華嚴經 品二十八 十通品Avataṃsaka Sūtra · The Ten Spiritual Penetrations

Why the Ten Penetrations Follow the Ten Samādhis

When a sūtra sets aside a whole chapter for ‘spiritual penetration,’ the doubt a reader most readily falls into is this: is not cultivation supposed to be a departing from craving and seeking? How then does it turn about and get up a display of these strange knacks? That doubt is in fact asking in the wrong place. Look at where the chapter is set, and the matter becomes plain — the chapter before it is the Chapter on the Ten Samādhis, and this one is the Chapter on the Ten Spiritual Penetrations. Chengguan judges the reason for this chapter’s coming, and says it straight out: both chapters make clear that ‘the working is vast’; the former speaks of concentration and this one of penetration, and that is the order of precedence in the doctrine — and moreover ‘it is also because penetration is issued in dependence upon concentration.’ Li Tongxuan judges it in exactly the same way: before there was the Chapter on the Ten Samādhis, and this makes clear the raising of function out of concentration.

So the standing of spiritual penetration here is that of function, not of substance. Concentration is the going deep; penetration is the reaching out everywhere. Without the depth of the chapter before, the reaching of this chapter would be a shallow thing. To take spiritual penetration for an ability that can be hunted after on its own is to peel the function off the substance and look at it apart — and by setting the two chapters side by side the sūtra is precisely forbidding anyone to read it so. Brought down to oneself: if a person has no mind that can rest settled, then what he calls ‘knowing a great deal’ is only the spreading out of distraction, and not penetration at all.

‘Penetration’ and ‘Clarity’: The Doctrine Inside a Quarrel over a Rendering

Of the very same passage, the sixty-fascicle Avataṃsaka renders the title as the Chapter on the Ten Clarities and says there are ‘ten kinds of clarity’; the eighty-fascicle Avataṃsaka renders it as the Chapter on the Ten Spiritual Penetrations and says there are ‘ten kinds of penetration.’ This is no casual change of a graph by the translator; the ancient masters set up a distinction over it.

Chengguan first glosses the two graphs: “penetration is spiritual penetration — a wondrous functioning hard to fathom is called ‘spiritual,’ and being sovereign without any blockage is called ‘penetration.’” The wondrous functioning cannot be fathomed, and so it is called spiritual; there is sovereignty without blockage, and so it is called penetration. Then he says why the Jin rendering calls it clarity: “that the Jin scripture and the Benye alike call them the ten clarities is because the illumining is thorough and leaves nothing out” — clarity is illumining to the very bottom, with nothing left out. Where then do the two names divide? He cites the Zhi lun: “to know directly the affairs of past lives is penetration; to know the causes and conditions and the deeds and practices of the past is clarity” — to know only that such and such happened in a certain past life is penetration; to know as well the causes and conditions and the deeds of that life is clarity. From this Chengguan reconciles them: the penetration this sūtra speaks of is of itself a thorough illumining, and so it too may be called clarity.

Fazang, over on the side of the sixty-fascicle text, sets up the name directly as ‘clarity,’ saying that “the wondrous functioning is sovereign, and being a thorough illumining it is called clarity; and since the functioning of clarity is without limit, ten are set out in order to lodge the perfect within them — which is to say, an explanation that carries a number” — the ten are not a real count, but ten lodged so as to display the perfect. Guard here against a common misreading: do not suppose that because the two recensions diverge one of them must be wrong. The ancient masters’ way with it is to let each state the ground it stands on and let both stand, without judging which is higher; and it is just this way of reading that the reader ought to learn.

Where the Ten Penetrations Come From: Opening the Six Penetrations Out into Ten

How does the number ten arise? Chengguan gives a reckoning of the utmost clarity. He first lists the ten names: first, others’ minds; second, the divine eye; third, knowing the abodes of former lives throughout the kalpas of the past; fourth, all the kalpas to the limit of the future; fifth, the unobstructed and pure divine ear; sixth, dwelling in no substance-nature and without motion going to all the buddha-lands; seventh, well discriminating all speech; eighth, numberless form-bodies; ninth, the knowledge of all dharmas; tenth, entering the samādhi of the extinction of all dharmas. Then he says: “these ten are also an opening out of those six penetrations, since the divine eye, the divine ear, the spiritual bases, and the exhaustion of the outflows are each divided into two.” The divine eye divides into seeing the present (the second) and seeing the future (the fourth); the divine ear divides into hearing sounds (the fifth) and distinguishing speech (the seventh); the spiritual bases divide into the working of going forth (the sixth) and the displaying of form-bodies (the eighth); the exhaustion of the outflows divides into wisdom (the ninth) and concentration (the tenth); others’ minds and past lives, two of them, are not divided — and so six is opened out into ten.

