華嚴經 品二十七 十定品 · 第六 智光明藏大三昧Avataṃsaka Sūtra · The Ten Samādhis · The Sixth, the Great Samādhi of the Treasury of the Light of Wisdom

Why This Samādhi Must First Ask After the Name

Samantabhadra speaks the sixth samādhi, and he begins, as before, with a question: “What is the bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s samādhi of the treasury of the light of wisdom?” He does not first teach a method; he first sets up a name. Chengguan’s outline gives each of the ten samādhis a statement, an explanation, and a conclusion, and this is the settled track of the whole Chapter on the Ten Samādhis; the statement is just this question. The misreading to guard against is taking this question for a courteous opening flourish. In truth, to ask after the name is to fix the range: since it is named the treasury of the light of wisdom, what this samādhi treats of is not a still condition of mind but a kind of shining; and how far that shining reaches is what the text below sets out passage by passage. Li Tongxuan explains this name by saying that it means this bodhisattva is able to know all the buddhas within all the kalpas of the future, those who have already spoken the Dharma and those who have not; and he glosses the graph ‘treasury’ by saying that without leaving a single thought-moment it holds within it the wisdom of the kalpas of the three times, and is therefore named a treasury. The name being such, everything laid out later has its place to come home to. Brought down to use: in reading each of the ten samādhis, look first at which side its name falls upon, and you will not read the ten as ten repetitions of one thing.

Knowing the Buddhas of the Future and Their Names: Why the Field Known Is the Future

The first passage says that one who dwells in this samādhi “is able to know all the buddhas there are within all the worlds and all the kalpas of the future,” whether they have spoken the Dharma or not, whether they have been given a prediction or not, and that their names are each unlike the others — numberless names, measureless names, boundless names, on to unspeakable names. The doubt that most easily arises here is this: the matters of the future have not yet happened, so how can they be known? The sūtra’s answer does not lie in argument but in setting out plainly what it is that is known: already spoken is set against not yet spoken, already given a prediction against not yet given one, and this is precisely to make clear that what is known is not confined to what has already been shown, but that the not yet shown lies within the shining as well. Chengguan divides this stretch into the two subdivisions of knowing all the buddhas together and knowing their many names. The reason the names must be told out under nine kinds of name without limit (four ‘without’ and five ‘cannot’) is that the appearing of buddhas is of itself without limit, and their names are without limit accordingly; it is not that one is meant to memorize nine numbers. Brought down to use: this passage first pushes open the border of ‘knowing’ — if what is known reaches only to what is already done, it is not yet the knowing this samādhi speaks of.

The Things They Are to Do: Knowing What They Are to Do

Next the sūtra lists twelve clauses each beginning with ‘are to’: they are to appear in the world, to benefit sentient beings, to be kings among the dharmas, to raise up buddha-work, to speak the benefit of merit, to praise the meaning of goodness, to speak the meaning of the bright portion, to cleanse away the evils, to dwell in virtue, to reveal the truth of the supreme meaning, to enter the station of consecration, to accomplish omniscience. Chengguan sets this under knowing what they are to do. The misreading to guard against here is to see it as a list of predictions, as though the bodhisattva were reckoning out that a certain buddha will do a certain thing in a certain year. Look closely at these twelve clauses: not one of them is a private course of doings; every one is the common road by which a buddha is a buddha — appearing, benefiting beings, kingship in the Dharma, buddha-work, speaking of merit, praise of goodness, speaking of the pure portion, cleansing of evil, dwelling in virtue, revealing of the supreme meaning, consecration, omniscience: from the first appearing to the accomplishing of omniscience it is one complete track. What is known being a track, it is not divination. Brought down to use: to know the future is not to know the particulars, it is to know that the Dharma must be thus.

