華嚴經 品三十八 離世間品 · 十行之行三十門Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Detachment from the World · The Thirty Gates of the Practice of the Ten Practices

First, Where This Stretch Stands

In this chapter Samantabhadra answers the two hundred questions of Universal Wisdom. The manner of the answering is peculiar: one question is answered with ten, and Chengguan says that this “accomplishes the two thousand surpassing practices of Samantabhadra,” so that two hundred questions became what he calls two thousand practices. This unit is the third of those rounds — thirty questions, thirty gates, running from “the ten kinds of sustaining power” all the way to ‘the ten kinds of ocean-like wisdom that enters unsurpassed perfect awakening,’ with not one question inserted in the middle and not a single narrative turn of “at that time.” The one and only speaker throughout is Samantabhadra; those addressed are Universal Wisdom and the other bodhisattvas seated in the assembly; and the vocative “Sons of the Buddha” is a general form of address to the assembly of bodhisattvas present.

Why are these thirty gates reckoned as one set? Chengguan, in his Huayan jing shu, sets up the outline and says that these thirty gates answer the “thirty phrases of the question about the ten practices” in the earlier part of the questioning. Here a misreading must be cleared away at once: nowhere from beginning to end does the scriptural text itself produce such stage-names as “the ten practices” or “the practice of gladness.” The reason the six positions (the ten faiths, the ten abodes, the ten practices, the ten dedications, the ten grounds, and the fullness of cause and completion of fruit) may be used to outline this whole long stretch is that the ancient worthies of old divided it on the basis of the text of the six rounds of question and answer in the Dushipin jing; and Chengguan himself states the provenance plainly — he says that the ancient worthies of old all relied on the text of that scripture to outline this scripture. Therefore, in everything that follows, wherever ‘the such-and-such practice’ is spoken of, it is uniformly what Chengguan says in carrying on the outline of the ancient worthies, not what the scripture says of itself. If a reader takes the stage-names for scriptural text, the very foundation of his reading of the Avataṃsaka is set crooked.

Before the thirty gates Chengguan first records a division made by the ancient worthies: the first six gates make clear the practice of a great resolve that reaches far; the middle nine make clear the practice of the working of concentration and wisdom; and the last fifteen make clear the practice in which the virtues are complete and brought to fullness. His comment on this division is, “yet taken as perfectly interfused, this sense is not without warrant” — he does not deny it. Then he puts forward a division of his own: he does not disturb the sequence of the scriptural text, but assigns the gates to the ten practices position by position — three gates to the first practice, one each to the second and the third, two to the fourth, six to the fifth, two to each of the next four, and nine to the tenth. Added together, that comes to exactly thirty.

Why is the number of gates apportioned in this way? The reason Chengguan gives is very down-to-earth: giving stands at the beginning, and so it takes three gates; keeping the precepts and patience run through the world, and so they have only one apiece; meditative concentration and wisdom are honored and surpassing, and so they have many gates. And since the gates of wisdom are already many, the gate of prajñā is treated briefly; the remaining practices are of the next rank, and so two gates are used for each. This sentence is worth remembering, for it makes one thing clear — the “ten” of the Avataṃsaka is not a mechanical dividing into equal shares; the very number of the gates is itself saying something.

Gate 1. Sustaining Power: The First Question Is ‘What Holds Practice Up?’

When a person sets his resolve on the bodhisattva practice, the first practical question is not ‘what am I to cultivate?’ but ‘by what shall I hold up?’ This gate answers that. The ten kinds of sustaining power are the buddhas, the Dharma, sentient beings, deeds, practice, vows, the objective realm, time, good, and wisdom.

The two graphs “sustaining power” must first be understood rightly. Chengguan expressly sets three near-synonyms apart: dhāraṇī is holding all things, and what it holds is the letter and the meaning; receiving and upholding is taking in and carrying out; while sustaining power is empowering and sustaining — an empowering that comes from without and a sustaining in oneself, joined together to hold practice up. The three are not to be confounded with one another.

Now look at how the ten are assigned. Chengguan says that the first three are the three jewels, that is, the sustaining power of the objective realm; and as to why “sentient beings” should count as the jewel of the Saṅgha, his explanation is that the Saṅgha of bodhisattvas is precisely the world of sentient beings. Of the latter seven: the sustaining power of deeds is the deeds performed by the compassionate mind; the sustaining power of practice is the setting of practice rightly going; the sustaining power of vows is what holds practice; the sustaining power of the objective realm is that only where there is a realm of compassion and wisdom can practice come to anything; time is the time at which practice is set going; and the last two, good and wisdom, are blessings and wisdom. Counted in this way, the ten kinds of sustaining power are not ten scattered items but one structure of support: the three jewels are what is relied upon, compassion and vow are what set it in motion, time and realm are where it stands, and blessings and wisdom are what it comes to.

Brought home to use: when a person’s resolve fails, it is often not that he no longer wishes to practice, but that some one of the things that sustain him has been cut — either he no longer sees the buddhas and hears the Dharma, or his vow has gone slack, or the realm no longer meets him, or blessings and wisdom no longer follow. What this gate gives is a checklist for examining oneself.

Gate 2. Great Gladness of Heart: Why Practice Makes a Person Feel Wide Inside

The second gate speaks of ten things at which “the heart is greatly glad and consoled.” Notice the sentence-pattern of the text: every one of them first “thinks thus,” and then “contemplating in this way, the heart is greatly glad and consoled” — gladness is not an emotion that follows upon a piece of good fortune; it is a consolation that arises on the spot upon contemplating a certain matter.

Chengguan judges this gate to be “directly setting forth the sense of the practice of gladness,” and briefly gathers the ten into five pairs: first, serving the buddhas and making offerings to them; second, hearing the Dharma and drawing near to the good; third, the completion of the practice of the two benefits; fourth, adorning the lands and converting living beings; fifth, seeing what is hard to see and accomplishing what is hard to accomplish. He also makes a comparison that is quite interesting: what is usually spoken of as the practice of gladness is that upon seeing someone come to beg, one is doubly glad; here, on the other hand, it is because one knows that through giving one comes to see the buddhas and make offerings to them that the heart is greatly glad — and Chengguan says that the first practice is for the most part the same as the Joyful Ground.

There is a misreading to be cleared away here. The fifth item speaks of the five terrors before the mind was brought forth — the terror of not making a living, the terror of a bad name, the terror of death, the terror of falling into a bad destiny, the terror of the majesty of the great assembly — and the text says, “from the moment I brought forth the mind, all of these were left far behind.” This sentence is easily read as ‘once the mind is brought forth one is never afraid again.’ The wording of the text is in fact more precise: what it lists is these five particular terrors, and all five are fastened to the end that is “I”; once what one acts for turns wholly toward sentient beings, these five have no footing left. It is not that they are pressed down; it is that they have lost the place they stood on.

Brought home to use: this gate is for those who find practice bitter. Item by item it points out that setting one’s eyes upon the whole future and upon all sentient beings is, on the contrary, the way of living in which the heart is most at ease.

Gate 3. Entering Deeply into the Buddha-dharma: Not Understanding It, but Getting into It

The ten phrases of the third gate: the first six begin with the graph “enter,” the latter four with the graph “know.” Chengguan points out that this division is deliberate — “the two passages of realizing entry and of fully knowing are made manifest” — the first half speaks of realizing entry, the latter half of fully knowing.

Now look at what is entered. Chengguan divides it into three worlds: the first four phrases enter the world as receptacle (the first three severally enter the three ages, past, future, and present, and the fourth speaks generally of the various natures of all worlds); the next two enter the world of sentient beings (the various deeds and their fruits, and the various practices of the bodhisattvas); the latter four enter the world of the wisdom of perfect awakening (the first three entering the buddhas of the three times, and the last phrase entering the Dharma). Seen in this way, “entering deeply into the Buddha-dharma” is not entering deeply into some scripture; it is walking into all three layers of world — the receptacle, living beings, and the wisdom of perfect awakening.

The hardest is the last phrase: “though knowing that all dharmas are without any discrimination, still speaking the various dharmas, for the reason that all of them enter the Dharma realm and yet there is no place that is entered.” Here a common misreading must be cleared away: no-discrimination does not amount to being unable to speak. Chengguan’s way of explaining it is this — because all of them enter the Dharma realm, therefore there is no difference; because there is no place that is entered, therefore the various can be spoken. He further raises a question against himself: if there were some other place that is entered, then in the entering the original mark would be lost, and on the contrary the various could not be spoken. Precisely because the thing itself is of itself empty and is therefore named entering the Dharma realm, and there is no separate place to be entered, the various are not destroyed.

Brought home to use: what this gate cures are the two ailments of ‘having understood, one need not speak’ and ‘having spoken, it does not count as realization.’ The position of the text is to take neither side.