Are the ten penetrations, then, no more than a rearrangement of the six? Chengguan denies that notion: “yet the six penetrations of the Lesser Vehicle have a functioning of wisdom that is bounded, and the level pervading of the three vehicles is likewise not exhaustive; now, in the One Vehicle, the functioning of wisdom of the ten penetrations pervades the Dharma realm layer upon layer, as the net of Indra fuses thought and instant into roundness.” The Yanyi chao puts ‘bounded’ still more concretely: the knowledge of past lives knows only the affairs of eighty thousand kalpas; the divine eye sees only the three-thousandfold world-system; the divine ear, others’ minds, and the spiritual bases are all confined within the three thousand. Where the measure has an edge, that is called bounded.

The Ten Penetrations Alike Have Great Wisdom for Their Substance

Ask one further question: as to these ten penetrations, is their substance-nature one or ten? Chengguan answers: “that these ten all say ‘the knowledge of penetration’ is because they all have great wisdom for their substance-nature.” All ten names hang a single graph, ‘knowledge,’ upon themselves, and that is a marking of the substance. If they are discriminated according to the aspects of affairs, then “the first eight are the wisdom that measures and the last two are the wisdom of principle; but taken as they really are, there is only one unobstructed great wisdom” — the first eight are the measuring wisdom that knows differentiated affairs, and the last two are the wisdom of principle that realizes the level principle; yet spoken of as they really are, they are only one unobstructed great wisdom. Fazang, over on the side of the sixty-fascicle text, judges it exactly the same, and adds a sentence: the last two clarities do not obstruct the raising of function either, and the first eight clarities do not set aside quiescence either.

This one sentence is the key to the whole chapter. Guard against a misunderstanding: do not imagine spiritual penetration as ten different pieces of apparatus. The apparatus is ten, but the place from which they are set going is one — wisdom. If a person’s wisdom has truly arrived, the penetration is there; if the wisdom has not arrived, then imitating ten kinds of knack is only ten kinds of illusion.

The First, the Penetration of the Knowledge of Others’ Minds: What Is Known Is the Difference of Minds, Not the Contents of a Mind

The first penetration says: the bodhisattva, by the penetration of the knowledge of others’ minds, “knows the differences among the minds of the sentient beings of one three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system.” Ask first: if it speaks of knowing others’ minds, why is the name not set up as ‘knowing the affairs of others’ minds’? Chengguan answers: “that the marking says ‘others’ minds’ is because the wisdom takes others’ minds for its object.” The name is set up from the object taken; and if it were set up directly from what is known, it ought to be called ‘the penetration of the differences of minds,’ since the manifold kinds of mind-king and mental factors can all be known.

The scriptural text then lists nearly thirty kinds of mind: good minds, minds not good, vast minds, narrow minds, great minds, small minds, minds that go along with birth-and-death, minds that turn away from birth-and-death, and on to the minds of the gods and dragons and the eight classes, the minds of humans and nonhumans, the minds of the beings of the hells and the animals and the hungry ghosts, and the minds of sentient beings in the many difficult conditions. Chengguan divides this long string: the first ten display the whole in terms of aspect, and the latter twenty display it severally in terms of persons (reckoned on the thirty kinds that include ‘the indeterminate’; the eighty-fascicle text lacks that item, and so has twenty-nine); and the earlier ones stand two by two in pairs — the first two in terms of nature, the next two in terms of conduct, the next two in terms of retribution, and the next two in terms of turning toward and turning away. He also sets down a difference between the recensions: the third item, ‘the indeterminate,’ is wanting here, whereas the Jin rendering has it.

The concluding sentence says, “this is called: the bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s first spiritual penetration of the wisdom that well knows the minds of others,” and it has first laid down a layer of measure: as with the sentient beings of one world, so with the minds of the sentient beings of a hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of worlds and on to as many worlds as the dust motes of unspeakably unspeakable buddha-lands, all of them he can know discriminately. Brought down to a way of reading: the point of the penetration of others’ minds is not the peeping into what is private, it is knowing differences — only when one knows how many ways the minds of sentient beings can run does one know how the Dharma is to be spoken.

The Second, the Penetration of the Knowledge of the Unobstructed and Pure Divine Eye: From Seeing the Aspect to Seeing the Cause

Why must the four graphs ‘unobstructed and pure’ be added to the name of the second penetration? Chengguan glosses them one by one: “that the marking says ‘unobstructed’ is because the seeing is sovereign; ‘pure’ is because it is apart from hindrances; and the divine eye is the penetration itself.”

