華嚴經 品二十七 十定品 · 第八 一切眾生差別身大三昧Avataṃsaka Sūtra · The Ten Samādhis · The Eighth, the Great Samādhi of the Differentiated Bodies of All Sentient Beings

What This Round of Samādhi Is Asking

The ten great samādhis run through one after another, and every one of them opens with the same sentence — ‘what is the bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s such-and-such samādhi.’ At the eighth round, what Samantabhadra asks after is the samādhi of the differentiated bodies of all sentient beings. The two graphs in the name that strike the eye hardest are ‘differentiated’: the bodies of sentient beings differ by a thousand and a thousand degrees — a human body, the body of a god, the body of a dragon, the body of a yakṣa, one body, a thousand bodies, a nayuta of bodies — and these differences are exactly the wall that stands most solid when an ordinary person looks at the world. This round of samādhi takes ‘differentiated bodies’ for its name precisely because it means to display mastery at the place where the wall is thickest. Hence this passage asks its question differently from the seven rounds before it: it does not only ask ‘what is this samādhi,’ but goes straight on to ask ‘how does he enter it, and how does he rise from it.’ The weight of the whole passage does not fall upon describing a state of samādhi, but upon showing that coming and going between the samādhi and the rising from it is without obstruction. In reading this passage, keep your eye on the two words ‘enter’ and ‘rise’: they are the bone of the whole.

The Ten Kinds of Non-Attachment: The Wisdom That Enters Must First Have Empty Hands

For the first mark of dwelling in this samādhi, the sūtra text sets out not what is obtained but what is let go — ten kinds of having nothing to which one is attached. Lands, quarters, kalpas, multitudes, dharmas, bodhisattvas, the vows of bodhisattvas, samādhis, buddhas, grounds: toward each of them, nothing to which he is attached. One misunderstanding has to be cleared away first: non-attachment is not indifference; it does not mean not adorning buddha-lands, not delivering sentient beings, not making vows. Look closely at how the ten are ordered: from the outer realms (lands, quarters, kalpas, multitudes) to dharmas, then to bodhisattvas and the vows of bodhisattvas, then to samādhi itself, and last to buddhas and to the grounds — the further along, the more they are the things a practitioner can least bear to let go of. Only when even ‘the samādhi I have cultivated,’ ‘the station I have realized,’ and ‘the buddha I have seen’ are not clung to is it called non-attachment. Chengguan glosses this passage by saying that it is through obtaining the ten kinds of non-attachment that the mastery of rising and entering afterward is accomplished; and he further explains that the last clause, ‘all grounds,’ runs through both the ground of buddhahood and the grounds of the bodhisattva. This is the eye of cause and effect for the whole passage: mastery is not some trick that cultivation produces — the hands are emptied first, and only then is the coming and going unobstructed. Brought down to use: wherever you feel that some particular appearance of practice absolutely must be kept, that is precisely where you are not yet free.

Entering and Rising: The Display of Thirty-Nine Interlaced Pairs

The text that answers the question is exceedingly long: a string of paired clauses of entering and rising, linked by semicolons. First see whether their arrangement has any order. Chengguan judges them to be ten classes: the first is the several classes of the direct recompense set over against one another (inner and outer body, the same and the different body, the human body and the body of a yakṣa, on to the body of a Brahmā king and a body of the desire realm); the second is the dependent recompense of the six destinies set over against one another (entering among the gods, rising in the hells, among human beings, in the remaining destinies); the third is the one and the many set over against one another (a thousand bodies, a single body, a nayuta of bodies); the fourth is the four continents and the great seas set over against one another (Jambudvīpa, Godānīya, Uttarakuru, Pūrvavideha, the three continents, the four continents, the multitudes of sentient beings of the seas); the fifth is the great elements and the things and dharmas set over against one another (the sea-gods, the water element, the earth element, the fire element, the wind element, the four great elements, the dharma of non-arising, the Wondrously High Mountain, the seven jeweled mountains, the crops and groves and black mountains); the sixth is the several quarters set over against one another (the adornments of fragrance and flower and jewel, the places below and above where beings take birth); the seventh is the greater and lesser numbers of the multitudes set over against one another (the small thousand, the middling thousand, the great thousand, on to unspeakably unspeakable worlds); the eighth is the defiled and the pure set over against one another; the ninth is the several elements set over against one another (the six sense-fields of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind; one’s own sense-field and another’s); and the tenth mixedly makes clear the several classes (the dust mote, the śrāvaka and the pratyekabuddha, one’s own body and the body of a buddha, the thought-moment and the kalpa, the prior and the later and the middle limit, the three times and the kṣaṇa, suchness and speech).

