華嚴經 品三十八 離世間品 · 十地行五十門Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Detachment from the World · The Fifty Gates of the Practice of the Ten Grounds

First, Where This Stretch Stands

Universal Wisdom Bodhisattva asked two hundred questions in one breath, and Samantabhadra Bodhisattva answers each question with ten clauses. This stretch is the fifth of those rounds — fifty questions, and fifty gates of the form ‘ten kinds of such-and-such.’

What do these fifty gates speak of? Chengguan states it plainly at the head of his Shu: this stretch “answers the fifty questions and makes clear the characteristics of the practice within the stations of the ten grounds,” and he says that the ancient worthies of old divided the whole chapter into six rounds, of which this is the fifth. But one thing must be made clear first: from beginning to end the scriptural text itself never uses the three graphs for ‘the stations of the ten grounds.’ Forty-seven gates are worded ‘Sons of the Buddha! Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas have ten kinds of such-and-such,’ and the remaining three gates open a little differently. What judges these fifty gates to be the characteristics of the practice within the stations of the ten grounds is the outline that the ancient worthies of old made on the basis of the Dushi jing, and Chengguan carried it on — this is an interpretation attributed to the commentators, not something the scriptural text says of itself. In reading, keep the two layers apart: what the scriptural text gives is fifty sets of practices; what the commentators give is a frame that sets them upon the sequence of the path.

How is the frame built? The two houses differ. The ancient worthies divide it in four sections — the first twelve gates speak of the surpassing practice of the three kinds of deed, lodged in the first ground; the next nine gates speak of the practice of building up cultivation and leaving obstruction behind, lodged in the second and third grounds; the next nine gates speak of the practice of building up cultivation to ripeness, lodged from the fourth ground upward; the last twenty gates speak of the practice in which the marks of recompense are complete and full, lodged from the eighth ground upward. Chengguan passed an explicit judgment — “this explanation comes rather close, yet the text is not exhausted in its principle” — and set up another: the first ground ten gates, the second ground six gates, the third and fourth grounds five gates each, the fifth ground two gates, the sixth ground one gate, the seventh and eighth grounds three gates each, the ninth ground two gates, the tenth ground thirteen gates. Added together this comes to exactly fifty. Fazang, in the Tanxuan ji, likewise counts the four sections by gates, while giving the total as “five hundred phrases” — one gate has ten clauses (gate fourteen has eleven), so the fifty gates come to five hundred and one; and what the ancient worthies called the first twelve gates he calls one hundred and twenty gates. One and the same matter, the one counting gates, the other summing the phrases. These several reckonings stand side by side; they are recorded only, and no ranking is passed between them.

There is one more word to notice: the language of assignment in the outline of the ancient worthies as Chengguan records it is ‘lodged’ — lodged in the first ground, lodged in the second and third grounds, lodged from the eighth ground upward; in his own outline Chengguan says directly “the practice within such-and-such a ground.” To lodge is to borrow the sequence of the grounds and stations in order to display the shallowness or depth of the characteristics of practice; it is not to say that this chapter has set up a set of ten grounds of its own. The Chapter on the Ten Grounds directly expounds the ten grounds; here the ten grounds are borrowed in order to speak of the characteristics of practice. The two must not be confounded.

Last, the brushwork of this stretch. The first thirty gates speak of the mind, of understanding, of the path, and are still within the ordinary language of the characteristics of dharmas; but from the thirty-first gate, ‘feet,’ onward, the scriptural text all at once speaks the whole way through by way of the body — feet, hands, belly, storehouse, mind, the armor donned, weapons, head, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, then walking, standing, sitting, lying down, and last the places of abiding and the places walked in. This is not a description of what a bodhisattva looks like. Fazang had already broken it open at the second gate, the ten bodies: “this takes the practices themselves as the body, and therefore is not the same as the foregoing” — a sentence spoken of the ten bodies in particular; Chengguan too, explaining the last thirteen gates, says that this is “made clear by lodging it in the workings of the six faculties and the four postures.” The names of the organs turn into the names of practices — the ‘belly’ is not a stomach but a ground of mind without flattery and crookedness; ‘lying down’ is not sleep but the ease that follows when what was to be done has been brought to completion. This turn is the house brushwork of the Chapter on Detachment from the World.

Gate 1. The Deeds of the Body — How One Body Can Fill All the Worlds

Ask first a question of common sense: how could a single body possibly “fill all the worlds”? And how could one “with a single hand cover all the worlds everywhere,” or “with a single hand grind the encircling mountains of adamant of all the worlds to powder, like fine dust”?

To read these ten clauses as a display of spiritual powers is to read them awry. The landing place of all ten lies in the last two: “with a single body to contain and receive all the realms of sentient beings,” and “within his own body to display everywhere all the purified buddha-fields, causing all sentient beings to accomplish the path therein.” The first eight clauses speak of what the body’s functioning can do — it can pervade, can manifest, can take birth, can roam, can go to the buddhas, can cover, can grind, can display the forming and collapsing of the fields; and the last two gather all this functioning up into one purpose — so that sentient beings may accomplish the path within it. That is why the closing sentence says, “then they will obtain the unsurpassed buddha-deeds of the Tathāgata, and will be able to awaken all sentient beings.”

Clear away one mistake: do not read ‘a single hand covering all the worlds’ as meaning that the hand is very large. When Fazang lists these ten aspects he says, “all of these are the functioning of the body, and are alike named the deeds of the body” — what is spoken of is functioning, not size. The reason the body can pervade runs along the same road as the simile of space in the Chapter on the Appearing of the Tathāgata: not because its bulk is great, but because it is not confined by place and direction.

Bring it down to use: in reading this gate, the question to ask is not ‘when will I have a body like that,’ but ‘what has this body of mine done for sentient beings today?’ When the text calls the body a ‘deed,’ it is looking at the body as a piece of work now under way.

Gate 2. The Body — Not One of the Ten Bodies Is a Physical Form

The gate before spoke of the ‘deeds’ of the body; this gate speaks of the ‘substance’ of the body — and a question comes at once: since the body has already been spoken of, why speak of the body a second time?

Fazang’s distinguishing is direct: “this takes the practices themselves as the body, and therefore is not the same as the foregoing” — the gate before spoke of what the body does; this gate takes the practices themselves as the body. So not one of the ten bodies is flesh and blood: the body of the perfections, the body of the four means of gathering, the body of great compassion, the body of great loving-kindness, the body of merit, the body of wisdom, the dharma-body, the body of skillful means, the body of spiritual power, the body of awakening. Fazang further groups these ten bodies for us: the first two are the six perfections and the four means of gathering; the next two are loving-kindness and compassion; the next two are merit and wisdom; the next three are substance and function; the last one is the accomplishing of the fruit.

Clear away one mistake: the clause “the dharma-body, for the reason that he has left birth in the destinies behind forever” must not be read as meaning that from now on the bodhisattva takes birth no more. The gate before had only just said “within all the destinies to be able to take birth — this is a bodily deed,” and the two clauses do not quarrel: what is left behind forever is birth drawn on by deeds, not birth undertaken for the sake of sentient beings. The twenty-second gate, the path that leaves birth behind, will make this layer plainer still.

Bring it down to use: if a person asks, ‘what do I take as my standing?’, this gate gives ten answers, and not one of them is a name, a station, or an achievement. The practice one cultivates is the standing one has.

Each of the ten clauses carries a “for the reason that,” and it is there that the weight of this gate lies. “The body of great compassion, because he takes on the measureless suffering of all beings in their stead without weariness or aversion” — great compassion can be set up as a body not on account of a feeling of pity, but on account of taking suffering on in another’s stead without giving rise to weariness; “without weariness or aversion” is what limits this clause, and take it away and this body will not stand. “The body of the four means of drawing in, because he does not abandon any being” — the four means are a body because of the not-abandoning. “The body of wisdom, because it is of one nature with the bodies of all buddhas” — wisdom is not a brightness of one’s own but is of one nature with the buddhas. “The body of skillful means, because it is present in every place” — skillful means is a body in that it can be brought forth everywhere, not held in reserve. “The body of awakening, because he attains right awakening according to their delight and according to the time” — even becoming a buddha is bound to what beings delight in and to the time, and is not a date one fixes for oneself. Each of the ten bodies, clause by clause, is bound to beings.

Gate 3. Speech — Ten Manners of Speaking

Question: what is there about speaking that calls for ten items?

Of the ten kinds of speech the text lists, the first four speak of the virtue of the mouth — gentle, ambrosial, undeceiving, true; and the last six speak of what the speaking accomplishes — vast, profound, firm, upright, of many kinds, and speech that awakens all sentient beings. Every clause carries a ‘for the reason that,’ explaining what such speaking is for: gentleness is “that it causes all sentient beings to obtain security”; ambrosia is “that it causes all sentient beings to obtain coolness”; uprightness is “that the words he utters are easily understood.” So these ten kinds of speech are not a rhetoric; they set up ‘speaking’ as a piece of work done for others.

Clear away one mistake: “true speech, for the reason that even in dreams there is no false speech” — this clause does not require a person to police his dreams; it says that truthfulness has ripened to the point where it needs no deliberate intent. It is a clause of degree, not a rule of discipline.

Bring it down to use: the best use of this gate is to take the ten standards and go once through the things one has said today. Which sentence made someone secure; which made someone cool; which was only a well-turned phrase.

