華嚴經 品三十八 離世間品 · 十迴向行二十九門Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Detachment from the World · The Twenty-Nine Gates of the Practice of the Ten Dedications

First, See Clearly What This Stretch Is Asking

Universal Wisdom Bodhisattva asked two hundred questions in one breath, and Samantabhadra answers each question with ten. This round is the twenty-nine questions lying between the seventy-first and the ninety-ninth; twenty-eight of the gates read ‘Sons of the Buddha! Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas have ten kinds of such-and-such,’ and one reads ‘bring forth ten kinds.’ The first thing a reader must establish is this: the scriptural text does not itself say that this round is the station of the ten dedications. Among the twenty-nine gates, apart from gate 7, “the dedicating of roots of good,” and the third of the dharmas not held in common, which speaks of “dedicating and directing with skill” — both of them names of dharmas of practice — nowhere in the whole stretch does a name of a station appear.

Then where do the four graphs “the practice of the ten dedications” come from? They come from an outline set up by the ancient worthies of old on the basis of the six rounds of question and answer of the Dushipin jing, and Chengguan carried that outline on and explained the gates one by one under it. At the beginning of the chapter Chengguan states it plainly for himself: the ancient worthies of old all relied on the text of that scripture to outline this scripture. Therefore in this piece, wherever the six positions are spoken of, they are uniformly fastened to ‘Chengguan carrying on the outline of the ancient worthies,’ and are not taken as what the scriptural text says of itself. If this layer is not established first, a reader will read the expedient of the outliners as the Buddha’s own speaking — which is the mistake most easily made in reading the Avataṃsaka.

The number of the gates must also be explained first. Chengguan produces two numbers: the proper outline gives twenty-nine gates, and if that one sentence generally listing “the unimpeded workings” is also counted as a gate, then there are thirty. Where does the difference lie? After the ten masteries the scriptural text first lists generally, “there are ten kinds of unimpeded working,” and sets out the ten names from sentient beings down to powers, and only then answers gate by gate. That sentence of general listing does not itself answer ten phrases, and so it is not reckoned a gate; but it may also be reckoned one, and the ancient worthies did so reckon it. The two numbers stand together, and there is no need to judge which is right.

The Threefold Division of the Ancient Worthies and Chengguan’s Tenfold Assigning: Two Measuring Rods for One Stretch of Text

Chengguan here records a threefold outline of the ancient worthies: the first eleven gates make clear the firmness of the substance of practice within the station of the dedications; the twelve gates from the ten masteries onward make clear the mastery of the working of practice; the seven gates from the ten kinds of sporting onward make clear the completeness of the virtues of practice. This is to see the twenty-nine gates as three sections — substance, working, virtue.

Chengguan then lays out a measuring rod of his own: assigning them anew according to the sequence of the ten dedications — four gates to the first dedication, two gates each to the second and third dedications, one gate each to the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh dedications, the eighth dedication being just the ten unimpeded workings, three gates to the ninth dedication, and four gates to the tenth.

One and the same stretch of scriptural text, divided into three and divided into ten. What must be noticed is that these two rods neither conflict with nor gather in each other; they are two angles. A reader need not ask which is ‘the original intent of the scripture’ — the scripture only speaks gate by gate, and the outline is what later people set in place so that the thread might be seen. Brought home to use: when reading a long stretch of numbered dharmas, first find a rod by which to divide it into sections, then ask of each section whether it is speaking of substance, of working, or of virtue, and one will not read it as a mere running account.

Gate 1. Abiding like a Jewel: Why the Place Abided In Is Called a Jewel

The first gate does not say “ten kinds of abiding,” but “ten kinds of abiding like a jewel.” Wherein lies the preciousness? Chengguan, explaining this gate, says that the roots of good abided in are precious and complete, and therefore it is called a jewel.

The sequence of the ten phrases has an order to it. Chengguan names them one by one: the first is making offerings to and serving many buddhas; the second, hearing the Dharma and receiving and upholding it; the third, taking birth with mastery; the fourth, speaking the dharmas of root and branch; the fifth, mastery in the knowing and the cutting off; the sixth, compassion and wisdom carried on together; the seventh, knowing that nature and characteristic are unimpeded; the eighth, the obtaining that obtains nothing; the ninth, contemplating emptiness and fulfilling the vow; the tenth, receiving and practicing without weariness.

First ask a question: the first phrase is only ‘going to many buddhas and bowing and making offerings’ — what is precious in that? The answer lies in the eight graphs “all able to go to measureless worlds” — it is not going to one place, but that there is no place he is unable to go. This is already not the offering of an ordinary being; it is the mastery that comes only after the substance of practice is firm. The second phrase goes on to say that he hears the Dharma and “does not let it be forgotten and lost,” and that “the wisdom of awakening grows” — from which one sees that making offerings to a buddha is not for the sake of seeking blessings but for the sake of receiving the Dharma. Brought home to use: if a person makes offerings to a buddha but does not receive the Dharma, he has the first phrase of this gate and not the second, and the jewel cannot come to be abided in.

Gate 1, Phrases Three and Six: Taking Birth Without Confusion, and Speaking of Directions and Places Where There Is No Place

The third phrase is a single sentence: “passing away from this land and appearing in birth in another place, and yet as to the Buddha-dharma being in nothing confused.” The first half is something ordinary beings have as well — dying here and being born there; the whole of the preciousness lies in the limiting clause that follows: as to the Buddha-dharma being in nothing confused. Chengguan names this phrase taking birth with mastery, and Fazang the same. First ask: why should taking birth have a gate set aside for it? Because the confusion of the interval between bodies is the most concrete barrier a practitioner meets — whether the dharma understood in this life will still be remembered in the next. The scriptural text’s answer is not that memory is kept by spiritual penetration; it is that as to the Buddha-dharma he is not confused. What is confused over is one’s birth and circumstance; what is not confused over is the Dharma. Brought home to use: whether a thing can be carried across depends on whether the Dharma has become a view in you, and not on whether it has become a memory.

The sixth phrase has the pattern of a double turn: “knowing that what the minds of all sentient beings discriminate is all without place, and yet also speaking of there being various directions and places; and though he is without discrimination and without anything made, yet for the sake of taming all sentient beings there is cultivation and there is what is done.” Knowing there is no place is the real; speaking of directions and places is the provisional. Being without discrimination and without anything made is the real; there being cultivation and what is done is the provisional. Look closely at “for the sake of taming all sentient beings” — this clause is where the reason of the whole sentence lies, and it is the ground upon which the provisional is not empty. Chengguan names this phrase compassion and wisdom carried on together; Fazang says it more plainly: knowing that beings are empty and yet carrying on their conversion. First clear away a misunderstanding: since there is no place and nothing made, are the speaking of places and the doing of what is done not a self-contradiction? It is not a contradiction; it is that each half is set over against something of its own — being without place is spoken over against the discriminating of the mind, and there being directions and places is spoken over against the one being converted. If, because one knows emptiness, one neither speaks nor acts, compassion has been cut off; if, because one must speak and act, one forgets emptiness, wisdom has been cut off. Brought home to use: when a person is speaking the Dharma, if he is still in his heart reckoning whether he has spoken it rightly and whether it has had effect, most often it is the first half of this phrase that has not held.

Gate 1, the Fourth: One Dharma Brings Forth All Dharmas, and Yet All Meanings Are at the End One Meaning

The fourth phrase says, “knowing that from a single dharma all dharmas can be brought forth, and being able to discriminate and expound them one by one,” and the closing phrase is, “because the various different meanings of all dharmas are, when brought to the end, one and the same meaning.” Chengguan explains this phrase in two halves: the first half is the arising of the branch from the root, the second half the gathering of the branch back into the root, and the second half serves precisely to establish the first. He further raises a cross-reading: as is said in the scripture, they are born from a single dharma, and that one dharma is without characteristic.

Here a misreading must be cleared away. ‘All meanings are at the end one meaning’ is easily read as ‘therefore whatever one speaks of is the same, and there is no need to discriminate’ — the very opposite. What the scriptural text says is “being able to discriminate and expound them one by one”; to be able to discriminate is the very capacity in question. And the reason he can discriminate without confusion is precisely that he knows the meanings return at the end to one. If there were discriminating without the returning to one, the speaking of the Dharma would become a piling up of knowledge; if there were the returning to one without the ability to discriminate, it would become vagueness. Both sides are needed.

Gate 1, the Fifth: Not Realizing the Real Limit, and Yet Arriving at the Far Shore of the Real Limit

The fifth phrase is the weightiest sentence in the whole stretch: “knowing how to grow weary of and leave the afflictions, knowing how to bring the afflictions to rest, knowing how to guard against the afflictions, knowing how to cut off and remove the afflictions; cultivating the bodhisattva practice and yet not realizing the real limit, and yet arriving at the end at the far shore of the real limit.”

Chengguan matches the first four knowings to the four paths: the path of the requisites is the wearying and leaving, the path of preparation the guarding against, the uninterrupted path the cutting off and removing, while precisely the realizing and entering of the path of liberation is not taken up. He says it plainly: the not taking up of the realizing and entering is in order to differ from the two vehicles, and also because the bodhisattva retains the delusions — only by retaining them uncut can the cutting and realizing be brought to the end; Fazang likewise gives the two reasons side by side, ‘because of differing from the two vehicles, because of retaining the delusions.’ It is the bodhisattva who retains the delusions, not the two vehicles.