The scriptural text says that what is seen is sentient beings “dying here and taking birth there, good destinies and evil destinies, marks of merit and marks of offense, comely or ugly, defiled or pure,” and it lists the gods and dragons and the eight classes and on to sentient beings of every kind, minutely fine of body and vast of body. But this is only the aspect of what is seen. The real watershed lies in the latter half: “according to the deeds they have gathered up, according to the pleasure and pain they undergo, according to their minds, according to their discriminations, according to their views, according to their speech, according to their causes, according to their deeds, according to the objects they take, according to all that arises in them — all of it he sees, without the least error.” Chengguan breaks it open here: the earlier part is only the seeing of present aspects, while here is the illumining of causes and conditions, and moreover “the rubric of the ten clarities is set up from this” — the ground on which the Jin rendering calls them clarities comes to rest just at this layer.

Guarding against a misreading: the divine eye is not better eyesight. However good the eyesight, what it sees is still an aspect; to see why the aspect is as it is — that is penetration. Where it comes down to the ground is the concluding words “without the least error”: the reliability of a judgement comes not from seeing far, but from seeing the cause. This is the second spiritual penetration of the knowledge of the unobstructed divine eye.

The Third, the Penetration of the Knowledge of the Recollection of Former Abodes: If the Past Has Already Perished, How Can It Be Known

The name of the third penetration has to be taken apart. Chengguan glosses it: “affairs that have gone by are called former abodes; to remember them clearly in the past is called recollection.” Affairs of the past that have already fallen away are called former abodes, and to remember them distinctly is called recollection.

The scriptural text divides into two layers: first, knowing common affairs — born in such a place, with such a name and clan and race, such food and drink and pleasure and pain, and from the beginningless past “by causes and by conditions, turning about and growing on, one following another in unbroken succession, revolving without a break”; afterward, knowing the affairs of the buddhas — recollecting the names of the buddhas of the past, their arising in the world, their assemblies, their fathers and mothers, their attendants, their śrāvakas and their two great disciples, and on to their accomplishing perfect awakening, their speaking of scriptures, their parinirvāṇa, and the longer or shorter abiding of the Dharma, all of which he can recollect one by one.

Here there is a real difficulty, and Chengguan raises it himself: if a dharma of the past has not yet fallen away, it is not called past; and if it has already fallen away, then there is no dharma there to be known — on what ground, then, is it said that he can recollect and know? And if it be said that there is merely a seed-image left in the mind and now present before it, then he would see only his own mind and not that dharma, and moreover affairs he has never passed through ought to be unrecollectable (yet the sūtra says that even the affairs of others through measureless kalpas can be known). His answer is: “it is all because the bodhisattva has gained the eye of the nine times and sees them as though present.” It is not a searching of the memory; it is that the three times stand present before him within a single thought. The concluding sentence calls this the third spiritual penetration of the wisdom of the abodes of former lives that knows the kalpas to the limit of the past. Brought down to oneself: the ordinary man’s ‘recalling’ is a turning over of shadows, while the sage’s recollective knowing is an illumining here and now — the difference lies in the eye, not in the memory.

The Fourth, the Penetration of the Knowledge of All the Kalpas to the Limit of the Future: The Future Is Not Yet, So How Is It Known

The fourth penetration is symmetrical with the third, the one facing backward and the other forward, and the difficulty for the one facing forward is harder still. The scriptural text says that he can know how, within each single kalpa of the future, sentient beings “at the ending of their lives take birth, how the several existences follow one on another, and their deeds and their fruits of retribution” — good and not good, issuing forth and not issuing forth, fixed and not fixed, wrongly fixed and rightly fixed, roots of goodness together with the afflictive latencies or not together with them, complete or not complete, gathered in or not gathered in, heaped up or not heaped up, and on to whether dharmas of offense are heaped up or not — all of it he knows fully; and he also knows the names of the buddhas of the future and the affairs from their first arising of the mind down to the longer or shorter abiding of the Dharma.

Chengguan sets the difficulty out at once: “yet in the tenet of the Great Vehicle, the dharmas of a future age are without substance and without function alike; how then is this knowing?” He answers in two layers. Spoken according to the teaching of skillful means: it is only that he sees the causal seeds in the present and thereby knows the aspect of the fruit to come, and not that he really sees the substance of a future dharma. Spoken according to the tenet of the One Vehicle: within the nine times, within the future there is a present that has substance and function alike, and so the knowing is according to the real; only, that is not the present of the present, and hence it is still called future.

What is easiest to go astray over here is the taking of foreknowledge for fatalism. The scriptural text supplies its own line of defence: what is known is entirely the stations of deeds and their retributions — fixed and unfixed are set side by side, rightly fixed and wrongly fixed are set side by side. To know the future is to know how the principle of cause and effect unfolds, not to know an unalterable list. The concluding sentence: the fourth spiritual penetration of the wisdom that knows all the kalpas to the limit of the future.