Ten Times ‘Perfect’: Fullness of Cause and Completeness of Fruit

The fourth passage sets ten clauses side by side: they cultivate perfect practice, give rise to perfect vows, enter perfect wisdom, have a perfect assembly, are furnished with perfect adornment, gather perfect merit, awaken to perfect Dharma, obtain perfect fruit, are possessed of perfect marks, accomplish perfect awakening. Chengguan sets this under making clear the knowing of the fullness of their cause and the completeness of their fruit. Why should all ten matters be hung upon the two graphs ‘perfect’? It is easily misread as a rhetorical heaping-up. In fact the first half of these ten clauses belongs to cause and the latter half to fruit: practice, vow, wisdom, assembly, adornment, and merit are the cause that is cultivated; Dharma, fruit, marks, and awakening are the fruit that is obtained. The cause being full, the fruit is therefore complete. And the reason ‘perfect’ recurs in every clause is to let one see that cause and fruit are of one and the same quality — it is not that there is first a scattering of piecemeal causes and then, all at once, a perfect fruit. Brought down to use: in examining your own cultivation, the test is not how many items there are, but whether each item is cultivated toward the perfect.

From Name, Surname, and Clan to the Entering of Nirvāṇa: Knowing What They Now Do

The fifth passage says: the names and surnames and clans of those Tathāgatas, their skillfulness in means, their spiritual penetrations and transformations, their bringing sentient beings to maturity, their entering parinirvāṇa — “all such things as these he knows clearly, every one.” Chengguan sets this under knowing what they now do. Set beside ‘what they are to do’ before it, this subdivision speaks of the actual bearing of a buddha’s shown course of teaching for one lifetime — from the surname and clan into which he takes birth, to the skillfulness and the transformations used in teaching, to the maturing of beings, to the final passing away. The misreading to guard against is supposing that, since the necessity of the Dharma is known, these particular appearances may be passed over. The sūtra goes out of its way to place even so seemingly trifling a matter as name, surname, and clan among the things known, precisely in order to show that this wisdom does not fall into vagueness: the common road must be known, and the particular appearances must be known too. Brought down to use: a wisdom that is real does not find the particulars of things too petty; only a mind that is vague needs generalities to cover itself with.

Entering Measureless Kalpas Within a Single Thought-Moment: How the Bounds Are Broken

The sixth passage begins from “this bodhisattva, within a single thought-moment,” and mounts by degrees all the way: one kalpa, a hundred kalpas, a thousand kalpas, a hundred thousand kalpas, a hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of kalpas; kalpas as many as the dust motes of Jambudvīpa, kalpas as many as the dust motes of the four continents, on to kalpas as many as the dust motes of unspeakably unspeakable buddha-lands; and at last it gathers all up, saying that all the numbers of kalpas in all the worlds of the future are known clearly by wisdom. Chengguan sets this under making clear the knowing of the bounds. This passage is most easily read as a contest of quantity. In truth the point of the mounting lies in the few words at the very front — within a single thought-moment. If one thought-moment could hold only one kalpa, then the greater the number of kalpas the less the thought-moment would suffice; but the sūtra mounts to the unspeakably unspeakable and is still within a single thought-moment, which is precisely to show that between thought-moment and kalpa there is of itself no limit of capacity. When Li Tongxuan glosses ‘treasury’ as holding within a single thought-moment the wisdom of the kalpas of the three times, this is the very thing he speaks of. Chengguan appends to this subdivision one collating remark, saying that the ‘great thousand’ herein is precisely a buddha-land, and that where the sūtra says it twice over this is for the most part a matter of graphs let slip, and it ought to read ‘a hundred buddha-lands’ — this is a commentator’s inference from the sense of the text, and it is recorded without the base text being altered. Brought down to use: the gulf between a single thought-moment and a long kalpa is made by the view that sets bounds; it is not the fact itself.