Gate 4. Reliance: Practice Must Be Set upon Good Conditions

The ten phrases of the fourth gate are all of one and the same structure — relying on some matter, one carries out the bodhisattva practice. What is relied upon is making offerings to the buddhas, taming sentient beings, drawing near to good friends, accumulating roots of good, adorning and purifying buddha-lands, not forsaking sentient beings, entering deeply into the perfections, fulfilling the vows of a bodhisattva, the measureless mind of awakening, and the awakening of all the buddhas.

Chengguan assigns this gate to the practice within the second practice (the station of benefiting), and says: the previous gate spoke of realizing entry, this gate speaks of being set upon good conditions. He adds one sentence that matters — one must rely upon all ten of these before sentient beings can be benefited; it is not a matter of relying on the precepts alone; and besides, the precepts of themselves take in the good, so what could still be lacking?

The misreading to be cleared away here is this: people readily understand “reliance” as reliance on one master or one precept. Among the ten items the text lists, the good friend occupies only one. So “reliance” here is the whole spread of ground on which practice stands, not a single point of support.

Brought home to use: examine whether your own practice is standing on only one leg. The more of the ten are missing, the less steadily the walking goes.

Gate 5. Bringing Forth the Fearless Mind: No Fear Arises before Ten Hard Matters

The fifth gate is assigned to the third practice (the station of no contrariety). Chengguan’s way of explaining it is very clear: because one has relied upon the good of restraint of a bodhisattva, therefore in ten hard matters one can “do what is hard to do and bear what is hard to bear,” and this is called bringing forth the fearless mind.

He also labels the ten phrases one by one as ten hardships: first, obstructions hard to extinguish; second, the Dharma left behind hard to guard; third, evil demons hard to subdue; fourth, body and life hard to forsake; fifth, outsiders hard to crush; sixth, the minds of beings hard to suit (the minds of sentient beings being hard to meet one by one); seventh, the great assembly hard to gladden; eighth, the eight kinds of beings hard to tame; ninth, the lower vehicle hard to leave; tenth, the higher practice hard to cultivate. Having finished the labeling he asks in return: if one gives rise to no fear before all ten of these hardships, would one still fear that sentient beings might trouble and harm one?

That very question forces out the sense of ‘the practice of no contrariety’ — what is meant by no contrariety is not holding one’s temper down; it is that when the ten hardships are already without fear, being troubled and harmed by others simply does not make it onto the list.

Brought home to use: fear is often because one has not set out the things one fears and looked at them. What this gate does is first to set the ten hardest things out in full, and then to say ‘in all of these there is nothing feared.’

Gate 6. Bringing Forth the Mind without Doubt: First Get the Will Settled

The sixth and the seventh gates Chengguan assigns to the fourth practice (the station of no flinching). The position of this gate is this: because one already does not dread hard matters, therefore in ten matters to be done one settles the will without doubt — and Chengguan says that this is the vigor of donning armor among the ten kinds of vigor. To don armor is first to take an oath and set a term, as one puts on a coat of mail before going into battle.

The sentence-pattern of the text is extremely forceful: every one of them runs, “when they bring forth this thought, it is decided and without doubt; that a doubting mind should arise — there is no such thing.” Notice those last words, “there is no such thing” — it is not saying that one ought not to doubt; it is saying that within that state of mind doubt simply cannot get a footing.

Chengguan labels the ten matters very tidily: first, gathering beings in with the ten perfections; second, serving the buddhas and making offerings to them; third, adorning the lands with light; fourth, taming and ripening over a long time; fifth, being complete in all-knowing wisdom; sixth, being a bright lamp of the world; seventh, expounding the Dharma and bringing beings to awakening; eighth, extinguishing obstructions and attaining buddhahood; ninth, leaving the deluded behind and awakening of oneself; tenth, decidedly accomplishing awakening.

A misreading in one sentence: these ten are not ten promises, they are ten places where doubt cannot get in. What most drains a practitioner is not the doing, but that half of him is doubting while he does. This gate spends the strength first on cutting doubt clean away.

Brought home to use: after the vow is made, do not go back and haggle. The haggling is itself the leak.

Gate 7. The Inconceivable: Ten Matters Hard to Fathom

The seventh gate is still within the fourth practice. Chengguan says: because the will is settled and without doubt, therefore what is done is hard to fathom, and this is called the inconceivable.

He divides the ten phrases very finely: the first three speak of the roots of good alone — the roots of good, the vows, and knowing dharmas to be like an illusion — and because both vow and wisdom accord with the nature of things, they are called inconceivable; the remaining seven are inconceivable because the provisional and the real are carried on together, and of these the first four speak in terms of practice and the latter three in terms of wisdom, wisdom being the inward clarity and practice the outward mark. Of the first four: the fourth is entering into existence while the one path is pure; the fifth is having awakened to emptiness while the myriad practices seethe up; the sixth is cultivating the cause while the fruit of the eight aspects is accomplished; the seventh is manifesting the fruit while the great functioning is not forsaken. Of the latter three: the eighth is the mutual identity of the two truths; the ninth is the three matters fused and yet not fused; the tenth is the provisional and the real identical and yet not identical.

The ninth phrase matters most: “fully knowing that mind is equal to awakening, fully knowing that awakening is equal to mind, and that mind and awakening are equal to sentient beings.” Chengguan directly fastens these three matters to mind, buddha, and sentient beings being alike without difference, as stated in the verses of Forest of Awakening Bodhisattva in the Chapter on the Praises in Verse in the Palace of Yama. This is one of the most central scriptural grounds of the whole Huayan school, and this stretch holds one place among them.

The misreading to clear away: that the three matters are without difference does not say that the three are one and the same thing. The text goes straight on to say, “and yet giving rise to no inversion of mind, no inversion of thought, no inversion of view” — if one reads “equal” as merged into one, one falls precisely into inversion. When Chengguan says that the ninth is “fused and yet not fused,” this is what he means.

The eighth phrase is ten sentences in five pairs, and the text sets them down in one breath: “fully knowing that in all dharmas the markless is the mark and the mark is the markless, that non-discrimination is discrimination and discrimination is non-discrimination, that what is not existent is existent and what is existent is not existent, that non-doing is doing and doing is non-doing, that what is not spoken is spoken and what is spoken is not spoken.” Chengguan says these ten are five pairs, that is, the five dharmas: mark, false imagining, suchness, right wisdom, and name; and that each pair may be read on two levels. Read directly in terms of the substance of the dharmas, the markless is the real and the mark is the conventional, and the two are always of themselves identical: this is the first level. Read in terms of delusion and awakening, this is the second: deluded about suchness, one takes there to be marks; awakened to marks as markless, this is suchness — this is the first pair. Deluded about the non-discriminating right wisdom, one becomes false discriminating imagination; awakened to false discrimination as the right wisdom’s non-discrimination — this is the second pair. Understanding that suchness is not an existent is truly to have suchness; if one grasps at a suchness to be had, it is not suchness — this is the third pair. If wisdom does nothing, that is the doing of right wisdom; if it has something done, it is not the doing of right wisdom — this is the fourth pair. Knowing that the name is not the thing spoken is truly the speaking of the name; if one takes the name to hold what is spoken, that is not the speaking of the name — this is the fifth pair.

To ask first: is this back-and-forth of assertion and reversal a mere tongue-twister? It is not. The point of the five pairs is not which side, mark or markless, is the right one, but that one is not permitted to halt on either side. The misreading to clear away: what a reader most often does is take only the latter half — reading “the mark is the markless” as “nothing counts at all.” The text says both ends; “the markless is the mark” is in it as well. To dismantle the side of existence and be left holding the side of emptiness is still to be on one side. Brought home to use: to judge whether one has fallen to a side, see whether one can say the sentence backwards without the heart growing anxious.

The tenth phrase is the longest, and it is “identical and yet not identical.” It begins: “in thought after thought entering the concentration of cessation, exhausting every outflow and yet not realizing the real limit, and not exhausting the roots of good that have outflows” — in thought after thought one can enter the concentration of cessation and every outflow is exhausted, and yet one does not take up the realization of that real limit, nor does one use up the roots of good that have outflows. To ask first: if the outflows are exhausted, why not realize the real limit? What Chengguan speaks of here is cutting off, and substance and function: spoken of in terms of the time of cutting off, it is exhausted and yet not exhausted; setting the nature of dharmas over against that cutting off, it is not, and yet not not. The misreading to clear away: not realizing the real limit is not an inability to reach it, but an unwillingness to halt there and rest; not exhausting the roots of good that have outflows is not the keeping back of a little affliction as seed, but the refusal to strike out at a stroke all those good deeds by which bonds are formed within the world. Brought home to use: when one has practiced to the point of feeling that the affairs of the world may all be let go, this phrase stands in the way.

Brought home to use: whoever grows large-hearted upon reading that ‘mind, buddha, and sentient beings are three without difference’ must read the latter half along with it.