For the last six, the scripture states the reason further out than for the first four. “Vast speech, because Śakra, Brahmā, the four heavenly kings and the rest all revere it” — vastness is not volume but the weight that even the gods revere. “Profound speech, because it displays the nature of dharmas” — profundity is not hard-to-follow speech, but speech whose displaying is of the nature of dharmas; speech hard to follow that displays no such nature is merely obscure. “Firm speech, because his exposition of the Dharma is inexhaustible” — firmness is not refusing to change one’s words, but expounding without exhausting it; once exhausted, it is not firm. “Manifold speech, because he manifests it according to the time” — manifoldness is not ornament but manifesting according to the time, and so it does not contradict firmness. And the last clause draws all ten back onto the hearer: “Speech that awakens all beings, because he causes them to understand according to what they desire and delight in” — in the end the standard lies not in how the speaker spoke, but in whether the hearer understood.

Gate 4. Purely Cultivating the Deeds of Speech — Ten Matters That Wash the Deeds of the Mouth Clean

Question: the gate before has already spoken of speech; what does this gate’s “purely cultivating the deeds of speech” add?

The gate before spoke of the manner of speech; this gate speaks of how speech is trained into that manner — and all ten matters are things one can set one’s hand to: to delight in hearing the voice of the Tathāgata; to delight in hearing others speak of the virtues of the bodhisattvas; not to say anything that sentient beings do not like to hear; to leave far behind the four faults of speech; gladly to praise the Tathāgata; before a stūpa, with a loud voice, to praise the buddha’s virtues as they truly are; with a deep and pure mind to give the Dharma to others; with music to sing and praise; in the presence of a buddha to hear the Dharma without sparing body or life; to give up one’s body in serving the bodhisattvas and the masters of the Dharma, and so to receive the marvelous Dharma.

When Chengguan outlines the ten gates of the first ground he says, “the first two are in terms of the body, the next four set forth speech, the last four make clear the mind” — the third through the sixth gates are all reckoned as “setting forth speech,” which shows that these four gates are a single strand and not four separate matters.

Clear away one mistake: “not to say anything that any sentient being does not like to hear” is not the same as pleasing everyone. The third gate had only just spoken of “undeceiving speech” and “true speech”; taking the two gates together, the sense is that the truth that ought to be said must be said, but there is no need to say the things that only gratify oneself.

Bring it down to use: of the ten matters, eight can be done today. The one most easily passed over is the third — not saying what others do not like to hear.

Gate 5. Guarding — When the Deeds of the Mouth Are Pure, Who Comes to Uphold Him

Question: why is this gate not ‘there are ten kinds of guarding,’ but rather “if a bodhisattva-mahāsattva purely cultivates the deeds of speech by these ten matters, then he obtains ten kinds of guarding”?

Because it is the fruit of the gate before. The text joins the two gates with a single “then he obtains”: when the deeds of speech are pure, one draws to oneself the gods, the dragons, the yakṣas, the gandharvas, the asuras, the garuḍas, the kiṃnaras, the mahoragas, and the king of Brahmā, each bringing his own following to guard; and the last clause weighs most — “with the Tathāgata, the Dharma king, at their head, all the masters of the Dharma come to guard him.” The first nine are the eight classes and the king of Brahmā; the last is the masters of the Dharma; those who guard the world and those who guard the Dharma are both reckoned in.

Clear away one mistake: do not read this gate as a roster of Dharma-protecting spirits. Its weight lies in the direction of the causality — one does not first seek to be guarded; one first purifies the deeds of speech. Reverse the sequence, and this gate becomes a text for begging protection.

Bring it down to use: if one who expounds the Dharma finds that nothing goes smoothly, the checking point this gate offers is not outside him but in his own deeds of speech.

Gate 6. Great Matters — What Can Be Brought to Completion Once the Guarding Is Had

Question: the guarding is in hand; what is it for?

The text at once takes up a third section with “then he is able to bring to completion”: to cause all sentient beings to be glad; to be able to go to all the worlds; to know fully all the faculties; to cause every resolute conviction to be pure; to cause all the afflictions to be cut off; to cause all the habit-energies to be relinquished; to cause all desires and delights to be made bright and clean; to cause all deep minds to grow; to cause all the Dharma realms to be pervaded; to cause all nirvāṇa to be seen clearly everywhere. Not one of the ten clauses seeks ease for oneself.

Clear away one mistake: “to cause all desires and delights to be made bright and clean” — this is not to extinguish desire and delight but to wash it clean and bright. The text uses “made bright and clean,” not “cut off”; the clause just above had only said “to cause all the afflictions to be cut off,” and the difference of wording is deliberate.

Bring it down to use: the fourth through the sixth gates are one complete chain of cause and effect — purify the deeds of speech, obtain the guarding, bring the great matters to completion. Read the three gates together, and one sees why the text, where it is speaking of ‘speech,’ speaks three gates in a row.

Gate 7. The Mind — Ten Things Used as Similes for a Single Mind

Question: the mind cannot be seen; how is it to be spoken of? The text’s way is to take ten things that can be seen and set them alongside it.

The great earth can bear up and can nourish, so the mind that is like the great earth bears up and nourishes the roots of good of sentient beings; the great ocean can contain, so the mind that is like the great ocean lets the water of the Dharma of the great wisdom of all the buddhas flow in; Sumeru, king of mountains, is high, so the mind that is like it sets sentient beings in the place of the highest roots of good that transcend the world; the maṇi-jewel king is pure; adamant is firm; the encircling mountains of adamant are unmoved; the lotus flower is unstained; the uḍumbara flower is hard to meet with; the pure sun breaks through darkness; space cannot be measured. Ten similes, and each takes only one virtue of the thing, not the whole of it.

Clear away one mistake: these ten similes cannot be stacked up and read as a compound — ‘a mind that is both like the great earth and like space.’ The similes are used one at a time: when bearing up is spoken of, the great earth is used; when being unstained is spoken of, the lotus flower. Mix them, and it turns into airy talk.

Bring it down to use: these ten similes may be taken as ten mirrors and looked into one by one. This mind of mine today — which of the ten is it least like?

A simile takes one virtue, and which virtue it takes is pointed out by the scripture itself and may not be supplied by the reader. “A mind like adamant, because it enters decisively and deeply into all dharmas” — what is taken from adamant is not hardness but decisive deep entry; a mind that is hard and does not enter fails, rather, to answer the simile. “A mind like the king of wish-fulfilling jewels, because his delight and desire are pure and unstained” — what is taken from the jewel-king is the purity of delight and desire, not the preciousness of its worth. “A mind like the adamantine ring of mountains, because the Māras and outsiders cannot move it” — what is taken is not being moved by Māras and outsiders, not bulk. “A mind like the uḍumbara flower, because through all the eons it is met with only with difficulty” — what is taken is the rarity of the meeting, and what is rarely met is not to be held lightly. Clause by clause the line between simile and thing likened is drawn out; a reader who walks that line will not read the similes as descriptions.

Gate 8. Bringing Forth the Mind — Ten Sayings of ‘I Ought’

Question: is not the bringing forth of the mind a single thing? How is it divided into ten?

Because all ten clauses of the text have the form ‘bringing forth the mind that says “I ought …”’: I ought to liberate all sentient beings; I ought to cause sentient beings to cut off their afflictions; I ought to cause sentient beings to extinguish their habit-energies; I ought to cut off every doubt; I ought to extinguish the sufferings of sentient beings; I ought to extinguish the calamities of the evil destinies; I ought to revere and comply with all the tathāgatas; I ought to study well what all bodhisattvas study; I ought at the tip of every single hair to display all the buddhas accomplishing perfect awakening; I ought in all the worlds to beat the unsurpassed drum of the Dharma. Ten sayings of ‘I ought,’ and the bringing forth of the mind is taken apart from one vague intention into ten concrete matters to be seen to.

Clear away one mistake: the ‘I’ in these clauses is not a grasping at self. The ‘I’ here has the tone of shouldering, not the tone of ownership — the eleventh gate is about to say, “the deep mind that is not attached to any place of taking birth.”

Bring it down to use: the reason the mind first brought forth so easily retreats is often that it is too abstract. Turn it into ten sayings of ‘I ought,’ and there is something that can be accounted for clause by clause.

Gate 9. The Pervading Mind — The Ten Reaches of the Mind

Question: how does a mind “pervade”?

The text lists ten reaches: space, the Dharma realm, the three times, the appearing of all the buddhas, all sentient beings, all wisdom, all that is boundless, all that is unborn, all that is unobstructed, all mastery. Under each clause there is a reason: pervading space is “the intent he brings forth is vast”; pervading the three times is “within a single thought he knows the whole of it”; pervading the appearing of the buddhas is understanding the whole of the six matters — entering the womb, being born, leaving the household life, accomplishing the path, turning the wheel of the Dharma, and entering parinirvāṇa.

Clear away one mistake: “the mind that pervades all that is unborn, for the reason that he does not take dharmas to have an intrinsic nature” — pervading, by this point, no longer speaks of extent but of the principle seen. The first five clauses speak of the breadth of the mind’s extent; the last five speak of the principle the mind illumines. Fail to part these two halves, and ‘pervading the unborn’ will be read as a very large space.

Bring it down to use: this gate is best read against the seventh. The seventh gate says what the mind is like; this gate says where the mind reaches.

The reasons in the latter half must be read clause by clause (four of them are taken here), and only then is it clear that “pervading” has changed its sense in the second half. “A mind pervading all beings, because he knows fully their faculties, their desires, and their habit-energies” — pervading beings is not how many people are covered, but reaching those three layers; without them, however many the people, one is only a bystander. “A mind pervading all that is boundless, because he knows the differences within the nets of illusion” — the pervading of the boundless is bound to knowing the differences within the nets of illusion, not to inexhaustible quantity. “A mind pervading all that is unobstructed, because he does not abide in his own mind or in the minds of others” — this clause matters most: unobstructedness is not being able to reach into another’s mind, but not abiding either in one’s own mind or in another’s; wherever there is a place to abide, there is a place that obstructs. “A mind pervading all that is sovereign, because in a single thought he universally manifests the attaining of buddhahood” — the pervading of sovereignty lies in a single thought, not in the length of eons.