First ask: is the not realizing a not yet being able to realize? It is not. The scriptural text goes on to answer this itself: “being skillful in means, learning well all that is to be learned, causing the vows and practices of former times all to be brought to fullness.” It is for the sake of fulfilling the vows of former days that he does not take it up. Chengguan here raises a very vivid comparison: like arrows shot into the sky, where the arrow behind props the notch of the arrow in front, so that the arrows never fall to the ground. The bodhisattva’s not entering nirvāṇa is just such a propping, one power of vow after another.

Brought home to use: once a practitioner has tasted the sweetness of quiescence, it is easiest of all to stop there. This phrase is to be read at just such a time — that one may stop is not the problem; if the vow is large enough, it will of itself keep propping.

Gate 1, the Seventh to the Tenth: Nature and Characteristic Effaced, and Yet the Differences Still Spoken

The seventh phrase first sets up “knowing that all dharmas are of one and the same nature, namely: without intrinsic nature,” running down seven occurrences of “without” that efface nature and characteristic entirely; and then the brush turns and runs down fifteen occurrences of “this is”: this is the dharma of the buddhas, this is the dharma of the bodhisattvas, this is the dharma of the pratyekabuddhas, this is the dharma of the śrāvakas… down to the conditioned dharmas and the unconditioned dharmas. Chengguan names this phrase “knowing that nature and characteristic are unimpeded.”

First ask: since they are of one and the same nature, why must fifteen kinds still be divided out? Because the effacing is spoken with reference to principle, and the dividing with reference to teaching. If one cannot divide, there is no gate by which to speak the Dharma; if one does not know the effacing, discriminating becomes grasping. The unimpeded is unimpeded precisely here — it is not that the two sides are reconciled into a middling thing, but that each side goes to its own utmost and yet they do not hinder one another.

The eighth phrase, “seeking a buddha, one does not get one,” and yet “not forsaking the vow to tame and subdue sentient beings and cause them to accomplish perfect awakening in respect of all dharmas,” Chengguan names “the obtaining that obtains nothing”; the ninth, knowing that all skillful means are established by the thinking of the mind and yet are “neither upside-down nor false and deceiving,” he names “contemplating emptiness and fulfilling the vow”; the tenth, hearing unspeakable dharmas of prediction and being “not startled and not alarmed, not confused and not perplexed,” he names “receiving and practicing without weariness.” Read as four phrases together, they speak of one and the same matter: having seen emptiness, the vow stands all the more firmly.

Gate 2. The Mind of Vow of the Great Vehicle like a Vajra: Why the Vow Must Be like a Vajra

The second gate is ten great vows. Chengguan, explaining this gate, says that this is the rescuing and protecting of the great vow, and explains why it is placed second: a dedication must have the great vow going before it. He further points out the two dimensions of the vow — with regard both to what is to be done and to the practice presently being done, there is no bounding limit, and the mind must be firm and exhaust the bound of it.

As to how the ten phrases are assigned, Chengguan is very exact: the first is the vow to know the inexhaustible gates of the Dharma; the second, the vow to deliver boundless sentient beings; the third, adorning the lands; the fourth, dedicating; the fifth, making offerings to the buddhas. Of these, the latter three — adorning the lands, dedicating, making offerings to the buddhas — Chengguan says are the vow to accomplish the fruit of buddhahood, and the first five are all with reference to what is to be accomplished, all discussed crosswise as being without shore. The sixth, being unattached in seeing and hearing, and the seventh, patient endurance without disturbance, are with reference to what is presently done, and are lengthwise, deep and without limit. The last three return to what is to come: the eighth is the practice of the two benefits pervading time and place, the ninth is the boundless great practice accomplished with the mind for its essential, and the tenth is the setting going of the working from within quiescence.

What do crosswise and lengthwise mean? Crosswise is breadth — the ten directions inexhaustible; lengthwise is depth — being able to bear it within a single thought. A vow that has only the crosswise is an empty vow; one that has only the lengthwise is a small vow. Brought home to use: one who makes a vow may well ask himself whether his vow is one that spreads out, or one that holds up.

Gate 2, the Seventh: The Body Cut Apart and No Anger or Harm Arising

The seventh phrase is written with the utmost weight: there are sentient beings who revile and abuse and shame, who whip and beat and cudgel, who even cut off hands and feet, slice off ears and noses, gouge out eyes, and sever heads, and “all such things he is able to bear, and in the end he does not on that account give rise to a mind of anger and harm.” The scriptural text gives the reason itself: “because he has already contemplated well that all dharmas are without the two characteristics, his mind unshaken and undisturbed, and is able to give up his own body and bear that suffering.”

First clear away a misunderstanding: this is not teaching a person to be numb, nor saying that it does not hurt. What the scriptural text says is “without the two characteristics” — there is no one who harms set over against a me who is harmed. Where there are two characteristics, patience is only suppression; where there are none, patience is patience that really holds. Chengguan, following this phrase, notes the four graphs saying that to sever a head is to take a head-count, pointing out the archaic graph in the scriptural text, and judges that the sixth and seventh phrases are the temporary cutting off of the afflictions.

Brought home to use: an ordinary person flares up at a single heavy word, precisely because the two characteristics are distinct. This phrase does not have to wait until someone comes to cut you down before it can be used; it can be tested in the very moment of a single word.

Gate 2, the Tenth: The Threefold Raising and Explaining of the Working Set Going from Within Quiescence

The last phrase is the longest. The bodhisattva knows that buddha, awakening, bodhisattva, dharma, sentient being, mind, practice, the three times, the world, and the conditioned and unconditioned are altogether not to be got at, and so abides in quiescence and on to abiding in the real limit, twelve abodes; and yet from “not forsaking any of the great vows” there run down nine occurrences of “not forsaking.” The scriptural text then raises a question against itself three times.

Chengguan sets out these three levels very clearly. The first level asks: since there is quiescence, why is the working still set going? The answer: because the wisdom of the original vow does not forsake great compassion. The second level asks: why does wisdom not forsake compassion? The answer: wisdom exists for sentient beings from the first. The third level asks: why must quiescence and working necessarily be carried on together? The answer has two senses: first, that all the buddhas do so; second, that I have already before made a vow.

These three questions and three answers are the heart of the whole stretch. They answer a difficulty that everyone who reads prajñā must sooner or later run into: since nothing at all is to be got at, what is all this busyness for? The scripture’s answer is not a reasoning that circles back, but two facts — the buddhas all do so, and I gave my word. Brought home to use: when one cannot think one’s way through on the level of principle, there is no need to force the thinking; first look at what the buddhas do, then look at what one promised at the beginning.

Gate 3. Great Setting Forth: Setting the Mind Really in Motion

All ten phrases of the third gate read ‘I would do such and such.’ Chengguan, explaining this gate, says that this is that for the sake of which the dedication is made, and that setting forth means causing it to be present before one. He divides the ten phrases into the two halves of self-portion and advance-onward: the first six are the self-portion, of which the first three are greatness in the deed of blessings and the next three greatness in the deed of converting (adorning the lands too being for the sake of gathering in beings); the last four are the advance onward, the seventh and eighth advancing onward and gathering in blessings, and the last two advancing onward and setting going the converting — the ninth realizing the substance, the tenth setting going the working.

First ask: how does setting forth differ from the mind of vow before it? A vow is the firmness of the mind; a setting forth is the pushing forward of an affair. And so every phrase of this gate is concrete: making offerings to the buddhas, nourishing roots of good, adorning stūpas, teaching and converting sentient beings, adorning the worlds, exhausting the future age for one sentient being, passing inconceivable kalpas with one tathāgata, raising stūpas and making images, accomplishing unsurpassed awakening, and still expounding the true Dharma after accomplishing perfect awakening.

Brought home to use: if a person stops at ‘I have brought forth the great mind,’ this gate reminds him that the mind must come down into affairs that will actually be finished, one by one.

Gate 4. Great Matters Brought to the End: Ten Matters to Be Carried Through

Chengguan explains this gate in one sentence only: this is the bringing to fullness of what is done, and the ten phrases may be known. He says no more, because the aspect of the text is plain. But the two graphs “brought to the end” are worth pausing over.

Every one of the ten phrases uses the same structure: such-and-such a matter — a great matter brought to the end. Revering and making offerings to the tathāgatas, rescuing and protecting the sentient beings that come to mind, seeking the Buddha-dharma single-mindedly, gathering together roots of good, pondering the Buddha-dharma, fulfilling vows, accomplishing the bodhisattva practices, serving good friends, going to the places of the buddhas, hearing and holding the true Dharma of the buddhas. Not one of these ten, taken alone, is remarkable; what is precious is the “brought to the end” — not having done it, but having carried it through.

Read together with Chengguan’s outline, this gate is the last of the four gates of the first dedication — the first gate sets up the substance of practice, the second sets up the great vow, the third sets it forth, and the fourth brings it to fullness. The four gates together make one complete act of dedication. Brought home to use: examining one’s own practice, one is mostly not short of the first three items; what is short is the fourth.

Gate 5. Faith That Cannot Be Broken: Faith Is to Be Set in Ten Places

The second dedication is named “unbreakable,” and Chengguan takes this gate as making clear precisely the unbreakable, and says that the sense of the ten phrases is as was said before.

The objects of the faith in the ten phrases are arranged in an interesting way: the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṅgha, the bodhisattvas, good friends, sentient beings, the great vows of the bodhisattvas, the bodhisattva practices, the matter of making offerings to the buddhas, and the matter of the bodhisattva’s teaching, converting, taming, and subduing sentient beings by skillful and hidden means. The first five are the objective realms revered; the last five are the affairs practiced.

