is to say: when the ten practices reach the tenth, what is finally given is not a tenth thing but the structure by which the ten practices have all along gathered one another in. The “real” of the tenth practice is real to the point of taking the first nine practices back into itself.

Further on: he obtains fearlessness and can turn the unobstructed and pure wheel of Dharma; obtains liberation through wisdom and knows the objective realms of all worlds; cuts off the returning current of birth-and-death and enters the great ocean of wisdom; for the sake of all beings upholds the true Dharma of the buddhas of the three times and reaches the very source of the real character in the ocean of all the Buddha’s Dharma. The last sentence returns to persons: any who draw near to him — gods, humans, demons, Brahmās, śramaṇas, brahmins, gandharvas, asuras and the rest — “he causes to awaken, to be joyful and pure”. The closing sentence: “This is called a bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s tenth practice, that of the real.”

The part of manifest attestation: heaven and earth bear witness

The ten practices spoken, the sūtra does not draw to a close but first writes the auspicious signs: by the Buddha’s spiritual power, worlds as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land in each of the ten directions quake in six ways — quaking, quaking throughout, quaking throughout equally; rising, rising throughout, rising throughout equally; surging, surging throughout, surging throughout equally; shaking, shaking throughout, shaking throughout equally; roaring, roaring throughout, roaring throughout equally; striking, striking throughout, striking throughout equally. Six names each in three, eighteen aspects in all. Then the heavens rain marvellous flowers, heavenly incense, heavenly powdered incense, heavenly garlands, heavenly garments, heavenly treasures, and heavenly adornments; heavenly music is played and heavenly light sent forth. A last sentence concludes: “Just as in the palace of the Yāma Heaven of this world, where the spiritual transformations appeared as the dharma of the ten practices was expounded, so it is in the worlds of the ten directions as well.”

Chengguan names this part “the part of manifest attestation”, Zhiyan on the sixty-fascicle side calls it “the part of benefit”, and Li Tongxuan divides it into three segments: the quaking of the earth and the raising of offerings, the conclusion that the ten directions are all alike, and the coming of the bodhisattvas of the ten directions to bear witness. The three masters name it differently, and what they point to is one and the same passage.

Why must the earth quake when the exposition is finished? Because the dharma of the ten practices cannot be attested by a person alone, and the movement of heaven and earth is the outward attestation. Where it comes home: this passage reminds the reader that the ten sections above are not ten pieces of argument but something that, when spoken, shakes the world.

The part of attestation accomplished: those who come to bear witness are bodhisattvas, not buddhas

Next comes the passage most easily misread in the structure of speakers in this chapter.

Beyond worlds as many as the dust motes of a hundred thousand buddha-lands in each of the ten directions, there are bodhisattvas as many as the dust motes of a hundred thousand buddha-lands who come together to this land, filling the ten directions, and say to the bodhisattva Merit Grove: “Son of the Buddha! Good indeed! Good indeed! You are well able to expound the practices of the bodhisattvas. We are all of one and the same name, Merit Grove; the worlds where we dwell are all named Banner of Merit; and the tathāgatas of those lands are all of one and the same name, Universal Merit.”

The distinction must be kept clear: those who appear at the head of the chapter, exhorting him, conferring wisdom, and stroking his crown, are the buddhas of the ten directions all named Merit Grove; those who come at the end to bear witness when the exposition is finished are the bodhisattvas of the ten directions all named Merit Grove — the sūtra says plainly “there were bodhisattvas as many as the dust motes of a hundred thousand buddha-lands who came together … and said to the bodhisattva Merit Grove”. Though head and tail alike are “of the same name”, one is buddhas and one is bodhisattvas, and they must not be confounded. Moreover, from beginning to end this chapter has no question and answer: Merit Grove, sustained by the Buddha’s power, expounds throughout by himself, and the bodhisattvas of the ten directions only come to bear witness; they ask nothing.

Zhiyan distinguishes this point most clearly: it is precisely because of this text of the bodhisattvas of the ten directions attesting that one knows the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the same name at the close of the assemblies all come in order to attest the meaning; whereas as to the gathering of those of the same name from the ten directions at the opening of an assembly, they “are merely the resonance that marks the bounds of the station; they are not yet attesting the Dharma” — the opening of the assembly marks the station, and only its close attests the Dharma. The two have different offices.