Gate 10. The Faculties — Ten Faculties Turned Toward the Dharma

Question: what is a “faculty” here? Not the faculties of eye and ear, nose and tongue — those do not come until the thirty-ninth gate and after. The faculty here has the sense of that which can generate, and points to such faculties as faith, vigor, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.

The ten faculties in order are gladness, aspiration, non-retrogression, abiding securely, the fine and subtle, no resting, likeness to adamant, the flaming light of adamant, no difference, and the unobstructed limit. The first four speak of the entryway — seeing the buddhas and having faith unbroken; hearing the Dharma and being able to understand; undertaking a thing and being able to bring it to its end; carrying out the bodhisattva practice without severing it. The last six speak of the depths — entering the subtle and marvelous principle of prajñā; bringing the affairs of sentient beings to their end; realizing and knowing the nature of dharmas; shining everywhere upon the realms of the buddhas; knowing that all the tathāgatas are one body; entering deeply into the ten powers of the Tathāgata.

Chengguan divides the ten gates of the first ground into three sections, of which “the last four make clear the mind” — the seventh gate, the mind; the eighth, bringing forth the mind; the ninth, the pervading mind; and the tenth, the faculties: these four gates belong to the deeds of the mind. So these ten faculties are spoken of in terms of an inward power that can generate.

Clear away one mistake: “the faculty of no difference, for the reason that all the tathāgatas are together one body” does not say that the buddhas have no distinctions. It says that on the side of realizing and knowing, one sees the buddhas as one dharma-body, and therefore there is no difference.

Bring it down to use: a faculty is what generates. Which faculty has not yet been set up? Look at which kind of dharma never manages to arise in oneself, and one will know.

Gate 11. The Deep Mind — Ten Places of Neither Stain nor Admixture

Question: what sort of mind is called “deep”?

The text answers by listing ten things, what it does not do and what it does: not stained by the dharmas of the world; not admixed with the path of the two vehicles; fully comprehending the awakening of the buddhas; according with the path of the wisdom of all wisdoms; not shaken by the demons or the outsiders; purely cultivating the perfect wisdom of the tathāgatas; receiving and upholding every dharma heard; not attached to any place of taking birth; complete in every fine and subtle wisdom; cultivating the dharmas of all the buddhas. Of the ten clauses, four are withholdings (not stained, not admixed, not shaken, not attached), and six are settings-forth (fully comprehending, according, purely cultivating, receiving and upholding, being complete, cultivating).

Clear away one mistake: “the deep mind that is not admixed with any path of the two vehicles” is not a disparagement of the two vehicles. The closing sentence of the twenty-second gate, the path that leaves birth behind, says it clearly enough — “and yet also not admixed with the practice of the two vehicles”: what is spoken of is not being mingled, not that the practice of the two vehicles is bad. The stance of the text is not to blend, not to look down.

Bring it down to use: what makes the deep mind difficult is that it is not a single exertion but a direction that is not pulled away. Let any one of the ten clauses be pulled away, and the deep mind has grown shallow.

Gate 12. The Surpassing Deep Mind — One Layer Further Above the Deep Mind

Question: the deep mind is already deep; what does “surpassing” add?

Look at the ten clauses and it becomes clear: non-retrogression, apart from doubt, rightly upholding, most surpassing, being master, vast, foremost, mastery, abiding securely, no resting. The deep mind of the gate before speaks of ‘not being robbed of something’; this gate speaks of ‘being able to be master within it’ — “the surpassing deep mind that is master, for the reason that with respect to all the Buddha-dharma he obtains mastery”; “the foremost surpassing deep mind, for the reason that everything he undertakes he is able to bring to completion.” From being able to hold to being able to wield: this is what ‘surpassing’ means.

Clear away one mistake: “the surpassing deep mind apart from doubt, for the reason that he understands the hidden words of all the tathāgatas” — the hidden words here are not secret sayings but words deep and difficult to fathom. The doubt that is left behind is the hesitation that arises when one cannot understand a buddha’s words; it is not rational inquiry.

Bring it down to use: advance in the Dharma often has two stages: first, not being robbed by circumstance; then, being able to function within circumstance. This gate is the checklist for the second stage.

The limiting clauses of “sovereign” and “abiding securely” are the easiest to read past. “The sovereign superior deep mind, because all concentrations, penetrations, and transformations are adorned” — sovereignty is not doing as one pleases, but the three matters of concentration, penetration, and transformation all being brought to completion in adornment; without those three beneath it, so-called sovereignty is merely being unconstrained. “The abiding superior deep mind, because he takes up and holds his original vows” — what makes abiding secure is bound to taking up the original vows; an abiding not bound to the original vows is a halting, not an abiding securely. And again, “the rightly upholding superior deep mind, because it flows forth from great vows and great practice” — what enables it to uphold is that it flows out of great vows and great practice, not that it props itself up. Read the three together, and the “superior” of the superior deep mind lies wholly in being bound to something: bound to concentration, bound to the original vows, bound to great vows and great practice.

Gate 13. Diligent Cultivation — The Six Perfections, with Loving-Kindness, Compassion, and the Powers of a Buddha Added

Question: why does this gate come only after the deep mind?

Because what came before all concerned the ground of the mind, and this gate begins to speak of exertion in actual matters. The first six of the ten clauses are precisely the six perfections — giving, keeping the precepts, patience, vigor, meditative concentration, wisdom; and the last four are great loving-kindness, great compassion, awakening to the ten powers of the Tathāgata, and the non-retrogressive wheel of the Dharma. The six perfections are the base of practice for oneself; the last four are the utmost of benefiting others and of heading toward buddhahood.

In his own assignment to the ten grounds Chengguan names the opening gate outright: “second, the six gates from ‘the ten kinds of deep mind’ onward make clear the practice within the second ground”; the outline of the ancient worthies takes the nine gates from “the ten kinds of diligent cultivation” onward as “the practice of building up cultivation and leaving obstruction behind, lodged in the second and third grounds” — these are all language of assignment belonging to the commentators, attributed to the ancient worthies and to Chengguan, and not said by the scriptural text itself.

Clear away one mistake: “the diligent cultivation of keeping the precepts, for the reason of the ascetic practices of shaking off the dust, of few desires and contentment, and of not deceiving anyone” — the last words are the key. The shaking off of the dust is not for the sake of hardship; it is for the sake of not deceiving. If one keeps the precepts and yet still harbors deceit within, this clause has come to nothing.

Bring it down to use: everyone can recite the six perfections; the use of this gate lies in the ‘for the reason that’ behind each one. The reason of giving is “he seeks no recompense”; the reason of patience is “he leaves behind the notion of self and other.” Lose the reasons, and the six perfections become a list of items.

For great kindness and great compassion among the last four, the reason the scripture gives is not feeling but seeing. “Diligent cultivation of great kindness, because he knows that beings have no own-nature” — what enables kindness to be diligent is bound to knowing that beings have no own-nature; if one sees a real person to be pitied, kindness has a measure and diligence cannot go the whole way. “Diligent cultivation of great compassion, because he knows that dharmas are empty, and universally takes on suffering in the stead of all beings without weariness or aversion” — what enables compassion to be diligent is bound to knowing that dharmas are empty; knowing emptiness, he takes suffering on and is not wearied. Kindness and compassion are not here called softness of heart; they are called the functioning of two ways of seeing. The last two clauses are the same: awakening to the ten powers is to be cultivated diligently “because he penetrates them without obstruction and shows them to beings,” and the non-retrogressing wheel of Dharma is to be cultivated diligently “because he turns it until it reaches the minds of all beings” — neither halts at one’s own realization.

Gate 14. Settled Conviction — Eleven Clauses, and Yet Named Ten Altogether

Question: this gate lists eleven clauses in the text, so why does the closing sentence still say “these are the ten”?

So the text has it; the number in the gate’s name takes ‘ten’ as its rule, while the clauses number eleven. Discrepancies of this kind are not rare in the scriptures, and are transcribed word for word without adjustment. As for “settled conviction,” it is a resolute conviction that has examined and settled upon its object and cannot be drawn away — highest, adornment, vast, quiescence, universal, fit to bear, firm, clear discernment, what is present, carrying on and flourishing, mastery; and under each clause its reason is attached.

Clear away one mistake: settled conviction is not obstinacy. The clause “the vast settled conviction, for the reason that his mind has never been narrow and mean” blocks this misreading at once — being settled and being broad are here two faces of one thing. An obstinate mind is a narrow and mean one, which is precisely the opposite of this clause.

Bring it down to use: people are full of doubts, and mostly not because the evidence is insufficient but because their conviction is unsettled. What this gate says is: once conviction is settled, the mind on the contrary grows broad.

Every one of the eleven clauses has its reason, and two of them show the measure of this gate most clearly. “The conviction that is fit to bear, because he can receive the sustaining power of the buddhas” — fitness to bear is not confidence that one can shoulder things oneself, but being able to bear up under the buddhas’ sustaining power; only being able to receive it is called fitness to bear. “The conviction that is clear in its deciding, because he fully knows all deeds and their recompense” — what such deciding decides upon is the principle of deeds and their recompense, not the rights and wrongs of other people; read “clear in deciding” as daring to pass judgment and one has turned it backwards. So too the others: “the conviction of quiescence, because he can enter the profound nature of dharmas” — the conviction of quiescence is bound to being able to enter the nature of dharmas, not to feeling nothing; “the conviction that continues and raises up the lineage, because he receives the prediction in the presence of all buddhas” — it is bound to receiving the prediction, not to appointing oneself to the task. Read the eleven together, and every clause of settled conviction is bound to the dharma faced, and not one of them to self-confidence.

Gate 15. Settled Conviction That Knows the Worlds — How World and World Enter Each Other

Question: “all the worlds enter into a single world” — how can such a thing be?