The Fifth, the Penetration of the Knowledge of the Unobstructed and Pure Divine Ear: To Hear or Not to Hear, Sovereign at Will

The scriptural text of the fifth penetration first gives nine clauses of description: full, vast, keen and penetrating, apart from hindrances, comprehending and unobstructed, complete and accomplished; and then it comes to rest upon “toward all sounds whatsoever, he hears when he wishes and does not hear when he does not wish, sovereign according to his own mind.” Chengguan says that the marking of the name above is the general clause, and that these nine clauses “all set out the virtue in terms of function,” and he matches them one by one with their senses: fullness is that the faculties can be used interchangeably; vastness is hearing everywhere throughout the ten directions and the nine times; keenness is taking it in at one moment and penetrating to its source; apartness from hindrances is being apart from the two hindrances; comprehension is a clear knowing of what is known … and the last clause is the weightiest of all: “that is, when he wishes to hear, nothing subtle or distant escapes him; when he wishes not to hear, nothing near or loud disturbs him — and therefore it is called sovereign.”

This one sentence brings out the character of spiritual penetration. What the world imagines a divine ear to be is ‘hearing everything,’ but that in fact is not being sovereign — it is being chased about by sounds. The sovereignty the sūtra speaks of runs both ways: when he wishes to hear, nothing however subtle or however distant can escape; when he wishes not to hear, nothing however near or however loud can stir him.

The latter half raises the dharmas spoken by the buddhas of unspeakably many buddha-lands in the east, “all of which he is able to receive and hold fast,” and the meaning and the letter, the one person and the multitude, the sound and diction and the wisdom, the realm and what is relied upon and the way of issuing forth — “all of which he is able to remember and hold fast, not forgetting and not losing, not breaking off and not falling back, not confused and not perplexed” — and he can further expound them for others and “from first to last never let fall a single letter or a single phrase”; and as it is in the east, so also in the south, the west, the north, the four intermediate points, the zenith and the nadir. Clearly the penetration of the divine ear does not stop at hearing: hearing and holding fast and turning about to speak are one continuous thing. The concluding sentence: the fifth spiritual penetration of the knowledge of the unobstructed and pure divine ear.

The Sixth, the Penetration of the Knowledge of Dwelling in No Substance-Nature: Reaching Everywhere in the Ten Directions Without Moving from His Own Place

The name of the sixth penetration is the longest, and it is also the one in which the tenet of the Huayan is most to be seen. In one breath the scriptural text lists fourteen names: no substance-nature, no doing, sameness, vastness, measurelessness, no reliance, following upon thought, arising, not arising, not falling back, not breaking off, not being ruined, increase and growth, and going wherever he will. Chengguan says that “the first one is the general penetration, that is, no substance-nature, and the rest are all particular,” and he matches them one by one with their senses: no doing is being without effortful function; sameness is being one in principle; vastness is the being able to pervade; measurelessness is that the measure is hard to know; no reliance is that the function is raised not from a substance relied upon; following upon thought is taking shape as soon as thought follows; arising is that there is a present functioning; not arising is not moving from one’s own place; not falling back is that what is done is carried to the utmost; not breaking off is that the function has no interval and also that the lineage of the buddhas is not broken off; not being ruined is that others cannot ruin it; increase and growth is the being able to give rise to roots of goodness; and going wherever he will is going according to wherever he goes. He further points out that among them the four — no doing, sameness, no reliance, and not arising — are the sense of no substance-nature, while the rest are the sense of spiritual penetration, and “because these two do not obstruct one another, it receives this name.”

And so the key sentence of this penetration is established: “as soon as this bodhisattva hears the names of those tathāgatas, without moving from his own place he sees his own body in the presence of that buddha” — the body has not shifted from here to there, and yet it is really there doing homage and serving, asking after the Dharma and entering into wisdom. The scriptural text then adds a sentence harder still: “he reaches everywhere throughout the ten directions and yet there is no going anywhere.”

Why can it be so? Because there is no substance-nature. If the body were a solid piece of something, coming and going would have to take up a stretch of road; since substance-nature is of itself empty, displaying oneself everywhere requires no moving. Guarding against a misreading: this is not to say that spiritual penetration is an illusion, for the sūtra plainly says that “he comprehends in every case the lands of the buddhas, their seats of awakening, their assemblies, and the Dharma they speak” — the working is real; it is only that the reality is not built upon a solid substance. The concluding sentence: the sixth spiritual penetration of the wisdom of dwelling in no substance-nature and without motion going to all the buddha-lands.