Li Tongxuan reads it figuratively: that the bodhisattvas of the ten directions are all named Merit Grove figures that the ten practices pervade everywhere; that the buddhas of those lands are named Universal Merit figures that the pervading of the ten practices is the pervading of merit — merit being the fruit drawn forth by the pervading of practice.

There is one more sentence that must not be passed over: “Where our buddhas are, we too expound this Dharma; the assemblies and their retinues, the words and the meanings, are likewise the same, without increase or decrease.” What they expound where their own buddhas are is this same text, with not a word added or taken away, in wording and in meaning. This is the fixed form of this sūtra’s “the ten directions expound alike”, and it is also where “one station gathers in all stations” comes to rest in the sphere of phenomena.

The outline of the repeated verses: how the one hundred and one verses are paired

Merit Grove, sustained by the Buddha’s spiritual power, contemplates everywhere all the assemblies of the ten directions and reaches to the Dharma realm, and speaks one hundred and one verses. Before the verses, the sūtra first lists nine clauses of “in order that … ”: in order that the lineage of the buddhas should not be cut off, that the lineage of the bodhisattvas should be pure, that the lineage of vows should not turn back, that the lineage of practice should continue constantly, that the lineage of the three times should be wholly even; in order to gather in the lineage of all buddhas of the three times; in order to open out and expound the good roots that have been planted; in order to contemplate all the faculties, desires and understandings, afflictions, habitual tendencies, and doings of mental conduct; in order to illumine the awakening of all buddhas. Chengguan outlines this passage as “the manner and intent of speaking the verses”, and judges the intent to have “nine clauses, the first general and the rest particular”.

Five of the nine clauses speak of “lineage” — the lineage of the buddhas, of the bodhisattvas, of vows, of practice, and of the three times. The reason the repeated verses must be spoken is that the lineage should not be cut off. Zhiyan sets a good question here: what is the difference between the buddha-lineage and the bodhisattva-lineage? He answers himself: for a bodhisattva at the causal station, what is accomplished by way of a buddha is the buddha-nature; what is accomplished by the bodhisattva himself is the bodhisattva-nature.

The outline of the verses. Chengguan, following the eighty-fascicle text, judges: “There are one hundred and one verses in all, broadly divided into three: the first one verse expresses homage in general; the next ninety-six verses properly restate the preceding text; the third, four verses, close with praise of its depth and breadth.” Checked graph by graph against the base text: the verses actually count two hundred and two lines, two lines to a verse, making exactly one hundred and one verses; the first verse is “with one mind I reverently bow to the honoured one of the ten powers”, and the last four verses, from “in order that beings may come forth from the world” onward, are precisely the closing praise. Li Tongxuan, following the same text, judges “two hundred and two lines of verse, two lines to a verse”, which agrees with Chengguan.

Zhiyan, following the sixty-fascicle text, judges instead one hundred and twelve verses, divided in three: the seven-graph verse of general praise, the particular praise, and the last four lines concluding the great intent as a whole. Fazang, following the sixty-fascicle text, pairs section by section with the stations, as with “sixteen verses restate the foregoing practice of the real”, “nine verses restate the foregoing virtue of the fullness of cause”, “fifteen verses restate the foregoing virtues of the buddha-fruit”, and finally “third, four verses conclude the ten practices as a whole”. The witnesses the four masters follow are different, and so the numbers they judge naturally differ; the verses of the sixty-fascicle text are in five graphs while those of the eighty-fascicle text are in seven, so that the numbers of lines cannot be compared at all. Anciently there are these four accounts; they are recorded, without judging higher and lower.

What the ninety-six verses in the middle restate. A corner of it can be seen from the outline-words Chengguan leaves at the end of the verses: “Sixth, the two verses from ‘a single light’ onward restate that the benefiting of things is not in vain” — that is, the two verses following the verse “a single light touches without any limit” restate the benefiting of beings that is not passed in vain; and earlier he judges eighteen verses to restate “learning the true speech of the buddhas of the three times and obtaining the Buddha’s ten powers and the rest”, that is, restating the content of the tenth practice, that of the real. It can be seen that these ninety-six verses in the middle restate section by section following the order of the ten practices, and only at the last gather into the closing praise.

A few verses worth looking at singly. The first verse is the homage: “With one mind I reverently bow to the world-honoured one of the ten powers, who is stainless and pure, who sees all without obstruction, whose objective realm is deep and far and has no peer, who abides in the path that is like space.” — The object of homage is nothing else than the one who “abides in the path that is like space”, answering to the clause of the part of the root, “equal to the Dharma realm and the realm of space”.