Gate 8. Skillful Secret Speech: A Secret That Can Be Spoken Aloud

The six gates from the eighth through the thirteenth Chengguan assigns to the fifth practice (the station of no folly and disorder), and divides them into three sections: the first two gates are the practice of no folly; the next two are the practice of no disorder; the last two make clear in both respects the merits brought forth by the two preceding sections. He further matches these three sections with three kinds of meditation — the meditation that benefits sentient beings, the meditation of abiding in the delight of the true Dharma, and the meditation that brings forth merits.

This gate stands at the head of the six, and what it speaks of is that outward speech is not foolish. Chengguan expressly sets out five senses of “secret speech”: first, speaking a profound and secret dharma; second, speaking all dharmas in a single utterance; third, near and yet not heard, and far and yet without partition (near and yet not heard, as Śāriputra sat in the assembly; far and yet without partition, as Maudgalyāyana went in search of the voice); fourth, the words near while the sense is far, or the words far while the sense is near (as in saying that the three vehicles are ultimate, or in saying that to get fire in cold weather is called nirvāṇa — this sense is also called hiding the real and speaking the provisional); fifth, speaking a different dharma with different words. And he says that among the ten phrases of the text the first phrase is complete in all five senses, because it is the general one and is the whole of the teaching.

The misreading to clear away: “secret speech” is not a code, and it is not a refusal to let people understand. The five senses above are each a road of its own: a profound and secret dharma; a single utterance gathering all dharmas; the near and the far in hearing; the near and the far between words and sense (this being the hiding of the real and speaking of the provisional); speaking a different dharma with different words — all are the skilful bestowing of the speaker, each hearer receiving in their own measure, and not one of them is a concealing.

Taking the ten phrases one by one, one can see how the “secret” comes to rest upon actual matters. The first is within all the buddhas’ scriptures — this is the general phrase, and it was said above to be complete in all five senses, because the whole of the teaching lies within it. The second is within every place of taking birth — where a bodhisattva manifests the taking of birth, that birth is itself a stretch of Dharma-preaching. The third is within all the bodhisattvas’ superknowledges and transformations and their attaining of perfect awakening — displaying the superknowledges and showing the attaining of buddhahood are alike words beyond words. The fourth is within the deeds and retributions of all sentient beings — one deed, and yet the retribution shallow or deep; that it can be spoken and yet not fixed is the secret. The fifth is within the defilement and purity that sentient beings give rise to — Fazang says it plainly here: skillfully to speak of sentient beings as defiled while undefiled, and to call this stain; as undefiled while defiled, and to call this purity. One and the same matter, spoken with the grain, is stain; spoken against it, is purity; and so it is secret. The sixth is within the gate of ultimate unobstructedness in all dharmas — the speaking of all within one. The seventh is within the whole of space, where in place after place worlds form or decay with no gap between — that within decay there is formation is the secret.

The eighth is within the whole dharma-realm, all ten directions, down to the most minute place, where everywhere the Tathāgata displays first birth and on to buddhahood and entry into parinirvāṇa, filling the dharma-realm and each seen distinctly. To ask first: if the Buddha has already entered nirvāṇa, how is he everywhere newly born? The answer is in “filling the dharma-realm and each seen distinctly” — universally he manifests birth and entry into extinction, and the one who sees stands at this secret place and speaks; therefore it is secret speech.

The ninth and the tenth phrases carry the weight of this gate. The ninth: “seeing that all sentient beings are evenly nirvāṇa and without alteration, and yet not forsaking the great vow, so that the vow of omniscience, not yet fulfilled, may be brought to fulfillment.” Sentient beings are of themselves even, which is nirvāṇa, and there is no alteration to speak of; by that reasoning, since there is none to be delivered, the great vow ought to rest — and yet it does not rest. Fazang judges this phrase to be skillful secrecy: understanding that sentient beings are nirvāṇa itself and need not be extinguished again, and yet still not forsaking the great vow to gather beings in. The tenth: “though knowing that no dharma is awakened to through another, yet not parting from good friends.” Awakening is not given by another — that is the definitive sense; and yet one does not on that account leave the good friends, but rather “grows the more reverent toward the Tathāgata.” The text then sets out four samenesses — the same doing, the same substance and nature, the same going forth, the same accomplishing: with the good friend, what is done is one doing, the substance is one substance, the going forth is one going forth, the accomplishing is one accomplishing.

The misreading to clear away: these two phrases are the ones most easily taken up as a warrant for idleness. “Sentient beings are of themselves nirvāṇa” does not lead to “there is no need to deliver them”; “not awakened to through another” does not lead to “there is no need to draw near good friends.” The sentence-pattern of the two is exactly the same: first the ultimate and definitive sense is set up, and then with “and yet not forsaking” the practice is brought back in. Brought home to use: whenever one hears a lofty principle and there floats up the thought “then I need not do such and such,” look first at the pattern of this gate — the real secret is that the definitive sense and the practice can be spoken in one breath.

Brought home to use: one who expounds the Dharma, if he fears that he is speaking shallowly, may look at the fourth sense — words near and sense far is also secret speech.

Gate 9. The Wisdom of Skillful Discernment: Inward Wisdom Is Not Foolish

The ninth gate is paired with the one before it. Chengguan’s statement is extremely brief: outward speech being already hidden, and inward wisdom being further skillful, therefore in benefiting sentient beings there is no folly or darkness.

The ten phrases of the text are all “the wisdom of skillful discernment that enters …”: entering lands, entering the dwelling places of sentient beings, entering mental conduct, entering the faculties, entering deeds and their fruits, entering the practices of the śrāvakas, entering the practices of the pratyekabuddhas, entering the practices of the bodhisattvas, entering the dharmas of the world, entering the dharmas of a buddha.

Here it is worth stopping a moment: these ten cover place, sentient beings, mind, faculties, and deeds, and then the practices of the three vehicles and the dharmas both worldly and world-transcending. In other words, what skillful discernment knows is of three kinds: places and sentient beings (where to convert, whom to convert), the practices of the three vehicles (where to set those converted), and the dharmas of the world and of the Buddha (by what dharma to convert) — Fazang matches the ten phrases to these four questions. Discernment here is not the discerning of deluded imagining; it is knowing where the person in front of you is standing and by what dharma they are to be converted.

The misreading to clear away: the seventh gate has only just spoken of “no discrimination,” and here “the wisdom of skillful discernment” is set up, which looks like a contradiction. The two are of different stations — no discrimination speaks of the substance that is realized, skillful discernment of the functioning that converts others. There being no discrimination in the substance, there is no harm in discerning in the functioning; and this is exactly the carrying on of both the provisional and the real that Chengguan speaks of again and again.

Brought home to use: real compassion must first see accurately. Compassion that does not see accurately often turns into imposition.

Gate 10. Entering Samādhi: Taking Ten Kinds of Object and Entering Concentration

Of the tenth and the eleventh gates Chengguan says that they are “the practice of no disorder, all of them the substance of concentration.” This gate makes clear the entering of samādhi, showing that the places taken as object and the rest are not the same; the next gate makes clear universal entering, and there the touching of one kind pervades all.

The objects of the ten phrases of the text: all the worlds, the bodies of all sentient beings, all dharmas, seeing all the buddhas, abiding in all the kalpas, rising from samādhi and manifesting an inconceivable body, the bodies of all the buddhas, awakening to the equality of all sentient beings, within a single thought entering the samādhi-wisdom of all bodhisattvas, and within a single thought with unobstructed wisdom accomplishing the practices and vows of all bodhisattvas.

Chengguan’s observation is very fine: though the objects of these ten gates are each different, all ten run through everything; and the first five are matters of one layer, while the latter five are an interpenetrating perfect fusion; the ninth and tenth phrases are both a being one and yet many.

The misreading to clear away: it is easy to read samādhi as ‘entering concentration and attending to nothing.’ Look at the tenth phrase — within a single thought, with unobstructed wisdom, accomplishing the practices and vows of all bodhisattvas without rest, and this is still within samādhi. Concentration and practice are not here two stretches, one before and one after.

Brought home to use: concentration is not leaving the object behind; it is being with the object in another manner.

Gate 11. Universal Entering: To Enter One Kind Is to Pervade All

The eleventh gate stands over against the one before it. Chengguan likens it to the ten universals of the Lesser Vehicle, saying that this makes samādhi gradually broader still; and he points out that the previous gate spoke of being able to enter all bodies (such as the body of a youth and the rest), which need not, however, be at one and the same time; whereas this gate is that upon entering one kind one pervades all, as when Ocean of Wisdom Bodhisattva first came and all at once everything was water.

What the ten phrases of the text universally enter is: sentient beings, lands, the various marks of the world, the calamity of fire, the calamity of water, the buddhas, adornment, the boundless body of merit of the Tathāgata, all the various expoundings of the Dharma, and all the various offerings to the tathāgatas.

The misreading to clear away: this gate is easily read as a display of spiritual penetrations. Its weight lies in “upon entering one kind, pervading all” — it is not doing ten things at once, but doing one thing with the other ten all present within it. This is the root way of reading the Avataṃsaka, and not a matter of how great an ability is.