The Seventh, the Penetration of the Knowledge That Well Discriminates All Speech: Like the Light of the Sun Shining Everywhere on All Colors

What the seventh penetration asks is this: how is the Dharma to enter into sentient beings of measureless and differing capacities? The scriptural text answers: the bodhisattva fully knows the manifold speech of the sentient beings within unspeakably many worlds — the speech of the noble ones, the speech of those not noble, of gods, dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, humans and nonhumans, and on to all the speech that all sentient beings possess, “each severally signifying something other, manifold in their differences, and all such things as these he is able to know.”

But merely to understand what is heard is not yet enough. The scriptural text goes on: the bodhisattva, according to the world he enters, “is able to know the natures and desires of all the sentient beings within it, and according to their natures and desires puts forth speech, causing them all to understand and be without doubt.” First to know their disposition and what they delight in, and then to put forth speech in accordance with it — this is the order of the speaking of Dharma: not putting out what one happens to have, but saying what the other can receive.

Then comes one of the only two similes of the scriptural text in this chapter: “just as when the light of the sun appears it shines everywhere upon all colors, so that all who have eyes see clearly.” Chengguan judges this passage to have dharma, simile, and joining. The deftness of the simile lies in the four graphs ‘shines everywhere upon all colors’: the sunlight is one and the colors it shines upon are ten thousand; it is not that the sunlight turns blue or yellow or red or white to accommodate them, but that one light lets ten thousand colors each display itself. The joining the scriptural text states itself: the bodhisattva “enters deeply into the cloud of all speech, and all speech is such that he can cause the wise in the world to understand it.” The concluding sentence: the seventh spiritual penetration of the wisdom that well discriminates all speech.

The Eighth, the Penetration of the Knowledge of Numberless Form-Bodies: Only by First Knowing There Is No Form Can Form Be Displayed

The structure of the eighth penetration is the one most to be watched. It does not begin from ‘how many bodies he can conjure up,’ but from “knowing that all dharmas are far removed from the marks of form” — without mark of difference, without mark of manifoldness, without mark of measurelessness, without mark of discrimination, without mark of blue or yellow or red or white. Chengguan divides this penetration into three passages: first, knowing that there is no form, since form is itself emptiness; next, making clear the being able to display form, since emptiness is itself form; afterward, making clear both together, no form and the displaying of form, since what it is done for does not obstruct compassion.

Why must it be turned about so as to speak of formlessness first? Chengguan answers cleanly: it is by comprehending that the Dharma realm has no fixed and solid form, and that in its whole substance it is emptiness — and this emptiness is not an emptiness of annihilation, for “within emptiness there is no form, and it does not obstruct form; keeping and losing, hiding and displaying, are all sovereign; and only so can he display manifold forms according to what is delighted in, and therefore it is made clear first.” If form were solid, it could only be as it already is, and no second kind could be conjured from it; it is just because there is nothing fixed and solid that he can display according to those he transforms.

And so the scriptural text lets go a hundred and more names of form: boundless form, measureless form, pure form, adorned form … all the way to the form that brings forth the treasury of all the tathāgatas and the form complete in all the practice of Samantabhadra. Chengguan says that these names are “either set up from the aspect of form, or given from the virtue and function,” and moreover that they “are all forms that accord with the Dharma realm, unlike the form that alters and obstructs; the names of form are set up merely according to what is displayed” — they are not colors in the material sense, but names for the shapes in which the virtues of the Dharma realm appear. The last passage comes down entirely upon “those he transforms”: causing them to see, causing them to recollect, turning the wheel of the Dharma for them, according to the season, according to the shape, causing them to draw near, causing them to awaken, raising up spiritual penetrations, displaying sovereign powers, performing capable deeds — the reason for displaying form is, from first to last, one only: to deliver sentient beings. And the concluding sentence writes that reason into the name itself: the eighth spiritual penetration of the knowledge of numberless form-bodies, diligently cultivated and accomplished for the sake of delivering all sentient beings.

The Ninth, the Penetration of the Knowledge of All Dharmas (i): Apartness from Words, and the Two Emptinesses

From the ninth penetration onward it turns from the wisdom that measures into the wisdom of principle. The scriptural text uses a long string of doubly-negating clauses to write what is known: all dharmas have no name, have no lineage of nature, do not come and do not go, are not other and not not other, are not manifold and not not manifold, are not two and not not two, have no self and nothing to compare with, are not born and do not cease, do not move and are not ruined, are not real and are not unreal, are one mark and are without mark, are not nonexistent and not existent, are not dharmas and not non-dharmas, do not follow along with the worldly and yet do not not follow along with it … and on to being not according with principle and not other than according with principle.