The one most easily overlooked among them is the sixth: “faith in all sentient beings that cannot be broken.” First ask: what is one to have faith in with regard to sentient beings? Faith that they can become buddhas. If this phrase is broken, all the earlier faith in the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha turns into the faith of one who saves only himself. Brought home to use: the moment one utterly gives up on a particular person is the moment this phrase is broken.

Gate 6. Obtaining a Prediction: Ten Ways of Being Settled and Sealed

Chengguan, explaining this gate, says that this is the accomplishing of the practice of dedication, and assigns the ten phrases to the positions: the first is understanding and meeting the mind of a buddha; the second, being complete in the good that is a portion of liberation; the third, the great practice having been cultivated — these three are mostly with reference to the three worthy stages; the fourth and fifth are spoken with reference to being face to face and not being face to face, and he further adduces as warrant a text of the Lotus to the effect that those who are not in this assembly, you shall proclaim it to them; the sixth is realizing suchness on the first ground; the seventh is accomplishing the patient acceptance of non-arising on the eighth ground; the eighth is being complete in the means of taming and converting on the ninth ground; the ninth is the fulfilling of the three great kalpas on the tenth ground; the tenth is that at equal awakening one has already entered the twofold mystery and therefore it is called mastery, as with the prediction given to Maitreya.

Chengguan here also opens two readings: if one follows the graded sequence, this station has only the first five phrases and the rest come in by way of convenience; if one follows the perfectly interfused, all ten run through. This is precisely the house-style of the Avataṃsaka — one and the same stretch of text has, read as graded, the order of the graded, and read as perfectly interfused, station gathering station.

Brought home to use: on reading “prediction” one need not imagine a ceremony. Of the ten kinds listed by the scriptural text, six are not the Buddha opening his mouth at all, but a being settled and sealed of itself upon reaching a certain point in practice.

Gate 7. The Dedicating of Roots of Good: Setting Up No Accomplishment of One’s Own

The ten phrases of this gate are entirely alike in pattern: ‘taking my roots of good to be the same as such-and-such of the good friend, accomplishing in this way, setting up no separate accomplishment of my own.’ Vow, mind, practice, roots of good, evenness, mindfulness, purity, what is abided in, bringing to fullness, unbreakableness — ten things, all the same.

Chengguan fastens this gate to the dedication of being even with all buddhas: this gate makes clear precisely the being even with the buddhas; a buddha is the true good friend, and “the same” has the sense of “even.” He further explains why all ten phrases say “the same” — because they are of one and the same substance, and because no two characteristics are seen. And as to what lies within the ten phrases, he says that the mind is compassion and wisdom, because only when the mind is even does it accord with principle, and that the rest each have a sense of their own.

First ask an important question: what after all is a dedication? Most people take it to be the transferring of merit away, like a bank transfer. The answer this gate gives is entirely different: to dedicate is “to set up no separate accomplishment” — to set up no accomplishment belonging to me. Merit was never a thing that could be held; to say ‘send it away’ already presupposes holding it first.

Brought home to use: having done a good deed, the hardest thing is not being willing to dedicate it, but not quietly entering it in one’s own account. This gate is spoken for the sake of that entry.

Gate 8. Obtaining Wisdom: Ten Gates Where Wisdom Arises

Chengguan, explaining this gate, says that this too is the accomplishing of the practice of dedication, and adduces as warrant the text of the fruit of that station in the Chapter on the Ten Dedications, saying that abiding in this samādhi one enters the deep and pure objective realm of wisdom.

The wisdom spoken of in the ten phrases does not come out of concentration but out of affairs: gaining mastery in giving, understanding the Buddha-dharma deeply, entering the boundless wisdom of the Tathāgata, cutting off doubts in questioning and answering, entering the meaning of those who have wisdom, understanding the skillfulness of the Tathāgata’s speech and sounds, knowing that a few roots of good will surely bring the pure and white dharmas to fullness, accomplishing the inconceivable abodes, going in a single thought to unspeakable buddha-lands, and being awake to the awakening of all the buddhas while hearing and holding all the dharmas.

Among them the seventh phrase is the most worth turning over: “understanding deeply that the planting of but a few roots of good in the presence of the buddhas will surely be able to bring to fullness all the pure and white dharmas.” First ask: how can a few roots of good bring all dharmas to fullness? Because they are planted in the presence of the buddhas. This is not an opportunist’s reckoning; it says that the value of a root of good is not to be measured only by its quantity, but also by the objective realm it faces. Brought home to use: this phrase is to be read by one who feels he has cultivated too little.

Gate 9. Bringing Forth the Measureless and Boundless Vast and Great Mind: The Mind Grows Broad with the Realm

Chengguan, explaining this gate, says that this is the practice within the dedication of reaching everywhere — since the objective realm is measureless and boundless and there is nowhere it does not reach, the mind grows vast along with the realm.

The ten phrases mostly read ‘contemplating such-and-such, bringing forth the measureless and boundless vast and great mind’ (six state “contemplating” outright; the other four read in the presence of the buddhas, rightly bringing to mind, adorning and purifying, entering everywhere): in the presence of the buddhas, contemplating the realm of sentient beings, contemplating all lands and all ages and all Dharma realms, contemplating that all dharmas are like empty space, contemplating the vast and great practice of the bodhisattvas, rightly bringing to mind the buddhas of the three times, contemplating the inconceivable fruits and retributions of deeds, adorning and purifying the buddha-lands, entering everywhere into the great assemblies of the buddhas, and contemplating the marvelous sounds of the tathāgatas.

There is a method of practice in this: the mind does not grow large by one’s wishing it large; it is the objective realm taken as support that stretches it open. And so the ten phrases for the most part first say what is taken as support and afterward say what is brought forth. Brought home to use: when one feels the measure of one’s mind is small, there is no need to force oneself to ‘enlarge the mind’ — one need only change what is taken as support.

Gate 10. Hidden Treasuries: The Dharma Is Itself the Treasury

Chengguan, in explaining this gate, takes the two graphs “treasury” and “hidden” apart: within all dharmas these ten meanings are held, and therefore it is called a treasury; contemplating the dharma just as it is, the deluded do not see it, and therefore it is called hidden. He further says that this gate is the practice within the dedication of the inexhaustible treasury of merit, and that all things having ten kinds each is what inexhaustible merit is.

The pattern of the ten phrases is mostly ‘knowing that all dharmas are the treasury of such-and-such’ (seven read so; the other three have each their own object of knowing): the treasury that gives rise to the practices of merit, the treasury of right pondering, the treasury of the shining clarity of the dhāraṇīs, the treasury of eloquence that opens up and expounds, the treasury that cannot be spoken of and yet is well able to be awake to the real, the treasury of contemplating and manifesting, the treasury of skillfully bringing forth evenness, the treasury of constantly seeing all the buddhas, the treasury of being well able to penetrate that all abide as illusions, and the treasury able to bring forth joy and pure faith.

First clear away a misunderstanding: a hidden treasury is not a hoard of jewels that the Buddha put away somewhere for people to go and find. The scriptural text says it plainly — the treasury lies upon “all dharmas,” and it is not seen because of delusion, not because it has been hidden away. Brought home to use: practice is not going elsewhere to seek treasure; it is seeing through this one dharma before one’s eyes.

Gate 11. Rules of Discipline: Spoken Not from the Characteristics of the Precepts but from the Root of Practice

A reader coming to “rules of discipline” will mostly expect articles of precept, and yet the scriptural text lists not one characteristic of a precept; all ten phrases are workings of the mind: not slandering the Buddha-dharma, a mind of faith and delight in the buddhas that cannot be broken, honoring the bodhisattvas, not forsaking good friends, not calling the two vehicles to mind, leaving far behind what causes turning back from the bodhisattva path, not giving rise to a mind that harms sentient beings, cultivating roots of good and causing them to be brought to the end, subduing the demons, and bringing the perfections to fullness.

Chengguan makes his explanation precisely upon this point: that station (the dedication of according with and being firm in all roots of good) is with reference to the head of practice, and therefore the roots of good are made clear at length in terms of giving; this gate is with reference to the root of practice, and therefore the rules of discipline are set forth in brief. He further says that the roots of good all accord with the principle of evenness and truly run through all things. And as to the eighth phrase, “causing all roots of good to be brought to the end,” he points out that being brought to the end is precisely the sense of according and being firm, which fastens upon the very name of that station. Upon the gate as a whole he passes but one comment: the ten phrases gathering in good and benefiting others are complete in every part, run through all good, and may plainly be known.

Brought home to use: if the characteristics of the precepts are kept and yet the working of the mind does not accord with principle, the rules of discipline are in fact empty. This gate pushes the rules of discipline down one layer to the root.

Gate 12. Mastery: The Free Movement of the Working

The ten masteries are an old term of the Avataṃsaka — life, mind, requisites, deeds, taking birth, resolute conviction, vows, spiritual power, Dharma, and wisdom. Chengguan does not explain them again here, but says only that the ten masteries are as set forth on the eighth ground, and fastens this gate to the dedication of according evenly with all sentient beings: only being complete in the ten masteries can one accord.

Notice the sentence-pattern of the scriptural text: every phrase is ‘such-and-such a mastery’ plus a reason carried by the graph “for the reason that.” The reason for mastery over life is that one is able to sustain one’s life-span through unspeakable kalpas; the reason for mastery of mind is that wisdom is able to enter measureless samādhis; and so on by the same pattern. The clause of reason is the real content; the name is only a label.