The Ten Gates of Holding: Why ‘Holding’ Follows Upon ‘Knowing’

The working having been fully told, the sūtra makes its own turn: “Because of this clear knowing, his mind enters further into ten gates of holding.” Chengguan explains this turn by saying that it is because of the knowing that went before that it is held and not lost, and because it is held and not lost that the benefit of holding is gained. Here is a sequence of the first importance: knowing first and holding after. Holding is not a labour begun on a fresh hearth; it is the continuing of knowing. What the sūtra lists is the holding of the Buddha, the holding of the Dharma, the holding of practice, the holding of power, the holding of wisdom, the holding of great compassion, the holding of the clauses of skillfulness in differences, the holding of the dharma of the lion’s taking of birth, the holding of the power of wisdom, the holding of the power of the good friend, the holding of the power of non-abiding, and the holding of the power of the Dharma — it states ten kinds and lists in fact twelve, which Chengguan explains as a number added within a ten, the same precedent as the eleven clauses of the first samādhi. It is a formal usage of the text of the Avataṃsaka, not a graph dropped or intruded. Of several of these clauses Chengguan gives particular explanations: the lion’s taking of birth is not fearing the suffering of birth-and-death; to show the real nature of birth-and-death is called opening the bolt and key of the Dharma, and because one fully knows that birth-and-death is from the first empty one comes out of the mire of desire; the holding of the power of wisdom is the twin running of concentration and wisdom; and entering the holding of the power of non-abiding, the great kalpas do not leave a single thought-moment. Brought down to use: when one learns and cannot hold, it is because one did not truly know at the outset; the mending is to be done at the knowing, not by hard memorizing.

Eleven Kinds of Skillfulness: The Two Sides of Dwelling and Knowing

The dharma-portion of the second benefit runs on through eleven clauses: skillfully dwelling for unspeakably unspeakable kalpas, skillfully dwelling in unspeakably unspeakable lands — these two are ‘dwelling’; the nine that follow are ‘knowing’ — knowing the manifold kinds of sentient beings, knowing the differing appearances of beings, knowing the same and the different recompenses of deeds, knowing diligence and the habit-energies of the faculties and the manifold practices that follow one another in difference, knowing the measureless defiled and pure kinds of thinking, knowing the manifold meanings of the Dharma and its measureless letters and the words in which it is expounded, knowing the manifold appearings of buddhas, their clans, their seasons, the marks they show, the Dharma they speak, the buddha-work they carry out and their entering parinirvāṇa, knowing the boundless gates of wisdom, knowing the measureless manifestations of all the spiritual penetrations. The misreading to guard against is taking ‘skillfulness’ for cleverness of technique. Look closely and what every clause faces is a field of differences: beings have differing appearances, recompense has sameness and difference, practices follow one another in difference, thinking has the defiled and the pure, the meaning of the Dharma has measureless letters — what makes skillfulness skillful is exactly that, facing such unevenness, it is not thrown into confusion. Chengguan judges this stretch to have a dharma-portion, a simile, and a joining, and this is the one portion of dharma. Brought down to use: to be clear and unconfused just where things are most uneven is what is called skillfulness; lumping everything together is not skillfulness, it is failing to see.

The Simile of the Rising Sun: The Sun Singles Out No One for Discrimination

The simile is taken from something utterly commonplace: it is as when the sun rises, and all that there is in the world — villages and encampments, cities and towns, palaces and halls, houses and dwellings, mountains and marshes, birds and beasts, trees and groves, flowers and fruits, all things of every kind such as these — a man who has eyes sees them all plainly. Why raise up the sun? Two things are taken from it: first, that the sunlight reaches everywhere and leaves nothing out; second, that the sun has never singled out some one thing for discrimination and then shone upon it. The misreading to guard against is to put the weight upon ‘the sun is very bright.’ What the sūtra borrows is not the degree of light, but that relation between the shining and the shone-upon in which there is no discrimination and yet nothing is left unreached. And the four words ‘a man who has eyes’ must be noticed as well: though the sun shines universally, seeing or not seeing still hangs upon whether one has eyes — the simile has already laid down within itself the side of the one who receives. Brought down to use: evenness is not vagueness; it is just because the sunlight has no partiality at all that the ten thousand things each show forth their own shape.