The eighteenth verse is “the dāna-pāramitā already fulfilled, adorned with the marks and signs of a hundred merits” — the only place in the whole sūtra text of the chapter where a perfection is named individually, and it falls at the place of the verse restating the first practice; as said above, it is the internal attestation for pairing the ten practices with the ten perfections.

The fifty-fourth verse, “the measureless, boundless lands he causes all to enter together into a single mote of dust, able to contain them everywhere without obstruction”, and the forty-fourth verse, “in the space of a single hair’s tip he sees the buddhas, their number measureless and beyond speech, and so it is throughout the whole Dharma realm” — these two verses are this chapter’s verse-form of this sūtra’s sense that small and great are unobstructed, running with the passage on the hair’s tip measuring the Dharma realm in the seventh practice of the prose.

The four verses from the ninety-eighth on are the closing praise. Its way of closing is peculiar: first it asks itself, “this practice is vast and without bound — how could there be one able to know it?”; then it says that suppose bodies divided as many as the Dharma realm and space together extolled it, through a hundred thousand myriad kalpas they could not exhaust it; then it says that suppose measureless, boundless buddhas, through measureless kalpas, could not finish speaking it; and only then comes that rhetorical question: “How much less the gods and humans of the world, and all the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas — could they, through measureless, boundless kalpas, praise and extol it and reach the end?”

All the way, those able to praise are pushed from “divided bodies” to “the buddhas” and then dropped back to ‘gods and humans and the two vehicles’, higher and higher on one side, lower and lower on the other, and there is only one conclusion: it cannot be finished. The whole chapter closes with this — the ten practices are not ten things that can be finished in the telling.

Lineage

The sense of this chapter was carried on by four later tracks, all recorded without adjudication.

The line of Chengguan: it outlines this chapter by four gates (the reason for its coming, the explanation of the name, the tenet and purport, the explanation of the text) and seven parts (samādhi, empowerment, arising, root, exposition, manifest attestation, repeated verses); it glosses practice as “to follow conditions and accord with principle, making and cultivating”, explains the number ten as “lodged in the round figure of ten as a means of setting them forth”, and records the two variant names, the ten stillnesses of the Renwang and the long nurturing of the Fanwang; in distinguishing the substance of practice in the part of the root it sets up four layers (what is depended upon, what is contemplated, that which contemplates, the aspect of the teaching), takes the ten perfections as the particular substance of the ten practices, pairs each practice with the ten perfections of giving, morality, forbearance, vigour, meditation, wisdom, skillful means, vows, powers, and knowledge, and sets up the general rule “explaining the names in terms of the ten perfections, each perfection has three”; at “practice is inconceivable” it sets up the judgement of the two Dharma realms of phenomena and principle, and adds a further layer, “when negation and fusion are not two … only then is it called truly inconceivable”; in the part of empowerment it singles out teacherless wisdom as the wisdom of original awakening and judges it absent from the assemblies before and after; and for the repeated verses it judges the one hundred and one verses as one of homage, ninety-six of restatement, and four of closing praise.

The line of Fazang: on the sixty-fascicle text’s “The Ten Practices of the Bodhisattva Gathering of Merit-Flowers”, it explains the title by “virtue is the substance of practice, flower is the function of practice, gathering is the aspect of practice”, judging it a possessive compound together with a dependent-determinative naming, and treating person and dharma in the title; for tenet and purport it sets up three gates, the first gathering ten senses under the dharma of provisional placement in the three vehicles (the station of the perfection of cause, the second asaṃkhyeya of the practice of vigour, the samādhi-practice of breaking the vessel of space, the revealing-cause seed of the virtue of bliss, the third person of the ten practices, the second station of the wisdom of reflection, the forbearance of practice, the nature-lineage, the sustaining of the skillful means of practice, and the subduing and removing of the śrāvaka’s dread of suffering), noting the sources of each (the Liang Shelun, the Benye jing, the Yuqie and the Dichi); it further divides general practices from specific practices, judging that what this chapter clarifies is the specific and not the general, the cause and not the fruit; and its third gate clarifies the Samantabhadra practice in terms of the perfect teaching, judging that these ten practices fully gather the practices of all the stations before and after. Its pairing of the repeated verses with the stations is set up on the sixty-fascicle text, and its numbers naturally differ from those Chengguan judges on the eighty-fascicle text.