The text does not first argue the principle; it simply lists ten clauses: all the worlds enter a single world; a single world enters all the worlds; a single body of a tathāgata and a single lotus seat pervade all the worlds; all the worlds are like space; they are complete with a buddha’s adornments; they are filled with bodhisattvas; they enter a single pore; they enter the body of a single sentient being; a single tree of a buddha’s awakening and a single site of a buddha’s awakening pervade them; a single sound reaches everywhere and causes sentient beings each severally to understand it. Ten clauses that all the way through put the ‘large’ inside the ‘small.’

Clear away one mistake: this is no crowding of space. The fourth clause, “knowing that all the worlds are like space,” is the key — it is precisely because the worlds are like space and without solid obstruction that mutual entering can be spoken of at all. If the worlds were lumps of substance, mutual entering would be the forcing of one thing into another.

Bring it down to use: this gate must be read together with the three words “settled conviction.” What it lists is not a marvel but a settling of one’s view of the world — worlds can enter one another because they were never lumps of substance to begin with.

Gate 16. Settled Conviction That Knows the Realms of Sentient Beings — How the Realms of Sentient Beings Enter Each Other

Question: the gate before spoke of worlds entering one another, this gate of the realms of sentient beings entering one another; what is the difference between the two?

The gate before spoke of the receptacle world; this gate speaks of the sentient. The ten clauses in order are: the realms of sentient beings are in their nature not real; all the realms of sentient beings enter the body of a single sentient being; they enter the body of a bodhisattva; they enter the Tathāgata-womb; the body of a single sentient being enters everywhere into all the realms of sentient beings; all the realms of sentient beings are fit to serve as vessels for the Dharma of the buddhas; in accord with what they desire he displays the bodies of Śakra, of Brahmā, and of the world-guarding kings; in accord with what they desire he displays the quiescent deportment of the śrāvakas and the pratyekabuddhas; he displays the body adorned with the virtues of a bodhisattva; he displays the quiescent deportment with the marks and signs of a tathāgata and awakens sentient beings. The first five clauses speak of mutual entering; the last five, of manifesting in accord with capacity.

Clear away one mistake: the first clause, “in their nature not real,” does not say that sentient beings do not exist. It is the threshold of the nine clauses that follow — precisely because they are not a fixed substance really existing, mutual entering and manifesting in accord can be spoken of. Read it as nihilism and the whole work of liberating beings in the nine clauses that follow falls to nothing.

Bring it down to use: what this gate really speaks of is a way of seeing people. To see a person and at the same time to see that he is fit to serve as a vessel for the Dharma of the buddhas — this clause among the ten can be used on the spot.

Gate 17. Habit-Energies — Speaking of ‘Habit-Energy’ as a Good Thing

Question: is habit-energy not something to be cut off? How does this gate say that a bodhisattva “has ten kinds of habit-energy”?

Because habit-energy in its root sense is the residual force formed by perfuming, and is in itself neither good nor bad. The ten this gate lists are: the mind of awakening, the roots of good, teaching sentient beings, seeing the buddhas, taking birth in purified worlds, practice, vows, the perfections, contemplating the dharma of evenness, and the differences among the objective realms. All of them are residual force perfumed by good dharmas. Only the closing sentence joins the two sides: “then they will forever leave behind every habit-energy of affliction, and will obtain the great wisdom of the Tathāgata, the wisdom of habit-energy that is no habit-energy.”

Clear away one mistake: the closing phrase “habit-energy that is no habit-energy” is no tongue-twister. The first ‘habit-energy’ is said in terms of the force that has been perfumed; the second, ‘no habit-energy,’ is said in terms of there being no grasping within it — it has become natural and yet does not fall into grasping, and this is the habit-energy of the ground of buddhahood.

Bring it down to use: practice has one very solid test: what has already become a habit that needs no forcing. This gate says that only when good dharmas have been perfumed into habit-energy does it count.

Chengguan takes the beginning of this gate as the outline of the third ground: “third, the five gates from ‘the ten kinds of habit-energy’ onward make clear the practice within the third ground.” — this is an assignment belonging to the commentators, attributed to Chengguan.

Gate 18. Grasping — Ten Kinds of Grasping by Which the Bodhisattva Practice Is Not Severed

Question: the Buddha-dharma everywhere speaks of not grasping; how does this gate say that there are “ten kinds of grasping”?

The name of the gate already carries its own qualification: “they have ten kinds of grasping, by which they do not sever the practices of a bodhisattva.” Grasping all the realms of sentient beings, in order to teach them to the end; grasping all the worlds, in order to adorn and purify them to the end; grasping the Tathāgata, in order to make offerings; grasping the roots of good, in order to gather the marks and signs; grasping great compassion, in order to extinguish the suffering of sentient beings; grasping great loving-kindness, in order to give sentient beings the joy of all wisdom; grasping the perfections; grasping skillfulness in means; grasping awakening; and a last clause that states it altogether: “the bodhisattva grasps all dharmas, for the reason that in all places, with clear wisdom, he knows them as present before him.”

Clear away one mistake: the grasping here is not greedy grasping. The closing sentence gives the answer: “then they will not sever the practices of a bodhisattva, and will obtain the unsurpassed dharma of no grasping of all the tathāgatas.” The end point of grasping is no grasping. Grasping is the hand one uses, before no grasping has been reached, to keep the bodhisattva practice from being cut off.

Bring it down to use: if a person, for fear of attachment, shoulders nothing at all, then the bodhisattva practice has been the first thing severed. What this gate says is: where one has not yet arrived at no grasping, what ought to be shouldered must be shouldered.

The reasons in the seventh to ninth clauses state the limit of “grasping” most clearly. “He grasps the perfections, because he accumulates the adornments of a bodhisattva” — grasping the perfections is not taking up a set of exercises but accumulating adornment; adornment is a mark brought to completion, not an object held. “He grasps skillful means, because he manifests them in every place” — the reason for grasping skillful means is that they are to be brought forth everywhere; grasp them and keep them in one’s own hands, and this grasping falls empty. “He grasps awakening, because he obtains unobstructed wisdom” — even the grasping of awakening is bound to a reason, namely obtaining unobstructed wisdom; unbound to that, grasping awakening too becomes a kind of possession. The three clauses share one form: what is grasped is a means, and the reason points to use for others’ sake — and so grasping does not become greed.

Gate 19. Cultivation — Ten Matters That Are Cultivated

Question: the ten clauses of this gate are strikingly short — cultivating the perfections, cultivating study, cultivating wisdom, cultivating the meaning, cultivating the Dharma, cultivating going forth, cultivating manifesting, cultivating diligent practice without slackening, cultivating the accomplishing of perfect awakening, cultivating the turning of the wheel of the true Dharma. Why is no explanation added?

Because it is a table of contents. The first six clauses are the sequence of benefiting oneself: the perfections as the whole, study as the entering, wisdom as the substance, the meaning as what is understood, the Dharma as what is relied upon, going forth as what is headed toward; and the last four turn toward benefiting others and toward the fruit: manifesting, diligent practice without slackening, the accomplishing of perfect awakening, the turning of the wheel of the true Dharma. The closing sentence is short too: “then they will obtain unsurpassed cultivation, and will cultivate all dharmas.”

Clear away one mistake: “cultivating manifesting” is not the cultivating of spiritual powers. It belongs with “the turning of the wheel of the true Dharma” that follows, to the half concerned with benefiting others, and points to showing a body and showing a matter for the sake of teaching.

Bring it down to use: this gate is like a summary table. The thirteenth gate above spoke of the characteristics of the practice of diligent cultivation; this gate speaks of the items cultivated — one says how to cultivate, the other says what is cultivated.

Gate 20. Accomplishing the Buddha-dharma — Ten Matters by Which the Buddha-dharma Stands Firm in Oneself

Question: the Buddha-dharma is already complete of itself; why must it still be “accomplished”?

The accomplishing here is said from one’s own side. The ten clauses: not to part from the good friend; to believe deeply in the words of a buddha; not to slander the true Dharma; to dedicate and direct measureless and inexhaustible roots of good; to believe and understand that the realm of the Tathāgata has no bound; to know the realm of all the worlds; not to forsake the realm of the Dharma realm; to leave far behind the realms of the demons; rightly to keep in mind the realms of all the buddhas; to delight in seeking the realm of the ten powers of the Tathāgata. The first four clauses speak of attitude; the last six use the word ‘realm’ six times in a row, speaking of what is believed and understood.

Clear away one mistake: “to believe deeply in the words of a buddha — thus is the Buddha-dharma accomplished” does not ask a person to believe without thinking. The fifth clause uses the two words “believe and understand” — faith and understanding are raised together, and faith is no substitute for understanding.

Bring it down to use: these ten clauses and the next gate are exactly a face and its reverse, and reading them together costs the least effort. This gate says what makes the Buddha-dharma stand; the next says what makes it fall away.

Gate 21. Falling Away from the Buddha-dharma — Ten Matters That Ought to Be Left Far Behind

Question: why does this gate add the four words “which ought to be left far behind” right in the gate’s name?

Because all the gates before are dharmas that may be abided in, and this gate alone is to be left behind; the text marks this specially in the gate’s name. The ten clauses: to slight the good friend; to dread the suffering of birth-and-death; to weary of cultivating the bodhisattva practice; not to delight in dwelling in the world; to be engrossed in and attached to samādhi; to grasp at the roots of good; to slander the true Dharma; to sever the bodhisattva practice; to delight in the path of the two vehicles; to bear ill will toward the bodhisattvas.

Clear away one mistake: two of the clauses are the most easily overlooked — “to be engrossed in and attached to samādhi” and “to grasp at the roots of good.” Not every cause of falling away from the Buddha-dharma is an evil deed; a good thing held on to makes one fall away just the same. This is the sentence of this gate most worth remembering.