Then let the eight clauses of reason be looked at one by one. The reason for mastery of requisites is “that he is able to adorn all worlds with measureless adornments” — requisites are not what one enjoys oneself but what is taken up to adorn worlds, so that the content of this mastery is in fact giving and not having. The reason for mastery of deeds is “that he receives the recompense according to the time,” and the graph “according to” is what matters most: it is not that recompense is not received, but that the season of receiving it rests with him and not with the deed. The reason for mastery of taking birth is “that he manifests taking birth in all worlds” — note that it is manifesting and not being dragged, which joins directly to the not-being-confused of the third phrase of the first gate. The reason for mastery of resolute conviction is “that he sees the buddhas filling all worlds” — conviction here is ascendant conviction, and ascendant conviction at its furthest is that all that is seen is buddhas. The reason for mastery of vows is “that according to his wish and according to the time he attains right awakening in the lands” — even the greatest of all matters, the attaining of right awakening, has entered into “according to his wish and according to the time,” from which one sees that mastery of vows is the least bound of the ten. The reason for mastery of spiritual power is “that he manifests all the great spiritual transformations,” this gate speaking only of manifesting and not of the transforming itself. The reason for mastery of the Dharma is “that he manifests boundless gates of the Dharma” — mastery of the Dharma does not fall upon how many dharmas one has penetrated oneself, but upon how many gates one manifests for others. The reason for mastery of wisdom is the longest: “that in thought after thought he manifests the ten powers of a tathāgata, the fearlessnesses, and the attaining of right awakening,” where “thought after thought” presses time down to its shortest, and what is manifested is the fruit-virtue of a buddha. First ask: is there a rationale to the sequence of these ten? There is — from life and mind, which guard the body and guard the thought; to requisites, deeds, and taking birth, which have to do with affairs; to resolute conviction, vows, and spiritual power, which face toward the fruit; and at the last the Dharma and wisdom, which take up directly what a buddha has. Fazang here collates them name by name against the eighth ground, saying that what is here adornment is there named mastery over goods and possessions, that what is here resolute conviction is there named mastery of faith and understanding, and that what is here spiritual power is there named mastery of the wish-fulfilling kind — the names differ and the sense is one. Brought home to use: in reading the ten masteries it is easiest to remember only the names, whereas the real sense of every phrase lies wholly in that clause of reason carried by the graph “for the reason that.”

First ask: how does mastery differ from the unimpeded working that follows? This is precisely the question Chengguan takes up at the head of the next gate — he says that earlier, mastery was made clear, which is the working moving freely; now the unimpeded is made clear, displaying that the working is unbound. Moving freely is being effortless; unbound is being unrestricted. Brought home to use: to have practiced to the point of effortlessness is not yet to be unrestricted.

The General Listing of the Unimpeded Workings: One Stretch of Text in Four Sections

From here begins one great stretch of eleven gates. The scriptural text first lists the ten names generally, then raises the question, then explains gate by gate, and last concludes generally and accomplishes the benefit. Chengguan marks these four sections very clearly: first the general listing of the ten headings; second, from “Sons of the Buddha, what is called” onward, the general raising of the question upon the ten headings; third, from “Sons of the Buddha, bodhisattvas” onward, the separate explaining according to the headings; fourth, from “Sons of the Buddha, in this way” onward, the general conclusion and the accomplishing of benefit. He further says that within the first section there are also three small sections — the listing, the raising of the question, and the setting out of the names; and that among the ten passages of the separate explaining, each passage likewise has four parts — the listing, the raising of the question, the explaining, and the conclusion.

There is a matter concerning the speaker to be stated here. The sentence in the scriptural text, “Sons of the Buddha! What is called the unimpeded working of a bodhisattva-mahāsattva with regard to sentient beings and the rest?” is Samantabhadra raising a question against himself and answering it himself; it is not Universal Wisdom breaking in with a question — from beginning to end of the whole stretch there is no narrative turn of the compilers and no second speaker. In reading a long question-and-answer, this kind of self-raised and self-answered sentence is what is most easily misread as a change of speaker.

Chengguan passes two judgments upon the unimpeded. First: the unimpeded is of two kinds, the unimpededness with regard to wisdom and the unimpededness with regard to phenomena; among the ten gates some run through and some are particular, the gates of dharmas and of wisdom being mostly with reference to wisdom alone, the gates of bodies and of lands and the like mostly with reference to phenomena alone, while the one gate of sentient beings runs through both phenomena and wisdom. Second: the unimpededness with regard to phenomena necessarily runs through wisdom, while the objective realm of the unimpededness with regard to wisdom does not necessarily run through phenomena; yet both are the working that is identical with the substance, and therefore both alike are called unimpeded working. He further says that all ten gates run through both benefiting oneself and benefiting others, and that they are here spoken of, for the moment, with reference to converting others: the first gate is those to be converted, the second gate the place of converting, and the rest are that which converts.

Gate 13. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Sentient Beings: Spoken from the Side of Those to Be Converted

Chengguan divides the ten phrases of this gate into two halves: the first three set forth the unimpeded with reference to wisdom — the first phrase is the penetration of the emptiness of nature, the second is being manifested by the mind alone, and these two are the real wisdom; the third, knowing the occasion and speaking the Dharma, is the provisional wisdom. The remaining seven are with reference to the unimpededness of phenomena — the fourth is being able to manifest sentient beings, the fifth is the near gathering into a single hair, the sixth is the distant showing of other lands, and the remaining four are the manifesting of the bodies of those who stand foremost.

The first phrase, “knowing that in all sentient beings there is in fact no sentient being,” is most easily read as saying that there are no sentient beings and therefore no need to deliver them. First ask: are there really none? The second phrase of the scriptural text at once supplies the answer — “knowing that all sentient beings are only held in being by thinking.” It is not that there is nothing at all; it is that there is no real self standing there. What there is, is a continuity held in being by thinking. If there truly were no sentient beings, the eight phrases that follow, on manifesting and converting, would have nothing whatever to rest upon.

Brought home to use: what this gate teaches is a kind of eyesight — in looking at a person, to see at once that he is not a fixed self, and also to see that at this moment he is indeed suffering. Lacking either side, compassion goes wrong.

Gate 14. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Lands: The Gathering In and the Letting Out of the Lands

Chengguan, explaining this gate, says that the phrase of knowing the lands to be inexhaustible runs through both wisdom and phenomena, and raises two parallel translations as warrant: the Jin recension reads “entering deeply into the inexhaustible skillful means with regard to all lands,” and the Dushi reads “the inexhaustibility of what is entered in all buddha-realms,” both of them running through phenomena. The remaining nine phrases are unimpededness with regard to phenomena alone; he further points out that “deep lands” means the subtle and fine lands, and that the rest may plainly be known.

The framework of the ten phrases is four pairs of gathering in and letting out: making all lands into one land and putting all lands into a single pore are gathering in; filling all lands with one body and bringing forth all lands within a single body are letting out; adorning one land with the adornments of all lands and adorning all lands with the adornments of one land are again a pair of gathering in and letting out. Inserted among them is the phrase “shaking all lands without causing sentient beings to be terrified” — a phrase that reminds the reader that the measure and proportion of spiritual transformation also lie within the unimpeded.

Brought home to use: the Avataṃsaka’s mutual entering of the great and the small is not talking about physics; it is talking about a fact already at hand — the boundary of magnitude comes from the opposition of grasper and grasped, and once that opposition loosens, magnitude is no longer a problem.

Gate 15. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Dharmas: Able to Speak Them, and Never to Finish Speaking Them

Chengguan says that this gate is wholly with reference to wisdom: upon the dharma in which nature and characteristic are unimpeded, one is able to know and able to speak, and gains mastery. He names the phrases one by one: the first is the one and the many being identical and entering into one another without destroying what is basic; the second, the real wisdom bringing forth the provisional; the third, without letters, showing letters; the fourth, one speaking, many characteristics; the fifth, the speaking that is without speaking; the sixth, one word complete and round, the sense of the letter-wheel (he says that this sense is explained separately in the place of Megha); the seventh, gate gathering gate; the eighth, gathering the mundane by the true; the ninth, crosswise knowing the boundless; the tenth, lengthwise exhausting its limit.

These ten phrases handle one and the same contradiction over and over: the dharmas are apart from letters and speech, and yet they must be spoken to people. The scripture’s solution is not a compromise but a simultaneous establishing — the third phrase says, “knowing that all dharmas are apart from letters, and yet being able to cause sentient beings all to enter into awakening,” and the fifth says, “knowing that all dharmas are apart from speech, and yet being able to speak boundless gates of the Dharma for others.” Knowing that they are apart is the substance; being able to speak is the working. To speak without knowing that they are apart is to speak mere names and characteristics; to know that they are apart and not to speak is to let the Dharma be cut off.

Brought home to use: one who speaks the Dharma and, fearing to fall into verbal designations, dares not open his mouth, has obtained only half.

Gate 16. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Bodies: Between Body and Body There Is No Wall

All ten phrases are the mutual entering of body and body: the bodies of sentient beings entering one’s own body, one’s own body entering the bodies of sentient beings, all the bodies of the buddhas entering the body of one buddha, the body of one buddha entering all the bodies of the buddhas, all lands entering one’s own body, one body pervading the dharmas of the three times, one body manifesting boundless bodies and entering samādhi, one body manifesting bodies equal in number to the sentient beings and accomplishing perfect awakening, manifesting one body and all bodies within the bodies of sentient beings, and manifesting the dharma-body upon the bodies of sentient beings and the bodies of sentient beings upon the dharma-body.