The line of Li Tongxuan: it uses no seven parts but sets up a long outline in fourteen segments, saying for itself “since the sūtra itself has its own divisions, there is no need to trouble over outlining the text”; it tells day from night by the opening and closing of the lotuses of the Yāma Heaven, whence the name heaven of time-divisions, and so explains why this chapter is spoken in this heaven; it figures that practice is unattached by the ten abodes resting on the summit of Sumeru and the ten practices resting on space; it takes the bodhisattvas of the ten directions named Merit Grove as figuring that the ten practices pervade everywhere, and the buddhas named Universal Merit as figuring that merit pervades everywhere; on sequence it delivers a hard judgement — “the ten practices are altogether a gateway of practice of one time and one thought, without before and after; do not form the view of before and after, of extension and contraction”; and it glosses “reaching to the Dharma realm”, that to reach is to extend to. This track is chiefly one of figurative reading, running differently from the track of outlining through the words; anciently there is this account, and it is recorded.

The line of Zhiyan: on the sixty-fascicle text it sets up five gates (the explanation of the name together with the reason for its coming, what is counteracted, what is obtained, what is accomplished, the explanation of the text), judging what is counteracted to be “for the final teaching of the three vehicles, the obstruction of the śrāvaka’s dread of suffering”, what is obtained to be “the general practices, concentration, and the good roots of forbearance”, and what is accomplished to be the station of the ten practices; it outlines seven parts, of which the sixth is named the part of benefit and the seventh the verses; at the empowerment by mind it sets up questions and answers to distinguish why the sixty-fascicle text confers dharma while the preceding assembly conferred wisdom, answering that “dharma is born from wisdom, and so it is what directly accomplishes practice”; at the part of manifest attestation it distinguishes the differing offices of those of the same name at the opening and at the close of the assembly — the opening is resonance marking the station, and only the close attests the Dharma; it counts one hundred and twelve verses and divides them in three; and it adds at the end the clause “these manifold virtues are all fully present in each of the ten practice-stations above”.

The four masters differ among themselves in the numbers of the divisions, the numbers of the verses, and the sense of the sequence; all are the settled statements of the ancient worthies, and are recorded, without judging higher and lower.

The parallel translations: the corresponding passage of the sixty-fascicle Avataṃsaka is “The Ten Practices of the Bodhisattva Gathering of Merit-Flowers, Chapter Seventeen”; three of the ten names differ entirely from the eighty-fascicle text — the third reads “the practice without anger and hatred”, the fourth “the inexhaustible practice”, the eighth “the practice of reverence”; the name of the concentration is “the samādhi of good subduing” in the sixty-fascicle text and “the samādhi of good reflection” in the eighty; and what is conferred in the empowerment by mind is eleven kinds of wisdom in the eighty-fascicle text and ten dharmas in the sixty. Further, the eighty-fascicle text has, in the first practice, that of joy, the text of begging for the flesh of the body and of the cut flesh not being exhausted, whereas the sixty-fascicle text in this passage says only that he meets what they need and satisfies them all, and has no words of giving the flesh of the body. The two witnesses differ both in fullness and in names; the choice among witnesses belongs to Shi Huijing, and here it is recorded without adjudication.

The works that give this school its guiding outlines: the Huayan jing kongmu zhang sets up a chapter on the ten perfections at the head of its treatment of the Merit-Flower chapter, judging outright that “the ten perfections: these are the dharma of the ten practices”, running with Chengguan’s explaining of the names in terms of the ten perfections; and in three places it clarifies that “the fourth assembly expounds the ten practices”. The Huayan jing zhigui matches the assembly-places with “in Trāyastriṃśa the dharma of the ten abodes is expounded; in the Yāma Heaven and such places the ten practices and the rest are expounded”. The Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang and the Shixuan men in several places list “the ten faiths, the ten understandings, the ten practices, the ten dedications” as a sequence of stations. All of these list names for the comparison of teachings and are not commentary on the sūtra text of this chapter; they too are recorded without adjudication.

Beyond this chapter, the practice and station of the ten practices carry on from the standing firm of “The Ten Abodes” and lead into the storing up of “The Ten Inexhaustible Treasuries” — abiding is not falling back, practice is moving, and the treasuries are the inexhaustibility of what is stored. And the phrase of the tenth practice, that of the real, in this chapter, “entering the Dharma realm of Indra’s net”, has its sense expounded at length in “The Ten Grounds” and in the account of the ten mysteries of this school; this chapter gives that scriptural ground first, within the section on practice-stations, and what follows is able to take it up.