Bring it down to use: of the ten clauses, three have to do with other people — slighting the good friend, bearing ill will toward the bodhisattvas, slandering the true Dharma. Retrogression in practice often begins between persons.

The closing sentence gives the way out: “if the bodhisattvas leave these dharmas far behind, then they will enter the bodhisattva’s path that leaves birth behind.” — the name of the next gate is drawn straight out of this.

Gate 22. The Path That Leaves Birth Behind — Ten Clauses Whose Two Ends Are Held Apart by ‘and yet’

Question: this is the weightiest gate of the stretch; what does the “leaving birth” in its name leave behind?

The closing sentence explains itself: “going forth from the world, not held in common with the world, and yet also not admixed with the practice of the two vehicles.” What is left behind is the birth of birth-and-death, not a leaving behind of the sentient beings of the world. Each of the ten clauses is two ends held apart by an ‘and yet’: bringing forth prajñā and yet constantly contemplating sentient beings; leaving the views far behind and yet liberating sentient beings bound by views; not calling to mind any characteristic and yet not forsaking sentient beings attached to characteristics; passing beyond the three realms and yet always being within all the worlds; leaving the afflictions behind forever and yet dwelling together with sentient beings; obtaining the dharma of leaving desire behind and yet with great compassion pitying sentient beings attached to desire; always delighting in quiescence and yet constantly displaying a retinue; leaving behind birth in the world and yet dying here and being born there to set going the bodhisattva practice; not being stained by the dharmas of the world and yet not severing what is done in the world; having the awakening of the buddhas already present and yet not forsaking a bodhisattva’s vows and practices.

Clear away one mistake: do not take the first half of each clause as the main statement and the second as a concession. The two ends of the text hold at the same time — to detach without abandoning is exactly what the name of this chapter means. Li Tongxuan, explaining the name of the whole chapter, takes this same sense, saying that a bodhisattva “although he practices the myriad practices of Samantabhadra, he is not stained by the world,” and therefore it is named the Chapter on Detachment from the World; this is Tongxuan’s interpretation, attributed to him.

Chengguan takes the beginning of this gate as the outline of the fourth ground: “fourth, the five gates from ‘the path that leaves birth behind’ onward make clear the practice within the fourth ground.” And he explains why: “the first three grounds are lodged as being the same as the world, and there are the delusions of views and the rest, like raw food lying in the belly. The fourth ground is lodged as being the same as transcending the world; the counteragent is pure and is able to leave that rawness behind” — this is an assignment and a simile belonging to the commentators, attributed to Chengguan.

Bring it down to use: this gate is a measuring rod for judging whether one’s own practice is right. If one’s practice takes one further and further away from people, every one of these ten clauses is saying that it is not.

Gate 23. Settled Dharmas — Ten Matters That, Once Settled, Move No More

Question: how does this differ from the “settled conviction” of the fourteenth gate?

Settled conviction is said in terms of view; settled dharmas are said in terms of station. All ten clauses open with “settled”: settled that he takes birth within the family of the Tathāgata; that he abides within the realms of the buddhas; that he knows fully the matters a bodhisattva undertakes; that he abides securely in the perfections; that he obtains a place in the assemblies of the Tathāgata; that he is able to display the lineage-nature of the Tathāgata; that he abides securely in the powers of the Tathāgata; that he enters deeply into the awakening of a buddha; that he is together one body with all the tathāgatas; that where he abides and where the tathāgatas abide are without duality. The first five clauses speak of the settledness of entering the assembly; the last five, of the settledness of being of one substance with the buddhas.

Clear away one mistake: this gate has no closing sentence of superior benefit beginning “if the bodhisattvas abide securely in this dharma”; it closes upon “these are the ten.” So the text has it, and there is no need to supply what it lacks.

Bring it down to use: the tone of these ten clauses is one of declaration. What they address is the sentence in a practitioner’s heart that asks, ‘do I actually count?’ — ten ‘settleds’ are ten confirmations.

Gate 24. The Path That Brings Forth the Buddha-dharma — Ten Roads by Which the Buddha-dharma Grows Up in Oneself

Question: “accomplishing the Buddha-dharma” has only just been spoken of above, and here is “the path that brings forth the Buddha-dharma”; where is the difference?

The difference lies in the word ‘bring forth.’ To accomplish is to make it stand; to bring forth is to make it grow. The ten clauses: according with the good friend; deep-minded faith and understanding; bringing forth the great vow; accepting one’s own roots of good; cultivating throughout all the kalpas without ever having enough; manifesting in asaṃkhya worlds; not severing the bodhisattva practice; the measureless mind; surpassing practice; the lineage of the Tathāgata. Under each clause its reason is attached, and the last is the broadest — “the lineage of the Tathāgata is a path that brings forth the Buddha-dharma, for the reason that it causes all sentient beings to delight in bringing forth the mind of awakening, and with all the dharmas of good aids and sustains them.”

Clear away one mistake: “to accept his own roots of good is a path that brings forth the Buddha-dharma, for the reason that he knows that deeds are not lost” — ‘accept’ here has the sense of assenting to, of holding as settled, not of enduring. To hold it settled that the roots of good one has made will not have been made in vain is one of the conditions for being able to keep walking a long way.

Bring it down to use: the first of the ten clauses is again the good friend. The first clause of the twentieth gate was also the good friend. That the text twice sets it in first place is no accident.

The closing sentence draws out the next gate: “then they will obtain the names of a great man.”

The reasons of the first two clauses and of the seventh reward reading one by one. “According with good friends is a path that brings forth the buddha-dharma, because they plant the same roots of good” — what enables a good friend to bring forth the buddha-dharma is the planting of the same roots of good; it is not that he gives directions, but that what he plants is the very root one plants, and only so does “according with” have real content. “Deep-minded faith and understanding is a path that brings forth the buddha-dharma, because he knows the sovereignty of the buddhas” — what enables faith and understanding to bring forth is knowing the buddhas’ sovereignty; if what is believed is not that sovereignty, belief is only a settling of the heart. And the seventh: “Not severing the bodhisattva practice is a path that brings forth the buddha-dharma, because it increases great compassion” — what the unsevered practice brings forth is not a heap of merit but the increase of great compassion; with great compassion as what is brought forth, this gate can be told apart from the earlier one on bringing the buddha-dharma to accomplishment.

Gate 25. The Names of a Great Man — Ten Names of a Sattva

Question: why speak of names? Are names not outward appellations?

Because each of the ten names in the text is fastened to an actual virtue: bodhi-sattva is “born of the wisdom of awakening”; mahā-sattva is “abiding securely in the Great Vehicle”; the foremost sattva is “realizing the foremost dharma”; the surpassing sattva is “awakening to the surpassing dharma”; the most surpassing sattva is “his wisdom is the most surpassing”; the high sattva is “bringing forth high vigor”; the unsurpassed sattva is “revealing the unsurpassed dharma”; the sattva of power is “knowing the ten powers broadly”; the sattva without equal is “in the world there is nothing to compare with him”; the inconceivable sattva is “in a single thought accomplishing buddhahood.” The name is the fruit, the virtue the cause; only where the virtue is, is the name.

Clear away one mistake: these ten names are not ten ranks. They are appellations one and the same bodhisattva receives from ten angles, not ten steps climbed one after another.

Bring it down to use: the closing sentence says, “if the bodhisattvas obtain such names, then they will accomplish the bodhisattva path” — the name here is not a title but a self-reckoning. How a person calls himself is where he walks.

Gate 26. The Path — One Road Counted from One to Ten

Question: why is this gate especially long?

Because each clause is a whole set of numbered dharmas, counted from one to ten: the one path is not forsaking the single mind of awakening; the two paths are wisdom and skillful means; the three paths are emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness; the four practices are confessing, rejoicing, entreating, and dedicating and directing; the five faculties are faith, vigor, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom; the six penetrations are the divine eye, the divine ear, the minds of others, former lives, the spiritual foot, and the exhaustion of the outflows; the seven recollections are the recollection of the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṃgha, relinquishing, the precepts, the gods, and sentient beings; the eightfold noble path is right view through to right concentration; the nine successive concentrations run from leaving desire, ill will, and harm behind to the cessation of feeling and perception; the ten powers run from the knowledge of what is possible and not possible to the knowledge of the exhaustion of the outflows. From one to ten, ten sets of Dharma gates strung into a single bodhisattva path.

Clear away one mistake: every set in this gate has been rewritten; none is simply carried over from the śrāvakas. The divine eye among the six penetrations “knows that sentient beings die here and are born there” for the sake of liberating them; the knowledge of the exhaustion of the outflows “realizes the true limit here and now, and yet sets going the bodhisattva practice without severing it”; the nine successive concentrations are the plainest of all — “though he abides in the concentration that extinguishes all perception and feeling, yet also not to cease the bodhisattva practice.” The same numbered dharmas, landing on a bodhisattva, gain one further tail: the not forsaking of sentient beings. This is what the gate really means to teach.

Bring it down to use: many suppose that the Great Vehicle has a separate set of practices of its own. This gate says it does not — the numbered dharmas are the same set; only the intent with which they are used differs.