Upon this gate and the next Chengguan says only one thing: the text in both cases may be known. He does not explain, because the sense of the phrases is plain. But plain does not mean easy to believe. First ask: how can bodies enter one another? Because a body was never a substance with a boundary. The second gate above has already said that the body of a tathāgata is “neither real nor unreal, neither existent nor nonexistent”; this gate only brings that principle down into the working.

Brought home to use: the last phrase, “manifesting the dharma-body upon the bodies of all sentient beings and manifesting the bodies of all sentient beings upon the dharma-body,” is where the ten phrases come to rest — between sentient beings and the dharma-body too there is no such wall.

Gate 17. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Vows: The Ten Ways in Which a Vow Is Unrestricted

Upon this gate likewise Chengguan says only that the text may be known. The ten phrases are still worth seeing clearly one by one: taking the vows of all bodhisattvas as one’s own vow; manifesting one’s own accomplishing of perfect awakening by the power of the buddhas’ vow to accomplish awakening; accomplishing awakening oneself in accordance with the sentient beings to be converted; the great vow unbroken through boundless kalpas; leaving far behind the body of consciousness, not clinging to the body of wisdom, and manifesting all bodies with a masterful vow; casting away one’s own body to bring to fullness the vows of others; teaching and converting everywhere and yet not forsaking the great vow; walking the bodhisattva practice through all kalpas with the great vow unbroken; manifesting the accomplishing of perfect awakening within a single pore and pervading all the buddha-lands; and speaking one phrase of Dharma that pervades the whole Dharma realm.

The very first phrase takes apart the notion of ‘my vow’: it takes the vows of all bodhisattvas as one’s own. If a vow is still mine, it has a bound; only when it is not mine can it be boundless. The sixth phrase goes a step further — “casting away one’s own body in order to bring to fullness the vows of others.”

The last phrase is the most finely written of the gate: raising up the cloud of the great true Dharma, making shine the lightning-flash of liberation, shaking the thunder-sound of the real Dharma, raining down the rain of the taste of sweet dew. Four images run down in sequence, speaking of what a single phrase of Dharma sets going. Brought home to use: one who makes vows often worries that the vow is too great to be carried out; the answer of this gate is that a vow can be carried out precisely because it is great enough no longer to be one person’s affair.

Gate 18. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Objective Realms: Ten Pairs of ‘Being Here and Not Forsaking There’

The sentence-pattern of this gate is throughout a pairing: being within objective realm A and yet not forsaking objective realm B — seven phrases read “not forsaking,” one “not cutting off,” and of the last two one “manifesting” and one “manifests.” The Dharma realm and sentient beings; the buddhas and the demons; nirvāṇa and birth-and-death; omniscience and the seed-nature of a bodhisattva; quiescence and distraction; being like empty space and the frivolous discourse of sentient beings; the powers and liberation and all directions and places; the limit where there are no sentient beings and the teaching and converting of sentient beings; the concentrations and the spiritual penetrations and quiescence, and the manifesting of taking birth; the Tathāgata’s accomplishing of perfect awakening and the deportment of the two vehicles.

Chengguan’s judgment upon this gate is very compact: within these ten objective realms of the superior and the inferior that stand contrary to one another, to dwell on the superior side and yet be able to manifest the inferior side, turning about unimpeded, is the objective realm of the bounds of a bodhisattva.

First clear away a misunderstanding: this does not say that a bodhisattva has a foot in two boats. What are contrary are the objective realms; what is not contrary is the mind. “Being within the objective realm of the buddhas and yet not forsaking the objective realm of the demons” does not mean facing toward the buddhas and toward the demons at once; it means that being in the realm of the buddhas he does not avoid the place where the demons are. Brought home to use: practitioners often have a kind of fastidiousness, willing to stay only in clean objective realms; this gate says that only being willing to go into the unclean place and not be stained by it is called unimpeded.

Gate 19. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Wisdom: Setting Forth the Working of Wisdom Throughout

Chengguan first explains how this gate stands to the gates before it: earlier there was wisdom too, but it was gathered in each under its own class; this gate throughout sets forth the working of wisdom alone. He further says that wisdom in itself has no several kinds, and that it is the dharmas illumined that make the differences appear; the unimpeded working with regard to dharmas above takes wisdom as following the dharmas, and this gate takes the dharmas as following wisdom.

He divides the ten phrases into four layers: the first two are the wisdom that is able to convert; the next three are the wisdom that knows those to be converted; the sixth enters upward into the wisdom of a buddha — these first six are all the provisional wisdom; the seventh and eighth are the wisdom in which the provisional and the real are unimpeded; the last two are the wisdom in which phenomenon and phenomenon are unimpeded.

The most practical of the ten phrases is the fifth: knowing the desires and delights, the latent tendencies, the habit-energies, and the sickness of the afflictions of sentient beings, and “giving the medicine according to what each is fit for.” The comparison of the physician is here left implicit — only by knowing the illness can medicine be given, and to give medicine without knowing the illness is to recite from a manual. Brought home to use: this phrase is one that everyone who wishes to help others ought to read.

Gate 20. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Spiritual Penetrations: The Outward Working Unblocked

Between this gate and the next Chengguan makes a division: spiritual penetration is mostly with reference to the unblockedness of the outward working, spiritual power mostly with reference to there being an inward capacity of strength. He further matches the phrases one by one to the ten penetrations: the first is the penetration of measureless form-bodies; the second, the divine ear; the third, knowing others’ minds; the fourth, discriminating speech; the fifth, the penetration of former abodes (he says that the Dushi jing names it seeing former lives); the sixth, the penetration of going to all buddha-lands; the seventh, the penetration of the kalpas to come — since the past has already been made clear above, the three times are therefore raised together; the eighth, the penetration of the wisdom of all dharmas; the ninth, the divine eye.

For the tenth phrase Chengguan judges the base text to have a lacuna. Following the Jin recension he reads, “Sons of the Buddha, spoken in brief, the bodhisattva’s mastery of the penetration of contemplating all dharmas evenly,” and says that this is the samādhi of the extinction of all dharmas, running through evenness and quiescence; and he adduces the Dushi as warrant. His words are plain: the present text has dropped this phrase, and within the text it is raised only in brief and so is not exhaustive in detail, but the great purport is not different, and the detail is set forth in the Chapter on the Ten Penetrations. This piece records his judgment, and does not alter a single graph of the base text.

Brought home to use: that an ancient worthy points out a lacuna in the base text and yet does not presume to alter it is itself a rule for reading a scripture — record the divergence, do not alter the text.

Gate 21. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Spiritual Power: The Inward Capacity of Strength

Chengguan says that the ten phrases of this gate are mostly with reference to such things as one hair holding all within it, and judges that this is the power of the body, the next gate being the power of wisdom. He adds a further remark of much interest: if the powers be gathered in under the penetrations, the ten kinds of spiritual power are no more than the single penetration of spiritual feet; it is precisely because the penetrations and the powers have been divided as two things that the penetration of the spiritual realm is little spoken of in the Chapter on the Ten Penetrations.

The ten phrases are written with tremendous force: setting unspeakable worlds within a single mote of dust; bringing forth within a single mote of dust buddha-lands equal to the Dharma realm; putting the waters of all the great oceans into a single pore and carrying them round the ten directions; putting unspeakable worlds into one’s own body; tying the Vajra Encircling Mountains with a single hair and journeying with them; kalpas long and short made into one another; manifesting the destruction of the three calamities without vexing sentient beings; guarding the requisites of sentient beings when the three calamities destroy; hurling worlds with a single hand beyond unspeakable worlds; and declaring that all lands are the same as empty space.

What deserves notice is that four of the ten phrases add such words as “without causing sentient beings to be terrified,” “without vexing or disturbing sentient beings,” and “without causing sentient beings to have a thought of alarm and terror.” First ask: why is this stressed again and again? Because a spiritual power that terrifies people is not unimpeded but oppressive. Brought home to use: the greater the capacity, the more one must watch whether the other can bear it — this is the boundary the scriptural text itself draws around the spiritual penetrations.

Gate 22. The Unimpeded Working with Regard to Powers: The Power of Compassion and Wisdom

Upon this gate Chengguan has only two sentences: the powers of compassion and wisdom are alike without obstruction; and there is also the unimpededness of the working upon phenomena, spoken of according to the greater number.

The sentence-pattern of the ten phrases differs from that of the gates before: every phrase carries its own reason. The power over sentient beings is teaching and converting, taming and subduing, and not forsaking; the power over lands is manifesting adornment; the power over dharmas is causing all that has a body to enter bodilessness; the power over kalpas is cultivation unbroken; the power of a buddha is awakening those asleep; the power of practice is gathering in the bodhisattva practices; the power of the Tathāgata is delivering and liberating sentient beings; the power without a teacher is awakening of oneself to the dharmas; the power of omniscience is accomplishing perfect awakening by omniscience; the power of great compassion is not forsaking sentient beings.

Among the ten phrases, “the unimpeded working of the power of a buddha, for the reason that they awaken those asleep,” is the shortest and the weightiest. Sleep here is not lying down asleep; it is the torpor of ignorance. Brought home to use: the ten powers come to rest at last in the power of great compassion — the utmost of power is not how much can be done, but not forsaking a single person.

The General Conclusion of the Unimpeded Workings: Obtaining the Fruit without Forsaking the Cause

The eleven gates having been spoken, the scriptural text concludes: for one who obtains these ten unimpeded workings, as to unsurpassed awakening, whether to accomplish it or for the while not to accomplish it goes as his mind intends and is not gone against; and though he has accomplished perfect awakening, he does not break off the bodhisattva practice. Chengguan here passes a judgment: having already obtained the unimpeded, to be able further to obtain the fruit and yet not forsake the cause displays the unimpeded all the more.