See these ten classes clearly and you see what the author is about: this is no random heaping up, but the raising of one example for every single boundary that an ordinary person holds to be uncrossable — the boundary of the classes of body, of the destinies, of the many and the few, of place, of matter and the dharma of non-arising, of the defiled and the pure, of faculty and faculty, of the noble and the ordinary, of the thought-moment and the kalpa, of suchness and speech — and then, upon every one of those boundaries, one performance of ‘entering at this end and rising at that.’ The last pair is the tightest of all: entering by suchness, rising by speech; entering by speech, rising by suchness. Suchness, which is apart from words, and speech, which can say — this is the last boundary of all, and it too goes through. Chengguan notes here that the sense of entering and rising in this passage may be read together with the Chapter on the Chief in Goodness.

The Simile of the Ghost Holding a Person’s Body and the Simile of the Spell Raising the Dead Corpse

The first simile speaks of a person held by a ghost: that person’s body trembles and moves and cannot be at rest, while the ghost does not manifest a body of its own. What is it teaching? That ‘the place where the working appears’ and ‘the place from which it is set going’ may be two different places. The ghost is here and the movement is there; and the joining to the dharma is that he enters the samādhi by his own body and rises by another’s. One misunderstanding has to be cleared away here: it is not that the bodhisattva’s spirit runs off into someone else’s body, but that the working of the samādhi is not walled in by the body — that which sets it going has no shape, and that which appears has a mark.

The second simile speaks of a corpse that rises and walks: the corpse is able to do its business by the power of a spell, and though the corpse and the spell are each different, together they accomplish the business. The weight of this simile lies in ‘though each is different, they are able to come together’ — entering the samādhi in the same object-realm and rising in a different one rests precisely upon the fact that differentiated dharmas can come together. Chengguan judges each of the two similes to have its own attachment: the simile of the ghost’s power holding a person is attached to the first and the fourth of the ten classes above, since these are mostly spoken with regard to body; the simile of the spell raising the dead corpse is attached to the second and to the fifth and sixth, since these are mostly spoken with regard to the object-realms of the dependent recompense. Brought down to use: practitioners often suppose that once the state of samādhi is disturbed it is ruined; these two similes say rather that the working can appear in places one would never expect, and that there is no need to hold fast to an appearance of ‘I am in samādhi.’

The Simile of the Monk’s Bodily Penetration and the Simile of the One Taste of the Great Earth

The third simile takes a monk who has obtained mastery of mind: he either makes many bodies out of one body, or makes one body out of many. The sūtra text adds a clause of exclusion on purpose — it is not that the one body has perished and then the many are born, nor that the many bodies have perished and then the one is born. That clause is the eye of the whole simile: if there is birth and perishing, it is still transformation and not mastery. Only when the one and the many appear in each other without arising and without perishing is it the realm of the samādhi. Chengguan attaches this simile to the third and the seventh classes, since these are mostly spoken with regard to number.