The three sets — the eightfold noble path, the nine successive attainments, and the ten powers — are each rewritten limb by limb in the scripture, and none may be passed over. The first limb of the eightfold path reads “he walks the path of right view, because he leaves behind all wrong views” — right view is a path in leaving wrong views behind, not in setting up a view of its own. The limb of right livelihood is written at greatest length: “he abides securely in right livelihood, with the austere practices and contentment, his deportment examined and correct, according with awakening he practices the four noble lineages, because all faults are forever left behind” — the rightness of livelihood is bound to the four noble lineages and to deportment, not to a choice of occupation. The last limb: “his mind is constantly in right concentration, because he enters well the bodhisattva’s inconceivable gate of liberation, and within one samādhi brings forth all samādhis” — the standard of right concentration is bringing forth all samādhis within one, not sitting long. In the nine successive attainments every limb turns on an “and yet”: the first, “he leaves behind desire, hatred and harming, and yet with all verbal deeds expounds the Dharma without obstruction”; the fifth, “from this he is unmoving and enters the formless attainments, and yet does not abandon birth in the realms of desire and form” — entering the attainments and yet not abandoning birth is where the road parts from the two vehicles. The ten powers begin with “the knowledge that knows well what is possible and what is not possible” and end with “the knowledge that knows well the delights and desires of all beings, their proclivities and the exhaustion of the residues of their delusion, and yet he does not abandon the bodhisattva practices” — the ten are numbered out and still close on not abandoning the practices, by the same stroke as the last of the six penetrations, “the knowledge of the exhaustion of the outflows, because he directly realizes the true limit and yet arouses the bodhisattva practice without severing it.” The middle five limbs each have their reason too: right thought is “he casts off false discrimination, because his mind constantly accords with all-knowledge”; right speech, “because he leaves behind the four faults of speech and accords with the holy words”; right action, “because he teaches and transforms beings so that they are tamed”; right effort, “because he diligently cultivates all the ascetic practices of a bodhisattva and enters the ten powers of the Buddha without hindrance”; right mindfulness, “because he is able to hold in memory all sounds of speech and to extinguish the scattered and stirring mind of the world” — after each limb there hangs a “because,” and the reason lies wholly in benefiting beings and entering the Buddha’s knowledge, not in one’s own release. The three middle turns of the nine successive attainments are likewise: “he extinguishes applied and sustained thought, and yet with the applied and sustained thought of all-knowledge teaches and transforms beings” — what is extinguished is the coarse and fine searching of thought, what is used is the thought of all-knowledge; “he casts off joy and delight, and yet sees all buddhas and his mind greatly rejoices” — what is cast off is the joy of meditation, what is gained is the joy of seeing the buddhas; “he leaves behind worldly pleasure, and yet accords with the pleasure of the world-transcending bodhisattva path” — what is left is worldly pleasure, what is accorded with is the pleasure of the path; and the last limb, “though he abides in the attainment of the cessation of all perception and feeling, he does not cease from the bodhisattva practices” — having entered the deepest attainment he still does not stop the bodhisattva practices. To each of the eight middle items of the ten powers the scripture ties a “knowledge”: the knowledge of the causes and fruits of deeds and their results, the knowledge of expounding the Dharma according to faculties, the knowledge of the various natures, the knowledge of the skilful means that cause entry into the Dharma, the knowledge that displays everywhere the form and deportment of a tathāgata and yet does not abandon the bodhisattva practices, the knowledge that brings forth by skilful means the bodhisattvas’ gates of liberation, the knowledge of the differences of dying here and being born there, and the knowledge that in one thought knows all the kalpas of the three times — every one of them turns from the knowing of the śrāvaka’s ten powers into the bodhisattva’s use in delivering beings.

Gate 27. Measureless Paths — Ten Things Are Measureless, and So the Path Is Measureless

Before speaking of this gate, the text first gives a general heading: “Sons of the Buddha! Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas have measureless paths, measureless auxiliary paths, measureless paths of cultivation, and measureless paths of adornment.” This sentence has neither “which are the ten?” nor “these are the ten”; it only announces the four gates below and does not itself constitute a gate. Set it aside, and the answering text of this stretch comes to exactly fifty gates, agreeing with Chengguan’s “fifty gates” and Fazang’s “five hundred phrases.”

Question: why is the bodhisattva path measureless?

The text answers very evenly: it does not say that the path is itself so great as to have no bound, but fastens the measure of the path to ten other things — space is measureless, the Dharma realm is boundless, the realm of sentient beings is inexhaustible, the worlds are without limit, the number of the kalpas cannot be exhausted, the dharmas of the languages of sentient beings are measureless, the body of the Tathāgata is measureless, the voice of a buddha is measureless, the powers of the Tathāgata are measureless, the wisdom of all wisdoms is measureless — and therefore the bodhisattva path too is measureless.

Clear away one mistake: these ten clauses are not ten paths; they are one and the same path measured out as measureless ten times over by ten different rulers. Read them as ten, and this gate falls apart.

Bring it down to use: practitioners often fear that they ‘cannot finish.’ This gate says that not being finishable is precisely its nature — because the objects it faces were measureless to begin with.

Gate 28. Measureless Auxiliary Paths — What Is Gathered as Provision Is Measureless Too

Question: the path has been shown to be measureless; why speak further of the auxiliary path as measureless?

Because the path is what is walked, and the auxiliary path is what is gathered. The gate before said that the measure of the path is fastened to its objects; this gate says that the provision gathered is measureless accordingly, and the sentence-patterns answer one to one: as the realm of space is measureless, so the auxiliary path gathered is measureless; as the Dharma realm is boundless, so it is boundless; as the realm of sentient beings is inexhaustible, so it is inexhaustible; as the worlds are without limit, so it is without limit; as the number of the kalpas cannot be exhausted, so all the world cannot exhaust it in the telling. The last five clauses vary a little, writing the bodhisattva’s own functioning into them — “for the reason that a bodhisattva utters a single word and sound that pervades the Dharma realm, and there is no sentient being who does not hear and know it, the auxiliary path he gathers is measureless too.”

Clear away one mistake: the “auxiliary path” is not a secondary path. It is the provision required for accomplishing the path, and the six perfections and the myriad practices are all within it; ‘auxiliary’ is said relative to the fruit, not relative to importance.

Bring it down to use: read this gate together with the one before, and one sees that the text has said the same thing twice over: the objects faced are measureless, and the provision gathered is measureless. That being so, there is no reason for haste.

The last five vary somewhat because what they are compared to has shifted from realms and eons to the speech-dharmas of beings and the functioning of buddhas and bodhisattvas. “As the speech-dharmas of beings are measureless, so the auxiliaries the bodhisattva gathers bring forth a wisdom that knows the speech-dharmas, and this too is measureless” — here the auxiliaries gathered directly bring forth a wisdom, the wisdom that knows speech-dharmas. “As the body of the Tathāgata is measureless, so the auxiliaries the bodhisattva gathers pervade all beings, all lands, all ages, and all eons, and are measureless” — what it is compared to is the Tathāgata’s body, and what is gathered pervades those four, so that the inexhaustibility falls on the pervading. “As the power of the buddhas is measureless, so the auxiliaries the bodhisattva accumulates by relying on the Tathāgata’s power are measureless” — this clause adds “relying on,” so that the measurelessness of the auxiliaries does not issue wholly from one’s own strength. And the last: “As the wisdom of omniscient wisdom is measureless, so the auxiliaries the bodhisattva accumulates are likewise without measure” — taking omniscient wisdom as the comparison gathers up all nine preceding clauses. The first five compare with the measurelessness of objects, the last five with the measurelessness of buddhas: these are the two halves of this gate.

Gate 29. Measureless Paths of Cultivation — Ten Manners of Cultivating

Question: how does this gate differ from the nineteenth gate, “cultivation”?

The nineteenth gate speaks of what is cultivated; this gate speaks of how it is cultivated — the first eight clauses are stated by withholding, the last two by affirmation: neither coming nor going; neither increase nor decrease; neither existent nor nonexistent; like an illusion, like a dream, like a shadow, like an echo, like an image in a mirror, like a shimmering mirage in the heat, like the moon in the water; emptiness, signlessness, wishlessness, and non-action; the unspeakable, the wordless, that which is apart from words; not destroying the Dharma realm; not destroying suchness and the true limit; vast wisdom; abiding in the evenness of the ten powers of the Tathāgata, the four fearlessnesses, and the wisdom of all wisdoms.

Clear away one mistake: to withhold is not to do nothing. Under every clause a positive reason is fastened — “the cultivation of emptiness, signlessness, wishlessness, and non-action, for the reason that he sees the three realms clearly and yet gathers merit without resting.” What is withheld is grasping, not practice. This sentence is the eye of the whole gate.

Bring it down to use: at a certain stage in practice a person will think, ‘since everything is like an illusion, why cultivate any further?’ The fifth clause of this gate is the answer: seeing the three realms clearly as illusory, and gathering merit without resting.

The reasons of the first three clauses run together, and where Chengguan explains his own commentary he gathers them into three senses: not arousing the mind, according with the original nature, and dispelling the mark of cultivation. Set against the scripture this is plain. “Cultivation that neither comes nor goes, because the deeds of body, speech, and mind are without motion” — what neither coming nor going is bound to is the motionlessness of the three kinds of deed, and this is said with respect to concentration. “Cultivation that neither increases nor decreases, because it is as the original nature is” — what it is bound to is being as the original nature is, and this is said with respect to contemplative wisdom. “Cultivation that is neither existent nor non-existent, because there is no own-nature” — what it is bound to is the absence of own-nature, and even the two cultivations above are not set up. Each of the three goes a layer deeper than the last. Two clauses in the second half then write out the functioning of wisdom in full: “Cultivation that does not destroy the dharma-realm, because wisdom knows all dharmas manifestly” — not destroying is not leaving it untouched but wisdom’s manifest knowing; “cultivation of vast wisdom, because the power for whatever is to be done is inexhaustible” — the standard of vastness is the inexhaustibility of the power for what is done, not the breadth of what is known.

Gate 30. The Path of Adornment — Ten Sayings of ‘Although … and yet …’

Question: why are the ten clauses of this gate especially long?