Chengguan divides this into two gates: “the first is in terms of displaying the real by apartness from words; the second, from ‘no self’ onward, is in terms of displaying the real by the two emptinesses.” The first three clauses of the former gate display the real straight out — a name is “without the power to get hold of the thing,” a lineage of nature is “made by conditions and hence without nature,” and coming and going are “a substance in which going and coming are cut off.” The paired clauses that follow, however, must be read in three ways: first, purely in terms of displaying the real, that they are empty in their mutual dependence, so that since the marks of otherness are each absent to the other one says ‘not other,’ and then, having blocked ‘other,’ one says ‘not other’ and finds that even ‘not other’ cannot be got hold of, and so one says ‘not not other’; second, in terms of displaying both aspects of the substance; third, in terms of blocking both and their being mutually identical.

The illness most easily fallen into here is the reading of these ‘nots’ as nothingness. Chengguan gives a particular warning: “therefore he departs from the two extremes and does not dwell in the middle way.” Not even the middle way is allowed to be grasped as a footing. As for the phrase ‘nothing to compare with,’ he glosses it as there being no mine that can be set over against a self. This passage is not abstruse talk; it is the loosening, one by one, of every handhold in the language of ordinary men.

The Ninth, the Penetration of the Knowledge of All Dharmas (ii): Not Grasping the Two Truths and Yet Speaking the Dharma Inexhaustibly

If all dharmas are thus unspeakable, is the Dharma still to be spoken or not? The scriptural text’s answer is the most beautiful turn in the whole chapter: “this bodhisattva does not grasp the conventional truth and does not dwell in the highest, does not discriminate dharmas and does not set up letters, goes along with the nature of quiescent cessation and yet does not cast away all his vows” — he does not set up letters, and yet does not cast away his great vows; and so “he sees the meaning and knows the dharmas, spreads out the cloud of the Dharma and pours down the rain of Dharma.”

Chengguan judges this latter half to be “the benefiting of others by expounding the Dharma,” and divides it into three sections: first taking up the wisdom accomplished above as that upon which the raising of function depends; next properly making clear the expounding of the Dharma; afterward making clear that quiescence and function do not obstruct one another — and this last is further divided into three lesser sections: first, quiescence not obstructing function; next, from “though he has words” onward, function not obstructing quiescence; afterward, from “within the not-two” onward, quiescence and function being not two. The scriptural text itself has spoken the matter out to the end: “though he knows that the real mark cannot be spoken, yet with skillful means and inexhaustible eloquence he opens it up in due order, following the dharma and following the meaning,” “he is able to bring forth letters within all the dharmas that are apart from letters,” “though he has words yet he grasps at nothing.”

Brought down to a way of reading: to be unable to say a thing and to refrain from saying it are two different matters. To know that it cannot be said to the end and yet to say it, and in the saying to grasp at nothing said — this is the ninth spiritual penetration of the knowledge of all dharmas. So the concluding sentence sets up the name.

The Tenth, the Penetration of the Knowledge of the Samādhi of the Extinction of All Dharmas (i): What Is Extinguished Is Principle, Not the Activity of Mind

The tenth penetration is where the whole chapter is gathered up, and it is also where the division between the Huayan and other houses is most apparent. The scriptural text says that the bodhisattva “in thought after thought enters the samādhi of the extinction of all dharmas, and yet does not fall back from the bodhisattva way, does not cast away the affairs of a bodhisattva, does not cast away the mind of great kindness and great compassion,” cultivating the perfections without resting, contemplating the buddha-lands without wearying, not casting away the vow to deliver beings, not breaking off the turning of the wheel of the Dharma.

The doubt comes at once: in the samādhi of extinction the mind and its factors do not arise at all; how then can so many things be done at the same time? Chengguan’s answer lies in what the graph ‘extinction’ points to: “that it says the extinction of all dharmas means that the dharmas of the five groups are of their very substance quiescently ceased, and this is the extinction of principle — unlike the samādhi of extinction in the other houses, which makes clear only the extinction of affairs, extinguishing only the mind and mental factors of the sixth and seventh and not extinguishing the eighth and the rest.” The extinction the other houses speak of is the extinction of affairs, extinguishing the mind and mental factors of the sixth and seventh consciousnesses; the extinction this sūtra speaks of is the extinction of principle, all dharmas being of their very substance from the first quiescent. He then gives the ground of it: “because it is only the extinction of affairs, it cannot function in the very concentration; because he realizes the extinction of principle, concentration and dispersion are unobstructed — since affairs are themselves principle it does not obstruct extinction, and since principle is itself affairs it does not obstruct function.” The extinction of affairs can only bring things to a halt; only the extinction of principle can leave concentration and dispersion both unhindered. He further cites, as attestation, this sūtra’s own Chapter on the Ten Grounds, the seventh ground: “though he practises the real limit he does not make realization of it, and can enter in thought after thought and also rise in thought after thought”; and the Jingming: “without rising from the samādhi of extinction, he displays all the deportments.”