The fourth simile takes the great earth: the taste of the earth is of one kind only, while the shoots and crops it grows differ in taste one from another; the earth is without differentiation and yet the tastes are distinct. The joining to the dharma is that the bodhisattva has nothing that he discriminates, and yet there is entering in one kind and rising in many. This simile supplies what the first three lack: those spoke of the difference between agent and object, the difference of realms, the difference of number, while this one says outright that ‘non-discrimination’ and ‘there being differences’ do not conflict — it is exactly because the earth does not pick and choose that the shoots can each come to their own taste. Chengguan judges this simile to be attached to the last three gates together, mixedly making clear the several kinds. Brought down to use: true non-discrimination is not the flattening away of differences, but the no longer taking up and casting away on account of them.

The Ten Dharmas of Praise: The Ten Names That One Within the Samādhi Obtains

One who dwells in this samādhi obtains the praise of ten dharmas of praise. Note the sentence-pattern of these ten clauses: every one of them runs ‘because of such-and-such a sense, therefore he is named such-and-such’ — because he enters suchness he is named the Tathāgata; because he is awake to all dharmas he is named the Buddha; because he is praised by the worlds he is named the master of the Dharma; because he knows all dharmas he is named omniscience; because he is the refuge of the worlds he is named the place of reliance; because he penetrates the skillful means of dharmas he is named the guide; because he leads sentient beings into the path of omniscience he is named the great guide; because he is a lamp for the worlds he is named light; and the last two clauses name him the mastery of the ten powers and the seer of all. This is the establishing of a name by virtue, not the conferring of a name by station. The ninth clause is the longest, and Chengguan matches it phrase by phrase: ‘his heart and purpose are perfect’ is the power’s sense of benefiting oneself; ‘the profit of the meaning is accomplished’ displays the power’s benefiting of others; ‘all that is to be done is done’ manifests the power’s perfection; ‘he dwells in unobstructed wisdom’ displays in general the substance of the power; ‘he discriminates and fully knows all dharmas’ makes clear throughout the functioning of the power. One sees that a single name, ‘the mastery of the ten powers,’ holds within it five layers: self-benefit, the benefit of others, perfection, substance, and functioning. The misunderstanding to be guarded against in reading this section is to read it as a hymn of praise. What it is in fact saying is this: the depth or shallowness of a samādhi is measured at last by what name you are able to bear up under in the world.

The Ten Kinds of Shining Light: Where the Light Reaches Is Where the Way Goes Through

The second benefit is the ten kinds of light. Every clause likewise has its reason attached: he obtains the light of the buddhas, because he is equal with the buddhas; the light of the worlds, because he can adorn and purify them everywhere; the light of sentient beings, because he goes to them all and tames them; the light of fearlessness, because he takes the Dharma realm for his place of awakening and there expounds the Dharma; the light of non-differentiation, because he knows that all dharmas have no natures of this kind and that; the light of skillful means and the light of the real, both of which are fastened to ‘the verge where desire is left behind’ — the one with regard to realizing and entering, the other with regard to the mind attaining equality; the light of the spiritual transformations that pervade all the worlds, because he is upheld by the Buddha and is unceasing; the light of good pondering, because he reaches the shore of the mastery of all the buddhas; and the light of the suchness of all dharmas, because within a single pore he can well expound all things. Light here is not an appearance but a power of shining: wherever it reaches, there the way goes through. The last clause deserves particular notice — within a single pore he well expounds all things: this is the constant measure of the Huayan, the utmost small holding the utmost vast complete, and it answers exactly to the earlier clause of entering within a single dust mote and rising within the dust motes of numberless worlds.

The Ten Kinds of Doing Nothing: Acting and Yet Without Doing, That Is the Depth of the Samādhi