Brought home to use: there is no need to covet quantity. Carry one thing through to the end, and the rest is naturally inside it.

Gate 12. Gates of Liberation: Unobstructedness in Functioning

The twelfth and the thirteenth gates Chengguan assigns to the meditation that brings forth merits. This gate makes clear that functioning is unobstructed, and so it is called liberation; the next gate is that in the objective realm there is no blockage, and so it is called spiritual penetration.

Chengguan here makes a distinction on the side of Sanskrit: the liberation here is in Sanskrit vimokṣa, which means surpassing liberation, pointing to a surpassing functioning, and is not the eight liberations accomplished on the basis of meditative concentration. This is to be remembered, because in the fifteenth gate there is another “liberation,” and its Sanskrit is different.

The ten phrases of the text are all a mutual containing of body and realm: one body pervading all the worlds; manifesting measureless forms in all the worlds; making all the worlds enter one buddha-land; universally empowering the whole realm of sentient beings; filling all the worlds with the adorned bodies of the buddhas; seeing all the worlds within one’s own body; within a single thought going to all the worlds; within a single world manifesting the appearing in the world of all the tathāgatas; one body filling the whole Dharma realm; within a single thought manifesting the sporting spiritual penetrations of all the buddhas.

The misreading to clear away: these ten phrases are not a list of ten spiritual penetrations; they are ten sides of “unobstructedness” — the large entering the small, the small containing the large, one being many, many being one.

Brought home to use: if on reading “one body fills the whole Dharma realm” one feels it too far from oneself, one may go back to the sixth phrase — seeing all the worlds within one’s own body. The place of entry is in fact just this body.

Gate 13. Spiritual Penetrations: No Blockage in the Objective Realm

For the thirteenth gate Chengguan makes his comparison with the six penetrations drawn forth by the four meditations: if the first four of these ten are gathered under the six penetrations, they can be matched; the next five are the penetration of the divine faculty; the last is the exhaustion of the outflows, for the reason that awakening is accomplished. He also says that because the stations differ, these ten penetrations are slightly different from the ten penetrations spoken of in another place.

The ten phrases of the text all conclude with “the penetration of the wisdom of skillful means”: recollecting former lives, the divine ear without obstruction, knowing the mental conduct of others, contemplating with the divine eye, manifesting great spiritual power according to the mind, one body universally manifesting measureless worlds, within a single thought entering everywhere into unspeakable worlds, bringing forth articles of adornment and adorning worlds, manifesting unspeakable transformation bodies, and, according to the minds of sentient beings, manifesting the accomplishing of perfect awakening in unspeakable worlds.

The misreading to clear away: the four words “the wisdom of skillful means” appended at the end of every phrase are the key. Spiritual penetration here is not an ability belonging to the fruit of one’s deeds; it is skillful means — an instrument set up for the sake of delivering beings. The last phrase is plainest of all: even the manifesting of the accomplishing of perfect awakening is manifested according to the minds of sentient beings.

Brought home to use: to judge whether a spiritual penetration is genuine, do not look at how wonderful it is; look at whether it is a skillful means for delivering beings.

Gate 14. Clarity: The Substance of Prajñā Appearing as Ten Kinds of Clarity of Wisdom

The fourteenth and the fifteenth gates Chengguan assigns to the sixth practice (the station of good manifesting). This gate directly displays the substance of practice, which is prajñā, and so it is called clarity of wisdom; the next gate makes clear the leaving behind of the obstruction to wisdom, and so it is called liberation. He also says that these are all a wisdom in which the provisional and the real are unobstructed, and so it is called skillful.

Chengguan divides the ten phrases into two sections: the first seven speak of a single wisdom alone, the latter three are the carrying on of both. Of the first seven, the first three are in terms of those converted (deeds and their fruits, the quiescence of the realm, the one mark of what is taken as object), and the next three in terms of the one who converts (the subtle sound heard everywhere, the destroying of defiled attachment, the manifesting of the taking or not taking of birth), each of these sets going first by way of phenomena, next by way of principle, and last by way of returning phenomena to principle; the seventh leaves behind the thought of a grasper and a grasped, and gathers all back into prajñā. Of the latter three, the eighth is a speaking that is no speaking and an accomplishing that is no accomplishing; the ninth is the clarity of wisdom that gives rise to birth from no-birth; the tenth is the clarity of wisdom of teaching in evenness.

The ninth phrase is a long one, and the text itself gives it a name — the skillful clarity of wisdom of dependent origination. Chengguan divides it into three parts: first the direct setting forth; next the raising and explaining at “why is this”; last the concluding of the name at “this is called.” And within the direct setting forth there are again two layers: first the saying that there is no condition (the true mind of sentient beings according with principle, not to be got at; and if there were no condition there would be nothing converted), and then, from “and yet they know” onward, the saying that the true mind accords with conditions and does not destroy dependent origination, and that therefore there is after all something converted. He further matches that long string of “knowing causes, knowing conditions, knowing things, knowing realms, knowing courses, knowing arising, knowing ceasing” one by one with the twelvefold dependent origination — causes being ignorance and the rest, conditions being the deeds of the formative activities, things being consciousness, name-and-form, and so on, realms being contact, feeling, and the objects of the senses, courses being craving and grasping in the present, arising being the link of birth, and ceasing being aging-and-death.

That long string of “knowings” numbers thirty-one. The first seven have been matched above with the twelvefold dependent origination, and Chengguan gives a place to the remaining twenty-four as well; taken group by group, the frame becomes clear.

The eighth is “knowing speech”: Chengguan says this one is spoken generally in terms of according with the conventional, because what arises from conditions is not apart from the three times. It stands as a part of its own and closes off the first seven — the twelve links having been set out, the very setting out of them is itself an according with convention.

From “knowing delusion” to “knowing non-attachment” are twelve phrases in six pairs, which Chengguan judges to be a general knowing of defilement and purity, delusion and awakening. Delusion and freedom from delusion are the first pair; inversion and freedom from inversion the second; defilement and purity the third — deluded about principle, one is inverted and defiled; awakened, each is the reverse. Birth-and-death and nirvāṇa are the fourth pair; what can be got at and what cannot the fifth; grasping and non-grasping the sixth. Chengguan says that according with convention both sides may be got at, while in the ultimate sense neither side may be got at; and that “got at and not got at” is spoken in terms of principle, while “grasping and non-grasping” is spoken in terms of wisdom. To ask first: if in the ultimate sense neither side can be got at, why must they still be known pair by pair? Because the bodhisattva must be able to recognize, within conventional truth, which side a being stands on, before there is any place to begin.

From “knowing abiding” to “knowing taming” are eleven phrases, and here Chengguan turns to the knowing of the movements of mind. Abiding is the original nature; stirring is the adventitious dust. To follow the adventitious dust is to go and not return; to see the original nature is to return to the source and turn back to the root. Going and returning are both still the arising of mind; only when returning and abiding are both gone is there the stillness of not arising. And when mind arises, all goods are lost and ruined; when it does not arise, one goes forth from the coverings and bonds and knows quiescently upon contact with objects — and this is ripening: “knowing loss and ruin,” “knowing going forth,” “knowing ripening” fall exactly here. Last, “knowing the faculties, knowing taming” is a further knowing of capacity: spoken of one’s own faculties, that the six faculties are not dragged along by their objects is taming.

The misreading to clear away: the thirty-one “knowings” are not a list of thirty-one marvels. They are a single line: first knowing the twelve links of dependent origination; then knowing that the words in which they are spoken are still an according with convention; then knowing on which side of the six pairs of defilement and purity, delusion and awakening, a being stands; then knowing whether that mind abides or stirs, goes or returns, arises or does not arise; and last knowing how far this person’s faculties are ripened and whether he can be tamed. Only when the knowing reaches this last step does it join to the text’s own words, “teaching and converting in the various ways that answer to each.” Brought home to use: to wish to help someone without knowing which square he is in leaves one able to help only out of one’s own habit.

The misreading to clear away: this gate is most easily read as a string of marvelous knowings and seeings. In fact its frame is a single sentence — knowing that there is no one to be delivered, and yet delivering. The text answers for itself why this is possible: a bodhisattva brings forth the mind only for the sake of benefiting sentient beings, and has nothing else for which he acts.

Brought home to use: if the bringing forth of the mind still has some other purpose mixed into it, it cannot hold up ‘practicing while carrying out nothing at all.’

Gate 15. Liberation: Freedom from the Two Obstructions

The “liberation” of the fifteenth gate has the same name as that of the twelfth but a different sense. Chengguan says it flatly: here the Sanskrit is vimukti, meaning liberation, and it is not the same as the earlier one. The earlier was the surpassingness of functioning; this is freedom from bondage.