First ask: to walk the bodhisattva practice after becoming a buddha — is this not superfluous? If becoming a buddha be taken as a terminus, then of course it is superfluous. This very sentence is meant to take apart that imagining of a “terminus” — the bodhisattva practice is not a means toward the fruit of buddhahood, and the fruit of buddhahood is not the ending of the bodhisattva practice. The scriptural text then answers for itself why this is so: because the great vow has been brought forth, because the gate of boundless unimpeded working has been entered, and because he manifests with skill.

Brought home to use: if practice is read as a road with a terminus, weariness will certainly arise along the way. This sentence is what dissolves that weariness.

Gate 23. Sporting: The Mastery That Does Not Damage the Original Character

From this gate on are the seven gates of the third section as divided by the ancient worthies, making clear the completeness of the virtues of practice. Chengguan first states generally where these three gates come from: that station (the dedication of liberation without bond and without attachment) has a hundred gates, broadly displaying the accomplishing, through liberation without bond and without attachment, of the masterful working of the wisdom of Samantabhadra; here three gates are raised in brief — this gate is the mastery of roaming and enjoying with the practice of the resolve accomplished, the next gate makes clear that the objective realm is beyond measure, and the one after that makes clear the capacity of strength of the working of wisdom, all of them coming from being without bond and without attachment.

He gathers the ten phrases into five pairs: first, the supporting and the supported, the defiled and the pure, being made into one another and yet all without destroying the original character, which displays precisely the sense of sporting — as one sports at one’s pleasure in the world with nothing damaged or disturbed, the remaining pairs being modeled upon this; second, the great and the lesser vehicles manifesting one another; third, cause and fruit manifesting one another; fourth, birth-and-death and nirvāṇa manifesting one another; fifth, mastery in concentration and in distraction, of which the former phrase is setting going the working within concentration while constantly in concentration, and the latter is entering concentration within the working while constantly working.

The four graphs “without destroying the original character” are the eye of this gate. First ask: how does sporting differ from spiritual transformation? Spiritual transformation is being able to change; sporting is changing without losing. The bodies of sentient beings are made into the body of a land and yet the bodies of sentient beings are not destroyed — if they were destroyed, that would be annihilation, not sporting. Brought home to use: one who is truly masterful need not first destroy what he originally was in order to do anything.

Gate 24. Objective Realms: The Realm Walked and the Realm of Bounds

Chengguan says that this gate runs through two kinds of objective realm: first, the realm walked in sporting, which the Jin scripture names surpassing practice; second, the realm of bounds, that is, coming forth and sinking away unimpeded, which only a bodhisattva is able to do. He further divides them: of the ten phrases the first three are the realm walked that runs through, and the last seven are all the realm of bounds.

The ten phrases are a string of mutual bringings-forth: manifesting the gate of the boundless Dharma realm; manifesting the marvelous adornments of the worlds; going in transformation to the realms of sentient beings; bringing forth the body of a bodhisattva upon the body of a tathāgata and the body of a tathāgata upon the body of a bodhisattva; bringing forth worlds within the realm of empty space and the realm of empty space within a world; bringing forth the realm of nirvāṇa within the realm of birth-and-death and the realm of birth-and-death within the realm of nirvāṇa; bringing forth within the speech of one sentient being the speech of all the Buddha-dharma; making with boundless bodies a single body and with a single body all the differing bodies; filling the Dharma realm with a single body; and causing within a single thought all sentient beings to bring forth the mind of awakening, each manifesting measureless bodies and accomplishing perfect awakening.

Bounds means measure. The measure of a bodhisattva lies not in how far he can go, but in his being able to come forth and to sink away without being bound. Brought home to use: the last phrase most deserves notice — the utmost of the objective realm is not how many bodies one has manifested oneself, but the causing of all sentient beings to bring forth the mind.

Gate 25. Powers: The Power of the Self-Portion and the Power of the Advance Onward

Chengguan divides the ten powers into two halves: the first seven are the power of the self-portion, the last three the power of the advance onward. Within the first seven, the first three are for benefiting oneself — the first phrase seeks deeply throughout, and so he explains it as being unmixed; the second seeks the Buddha-dharma deeply, and so the Buddha-dharma is itself the ascendant; the third has what is done brought to the end because there is skillfulness; the next two are for benefiting others; and the last two run through both benefiting oneself and benefiting others. The rest he says may plainly be known.

The ten phrases are: the power of the deep mind, the power of the mind deep and ascendant, the power of skillful means, the power of wisdom, the power of vows, the power of practice, the power of the vehicle, the power of spiritual transformation, the power of awakening, and the power of turning the wheel of the Dharma. Every phrase carries a reason, and the reason is the content.

Then let the reasons of the seven phrases that follow be looked at one by one. The reason for the power of wisdom is “that he fully knows all the workings of mind” — wisdom does not fall upon how many dharmas are known but upon knowing what a person’s mind is doing; Fazang names this phrase knowing the minds of beings and assigns it to practice for the benefit of others, which fastens on exactly this. The reason for the power of vows is “that he causes all that is sought to be fulfilled,” and what is sought is not what he himself seeks but what sentient beings seek; Fazang names it fulfilling the wishes of beings. The reason for the power of practice is “that to the end of the coming limit it is not cut off,” and what makes practice a power is that it is uncut, not that it is fierce. The reason for the power of the vehicle keeps the finest measure: “that he is able to bring forth all the vehicles and yet does not cast off the Great Vehicle” — bringing forth all the vehicles is breadth, and not casting off the Great Vehicle is not losing the root; to bring forth all the vehicles and cast off the Great Vehicle would be to accord with others until oneself is lost. The reason for the power of spiritual transformation is “that within each and every pore he severally manifests all pure worlds and all tathāgatas arising in the world,” and note that the transformation of this phrase manifests no strange appearance: what it manifests is buddhas arising in the world. The reason for the power of awakening is “that he causes all sentient beings to bring forth the mind and become buddhas without any cutting off” — the power of awakening does not speak of his own obtaining of awakening but of causing others to bring forth the mind, and that without any cutting off. The reason for the power of turning the wheel of the Dharma is the most worth turning over: “that in speaking a single phrase of Dharma it answers to the faculties, natures, and desires of all sentient beings,” and a single phrase answering to all faculties and desires is what makes the wheel of the Dharma a wheel. First ask: since the last three are named the powers of fruit belonging to the advance onward, why do they still speak of sentient beings? Because the advance onward of the power of fruit is not an ascent away from sentient beings, but the carrying of one and the same thing through to the end. Brought home to use: these seven phrases may be taken as a sheet for self-examination — knowing people’s minds, fulfilling people’s wishes, practice uncut, breadth without loss of the root, what is manifested being buddhas and not marvels, causing people to bring forth the mind and not to depend, and speaking a single phrase from which every person can take use.

The first phrase, “the power of the deep mind, for the reason that it is unmixed with any worldly sentiment,” is the root of the ten powers. First ask: what is being unmixed with worldly sentiment? It is not being unfeeling toward people; it is that the motive of one’s practice has no worldly calculation mixed into it. If this phrase does not hold, the nine powers after it will all go off in flavor. Brought home to use: in examining whether one has power, one need not first look at how much has been done, but at whether the motive is pure.

Gate 26. Fearlessnesses: Ten Times ‘Because He Does Not See It, His Mind Obtains Fearlessness’

This gate is the most regular in form of the whole stretch; all ten phrases use the same structure: a certain accomplishment — thinking in this way — “because he does not see it, his mind obtains fearlessness”; seven of them close further upon “the shore of great fearlessness,” while the fourth, fifth, and seventh do not carry that phrase.

Chengguan first states where this gate stands among four gates: from the ten fearlessnesses onward, four gates make clear the practice within the dedication of the measureless Dharma realm, and divide into three sections — this gate makes clear the roots of good dedicated, the next gate the substance of the practice of the Dharma realm, and the last two the virtues accomplished. He says that this gate is the fearlessness of the roots of good of the giving of Dharma, because fearlessness is the virtue of speaking the Dharma. He further names the phrases one by one and points out what each does not fear: the first is the fearlessness of hearing and holding, the second the fearlessness of eloquence, and these two do not fear being unable to answer a difficult question; the third is the fearlessness of the two emptinesses, for penetrating the two emptinesses one does not fear deluded thoughts; the fourth is the fearlessness of deportment without flaw and the fifth the fearlessness of the three kinds of deed without fault, and these two do not fear reproach from without; the sixth is the fearlessness of outward guarding, not fearing the demons and the outsiders; the seventh is the fearlessness of right mindfulness, not fearing forgetting; the eighth is the fearlessness of skillful means, not fearing birth-and-death — and here he raises a comparison: as one who manages a boat well does not dread the perils of the sea; the ninth is the fearlessness of the mind of omniscience, not fearing the two vehicles; the tenth is the fearlessness of complete practice, not fearing being unable to convert beings.

The weightiest thing in this gate is that “not seeing.” First ask: is fearlessness a screwing up of one’s courage? It is not. Ten times over the scriptural text says “because he does not see it” — it is not a forcing of oneself not to fear, but that there is simply nothing frightening to be seen there. Not seeing is not evasion; it is how the matter really stands. The third phrase says it most thoroughly: having left far behind the self and what belongs to a self, one does not see in the dharmas the least nature or characteristic, and so one does not see who could damage and vex one.