The third benefit is the ten kinds of doing nothing: in the deeds of body, of speech, and of mind there is nothing done; in the spiritual penetrations there is nothing done; in fully knowing that dharmas have no nature, in knowing that deeds are not destroyed, in the wisdom of non-differentiation, in the wisdom of non-arising, in knowing that dharmas do not perish, and in following the letter without destroying the meaning — in all of them, nothing done. This section is the easiest of all to misread as passivity. The misunderstanding to be cleared away is this: doing nothing is not refraining from action, but acting without any ‘I who act’ and without any ‘appearance of the deed done.’ Look at the ordering: first the three kinds of deed, then the spiritual penetrations — this runs from the coarsest activity to the finest power; then the next five clauses turn to the level of wisdom, saying that even such workings of wisdom as ‘fully knowing dharmas,’ ‘knowing deeds,’ ‘non-differentiation,’ ‘non-arising,’ and ‘knowing that dharmas do not perish’ have nothing done in them; and the last clause is the finest of all: following the letter without destroying the meaning. Even the expounding of the Dharma can be without doing. Read together with the two benefits before it, the point is plain: the obtaining of names (the ten dharmas of praise), the obtaining of shining (the ten lights), and yet in truth no doing — names and workings there are, and no doer; and this is where the benefits of the samādhi come to rest.

The Measureless Realm: Eight Pairs of Entering and Rising, and Mastery in the Contrary and the Compliant, the Present and the Absent

The fourth part again sets out entering and rising, but not as the second part did. Chengguan points out the difference: the earlier second part made clear only entering and rising, whereas here the contrary and the compliant, the present and the absent, and the rest are made clear as well, and set forth as realms of every kind. The eight pairs are these: one and many, same and different, fine and coarse, great and small, compliant and contrary, having no body and having a body, markless and marked; and the last pair is entering within rising and rising within entering. The first seven pairs are still an exchange between two ends, but the last pair cancels the exchange itself — it is not a going from this end to that, but rising that is at that very moment entering, and entering that is at that very moment rising. Here Chengguan explains the substance of the samādhi outright: ‘entering within rising’ is the stillness that is the very functioning; ‘rising within entering’ is the functioning that is the very stillness; and so the bodhisattva’s samādhi is ever entering and ever rising, ever both entering and rising, ever without entering or rising — and only this is called mastery; and it is in order to display that mastery that the text lodges the meaning in the interlacing of realms of every kind. This sentence is the pivot of the whole passage: the seventy-eight clauses in thirty-nine pairs before it and the six similes after it are all for the sake of saying this one thing — a samādhi is not a room that one has to go into and come out of; stillness and functioning are one substance from the start.

The Simile of the Conjuror and the Simile of the Asuras: Same and Different, Coarse and Fine

The fifth simile speaks of a conjuror holding a spell: the spell and the conjured appearance are two separate things, and the spell is nothing but sound, and yet it conjures up the forms known by eye-consciousness, the sounds known by ear-consciousness, on to the object-realms known by mind-consciousness. One sound manifesting the realms of six consciousnesses — this is called entering the samādhi within the same and rising within the different. Chengguan judges this simile to be attached precisely to the pair of same and different above. What has to be taught clearly here is what ‘same’ and ‘different’ point to in this place: the same is the one that manifests, the different is the many that are manifested; it is not saying that things are really identical.

The sixth simile speaks of the asura king: his body seven hundred yojanas long, his fourfold army numberless thousands of myriads, and at the moment of defeat, by the power of conjuring art, all at once entering the hole of a lotus fibre. At the joining to the dharma the sūtra text speaks with extreme weight — he has already well accomplished the grounds of illusory wisdom; the illusory wisdom is itself the bodhisattva, and the bodhisattva is itself the illusory wisdom. This clause is one of the few outright statements in the whole passage: the wisdom that conjures and the person who cultivates this samādhi are not two, and therefore the differentiated and the undifferentiated can enter into one another. Chengguan attaches this simile to the two pairs of coarse and fine and of small and great, and opens two explanations and records them: if one takes principle and fact as facing one another, then the undifferentiated is the fine and the differentiated is the coarse, since principle is fine and fact is coarse; or else the other way about, the undifferentiated is the coarse, since it is entered by the characteristic of the whole, and the differentiated is the fine, since it is entered by the characteristic of the parts; undifferentiated, it is great and encompasses the Dharma realm, and differentiated, it becomes small according to the fact; and if one speaks of great and small with regard to fact alone, then both are taken in by differentiation. The ancient master lets the two readings stand side by side here, and they are recorded without adjudication.