He divides the ten phrases: the first four are freedom from the three obstructions of the ordinary person (the afflictions, wrong views, the various graspings, and the aggregates, elements, and sense-fields), for the reason that grasping increased becomes deeds; the latter six are freedom from the obstruction to wisdom; and of those latter six, the first phrase sets aside the inferior (surpassing the two vehicles), while the rest all display the surpassing.

Of the latter six, the first sets aside the inferior, and so the remaining five are the surpassing displayed by degrees, each wider than the last, and each must be looked at in turn.

The sixth is the liberation of the forbearance of the non-arising of dharmas. Forbearance here is not endurance; it is that the mind can come to rest — resting upon the fact that dharmas are from the first unarisen, without alarm and without retreat. What the first four are freed from is the afflictions, wrong views, the various graspings, and the aggregates, elements, and sense-fields, and these are still “a something to be freed from”; at this phrase, what is freed from is the very notion of arising.

The seventh is the liberation of freedom from attachment with respect to all worlds, all lands, all sentient beings, and all dharmas. The former phrase rested in non-arising; this one puts non-arising to use: to world, to land, to beings, to dharmas — in none of the four does one stick. To ask first: is not sticking the same as not caring? The text has answered elsewhere — not seeing that there is any sentient being, and yet teaching, taming, and expounding the Dharma. Freedom from attachment is not sticking; it is not a not-doing.

The eighth is the liberation of boundless abiding. Since one does not stick in the four, what is dwelt in has no boundary to speak of. This phrase turns the “freedom from” of the former phrase into a positive saying: it is not that there is nowhere to abide, but that the abiding has no limit.

The ninth is the liberation of bringing forth all the bodhisattva practices and entering the Tathāgata’s ground of non-discrimination. This phrase speaks of practice and ground together: on one side bringing forth all the bodhisattva practices, on the other entering the Tathāgata’s ground of non-discrimination. Practice discriminates, the ground does not, and the two are at once; therefore it is liberation and not an indulging.

The tenth is the liberation of being able, within a single thought, to know fully all three times. This is the last barrier, that of time. The preceding nine have gone on freeing until the ground of non-discrimination; this one says that the three times are known entire within one thought — not that the three times are compressed into a point, but that one is not barred by the length or shortness of time.

The misreading to clear away: these five are often read wholesale as “the state getting higher and higher.” See clearly what each is freed from: the sixth, the notion of arising; the seventh, sticking; the eighth, the bound of a dwelling place; the ninth, the separation of practice from ground; the tenth, the separation of times. When Chengguan says that the first four are freedom from the ordinary person’s three obstructions and the latter six from the obstruction to wisdom, this is exactly that order — what is freed from before is on the side of the afflictions, what is freed from after is on the side of the knowable. Brought home to use: one who feels that he “has already let go” may take these five and put them as five questions, one at a time.

The misreading to clear away: one and the same Chinese word appearing twice within one stretch and pointing to different things is very common in the scriptures translated into Chinese. If a reader does not look into it, he will mix the ten phrases of the twelfth gate and the ten phrases of the fifteenth into a single heap. The way to tell them apart is not to look up the Sanskrit but to look at the context — every phrase of the twelfth gate speaks of ‘pervading, manifesting, filling,’ and that is functioning; every phrase of the fifteenth speaks of ‘being freed from what,’ and that is bondage.

Brought home to use: practitioners often say ‘I want liberation,’ and should first ask which kind is wanted. Unobstructedness in functioning and the cutting off of bondage are two different labors.

Gate 16. Gardens and Groves: Taking the Place You Least Want to Go as a Garden

The sixteenth and the seventeenth gates Chengguan assigns to the seventh practice (the station of no attachment), and says that this gate makes clear a roaming ground where the feelings are given free rein and the next makes clear a resting place of ease and delight, and that both run through the two benefits, being provisional and real skillful means with nothing grasped at.

The force of this gate lies wholly in its first phrase: “birth-and-death is the garden of a bodhisattva, for the reason that there is nothing he wearies of and forsakes.” A garden is where people of the world roam and take their pleasure, and yet the text sets birth-and-death in that place. The nine phrases that follow use the same stroke: teaching sentient beings, abiding in all the kalpas, purified worlds, the palaces of all the demons, contemplating the dharma one has heard, the six perfections and the four means of gathering and the thirty-seven factors of the path, the ten powers and the four fearlessnesses and the eighteen exclusive dharmas, manifesting majestic power and spiritual penetrations, and within a single thought universally manifesting the accomplishing of perfect awakening.

The misreading to clear away: this is not saying that birth-and-death is fine, nor is it making merry in the midst of suffering. Every phrase has a reason appended to it — “for the reason that there is nothing he wearies of and forsakes,” “for the reason that he does not tire,” “for the reason that he takes up and holds the great practices.” What makes a garden a garden is not the circumstance but that in it there is nothing wearied of and forsaken. The fifth phrase, “the palaces of all the demons are the garden of a bodhisattva, for the reason that he subdues that host of demons,” is plainest of all: he goes there because there is work to do.

Brought home to use: to judge whether one has “no attachment,” a ready measure is this — the place you least wish to go, can you stay there?

Gate 17. Palaces: The Place Where One Sets One’s Body

The seventeenth gate is set over against the one before: a garden is a roaming ground, a palace a resting place. The ten phrases begin with the mind of awakening and end with receiving the prediction sealed by the anointing of the king of all-knowing wisdom.

Chengguan here points out only one thing, but points it out accurately: the “meditative concentration of the four dwellings of Brahmā” among the ten phrases is the four measureless minds, and is also the cause of the realm of form; and he cites the Dushipin jing as witness, saying that that scripture has “cultivating the four practices of Brahmā, loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.”

The way the text arranges them is worth looking at: the mind of awakening (never forgotten and lost), the ten courses of good deeds (converting the realm of desire), the four dwellings of Brahmā (converting the realm of form), birth among the gods of the Pure Abodes (undefiled by afflictions), birth in the formless realm (causing beings to leave the difficult conditions), birth in a defiled world (causing beings to cut off afflictions), dwelling manifestly amid the wives and retinue of the inner palace (bringing to accomplishment those who practiced together), dwelling manifestly as a wheel-turning king, a world-guarding king, Śakra, or Brahmā (taming those whose minds are set on mastery), abiding in the bodhisattva practice and sporting in spiritual penetrations, and receiving the prediction sealed by the anointing of the king of all-knowing wisdom. From the three realms to the station of a king to the inner palace, all of it counts as a palace.

The misreading to clear away: these ten phrases are not saying that a bodhisattva enjoys good fortune. Beneath the seventh phrase, “dwelling manifestly amid the wives and retinue of the inner palace,” the reason appended is “for the reason that he brings to accomplishment the sentient beings who practiced together with him in former times” — the place one is in is for the sake of the people who are there.

Brought home to use: there is no need to loathe and cast off the circumstances one is now in. Ask one question — ‘for whose accomplishment am I here?’ — and the circumstance turns from a cage into a palace.

Gate 18. What Is Delighted In: What the Inward Mind Takes Joy In

The eighteenth and the nineteenth gates Chengguan assigns to the eighth practice (the station of what is hard to obtain). He says that this gate is the vowing and delighting of the inward mind, and that the vow is the substance of practice; being already in a palace, one’s feelings naturally take joy in surpassing delights.

The ten things delighted in: right mindfulness, wisdom, going to the presence of the buddhas, the buddhas, the bodhisattvas, the gates of samādhi, dhāraṇī, unobstructed eloquence, accomplishing perfect awakening, and turning the wheel of the Dharma. Every phrase carries its reason; for instance, delighting in dhāraṇī is “for the reason that he holds the Dharma without forgetting and hands it on to sentient beings” — note the last words: the delight of holding all things does not stop at one’s own remembering.

The misreading to clear away: “what is delighted in” is not a matter of interest or taste. It is the source of the motive force of practice. Chengguan says “the vow is the substance of practice,” which means: what a person truly delights in is what his practice grows up to be.

Brought home to use: do not only examine what you have done; examine also what you delight in. The former can be forced; the latter cannot.

Gate 19. Adornment: Adorning the Vow with a Multitude of Virtues

The nineteenth gate is paired with the one before it. Chengguan says: the previous gate was the vowing and delighting of the inward mind; this gate is the outward furnishings of the adornment of virtue, adorning that vow with a multitude of virtues.

The ten adornments are: power, fearlessness, meaning, the Dharma, the vow, practice, the land, the universal sound, sustaining power, and transformation. Every one of them carries its reason — as the adornment of meaning is “for the reason that he speaks meanings that cannot be spoken and does not exhaust them,” and the adornment of the Dharma is “for the reason that he contemplates and expounds the eighty-four thousand collections of Dharma without forgetting or losing them.”

The misreading to clear away: adornment is easily read as an outward splendor. Not one of the ten here is outward — power, fearlessness, meaning, and the Dharma are all virtues. The sense of “adornment” here is close to ‘making a thing complete and manifest.’ The ninth, “the adornment of sustaining power,” looks back to the first gate of this whole stretch, which shows that the thirty gates are not each of them standing alone.