The Substance-Nature Is Even, and Yet It Can Know Differentiated Appearances

The joining says: the light of the sun is even, without discrimination, and yet it can cause the eye to see appearances of every kind; this great samādhi is likewise: its substance-nature is even, without discrimination, and yet it can cause the bodhisattva to know unspeakably unspeakable hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of differentiated appearances. This is the eye of this samādhi. The commonest misunderstanding is to take evenness and difference as two ends: that to have evenness one may not have difference, and that to speak of difference is to lose evenness. The sūtra sets the two sentences side by side, and plainly they are one matter: it is precisely because the substance-nature is even and undiscriminating that measureless differences can be shone out; if the one who shines had discrimination first, what is shone upon would be slanted accordingly. Upon this Chengguan sets up two kinds of skillfulness: the first is skillfulness answering to particulars, and therefore the dharma-portion speaks of the unspeakable and measureless and the simile speaks of seeing things of every kind; the second is skillfulness answering to principle, and therefore it speaks of the light of the sun being even. He judges that only when the two are without obstruction to one another is it named skillfulness, and so the joining says “without discrimination he yet is able to know.” Brought down to use: when there is a standpoint in the mind beforehand, what is seen is only the standpoint; an even mind is not one that fails to tell right from wrong, it is one that does not let a preconception act in the eye’s stead.

The Ten Things Not in Vain: Why Benefiting Others Must Be Told Out One by One as ‘Not in Vain’

The third benefit lists ten things not in vain: seeing not in vain, hearing not in vain, dwelling together not in vain, rousing not in vain, practice not in vain, drawing near not in vain, vowing not in vain, the dharma of skillfulness not in vain, raining down the rain of Dharma not in vain, appearing not in vain — of the ten clauses, six close with “causing sentient beings,” “causing boundless worlds,” or “causing all sentient beings” (the first through the fifth, and the tenth); the sixth reads “because it cuts off the doubts of unspeakably unspeakable sentient beings,” and the whole clause has no ‘causing’ in it; the seventh reads “causes them to make surpassing offerings,” the eighth “causes them all to dwell,” the ninth “causes them to dwell in the way of the buddhas” — each with a pattern of its own. Chengguan judges the four benefits, saying the former two are benefit to oneself and the latter two benefit to others, and this is the first of those that benefit others. The two graphs ‘not in vain’ must be guarded against being read as ‘not emptiness’ — the emptiness here is the emptiness of being set up for nothing and falling away to nothing, and not in vain means not for nothing. To see him once, to hear one word of his, to dwell together with him, on to raining down the Dharma for him — each of these truly takes effect, and is not to no purpose. And so each of the ten clauses is tied by the graph ‘because’ to a real benefit: giving rise to roots of goodness, reaching maturity, taming of the mind, acting according to what is spoken, purity of worlds, cutting off of doubt, accomplishment of vows, dwelling in the pure wisdom of unobstructed liberation, dwelling in the way of the buddhas, and all receiving the shining. Brought down to use: benefiting others is measured not by how great the aspiration is, but by whether there is truly one measure of change in the other person.

The Reverence and Service of the Ten Kings: How This Passage Should Be Read

The last passage says that when he gains the ten kinds of what is not in vain, the hosts of the kings of the gods all come and bow their heads to him, the hosts of the dragon kings raise up great clouds of fragrance, the yakṣa kings bow their heads to his feet, the asura kings reverently make offerings, the garuḍa kings surround him before and behind, the Brahmā kings all come and exhort him to speak, the kiṃnara kings and the mahoraga kings join together in praising him, the gandharva kings constantly come and draw near, and the hosts of the kings of men serve him and make offerings. Chengguan sets this under the benefit of the reverence and service of the ten kings. The misreading to guard against is to take it for a description of honour, as though the wage of cultivating samādhi were to be bowed to by people. Li Tongxuan has one important sentence upon this: he says that the names of the kings of the eight classes and the rest were explained already in the first assembly, that here they do not stand for a doctrine, and that it is only by the dharma of making offerings and paying reverence that they draw near to the Tathāgata — meaning that this passage does not have a further symbolic doctrine assigned to it, and the reader need not go hunting for a symbol king by king. Since the appearance of reverence and service comes in the train of the benefit of what is not in vain, one can see that what is revered is the benefit and not the person. Brought down to use: an outward show of reverence was never the aim; and if it be inverted so that reverence becomes the aim, then the ten things not in vain before it are all in vain together.