The Yanyi chao further marks out layer by layer whom Chengguan is setting off against: to say “this is the extinction of principle” is to mark the house’s own tenet; from “unlike” onward is to set off the Dharma-Characteristics house; and again, the clause “nor is it merely making clear that concentration and dispersion are both cut off” is to block the Chan house’s doing away with both calming and contemplation. Fazang, over on the side of the sixty-fascicle text, judges the same question by the five teachings: in the Lesser Vehicle the samādhi of extinction has no working at all; in the initial teaching it is by the power of the compassionate vow of the prior added practice striking upon the eighth consciousness that the deportments are had; in the final teaching, contemplating affairs as principle, it does not obstruct the functioning in affairs; and in the perfect teaching “to sit cross-legged in the samādhi of extinction is itself the going and coming and preaching of the Dharma.” What the several houses judge is recorded side by side, without judging which is higher.

The Tenth, the Penetration of the Knowledge of the Samādhi of the Extinction of All Dharmas (ii): Sovereign over the Measure of Time in Which He Dwells, Like a Light-Shadow Displayed Everywhere

The latter half speaks of sovereignty over the measure of time in the entering of concentration. The scriptural text sets out, from one kalpa, a hundred kalpas, a thousand kalpas, a koṭi of kalpas, and on to nayutas of koṭis of kalpas, numberless kalpas, measureless kalpas, all the way to unspeakably unspeakable kalpas, that he dwells “according to what his mind delights in.” Chengguan divides this into three: first, length and shortness according to mind; next, the deportments not going amiss; afterward, the not obstructing of the raising of function, concentration and dispersion practised together.

The deportments not going amiss points to this sentence: “though he has passed through so many kalpas dwelling therein, yet his body does not fall apart, does not waste away, does not alter; it is not seen and not not seen, it does not cease and is not ruined, it does not weary and does not slacken, and it cannot be used up.” However long the time, the bodily aspect is not ruined — and this is precisely the difference between the extinction of principle and the extinction of affairs, borne out upon the body.

Last comes the second simile of this chapter: “just as a light-shadow is displayed everywhere in every place, while within the samādhi he is quiescent and unmoving.” Chengguan explains the simile thus: “the light-shadow is displayed everywhere, quiescent and without mind; it waxes or wanes according to the vessel, while its substance neither comes nor goes.” The light-shadow falls upon the surface of the water in a thousand vessels — where the water is full it shows full, where the water is wanting it shows wanting — and the light itself has no mind, and no coming and going either. So it is with the bodhisattva’s benefiting of beings: the capacities of sentient beings are uneven, and what is displayed to each is unlike the rest, while the substance of the concentration has never moved by a hair’s breadth. And here the scriptural text concludes with the name: the spiritual penetration of the knowledge of entering the samādhi of the extinction of all dharmas.

The General Praise of Their Surpassing Power: What Is Inconceivable Is Known Only by the Buddhas and by Those Who Have Gained the Same

The ten penetrations having been spoken, the scriptural text gathers them up with a passage of general praise: as for one who dwells in these ten spiritual penetrations, “all gods and humans cannot conceive of it, all sentient beings cannot conceive of it,” and all śrāvakas, all pratyekabuddhas, and all the remaining hosts of bodhisattvas are alike unable to conceive of it; this bodhisattva’s deeds of body, of speech, and of mind are inconceivable, his sovereignty in samādhi is inconceivable, and the realm of his wisdom is inconceivable.

Chengguan judges this passage to have two layers: the first is “displaying the surpassing by the inferior,” raising up those who cannot fathom it so as to display how surpassing it is; the second, from “save only” onward, is “displaying the surpassing by the surpassing,” meaning that the buddhas and their like alone can fathom it. Fazang, over on the side of the sixty-fascicle text, divides it more finely: passing beyond humans and gods, going beyond the world, surpassing the two vehicles, and overstepping the lower grounds — these four set out the surpassing by the inferior; raising the three deeds in general, raising concentration in particular, and displaying the functioning of wisdom — these three set out the surpassing in its own aspect; and at the last, only a buddha can exhaust it.