The Simile of the Farmer and the Simile of the Kalala: One and Many, Present and Absent

The seventh simile speaks of a farmer sowing seed: the seed is below and the fruit grows above. A sentence of the utmost brevity, and yet the joining to the dharma is entering the samādhi within the one and rising within the many. Chengguan says that this simile jointly distinguishes the one and the many with regard to above and below, and that the wording of the sūtra text is abbreviated by implication. What has to be taught clearly is how it divides the work with the simile of the monk’s bodily penetration: there the one and the many appear together at one time, while here the one and the many are cause and effect in two places — the seed here and the fruit there, the one and the many neither in the same place nor at the same time, and it goes through all the same.

The eighth simile speaks of taking birth: the red and the white of man and woman come together, a sentient being takes birth therein, and it is first named the station of the kalala; then in due order it dwells in the womb and fulfills ten months, and by the power of good deeds the limbs and parts are accomplished, the faculties are not lacking, and the mind is clear. The sūtra text points to the crux — the kalala and the six faculties differ in substance and shape, and yet by the power of deeds they are brought to be accomplished in due order. The joining to the dharma is that the bodhisattva, from the station of the kalala of omniscience, grows by degrees in the power of faith, understanding, and vow, his mind vast and moving freely without contrivance, and so he enters the samādhi within the absent and rises within the present. Chengguan judges this simile to be attached to the pair of having a body and having no body above, saying that it takes the going ‘from the absent to the present.’ Of the ten similes this one comes closest to the practitioner: what it speaks of is sequence — how a first station with no discernible shape grows into a body complete in all its faculties. The first thought of practice and the final virtue of the fruit differ in substance and shape, and the power of deeds runs through them both.

The Simile of the Dragon’s Palace and the Simile of the Brahmā Palace: Marked and Markless, and the Universal Manifesting of Every Kind

The ninth simile speaks of the dragon’s palace: the palace is established upon the earth and not upon space, the dragon dwells in the palace and is likewise not in the sky, and yet it can raise clouds that fill the whole sky; the palaces that a person sees in the sky when he looks up are in truth the city of the gandharvas and not the dragon’s palace. The sūtra text adds a sentence of its own by way of conclusion — though the dragon abides below, the clouds are spread above. The joining to the dharma is entering within the markless and rising within the marked. This simile teaches a very fine distinction: there really are clouds in the sky, and that is a true working; the palace seen in the sky is a misrecognition. The appearing of a mark is no falsehood, but the place you point to as its seat may be entirely wrong. Chengguan attaches this simile to the pair of marked and markless.

The tenth simile speaks of the palace of the great Brahmā king of Wondrous Light, named the Most Excellent Pure Treasury of All the Worlds: the palaces of the gods and of the dragons of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system, on to the dwellings of human beings and the three evil destinies, Sumeru and the several mountains, the great seas and the rivers, the cities and the settlements, to the very edge of the great encircling mountains, down to the fine drifting motes in the sky, there is nothing that is not displayed within the Brahmā palace, as one sees a face in a bright mirror. At the joining to the dharma the sūtra text puts ten ‘of every kind’ one after another: he knows lands of every kind, sees buddhas of every kind, delivers multitudes of every kind, realizes dharmas of every kind, accomplishes practices of every kind, fulfills understandings of every kind, enters samādhis of every kind, raises spiritual penetrations of every kind, obtains wisdoms of every kind, and dwells in the very edge of kṣaṇas of every kind. Chengguan says that this simile is a simile for the rising within entering and the entering within rising above, and for the contrary and the compliant set over against one another, and that therefore the joining gathers all up with ‘of every kind.’ To close the ten similes with a mirror is an excellent arrangement: the mirror does not move and the myriad images appear; they appear, and the mirror neither increases nor decreases — and this is the very image of what was said before, ‘ever entering and ever rising, ever without entering or rising.’