The Concluding Name: The Skillful Wisdom of the Sixth Great Samādhi, the Treasury of the Light of Wisdom

The last sentence concludes: this is the bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s skillful wisdom of the sixth great samādhi, the treasury of the light of wisdom. As with the other samādhis among the ten, the three portions of statement, explanation, and conclusion are here brought to a close. Note that what the concluding name is tied to is still the words ‘skillful wisdom,’ and not merely the name of the samādhi — the same precedent as the concluding name of the first samādhi. A samādhi begins by asking after its name and ends by concluding upon wisdom; and in between, the six subdivisions of the working and the four benefits are, every one of them, matters of knowing and shining. Return to the doubt with which we began — how can what has not yet happened be known — and the sūtra gives no method of reckoning; it only pushes the field shone upon all the way out to all the worlds and all the kalpas of the future, and then, with the simile of the rising sun, brings it home to “the substance-nature is even, without discrimination.” Brought down to use: what this samādhi teaches is not foreknowledge; it is to bring the mind into such order that it is without discrimination, and then what can be shone upon is of itself far.

Lineage

The explanations of the ancient masters upon this samādhi survive in two houses. Chengguan’s Huayan jing shu judges the explanatory text of this samādhi to divide in two: the former makes clear the working of the samādhi, the latter sets forth the benefits of the samādhi; the working divides into six subdivisions (knowing all the buddhas together · knowing their many names · knowing what they are to do · knowing the fullness of their cause and the completeness of their fruit · knowing what they now do · making clear the knowing of the bounds), the benefits into four (the benefit of entering the holdings · the benefit of gaining skillfulness · the benefit of gaining what is not in vain · the benefit of the reverence and service of the ten kings), and he judges the former two benefits to be benefit to oneself and the latter two benefit to others. Under the subdivision of making clear the knowing of the bounds he appends one collating remark, saying that the sūtra’s ‘great thousand’ is precisely a buddha-land and that where it is said twice over this is for the most part a matter of graphs let slip, and that it ought to read ‘a hundred buddha-lands’; he judges the twelve clauses of the gates of holding to be a number added within a ten; he gives short explanations of the several clauses on the lion’s taking of birth, the opening of the bolt and key of the Dharma, the coming out of the mire of desire, the holding of the power of wisdom, and the holding of the power of non-abiding; and upon the benefit of gaining skillfulness he judges that there are the three portions of dharma, simile, and joining, and sets up the two kinds of skillfulness, answering to particulars and answering to principle, saying that only when the two are without obstruction to one another is it named skillfulness. The commentarial sense to which each section of this exposition is tied comes from here. Li Tongxuan’s Xin Huayan jing lun makes no division into subdivisions and explains only three matters: the ground of the name (that he is able to know all the buddhas within all the kalpas of the future, whether they have already spoken the Dharma or not), the gloss on the sense of ‘treasury’ (that without leaving a single thought-moment it holds within it the wisdom of the kalpas of the three times, and this is named a treasury), and the explanation of the clauses on the offerings of the kings of the eight classes (that this does not stand for a doctrine, but that by the dharma of making offerings and paying reverence they draw near to the Tathāgata), while for the remaining senses he says that they are complete in the text itself. Chengguan’s Yanyi chao has no text upon this samādhi that opens the matter out. Fazang’s Tanxuan ji and Zhiyan’s Souxuan ji are both commentaries upon the Jin translation, the sixty-fascicle Avataṃsaka, and the sixty has no Chapter on the Ten Samādhis; hence neither has a passage explaining this samādhi that could be adduced. Vasubandhu’s Shidi jing lun has no bearing upon this chapter. The Jin translation in sixty fascicles likewise has no text answering to this samādhi, and so there is no parallel translation to be collated. In the books that carry the doctrinal-classification framework of the Huayan school no text tied to this samādhi is to be seen. All this fullness and brevity is recorded as it actually stands, without judgement of higher and lower.