What is worth noticing is one opening-out here between the eighty-fascicle text and the sixty: the sixty says that only a tathāgata can declare this man’s merit, while the eighty has “save only the buddhas, and those bodhisattvas who have gained this spiritual penetration” — one class more, ‘bodhisattvas who have already gained this penetration.’ The two recensions are recorded side by side, without adjudication. Brought down to a way of reading: the inconceivable is not a label for the mysterious; it says that the thing lies beyond the field of what thought can measure, and that those who can know it are only those within the same realm.

Concluding the Number and Setting Forth the Fruit: Dwelling in These Penetrations, He Gains the Unobstructed Wisdom of the Three Times

The last sentence of the whole chapter is the fruit Samantabhadra concludes for the ten penetrations: “Sons of the Buddha! These are the bodhisattva-mahāsattva’s ten spiritual penetrations. If a bodhisattva-mahāsattva dwells in these spiritual penetrations, he gains entirely the spiritual penetration of all unobstructed wisdom of the three times.” Chengguan judges only that “the text is plain and can be known,” because the structure has already been made clear — the fourth of the great divisions, concluding the number and setting forth the fruit.

But there is still one thing in this sentence that has to be sorted out. Fazang, at the concluding praise of the sixty-fascicle text, declares it expressly: what is gained is the clarity of the buddhas’ wisdom of the three times, and “it does not mean that these are the three clarities” — it is not to be confounded with the Lesser Vehicle’s three clarities of past lives, of the divine eye, and of the exhaustion of the outflows. The ten penetrations, come to their end, are not a summing of the three clarities; they are one wisdom that runs through the three times unobstructed.

Look back over the whole chapter: the ten penetrations have great wisdom for their substance, they are the six penetrations opened out into ten, the first eight are the wisdom that measures and the last two the wisdom of principle, and at the last all come home to one unobstructed wisdom of the three times. Read straight through, one finds that from beginning to end this chapter has not a single sentence boasting of a knack; what it speaks of throughout is how far wisdom reaches, and for whose sake it is used once it has reached.

Lineage

The doctrine of this chapter was carried on by three tracks of later ages, recorded side by side without adjudication. The line of Chengguan: following the method of outlining and explaining that comes down from the Shidi jing lun, he divides the text passage by passage, setting up the three gates of the reason for its coming, the explanation of the name, and the tenet and aim, together with the four divisions of raising the number and declaring it, questioning the number and listing the explanations, the general praise of their surpassing power, and concluding the number and setting forth the fruit; and he judges the measure of the ten penetrations by the opening out of the six penetrations and by the net of Indra layer upon layer. In explaining the tenth penetration he sets off the Dharma-Characteristics house’s extinction of affairs and blocks the Chan house’s cutting off of both concentration and dispersion — and this is where the Huayan house’s doctrine of the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena comes to rest in this chapter. The line of Fazang: upon the sixty-fascicle text’s Chapter on the Ten Clarities he sets up the name as an explanation that carries a number, treats the reason for the coming of five chapters together, distinguishes how this chapter’s ten clarities are mutually taken in with the ten clarities of the Chapter on Detachment from the World and with the ten penetrations there, and judges by the five layers of the Lesser Vehicle, the initial teaching, the final teaching, the sudden teaching, and the perfect teaching the ground on which function is raised in the samādhi of extinction — the doctrinal classification by five teachings has here in this chapter one complete application. The line of Li Tongxuan: he reads the ten penetrations by an inconceivable wisdom that is without doing and unobstructed, judges them to be an “entering of the gate of Dharma of sovereignty layer upon layer within the realm of the net of Indra,” and glosses the two graphs ‘spiritual penetration’ as “by wisdom penetrating everywhere, being one in nature with things and thereby knowing things, it is named spiritual penetration; it is not a going and coming between self and other”; and he further judges that the ten samādhis, the ten penetrations, and the ten forbearances do not belong to the stage after the grounds alone, but are “cultivated in common by the five stations of the ten abodes, the ten practices, the ten dedications, the ten grounds, and the eleventh ground” — this judgement differs from the reading that goes by the order of the stations, but the ancients had this saying, and it is recorded.

As for the books that are the guiding outlines of the Huayan house, the Wujiao zhang in two places raises the ten penetrations as a rubric setting the six penetrations of the three vehicles over against the ten penetrations of the One Vehicle; both are a listing of names for a comparison of teachings, and not an explanation of this chapter’s scriptural text, and they too are recorded without adjudication. Outside this chapter, for the affairs upon which the fourth penetration depends Chengguan points to “the sense is as set out in the Ten Grounds,” and for the attestation of the tenth penetration he cites from afar the seventh ground of the Chapter on the Ten Grounds and the Jingming — the root of the ten penetrations lies truly in the practice-stations upon the grounds, and what this chapter opens out is the function that grows from that root.