Reaching the Ten Far Shores of the Spiritual Penetrations: The Passage Gathered Up by the Far Shore

At the last the ten far shores of the spiritual penetrations are set out. The words ‘far shore’ are words of gathering up — it does not say that he obtains the spiritual penetrations, but that he reaches the far shore of them, which is to say that these penetrations have been carried to their utmost edge. The ten clauses may be seen in three layers: the first two are with regard to buddhas and bodhisattvas (exhausting space and pervading the Dharma realm · the ultimate mastery without differentiation); the middle six are with regard to working (raising up practices and vows and entering the gate of the Tathāgata to do the Buddha’s work · shaking all worlds and making them pure · knowing that the fruits of sentient beings’ deeds are as conjurings · knowing the marks of the differentiated entering and rising, coarse and fine, of the samādhis · valiantly entering the realm of the Tathāgata and giving rise to great vows · making a conjured buddha and turning a conjured wheel of the Dharma so that beings enter the Buddha-vehicle); and the last two are with regard to expounding and to time (fully knowing the unspeakable secret letters and phrases so that the gates of the Dharma become pure · without borrowing day or night or year or month or the number of kalpas, displaying the three times within a single thought-moment). Among them the clause ‘knowing the marks of the differentiated entering and rising, coarse and fine, of the samādhis’ most repays turning over — the whole passage has been about entering and rising, and here the ‘marks of the differentiation of entering and rising’ are themselves listed as an object of knowing: not only is he free in entering and rising, he knows besides every mark of entering and rising there is.

The Concluding Name: The Wisdom of Skillfulness

The whole passage is closed with a single sentence: this is named the bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s eighth great samādhi of the differentiated bodies of all sentient beings, the wisdom of skillfulness. Of the ten rounds of samādhi, the first nine all conclude their names with ‘the great samādhi, the wisdom of skillfulness,’ while the tenth concludes with ‘the vast wisdom of the surpassing mind.’ Look back over the whole passage and it comes clear: the ten non-attachments are the root of skillfulness, the thirty-nine pairs and the ten similes are the marks of skillfulness, the three benefits are the effect of skillfulness, and the ten far shores of the spiritual penetrations are skillfulness at its utmost. That differentiated bodies can serve as the name of a samādhi is precisely because it is at the place of difference that skillfulness is most needed.

Lineage

Two tracks of divergent explanation stand side by side over this passage. Chengguan follows the order of the sūtra text and establishes an outline of five parts — making clear the wisdom that is able to enter, displaying the marks of entering and rising, making clear the benefits of entering the samādhi, making clear the mastery of the realm, gathering the whole up into the ultimate — and within the dharma he judges ten classes, and in the two places of simile-text he attaches the four similes and the six similes severally, and over the pair of coarse and fine he opens two readings by principle and by fact. Li Tongxuan, for his part, does not enter into the outlining of the text but takes up the sense of the establishing of the name, explaining this samādhi thus: one who enters this samādhi can manifest the body of a buddha and can match the differentiated bodies of sentient beings, all of them manifested according to their kind, and hence this name is established; and further, because he is able to enter the samādhi of the same and the different and of the compliant and the contrary, hence this name is established; as for the remaining sense, the sūtra text sets it forth in full of itself. The one follows the text and judges its structure, the other sets forth the Dharma and explains its name; the two tracks run side by side, both are the settled sayings of the ancient masters, and they are recorded without adjudication.

The sixty-fascicle Avataṃsaka has no Chapter on the Ten Samādhis, and therefore neither Fazang’s Tanxuan ji nor Zhiyan’s Souxuan ji has any outline-explanation of this chapter; for this passage, both the parallel translation and these two commentaries are honestly marked as lacking. This itself is worth setting down: the Chapter on the Ten Samādhis is a chapter newly added in the eighty-fascicle text, and the whole weight of its commentarial explanation falls upon Chengguan and Li Tongxuan alone. Whoever reads this chapter should know that the ground beneath its apparatus is altogether unlike the layered ranks of commentators that stand behind the Chapter on the Ten Grounds.