Brought home to use: against fear, most people’s method is to strengthen themselves; the method of this gate is to see clearly that the “I” that was threatened is not there at all.

Gate 27. Dharmas Not Held in Common: Setting Practice Going in Accord with the Dharma Realm

Chengguan explains the two layers of not being held in common: because the practice is set going in accord with the Dharma realm, it is not held in common with ordinary beings and the two vehicles; and because the awakening is not by another, neither is it held in common with another. These two layers answer exactly to the two key terms of the scriptural text — every phrase is capped with “not taught by another,” and what every phrase practices is a practice of the Dharma realm.

He names the phrases one by one: the first is the practice of benefiting oneself; the second, the practice of converting others; the third, the practice of seeking upward; the fourth, the practice of skillfulness — and within this phrase he further divides five sections: skillfully departing from the two vehicles, skillfully cultivating the samādhis, skillfully according with the world, skillfully abiding in the vehicles, and skillfully exhausting cause and fruit; the fifth is the practice not held in common of carrying both on together, which has a listing, an explaining, and a conclusion; the sixth is the practice in which the three kinds of deed follow upon wisdom in their working; the seventh, the practice of compassion undergoing the sufferings of others in their stead; the eighth, the practice of great kindness gathering in beings; the ninth, the practice of firm purity for oneself and others — and here he fastens on that the simile of the spring pool of the Nirvāṇa may be spoken of within this; the tenth, the practice of constant cultivation with the station fulfilled.

The fifth phrase, “carrying the provisional and the real on together,” is the most perilous and the most refined of the gate: abiding in nirvāṇa and manifesting birth-and-death; knowing that there are no sentient beings and diligently teaching and converting; being extinguished to the end and manifesting the arising of afflictions; constantly delighting in the joy of the Dharma and manifesting women attendants who sing; adorned with the many marks and manifesting an ugly, poor, and lowly form; gathering together the many goods and manifesting birth in the three bad destinies. The scriptural text passes a verdict of its own: such wisdom the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas are not even able to know.

“Abiding in a single firm and close body of wisdom that is the dharma body, and yet universally manifesting measureless bodies of sentient beings” — the real is the single firm and close, the provisional is the measureless bodies of beings; and the two graphs “firm and close” are to be noticed, for the dharma body is able to manifest universally precisely because it is one and inseparably close: were it divisible, to manifest in one place would be to be less in another. “Constantly entering deep concentration and yet showing himself receiving the pleasures of desire” — this phrase is the easiest to read as an excuse for license. Clear that misunderstanding away first: what the scriptural text says is constantly entering deep concentration, and that word “constantly” is the premise; for one who does not constantly enter deep concentration, showing himself receiving the pleasures of desire is simply receiving the pleasures of desire. “Constantly far removed from the three realms and yet not casting off sentient beings” — what is removed from is the binding of the three realms, and what is not cast off is the people within them; were “removed” read as leaving the place, the phrase could not stand at all, for having left the place, how would one not cast them off? “Though he has already reached the far shore of a buddha’s wisdom, yet neither does he cast off the wisdom-body of a bodhisattva” — this phrase is where the gate gathers, and it answers from afar to the fifth phrase of the first gate, the not realizing of the real limit: he reaches the shore and does not cast off the boat. First ask: since a buddha’s wisdom is already reached, of what further use is a bodhisattva’s wisdom-body? The answer lies in the general sense of the dharmas not held in common — not held in common does not mean standing a grade higher; it means that practice is set going in accord with the Dharma realm, and the practice of the Dharma realm has no day on which it is finished, so that above a buddha’s wisdom the body of a bodhisattva is still kept. Brought home to use: practitioners are forever imagining a final end, and these four phrases say over and over one and the same thing — the further on one goes, the less one lets go of what came before.

First clear away a misunderstanding: this does not say that a bodhisattva may manifest evil conduct as he pleases. What the scriptural text says is “carrying the provisional and the real on together” — the real is the being extinguished to the end, the provisional is the characteristic manifested; where there is no real but only the provisional, that is a fall, not a manifesting. Brought home to use: one must be honest in reading this phrase — what is seen is the objective realm of a buddha, not an excuse found for oneself.

Gate 27, the Ninth: The Jewel Pure Adornment

The ninth phrase is the one complete simile in the whole stretch. There is a jewel named Pure Adornment: placed in mud and standing water its light and color do not change, and it is further able to make the turbid water clear. Joined to the bodhisattva: though his body is in the places of the foolish, the ordinary, and the mixed and turbid, in the end he does not lose or destroy the pure jewel-mind that seeks omniscience, and is further able to cause those evil sentient beings to leave far behind deluded views, afflictions, and defiled turbidity.

This simile has two layers, and neither may be lacking. The first layer is the not changing — not being stained oneself. The second layer is the being able to clarify — being able further to make the water clear. With only the first layer it is self-keeping; only with both is it a bodhisattva. Chengguan here fastens on that the simile of the spring pool of the Nirvāṇa may be spoken of at this place.

Brought home to use: in a turbid place most people can manage only the first layer, and often manage it by keeping away. What this phrase speaks of is not keeping away and yet not changing, and moreover turning about and clarifying it.

Gate 28. Deeds: The Working of the Virtues Accomplished

Chengguan speaks of the last two gates together: from the ten kinds of deed onward, two gates make clear the virtues accomplished, of which the first makes clear the working of the deeds, its ten phrases being plainly knowable, and the latter gate, the ten bodies, displays the obtaining of the substance. He adds one general judgment: whether body or deed, both are measureless as the Dharma realm, and ten kinds are merely raised in brief.

The ten phrases are: the deed with regard to all worlds, the deed with regard to all the buddhas, the deed with regard to all bodhisattvas, the deed with regard to all sentient beings, the deed with regard to all that is to come, the deed of all spiritual power, the deed of all light, the deed of the seed of the Three Jewels not being cut off, the deed of all transformation, and the deed of all sustaining. Every phrase carries a reason.

Since the clauses of reason are the content, let them be looked at one by one. The reason for the deed with regard to all worlds is “that he is able to adorn and purify them all” — the deed, as it bears upon worlds, is not a making but an adorning and purifying; Fazang judges this phrase to be with reference to place, and it is the starting point of the ten deeds. The reason for the deed with regard to all the buddhas is “that he is able to make offerings to them all”; the reason for the deed with regard to all bodhisattvas is “that he plants the same roots of good together with them”; the reason for the deed with regard to all sentient beings is “that he is able to teach and convert them all” — these three Fazang judges to be with reference to persons, and the three directions of offering upward, walking alongside, and converting downward are set out at one stroke. The phrase about planting the same roots of good is to be noticed: toward bodhisattvas it is neither offering nor converting but planting together, and this is what makes walking alongside a walking alongside. The reason for the deed with regard to all that is to come is “that to the end of the coming limit he gathers it in,” which Fazang judges to be with reference to time. The reason for the deed of all spiritual power is written most strangely: “that without leaving one world he reaches everywhere to all worlds” — first ask: not leaving, and yet reaching everywhere; how is that possible? If “reaching” is understood as moving, it is of course impossible; what the scriptural text says is that without needing to move there is no place he is not. This is precisely the principle set up in the earlier gate of unimpeded working with regard to lands, now brought home upon deeds — the boundaries of extent come from the opposition of grasper and grasped, and being unmoving yet everywhere is because there was never any here-and-there to begin with. Read together with the tenth phrase it becomes clearer still. The reason for the tenth, the deed of all sustaining, is “that in a single thought, according to what the minds of all sentient beings desire, he manifests for them all, causing all their vows to be fulfilled” — the single thought is not-moving in time, and according with what their minds desire is reaching everywhere in space, so that the two phrases, the one vertical and the other horizontal, answer to each other exactly. Notice too where this phrase gathers: causing all their vows to be fulfilled. Sustaining is not doing it in another’s stead; it is causing his own vow to come to fulfillment. The reason for the ninth, the deed of all transformation, is “that in all worlds he speaks the Dharma and teaches and converts sentient beings” — the deed of transformation does not fall upon what is transformed into being, but upon speaking the Dharma and converting; and this is the same track as the seventh phrase before it, where light is sent forth and within the light bodhisattvas appear: what is manifested is Dharma, not a marvel. Brought home to use: the ten deeds begin from adorning and purifying worlds and gather into causing all vows to be fulfilled, and among them there is not one phrase that is done for oneself.

Of these the seventh is written with the most vivid picture: sending forth boundless light of color, within each and every light a lotus seat, and upon each a bodhisattva sitting cross-legged and appearing. The eighth is the weightiest: after the buddhas have passed into extinction, guarding and sustaining the dharmas of the buddhas — this phrase is the reason why the Buddha-dharma has been able to continue down to today. Brought home to use: on reading this phrase one should know that the scripture now in one’s hands is one that someone guarded through.

Gate 29. Bodies: Ten Bodies That Display the Substance

The ten bodies of the last gate: the body that does not come, the body that does not go, the body that is not real, the body that is not unreal, the body that is not exhausted, the body that is firm, the body that is unmoving, the body complete in the marks, the body without characteristics, and the body that reaches everywhere.