Brought home to use: to make your vow stand firm, the way is not to make the vow over and over, but to fill in these ten one item at a time.

Gate 20. Bringing Forth the Unmoving Mind: Outward Conditions Cannot Move It

The twentieth and the twenty-first gates Chengguan assigns to the ninth practice (the station of the good dharma), and says that this gate makes clear that outward conditions do not move one and the next makes clear that the inward mind does not forsake; he further says that this gate makes clear firmness of mind and the next makes clear entering deeply, and that both carry the sense of “power.”

Chengguan makes one fine division upon the ten phrases: the second and the ninth are the power of deliberating and choosing, and the rest are all the power of repeated cultivation. He also counts one by one the kinds of faith listed in the eighth phrase — that phrase of the text lists faith that has a root, faith that is unmuddied, pure faith, utterly pure faith, faith free of defilement, faith that is clear through, faith that reveres and makes offerings to all the buddhas, faith that does not turn back, faith that cannot be exhausted, faith that none can destroy, and faith of great gladness and exultation — and Chengguan counts eleven of them, giving a reason for each: the first is that faith can give birth to the fruit of buddhahood; the second is unmixed, because it is not muddied by unbelief; the third is pure, because it is without afflictions; the fourth is without subtle stirrings of thought; the fifth is apart from the defilement of the knowable; the sixth penetrates the source of phenomena; the seventh tends toward the station of the fruit; the eighth is firm in its own portion; the ninth is inexhaustible in virtue; the tenth is unmoved by conditions; the eleventh realizes suchness.

The misreading to clear away: an unmoving mind is not numbness. Look at the fifth phrase — “universally gathering in sentient beings without choosing between enemy and kin” — this is being moved to the widest extent while the mind does not shift; it is not a not-moving.

Brought home to use: the distinction between the power of deliberating and choosing and the power of repeated cultivation is very practical. Some kinds of unmovingness must come by thinking a thing through (deliberating and choosing); some can come only by doing it over and over until it is familiar (repeated cultivation). Use the wrong method, and the labor is spent for nothing.

Gate 21. The Deep and Great Mind Not Forsaken: The Inward Mind Does Not Let Go

The twenty-first gate is paired with the one before it. Chengguan’s way of explaining it is finished in a sentence: because one is unmoved, therefore one can go to the very end of both principle and phenomena; principle being deep and phenomena being broad, it is called “deep and great.”

All ten phrases begin with “not forsaking”: not forsaking the bringing to fulfillment of the awakening of the buddhas, not forsaking the teaching and taming of sentient beings, not forsaking the not cutting off of the family and nature of the buddhas, not forsaking the drawing near to good friends, not forsaking the making of offerings to the buddhas, not forsaking the single-minded seeking of the dharmas of merit of the Great Vehicle, not forsaking the practice of pure conduct and the guarding of the pure precepts, not forsaking the drawing near to bodhisattvas, not forsaking the seeking of the skillful means by which the dharmas of a buddha are guarded and upheld, not forsaking the fulfilling of the practices and vows of a bodhisattva and the gathering of the dharmas of the buddhas.

The misreading to clear away: if the two words “deep and great” are read as adjectives (a very deep and very great mind), Chengguan’s division is lost. Deep points to principle and great points to phenomena — this mind is deep and great precisely because it holds on to both ends, principle and phenomena, at once.

Brought home to use: the previous gate said that outward conditions cannot move one; this gate says that one does not oneself let go. These two are to be examined separately: for many people, the outward conditions have not moved and they have let go first.

Gate 22. Contemplation with Wisdom: The First of the Nine Gates of the Tenth Practice

From the twenty-second gate on there are nine gates in all, which Chengguan assigns to the tenth practice (the station of the real), and he labels these nine gates as nine wisdoms: the wisdom of contemplation, the wisdom of expounding the Dharma, the wisdom of leaving obstruction behind, the wisdom of deciding upon examination, the wisdom of shining through, the wisdom without equal, the wisdom that is not inferior, the wisdom that towers up, and the wisdom deep and vast. This is the longest set in the whole stretch, and also the set Chengguan divides most tidily.

The first is the wisdom of contemplation. Chengguan says: precisely because one does not forsake the deep and great, therefore one is able to contemplate. He also notices one detail — that in the earlier part of the questioning only “contemplation” was said and the two graphs “with wisdom” had dropped out, and that by this passage of the answer the lack can be made good.

The ten things contemplated: skillfully discriminating and proclaiming all dharmas, all the roots of good of the three times, the mastered transformations of the practices of the bodhisattvas, the gates of the meaning of the dharmas, the majestic power of the buddhas, the gates of dhāraṇī, universally proclaiming the true Dharma in all the worlds, entering the whole Dharma realm, all that is inconceivable in the ten directions, and the light of the wisdom of all the dharmas of a buddha being without obstruction.

The misreading to clear away: the “contemplation” here is not the inward looking of sitting in meditation. Among the ten phrases there is expounding the Dharma, there is entering the Dharma realm, there is knowing the majestic power of the buddhas — it is looking at everything with wisdom in hand, not one particular method of practice.

Brought home to use: the practice of the real begins from contemplation. To make no mistake in the matter at hand, one must first see accurately; and the precondition of seeing accurately is the not forsaking of the gate before.

Gate 23. Expounding the Dharma: From Inward Contemplation to Outward Speaking

The second is the wisdom of expounding the Dharma. Chengguan says: because one is able to contemplate inwardly, therefore one is able to speak outwardly. The sequence cannot be inverted.

He divides the ten phrases into two sections, the real and the conventional: the first two speak of the conventional (all arising from conditions, all being like an illusion), the latter eight speak of the real, and he labels the sense of each: first, there is no duality to be disputed; second, the substance and its virtue are alike broad; third, the mark is deep and far; fourth, the substance is firm and sharp; fifth, suchness is unmoved; sixth, the substance cuts off the hundred negations; seventh, bound within, it is undefiled; eighth, substance and mark are of one flavor.

The misreading to clear away: all ten phrases begin with “expounding that all dharmas,” and are easily taken for ten slogans. In truth it is a table of the sequence of expounding the Dharma — beginning from the two conventional phrases easiest to take hold of, arising from conditions and being like an illusion, and running all the way to “all abide in one meaning and are accomplished in their original nature.”

Brought home to use: which phrase to give a person first when teaching him has already been set in order by this gate. Skip the first two phrases and go straight to “accomplished in their original nature,” and the hearer cannot catch it.

Gate 24. Purity: Leaving the Obstruction to Wisdom Behind

The third is the wisdom of leaving obstruction behind. Chengguan says that what this gate leaves behind is the obstruction to wisdom, and points out that in the Jin translation this gate is named “without defilement”; he further says that though both are called purity, what is purified is not the same — this is a reminder to the reader not to confound the purity here with purity elsewhere. He also compares these ten phrases with the “seven purities,” saying that the opening out and the drawing together differ and that this is easily seen in the text, and that the discussion of the seven purities is at the beginning of the fifth ground.

The ten phrases are: the deep mind, cutting off doubt, leaving views behind, the objective realm, seeking all-knowing wisdom, eloquence, fearlessness, abiding in the wisdom of all bodhisattvas, receiving the disciplines of all bodhisattvas, and being complete in the accomplishing of unsurpassed awakening, the thirty-two marks of a hundredfold merit, the white and pure dharmas, and all the roots of good.

The misreading to clear away: purity here is not a cleanness in the moral sense; it is the absence of obstruction in wisdom. The second phrase, “purity of cutting off doubt,” and the third, “purity of leaving views behind,” make this plainest of all — what is purified is doubt and view.

Brought home to use: one who feels that his practice is not pure may first ask whether it is the obstruction of the afflictions or the obstruction to what is knowable. What this gate cures is the latter.

Gate 25. The Seal: Deciding and Sealing

The fourth is the wisdom of deciding upon examination. Chengguan says it very clearly: with pure wisdom one decides and seals all dharmas, and therefore it is called a seal; in the Jin translation this gate is named “the seal of wisdom”; and the benefit concluded at the end is likewise the seal of wisdom, just as with the three seals of the Dharma.

He labels the ten seals one by one as ten decisions: first, when the circumstance of suffering is peacefully received, the wisdom of forbearance does not move; second, when others do not benefit one, the practice of forbearance is decided; third, deep faith and forbearance toward the Buddha-dharma are decided (that is, the forbearance that examines dharmas); fourth, deciding to attain buddhahood and deliver beings; fifth, deciding to know that the wisdom of a buddha is boundless; sixth, deciding to long for the fruit of buddhahood without turning back; seventh, deciding to take no thought for body or life so as to draw near to persons and to the Dharma; eighth, deciding to deliver those who have already entered the Great Vehicle; ninth, deciding to deliver evenly; tenth, deciding to be of one substance with the buddhas, the cause full and the fruit complete.