Because every clause has to say both ends at once. Not parting from the realm of desire and yet entering the dhyānas of the realm of form and the formless realm without taking birth there; entering the path of the śrāvakas and yet not taking up going forth; entering the path of the pratyekabuddhas and yet bringing forth great compassion without resting; having a hundred thousand palace women singing and dancing in attendance and yet never for a moment forsaking samādhi; sharing the desires and delights of sentient beings and yet not forsaking the samādhi of evenness; having reached the far shore of the world and yet not forsaking the practice of liberating beings; abiding securely in the right path and yet displaying entry into the wrong paths so as to make those beings leave the wrong behind; constantly upholding the pure precepts and yet displaying the practice of the common and the foolish, even to displaying birth in the hells, among the animals and the hungry ghosts; being an unsurpassed master and yet displaying reverence for the master of discipline and the preceptor; obtaining the anointing of all the tathāgatas and yet still displaying birth in all the lands.

The ninth and tenth clauses further add a “why is this?” of self-question and self-answer — the ninth answering “a bodhisattva-mahāsattva by skillful means abides in the bodhisattva path, and in accord with what is fitting displays all these things,” and the tenth answering “a bodhisattva, wishing swiftly to realize anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi, contemplates the gates of all-knowing wisdom and cultivates the bodhisattva practice without rest.”

Clear away one mistake: “he displays the practice of all the ways of the common and the foolish” and “he displays taking birth in all the hells” do not say that the bodhisattva has truly fallen. The text nails it down with a clause of its own: “yet in truth the bodhisattva is not born within those destinies.” The displayed and the actual must be kept apart.

Bring it down to use: what this gate speaks of is a capacity — to be able to go in without being stuck to. Practitioners are often caught between two sides: to enter the world is to fear being stained; to leave it is to fear growing cold. These ten clauses speak of a third road.

The ninth and tenth clauses each carry a further set of limits, and without seeing them one cannot tell why these two are so long. The ninth opens with “not taught by another, he obtains unobstructed eloquence” — not being taught by another is the root of the clause, and the light of wisdom, being of one dharma-body with all buddhas, and the realms of the buddhas appearing before him all unfold from it; yet at the end it comes down to “though he is in truth an unsurpassed teacher for beings, he shows himself practicing reverence toward preceptors and masters,” with the question raised and answered: “the bodhisattva-mahāsattva, by skillful means, abides in the bodhisattva path and manifests whatever is fitting for them.” The tenth then uses a run of negations as its limits: “he does not abandon the bodhisattva practices, does not forsake the bodhisattva dharmas, does not slacken in the bodhisattva works, does not depart from the bodhisattva path,” and follows with six more — not letting the deportment go slack, not severing, not resting, not breaking off, not wearying, not halting. The consecration has been received and sovereignty accomplished, and yet not one of the ten is diminished — that is why the tenth clause has to be said at such length.

Gate 31. Feet — If He but Lifts a Step, He Reaches Everywhere Throughout All Worlds

From this gate onward the text changes over to speaking by way of the body. Ask first: why begin from the feet?

Because the feet are what can walk. The ten feet are keeping the precepts, vigor, the spiritual penetrations, spiritual power, the deep mind, the firm oath, according, delighting in the Dharma, the rain of the Dharma, and practice — not one of them is a foot. Keeping the precepts is a foot because “his surpassing great vows are all fulfilled”; vigor is a foot because “he gathers all the factors of awakening without retrogressing.” Fazang divides the ten feet into five pairs: the first two with reference to practice (precepts, vigor), the next two with reference to penetration, the next two with reference to mind (faith, vow), the next two with reference to the Dharma (guarding, hearing), the last two with reference to virtue — the spiritual penetrations and spiritual power are feet too, the two spoken of with reference to penetration. Only in the closing sentence is the simile drawn back in: “then they will obtain the unsurpassed and most surpassing foot of the Tathāgata, and if he but lifts a step, he will be able to reach everywhere throughout all the worlds.”

Clear away one mistake: the foot is the capacity to walk, not the organ of walking — of the ten bodies Fazang says “taking the practices themselves as the body,” and of the ten feet he sets out the five pairs, with reference to practice, to penetration, to mind, to the Dharma, and to virtue; so the feet of spiritual penetration and spiritual power are not to be erased, nor is the result of the ten feet to be credited to keeping the precepts and vigor alone.

Bring it down to use: of the ten feet in this gate, the first is keeping the precepts. Whether one walks far is first a question of whether one stands firm.

The outline of the ancient worthies has “fourth, the twenty gates from ‘the ten kinds of foot’ onward are the practice in which the marks of recompense are complete and full, lodged in the stations from the eighth ground upward” — this is the outline of the ancient worthies, which Chengguan cites and records while setting up his own, whose last division begins with the thirteen gates from “the ten kinds of head” onward.

Fazang further groups the ten feet two by two: “Of these, the first two are with respect to practice, one being the precepts and one vigor; the next two with respect to the penetrations, one general and one particular; the next two with respect to the mind, one being faith and one vow; the next two with respect to the Dharma, one guarding and one listening; and the last two with respect to virtue, one merit and one severance.” Read through that frame, the ten feet are not merely the two of precepts and vigor. The two with respect to the penetrations are the spiritual penetrations and spiritual power, one general and one particular: “the foot of the spiritual penetrations, because he gladdens beings according to their desires” states the according generally, and “the foot of spiritual power, because without leaving one buddha-land he goes to all buddha-lands” states particularly the arriving without moving. The two with respect to the mind are the deep mind and the firm oath: “the foot of the deep mind, because he vows to seek every surpassing dharma” is what is sought, and “the foot of the firm oath, because all that he does is carried through to the end” is what is accomplished. The two with respect to the Dharma are according and delighting in the Dharma: “the foot of according, because he does not go against the teaching of any venerable one” is the receiving, and “the foot of delighting in the Dharma, because he hears and retains all the Dharma the buddhas expound without tiring or slackening” is the holding. The two with respect to virtue are the rain of Dharma and practice: “the foot of the rain of Dharma, because he expounds for the multitude without timidity” is merit given to others, and “the foot of practice, because all evils are left far behind” is the virtue of one’s own severance. The ten feet stand in pairs, one for self and one for others, one general and one particular; whether one walks far is a matter of whether these five pairs are even.

Gate 32. Hands — Ten Hands That Draw People In

Question: the feet speak of the capacity to walk; what do the hands speak of?

They speak of drawing in. The hand of deep faith is single-minded acceptance of what a buddha has spoken; the hand of giving fills up whatever people desire; the hand that greets and inquires first is “he extends his right palm to meet them and draw them in”; the hand that makes offerings to the buddhas; the hand of learning much and of skillfulness cuts off people’s doubts; the hand that causes them to pass beyond the three realms is “he gives to sentient beings and draws them out of the mire of desire”; the hand that sets them upon the far shore is “within the four torrents it rescues the sentient beings who are drowning”; the hand that is not stingy with the true Dharma; the hand that skillfully employs the many treatises is “with the medicine of wisdom he extinguishes the illnesses of body and mind”; the hand that constantly upholds the jewel of wisdom is “he opens up the light of the Dharma and breaks through the darkness of the afflictions.”

Clear away one mistake: among these ten hands, one is especially plain — the hand that greets and inquires first, opening the right palm to meet a person. Of the ten matters, nine are great matters of the Dharma, and one is merely speaking first in greeting. That the text sets it alongside the others is deliberate.

Bring it down to use: hands are what one extends. What this gate asks, clause by clause, is: how many kinds of hand have I extended to people?

Two of the ten hands do not state their reason in terms of other people, and are worth looking at separately. “The hand of making offerings to the buddhas, because he gathers manifold merit without weariness or aversion” — this hand is not extended toward people but toward the buddhas; making offerings is a hand in that it gathers merit without weariness, and this too is a kind of being able to give. “The hand that is not stingy with the true Dharma, because he reveals all the wondrous dharmas he has” — the reason is a single clause: all the wondrous dharmas are revealed; the standard of not being stingy is not an inward willingness to part with them, but whether, and how much, has actually been revealed. And the first hand: “the hand of deep faith, because toward what the buddhas expound he wholly assents and upholds it to the end” — of the ten hands that draw people in, the first is extended toward what the buddhas expound; only what one can bear up under can be handed on.

Gate 33. The Belly — A Ground of Mind with Room for People

Question: what Dharma can a belly speak of?

The text speaks of inward quality. The belly that leaves flattery and crookedness behind is a pure mind; the belly that leaves illusion and falsity behind is an upright nature; the belly that is not false is without treachery or partiality; the belly that neither cheats nor seizes seeks nothing greedily among all goods; the belly that cuts off the afflictions is complete in wisdom; the belly of the pure mind leaves the evils behind; the belly that contemplates food and drink calls to mind the dharma as it truly is; the belly that contemplates non-action awakens to dependent origination; the belly that awakens to every path of going forth is well able to bring the deep mind to maturity; the belly that leaves far behind the stain of all the extreme views causes all sentient beings to be able to enter the belly of a buddha.

Clear away one mistake: “the belly that contemplates food and drink” is not about moderation in eating. The reason fastened to it is “he calls to mind the dharma as it truly is” — the contemplating of food is a gate, and the calling to mind of the dharma as it truly is the weight; the emphasis lies in the second half.

Bring it down to use: the belly in a person’s body is the place that hides things best, and so the text uses it to speak of what is hidden in the mind. The closing sentence says, “then they will obtain the unsurpassed vast belly of the Tathāgata, which is fully able to contain and receive all sentient beings” — only when flattery and crookedness, illusion and falsity, are not hidden inside is there room for people.

Gate 34. Storehouses — Ten Storehouses That Are Not Let to Be Severed

Question: what does ‘storehouse’ mean?