Chengguan collates these ten bodies with the ten bodies of the ninth practice of the Chapter on the Ten Practices, saying that they are largely the same and slightly different, and matches them one by one: the not coming and not going here are the not being born and not ceasing there; the not real and not unreal are the not real and not false there; the not exhausted and the firm are the not shifting and not destructible there — and he further distinguishes a layer, that the not shifting is crosswise, without shifting or change, while the not exhausted is lengthwise, speaking of what has no end. The unmoving here is the one characteristic there, and he adduces the Mañjuśrī Prajñā as warrant, saying that the Dharma realm is unmoving and the Dharma realm is precisely one characteristic, and that because one characteristic is obtained the demons are unable to move it. The body complete in the marks here is the body entering all the destinies of all worlds there; the body without characteristics bears the same name in both places; the body that reaches everywhere is the body entering all worlds without destinies there — the present edition punctuates Chengguan’s sentence as ‘the body of the destinies is without characteristics, the same in name as the body that reaches everywhere,’ while this piece reads it as three pairs according to the actual list of the ten bodies of the ninth practice in the Chapter on the Ten Practices (which has a body without characteristics of its own); both readings are recorded. The rest, he says, are as set forth in the ten practices.

The first four bodies make two pairs, in the sentence-pattern of the double negative. First ask: not real and also not unreal — what then is it? The scriptural text gives the reasons itself — it is not real because all worlds are obtained as they really are, and it is not unreal because it manifests in the world by the principle of how things really are. One and the same really-so: spoken of from what is obtained, it is not real; spoken of from what shows, it is not unreal.

Brought home to use: this gate comes to rest upon “the body that reaches everywhere, for the reason that it is of one and the same body with the buddhas of the three times.” The twenty-nine gates, having walked as far as this, have spoken out the three sections of the substance of practice, the working of practice, and the virtues of practice, and return at last to one sentence — of one and the same body with the buddhas of the three times.

Lineage

The outline of this stretch comes out of the six rounds set up by the ancient worthies of old on the basis of the Dushipin jing, which Chengguan carried on and explained, stating for himself at the beginning of the chapter what he carries on. This is the first layer to be kept apart in reading this chapter: the station is what the outliners set in place, the practice is what the scriptural text says. As for the reckoning of the number of the gates, Chengguan produces two numbers — the proper outline gives twenty-nine gates, and if the sentence generally listing the unimpeded workings be joined to them there are thirty. There are likewise two ways of dividing the stretch — the ancient worthies divide it in three, eleven gates for the firmness of the substance of practice, twelve for the mastery of the working of practice, and seven for the completeness of the virtues of practice; while Chengguan reassigns it according to the ten dedications as four, two, two, one, one, one, one, the ten unimpeded, three, and four. The two outlines stand together, and this piece records both without judgment.

The divergences in the names of the gates among the translations are also many. For the first gate the eighty-fascicle recension reads “abiding like a jewel,” the sixty reads it as “the jewel, abiding in and accomplishing unsurpassed perfect awakening,” and the Dushipin jing reads ‘like brightness showing forth in the night’; for the second gate the eighty reads “the mind of vow of the Great Vehicle like a vajra,” the sixty “bringing forth the vajra mind and adorning the Great Vehicle,” and the Dushi ‘resolved upon the armor of the Great Vehicle’; for the third gate the eighty reads “great setting forth,” the sixty “setting forth the great matter,” and the Dushi ‘great diligence’ (its gate ‘able to let flow forth great vigor’ answers to the next gate of the eighty, “completing the great matter”). What most deserves notice is the eleven gates of the unimpeded working: the eighty names them throughout “unimpeded working,” the sixty names them throughout “mastery” — and since the gate before them in the sixty is also called mastery, the earlier and the later bear the same name there; whereas in the eighty the earlier stretch is mastery and the later stretch unimpeded working, the names being distinct. Chengguan explains precisely upon this difference of the two names: earlier, mastery is spoken of, which is the working moving freely; here, the unimpeded is spoken of, displaying that the working is unbound. For the gate of sporting the sixty reads “sporting with the spiritual penetrations,” and for the gate of objective realms the sixty reads “surpassing practice.” All of these are divergences among the translations, and are recorded together without judgment.

For the tenth phrase of the unimpeded working with regard to spiritual penetrations, Chengguan judges the eighty-fascicle recension to have a lacuna, and supplies its sense from the Jin recension and the Dushi, saying that the great purport is not different and that the detail is in the Chapter on the Ten Penetrations. This piece records his judgment, and does not alter a single graph of the base text.

What the commentators have left upon this stretch must be spoken of house by house. Fazang’s Tanxuan ji is a commentary upon the sixty-fascicle recension, and upon this stretch it does have an outline at the level of the gate, one that stands as a system of its own: he reckons the total by phrases, saying that this great section has three hundred phrases answering the foregoing twenty-nine questions, because the ten phrases of the chapter-headings within the ten masteries are not among the questions. His threefold division has the same section-boundaries as the threefold division of the ancient worthies recorded by Chengguan, and he divides the first of the three again into two layers — the first forty gates making clear that the substance of practice is accomplished and perches high upon the far shore, and from the ten faiths that cannot be broken onward seventy gates making clear that the substance of practice departs from obstruction and gathers in the many ascendant virtues; this layer Chengguan does not have. Explaining the naming of the first gate he brings out two senses, the direct and the reverse: abiding in the place of the right Dharma that is precious is of course called abiding like a jewel, and taking non-abiding as abiding is also called abiding like a jewel. Most worth notice is the fifth phrase: he says the reason for not realizing the real limit is twofold, first that he differs from the two vehicles and second that he retains the afflictions — and both reasons are fastened to the bodhisattva, the retaining of afflictions being the bodhisattva’s retaining them in order to take birth; and Chengguan’s same phrase, “in order to differ from the two vehicles he retains the afflictions and does not cut them off, and only then is able to cut off and realize to the end,” admits of two readings — read as the bodhisattva retaining the afflictions in order to differ from the two vehicles, it says the same as Fazang; this piece takes that reading and records the other beside it. Under the gate of mastery over lands he further poses a question and brings out five senses as the general cause of the whole stretch of the gates of mastery — fully understanding that conditioned arising is mutually dependent in its characteristics; penetrating that the nature of dharmas is fused and thoroughgoing; the power of concentration setting going the ascendant penetrations; obtaining the power of liberation and being able to turn things about; and the power of wisdom understanding dharmas to be like an illusion or a dream and following upon what his own mind manifests — saying that all of it is because the obstruction to the knowable is exhausted, and saying of himself that this explanation runs through the gates above and below. The ten masteries he collates name by name against the eighth ground; the difficulty in the gate of sporting, that a bodhisattva should make a buddha’s body become the two vehicles, he poses and answers and then adds a further explanation; and for the ten powers, the ten deeds, and the ten bodies he brings out headings in every case — among which, upon the ten deeds, Chengguan says only that they may plainly be known and brings out no headings at all. At the end of this stretch he states a judgment of his own: from of old the worthies have mostly gathered the ten deeds and ten bodies into the ten grounds, but since in the Dushi jing these stand at the end of the fourth round, he outlines them into the dedications — which is the same as what Chengguan gathers in, save that here the reason is spoken out. Li Tongxuan’s Xin Huayan jing lun divides the whole chapter into ten sections by a long outline, and this stretch lies within the sixth section, the part of the proper speaking; he says of himself that the text of the two thousand answers is in every case complete of itself, that there is no need to trouble with explaining it, and that one need only practice according to what is spoken, and so at the level of the gate the absence is recorded as it stands. The Yanyi chao has two places of review upon this stretch, not one: the first, the citing of the scripture for the second mind of the second gate in another fascicle; the second, the simile of the boat in the eighth fearlessness, that of expedient means, of gate twenty-six, and the simile of the spring pool in the ninth practice of gate twenty-seven — of the boat he points out that it is originally the sense of the Larger Perfection of Wisdom and was already cited at the seventh ground, and the spring pool he opens into two explanations, by teaching and by principle: by teaching he cites in full the text of the Nirvāṇa’s simile of the spring pool and records the outline of Master Yuan and the explanation of the Guanzhong master; by principle he takes the present scripture directly and speaks by contemplation of mind, assigning the three graphs bright, pure, and wondrous of the jewel named Pure Adornment to the three virtues of prajñā, liberation, and the dharma body, assigning mud to ordinary beings and standing water to the two vehicles, and gathering all into the one phrase that it is not the practice of ordinary beings and not the practice of the worthy and the holy but is the practice of a bodhisattva. The Chao does not adjudicate which of the two explanations is ascendant, and neither does this edition.

This stretch may be read across with three places. The first is the ten bodies of the ninth practice of the Chapter on the Ten Practices, which Chengguan judges to be largely the same as and slightly different from the ten bodies of the last gate, and matches one by one. The second is the Chapter on the Ten Penetrations, where Chengguan says the dropped text of the unimpeded working with regard to spiritual penetrations is set forth in detail, and where, since he judges spiritual penetration and spiritual power to be two distinct things, the penetration of the spiritual realm is little spoken of. The third is the ten masteries of the eighth ground in the Chapter on the Ten Grounds, of which, at gate 12, Chengguan says only that they are as set forth on the eighth ground and does not explain them again. As for the Chapter on the Ten Dedications, when Chengguan explains the station to which each gate is assigned, he repeatedly adduces as warrant the text of the fruit of that station in that chapter, and the two chapters are scriptural grounds for each other.

The Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang and the Huayan jing zhigui have upon this chapter only general references at the level of the chapter, and a citation phrase by phrase of the twenty-nine gates of this stretch is not found; the Cheng weishi lun, the She dacheng lun, and the Yuqie shidi lun likewise yield nothing corresponding to be adduced for this stretch. The absence is recorded as it stands, and no attribution is forced.