The misreading to clear away: a “seal” is not a token of certification, nor is it some kind of experience. Look at the first seal — knowing the three kinds of suffering and single-mindedly seeking the Buddha-dharma without giving rise to indolence, not startled and not fearful, not alarmed and not terrified. This is the mind not turning in the very worst circumstance, and so it is called a seal: like a seal sealing a thing, it cannot be altered.

Brought home to use: the quickest way to examine whether one has these ten seals is to look at the second seal — when one is abused with evil words and harmed with knives and staves, is one still upon the mind of a bodhisattva?

Gate 26. The Shining of the Light of Wisdom: Shining Through Unobstructed

The fifth is the wisdom of shining through. Chengguan passes over it in a sentence: because of the sealing that went before, therefore the shining through is unobstructed, and the ten phrases are easily understood.

The ten phrases are: knowing that one will decidedly accomplish perfect awakening, seeing all the buddhas, seeing sentient beings dying here and being born there, understanding the gates of Dharma of all the scriptures, relying on good friends to bring forth the mind of awakening and gather roots of good, manifesting all the buddhas, teaching sentient beings and causing them to abide on the ground of the Tathāgata, expounding inconceivable and vast gates of Dharma, skillfully knowing the spiritual penetrations and majestic power of the buddhas, and fulfilling all the perfections.

The misreading to clear away: the first phrase, “the shining of the light of wisdom that fully knows that he himself will decidedly accomplish unsurpassed perfect awakening,” is not self-conceit. What it follows upon is precisely the seal of the gate before — the sealing being already decided, this matter turns from a wish into a fact that is shone upon and seen. Without the ten seals of the previous gate, this phrase would be a deluded imagining.

Brought home to use: this gate makes one thing clear — certainty is shone out, not thought out. Certainty cannot be arrived at by thinking; one can only walk up gate by gate.

Gate 27. Abidings without Equal: Abiding in Both Phenomena and Principle

The sixth is the wisdom without equal. Chengguan says: because of the shining through that went before, therefore one does not abide partially on one side but is able to abide in both phenomena and principle, and so it is named as having no equal. He further says that all ten phrases are the carrying on of both the provisional and the real, being either the functioning that is quiescence itself or the quiescence that is functioning itself.

The syntax of the ten phrases is nearly the same throughout, all of them “though … yet …”: though contemplating the true limit, yet not realizing it; planting roots of good equal to the Dharma realm, yet without grasping; practicing the bodhisattva practice and knowing that it is like a transformation, yet giving rise to no doubt about the Buddha-dharma; though leaving deluded imaginings behind, yet still able to bring the mind to bear and not to weary; grasping at nothing among all dharmas, yet not realizing nirvāṇa; knowing that all kalpas are themselves no-kalpa, yet truly speaking the number of the kalpas; knowing that all dharmas are without doing, yet not forsaking the practice of doing the path; knowing that the three realms are mind-only and the three times are mind-only, yet fully knowing that this mind is measureless and boundless; for the sake of a single sentient being carrying out the bodhisattva practice through unspeakable kalpas, yet giving rise to no weariness; though fulfilling his practice, yet not realizing awakening.

The eighth phrase is the one place in the whole stretch where mind-only is directly stated, and is worth remembering. And for the tenth phrase the text gives its own reason — a bodhisattva thinks thus: what I do was from the first for the sake of sentient beings, and therefore I ought to dwell long in birth-and-death.

The misreading to clear away: “abiding without equal” is not ‘being higher than others.’ At the head of the passage the text says, “none among all sentient beings, śrāvakas, and pratyekabuddhas is equal to them,” and the place where none is equal is the abiding in both — śrāvakas abide in principle and forsake phenomena, ordinary beings abide in phenomena and are dark to principle, and only here are both ends kept hold of.

Brought home to use: there are two common leanings in practice, one attending only to being freed from birth-and-death and paying no heed to the human world, the other busy only with phenomena and unclear in principle. This gate is the mirror in which those two leanings are seen.

Gate 28. Bringing Forth the Mind That Is Not Inferior: Looking Upward without Slighting Oneself

The seventh is the wisdom that is not inferior. Chengguan’s way of explaining it is deft: the previous gate looked downward and had no equal, this gate looks upward and is not inferior; with regard to ten surpassing matters one decides that they are to be done, and so it is called not inferior. He also mentions that in the Jin translation of the scripture this gate is named “without timidity.”

He divides the ten phrases into five pairs: first, the pair of subduing the demons and curbing the outsiders; second, the pair of gladdening others and fulfilling oneself; third, the pair of accumulating blessings and accomplishing wisdom; fourth, the pair of converting below and accomplishing above — these four pairs all being set forth singly; the fifth is the pair of compassion and wisdom brought to the end, and this alone is the carrying on of both. Of these, the ninth phrase is a compassion that is wisdom itself, in which compassion and wisdom are carried on together, and though compassion is practiced no fruit in return is sought; the tenth phrase is a wisdom that is compassion itself, in which the provisional and the real are carried on together. The tenth phrase is the longest, and Chengguan divides it into four parts: first the listing of what is known; then, from “in this way” onward, the setting forth of the one who knows (knowing suffering and awakening to the deluded, seeing principle and realizing cessation, cultivating the path and cutting off arising); then, from “and yet within” onward, the brushing away of the mark of the one who knows (the one who knows being without discrimination, therefore without merit; what is known being without variety, therefore without realm); and last, from “neither existent” onward, the gathering back into the Middle Way. He also distinguishes two graphs: otherness speaks of alteration lengthwise, difference speaks of unlikeness crosswise.

The misreading to clear away: the mind that is not inferior is not self-encouragement. The ninth phrase is being able to give away hands and feet, ears and nose, blood and flesh, bone and marrow, and even the throne of a king, without giving rise to a single thought of sorrow or regret — this kind of ‘not inferior’ goes in the direction of giving away, not in the direction of getting.

Brought home to use: for one who feels that his capacity is poor and that he cannot succeed in practice, this gate is exactly the remedy. But note that the prescription it gives is ‘decide to do ten surpassing things,’ not ‘believe that you are very capable.’

Gate 29. The Ascendant Mind Like a Mountain: The Myriad Practices Tower Up

The eighth is the wisdom that towers up. Chengguan says: because one is not inferior, therefore the myriad practices tower far up and it is hard to look up to their height; with regard to surpassing matters one decides to do them, and so one goes straight toward awakening and cannot be shaken.

He labels the ten phrases one by one: first, diligently cultivating the wisdom that is able to realize; second, constantly contemplating the principle that is realized; third, inwardly cultivating what is without outflows; fourth, outwardly drawing near to good persons. Upon the fourth phrase he speaks most weightily — to draw near for the sake of fame and gain or for the sake of some other seeking, or to hear a single word from another and then say that one has already understood, this is called stealing the Dharma; and he cites the Guanfo sanmei jing to say that such a person falls into the hells as swiftly as an arrow shot, and says that this is an admonition to those who come after. The fifth is the great forbearance that delivers beings while the great oath increases still further, and for this he uses a comparison: as firewood makes the fire fiercer. The sixth is decidedly surpassing the realms of the demons, for the reason that having accomplished surpassing virtues he is not attached to them but only takes the delight of the Dharma as his support, and then the realms of the demons all become the realm of a buddha. The seventh is diligent and brave practice, and for it he cites a verse of the She dacheng lun: though a fool practices but a little while, his slothful mind suspects that he has been long at it; the Buddha through measureless kalpas was diligent and brave in vigor, and took it only for an instant. The eighth is not forsaking evil persons; the ninth is standing alone and being equal to the buddhas; the tenth is the carrying on of both the provisional and the real.

The tenth phrase of the text is a long one, and Chengguan divides it into four parts, and upon the raising of the question at “why is this” he distinguishes two layers of sense: one question is that practice must accord with principle, and since principle is without anything got at, why is the vow not forsaken? and since the vow is not forsaken, what need is there further to contemplate that nothing is got at? His two explanations are these: first, if there were something got at, awakening would not be got, for it is precisely because nothing is got at that awakening comes forth, and therefore, though the vow is not forsaken, one must still contemplate that nothing is got at; second, the dharma of nothing-got-at does not lie outside the getting, and one must seek all dharmas everywhere before the source of nothing-got-at is exhausted, and therefore, wishing to realize that nothing is got at, one must not forsake the vow for awakening.

The misreading to clear away: this gate is most easily read as an exhortation. Look at the eighth phrase — not forsaking evil persons; look at the ninth — not waiting for another to help one in one’s practice. The place where it towers up is not in its momentum, but in still standing where others cannot.

Brought home to use: the admonition against stealing the Dharma in the fourth phrase is worth copying out by everyone who reads the scriptures. To hear a single word from another and say one has understood is the most labor-saving and the most damaging of shortcuts.

Gate 30. Entering the Ocean-like Wisdom of Unsurpassed Awakening: The Substance of Wisdom Is Deep and Vast as an Ocean

The ninth is the wisdom deep and vast, and it is also the last of the thirty gates. Chengguan says: it is not only a seeking to rise up lofty and steep, but also because the substance of wisdom contains what is deep and vast — the height of a mountain and the breadth of an ocean are precisely the pair of final gates of the tenth practice.

He divides the ten phrases: the first four are the four measureless realms; the latter six are all the realm of a buddha. The latter six are further divided: the fifth is entering the roots of good of the buddhas of the three times; the sixth, seventh, and eighth are entering the realms of the buddhas of the three times (past, future, and present, one each); the ninth is making offerings to many buddhas; the tenth is seeking many dharmas. At the end he concludes with a sentence: “by this ocean of cause, entry into the ocean of fruit is gained.”

What is worth looking at is the eighth phrase, the longest in length: from the buddhas sitting at the place of awakening, subduing the demons, and accomplishing perfect awakening, to turning the wheel of the Dharma, entering nirvāṇa, the compiling of the treasury of the Dharma, and the adorning of the stūpas of the Buddha — a whole set of the deeds of a buddha, all of it seen everywhere in thought after thought; and the text asks itself why it is that this contemplation can be everywhere and yet without error, and answers itself that it is because one fully knows that all the buddhas are like a dream, and yet still goes to the presence of all the buddhas and reverently makes offerings.

The misreading to clear away: “like a dream” here does not say that the buddhas are not real. It is joined to the next phrase, “and yet they are able to go to the presence of all the buddhas and reverently make offerings” — precisely because there is no grasping, therefore in the making of offerings one never has enough. Read as though the buddhas were unreal and need not be revered, the whole thing is turned upside down.

Brought home to use: walking the thirty gates as far as this, it comes to rest on four words, “never having enough.” The twenty-nine gates before all spoke of how to hold up, how not to turn back, how not to grasp; and this last gate speaks of this: to go on walking in this way is neither to finish nor to wish to stop.

Lineage

The standing together of two outlines. There are two outlines of the thirty gates: the ancient worthies divide them into three, the first six gates making clear the practice of a great resolve that reaches far, the next nine the practice of the working of concentration and wisdom, and the last fifteen the practice in which the virtues are complete and brought to fullness; Chengguan, on the other hand, “does not disturb the sequence” but assigns them to the ten practices position by position — three gates to the first practice, one each to the second and the third, two to the fourth, six to the fifth, two to each of the next four, and nine to the tenth. Chengguan passes an explicit judgment on the division of the ancient worthies: “yet taken as perfectly interfused, this sense is not without warrant” — these are his words of judgment, and this piece marks them as Chengguan’s judgment while recording the two outlines side by side, ranking neither in his stead. And what matters still more is the layer already spoken of above: the names of the six positions do not appear at all in the scriptural text, but were assigned as an outline by the ancient worthies of old on the basis of the text of the Dushipin jing, and Chengguan carried it on — wherever this piece speaks of a position, it belongs to that assigning.

The agreement of the number of gates in the three translations. The eighty-fascicle recension has thirty gates; the sixty-fascicle recension in this stretch yields thirty passages of answer in fact — the ninth gate of the eighty, “the wisdom of skillful discernment,” answers to the ninth passage of the sixty, “the wisdom of skillful and expedient discernment,” and the tenth gate, “entering samādhi,” to the tenth passage, “right-reception samādhi,” corresponding one by one from beginning to end; the separately circulating Dushipin jing, in its second round, likewise yields thirty gates. The numbers agree in the three translations while the names of the gates mostly differ; this is recorded as it stands and not forced into agreement.

Divergences in the names of the gates, and divergences in what Chengguan reports. Chengguan mentions the Jin translation’s names in four places: for the first gate he says that the Dushi jing names it “the ten establishings,” which agrees with the actual text of that scripture; for the third gate he cites a sentence of the Jin scripture in order to explain the text of the eighty-fascicle recension; for the twenty-fourth gate he says the Jin name is “without defilement” and for the twenty-fifth that the Jin recension names it “the seal of wisdom,” and both of these agree with the actual text of the sixty-fascicle recension; only for the twenty-eighth gate, where he says the Jin scripture names it “without timidity,” the actual text of the sixty-fascicle recension reads “bringing forth the mind without indolence,” while the Dushipin jing reads ‘the mind not timid, bringing forth the mind of the path’ — the name Chengguan reports agrees with the Dushi and differs from the sixty-fascicle recension. The three recensions are recorded together without judgment. Besides this, where the eighty-fascicle recension of the first gate reads “the sustaining power of time” the sixty reads “marvelous sustaining”; and in the fifteenth gate, where the eighty reads “the various graspings” the sixty reads “blazing,” and where the eighty reads “the aggregates, the elements, and the sense-fields” the sixty reads “the heaps, elements, and entries,” and in that gate the sixty lists only eight phrases — these too are recorded together.

The explanations of the three commentators, and three outlines. For this unit three commentators may be adduced. Chengguan’s Shu explains gate by gate, as above. Chengguan’s Yanyi chao sets up no separate outline, but cites the Shu phrase by phrase to set out what each rests upon — that the Shu’s “now one who expounds the Dharma” comes from the Maudgalyāyana chapter of the Vimalakīrti Sūtra; that “not merely relying upon the precepts” comes from Ānanda’s four questions, where the Buddha bade them take the precepts as teacher; how the two senses of “ten phrases in five pairs” in the eighth phrase of the seventh gate are each explained twice; that the fifth kind of secret speech comes from the secret of transformation among the four secrets of the Mahāyānasaṃgraha — all of these the Chao points out. Fazang’s Tanxuan ji, for its part, does have an explanation of this section gate by gate: from the outline of “the third great section” it explains gate by gate as far as the thirtieth and then passes on to the next round, and there is explicit text on the ten sustainings of gate 1, the five senses of secret speech in gate 8, the three successive explanations of gate 9, the outline of gate 14, and the two kinds of liberation in gate 15. Only, what the Tanxuan ji comments on is the sixty-fascicle recension, and so its names for the gates and its counts of phrases in many places do not agree with the eighty. It is only Li Tongxuan’s Xin Huayan jing lun that, in chapter thirty-eight, takes up a doctrinal framework for the whole chapter and does not cite the text gate by gate, so that for this stretch there is no gate-by-gate explanation of his to be adduced; the absence is recorded as it stands, and the text of some other place is not used to fill it out.

Three outlines of the thirty gates therefore stand together. The ancient worthies divided them into three — the first six gates, the practice of great and far-reaching aspiration; the next nine, the practice of the working of concentration and wisdom; the last fifteen, the practice of merit fully accomplished — and this is what Chengguan transmits. Fazang also divides into three, but counts by phrases: the first sixty phrases, the practice of great and far-reaching aspiration; the next ninety, the practice of the working of concentration and wisdom; the last hundred and fifty, the practice of merit fully accomplished. Chengguan himself does not break the sequence, but assigns the gates to the ten practices station by station. The names of the three parts in the first two are wholly the same; what differs is that the one takes the gate and the other the phrase as its unit, and since each gate has ten phrases, six gates are sixty phrases, nine gates ninety, and fifteen gates a hundred and fifty, the two counts answering to each other. The three outlines are recorded together, and no judgment is made among them.

Places for cross-reading. For the ten sustainings of the first gate, Chengguan once collated them with the eleven sustainings of the part on the great exhaustion in the tenth ground of the Chapter on the Ten Grounds — there one sustaining of the afflictions is added, because it is spoken with reference to the unbroken continuity of responsive manifestation; here it is spoken only with reference to the root of practice, and so there is no sustaining of the afflictions. Again, there there is a sustaining of offerings and a sustaining of kalpas but no sustaining of the objective realm and no sustaining of the power of good; Chengguan says that here kalpas are taken in under time, and there the power of good is taken in under practice and offerings arise in dependence upon the realm, and so there is no real divergence. The mind, buddha, and sentient beings without difference of the ninth phrase of the seventh gate Chengguan fastens to the verses of Forest of Awakening in the Chapter on the Praises in Verse in the Palace of Yama. And when explaining the first sense of secret speech in the eighth gate, Chengguan fastens it to “the secret treasury of the Tathāgata” of the Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata. All three of these places may be read across.

How this bears upon the name of the chapter. The tenth phrase of the seventh gate says, “though fully knowing that the Buddha-dharma is the dharma of the world and the dharma of the world is the Buddha-dharma, yet not within the Buddha-dharma discriminating the dharma of the world and not within the dharma of the world discriminating the Buddha-dharma,” which Chengguan judges to be “identical and yet not identical,” saying that it is by the thing itself being of itself empty that it is named mutual identity, and that it is not that within the world there is a separate Buddha-dharma to be got at. This chapter is named Detachment from the World, and this phrase is precisely the inside and the outside of that name — what is detached from is not the world as such, but that single thought which discriminates and grasps between the world and the Buddha-dharma.