It is what contains and holds; it is a treasury. The first three of the ten storehouses are the three jewels: not severing the lineage of the Buddha, increasing the lineage of the Dharma, sustaining the lineage of the Saṃgha. The middle three are the three groups of sentient beings: awakening the rightly settled group, bringing the unsettled group to maturity to the end, bringing forth great compassion for the wrongly settled group. The last four are the virtues of a buddha: fulfilling the indestructible causes of the ten powers, the most surpassing and fearless great lion’s roar, obtaining the eighteen exclusive dharmas, knowing fully everywhere all sentient beings, all the fields, all dharmas, and all the buddhas. The three jewels, the three groups, the virtues of a buddha: the ten clauses fall into three sets.

Clear away one mistake: “to bring forth great compassion for the sentient beings of the wrongly settled group — this is a bodhisattva storehouse, for the reason that he causes the causes of the future all to be accomplished” — the wrongly settled group is the capacity hardest to liberate, and the text does not say forsake; it says “bring forth great compassion” and “cause the causes of the future all to be accomplished.” What cannot be liberated now — then plant the causes of the future. This is the broadest clause of the ten storehouses.

Bring it down to use: what makes a storehouse a storehouse is that it is not severed. What this gate asks, clause by clause, is: what has passed through me and not been broken off?

Among the three groups, the reasons of the clause on the fixed and the clause on the unfixed should be read against each other. “Awakening beings of the rightly fixed group is a bodhisattva’s storehouse, because he accords well with their time and does not overstep a single thought” — the rightly fixed group are already settled for deliverance, and the difficulty lies not in whether they can be delivered but in the timing; “does not overstep a single thought” means not missing it, a thought early or a thought late both being wrong. “Bringing beings of the unfixed group to final maturity is a bodhisattva’s storehouse, because he causes their causes to continue on without interruption” — the unfixed may go either way, and so what is used is not “according with the time” but “the causes continuing”; keep the causes they have planted running on unbroken, and in time they ripen of themselves. Both are the delivering of beings, yet one clause uses timing and one uses continuity, while the third, on the wrongly fixed group, uses great compassion and future causes. Three clauses, three methods, according to the differing capacities.

Gate 35. The Mind (the Second Occurrence) — This Gate’s Mind Is Not the Seventh Gate’s

Question: the seventh gate has already spoken of “ten kinds of mind”; why speak of it again here?

The name of the gate is the same; what is spoken of is not. The seventh gate spoke of the substance and nature of the mind by way of ten things as similes; this gate speaks of ten manners of the mind in the doing of things: diligent, unslackening, greatly brave and strong, practicing in accord with the principle, non-retrogressive, pure in its nature, knowing sentient beings, the great Brahmā-abiding that causes them to enter the Buddha-dharma, emptiness and signlessness and wishlessness and non-action, and the adornment of the mark of the svastika, the surpassing storehouse firm as adamant. The first five clauses speak of the strength for doing things; the middle two, of knowing oneself and others; the last three, of where the mind rests. Chengguan says that the mind of this gate is in Sanskrit hṛdaya, the heart of flesh, spoken of over against the other viscera; the mind of the first ground was citta, the mind that deliberates and knows, spoken of over against body and speech.

Each of the ten clauses has its reason; read them one by one. The diligent mind, “because all that is done is carried through to the end” — diligence lies in finishing; the unslackening mind, “because he accumulates the practices of merit for the marks and signs” — not slackening lies in gathering merit; the greatly brave and strong mind, “because he crushes all the armies of the demons”; the mind that practices in accord with the principle, “because he extinguishes all the afflictions” — accord with the principle is a practice that counters the afflictions, not a compliance in doctrine; the non-retrogressive mind, “because up to bodhi he never ceases”; the mind pure in its nature, “because he knows the mind to be unmoving and without attachment” — purity is not having nothing to do, it is knowing the mind’s unmovingness and not clinging; the mind that knows beings, “because he causes them to gain release according to their understanding and desire” — knowing people is for the sake of their release; the mind of the great Brahmā-abiding that causes them to enter the Buddha-dharma, “because he knows the various understandings and desires of beings and does not rescue them by a separate vehicle” — knowing that their understandings and desires differ, he still does not rescue them by another vehicle; the mind of emptiness, signlessness, wishlessness and non-action, “because he sees the marks of the three realms and does not grasp at them” — the three gates of liberation fall upon the mind as seeing the marks without grasping; and the mind adorned with the mark of the svastika, the surpassing storehouse firm as adamant, “because though demons equal in number to all beings come, they cannot stir a single hair.” The first five are the strength for doing, the middle two are knowing, the last three are resting — taken together the ten clauses are the ten faces of one mind at work on the ten grounds.

Clear away one mistake: the last clause, “the mind adorned with the mark of the svastika, the surpassing storehouse firm as adamant, for the reason that though demons equal in number to all sentient beings should come, they could not so much as move a single hair of him,” is not about spiritual power guarding the body. It runs the same road as the seventh gate’s “a mind like the encircling mountains of adamant, for the reason that the demons and the outsiders cannot shake it” — with respect to the heart of flesh of this gate it is spoken with reference to phenomena, and with respect to the Dharma the Chao says that “with reference to the Dharma all ten are fused without exhaustion” — so the last clause carries both the unshakability of the mind and the unshakability of the flesh, the two senses standing together, neither taken alone.

Bring it down to use: the clause “the mind of the great Brahmā-abiding that causes them to enter the Buddha-dharma, for the reason that he knows the various understandings and desires of sentient beings and does not use another vehicle to rescue and protect them” most repays turning over: he knows that each person has his own understanding and desire, and yet does not on that account swap in another set of teachings to humor him.

Gate 36. The Armor Donned — Ten Coats of Mail Worn upon the Body

Question: since the firmness of the mind has already been had, why speak further of armor?

The firmness of the mind is the substance; the armor donned is the aspect. The ten coats of mail: the armor of great loving-kindness rescues and protects sentient beings; the armor of great compassion is able to endure all sufferings; the armor of the great vow brings everything undertaken to its end; the armor of dedicating and directing establishes the adornments of the buddhas; the armor of merit benefits sentient beings; the armor of the perfections liberates all that has consciousness; the armor of wisdom extinguishes the darkness of the afflictions; the armor of skillfulness in means brings forth the roots of good of the universal gate; the armor of the mind of all wisdom, firm and unscattered, does not delight in the other vehicles; the armor of the single-minded and settled leaves doubt behind with regard to dharmas.

Clear away one mistake: armor is a thing of defense, yet not one of these ten coats of mail is for protecting oneself. The armor of great loving-kindness is “he rescues and protects all sentient beings”; the armor of great compassion is “he is able to endure all sufferings” — the purpose of donning armor is to be able to take the blows and so go on doing the work, not to hide.

Bring it down to use: this gate and the next are a pair — first don the armor, then take up the arms; first be able to receive, then be able to break.

Gate 37. Weapons — Even the Afflictions and Birth-and-Death Have Become Arms

Question: the strangest clause of this gate is “greed, hatred, delusion, and all the afflictions are a bodhisattva’s weapon.” How can the afflictions be arms?

The text gives its own reason: “for the reason that by the gate of the afflictions he liberates sentient beings.” The next clause runs the same way: “birth-and-death is a bodhisattva’s weapon, for the reason that without severing the bodhisattva practice he teaches sentient beings.” The first six clauses are still ordinary: giving crushes stinginess; keeping the precepts casts away transgression; evenness cuts off discrimination; wisdom extinguishes the afflictions; right livelihood leaves wrong livelihood behind; skillfulness in means manifests everywhere. At the seventh clause it turns all at once, taking what ought to be cut off and using it as arms.

Clear away one mistake: this does not say that the afflictions may be given free rein. “By the gate of the afflictions he liberates sentient beings” is said in terms of manifesting and of working alongside beings, and runs the same road as the thirtieth gate’s displaying the practice of the common and the foolish while “in truth the bodhisattva is not born within those destinies.” The condition for being able to use it is that one is already not used by it. Reverse the sequence, and this clause becomes an excuse.

Bring it down to use: this gate lets a person look afresh at the things in himself that will not be got rid of — while they still cannot be got rid of, they can at the very least be used to feel what others feel.

After the afflictions and birth-and-death the scripture has two more clauses, and they are where this gate closes. “Speaking the Dharma as it truly is, is a bodhisattva’s weapon, because it can shatter every attachment” — having called the afflictions a weapon, the passage might leave one thinking anything at all can be so used, and this clause points back to what is to be shattered: attachment. “Omniscience is a bodhisattva’s weapon, because he does not abandon the gateways of bodhisattva practice” — the reason of the last clause lies not in shattering but in not abandoning; omniscience is the final weapon, and its use is that the gateways of bodhisattva practice are not let go. The first eight clauses say what is shattered; the last two give the aim of the shattering and the floor beneath which nothing is shattered — and only so do the ten come to rest.

Gate 38. Heads — Ten Heads That Stand Above and Yet Do Not Slight Others

From this gate begins the last thirteen gates as Chengguan outlines them. He says: “tenth, the thirteen gates from ‘the ten kinds of head’ onward make clear the practice of the tenth ground; since in the tenth ground the virtues are complete, it is made clear by lodging it in the workings of the six faculties and the four postures. It is further divided in three: the first one gives the general heading of the head of virtue; the next six are the surpassing virtues of the six faculties; the last six are the settled norms of the four postures.” — the first gate is the general heading; the six gates of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind are the six faculties; walking, standing, sitting, lying down, together with the places of abiding and the places walked in, are the six gates of the four postures. This is an outline of the commentators, attributed to Chengguan.

Question: the head stands uppermost in the body; does this gate speak of high position?

The ten heads: the head of nirvāṇa, whose crown none can see; the head of reverence, to which humans and gods pay homage; the head of vast resolute conviction, most surpassing within the three-thousandfold world; the head of the foremost roots of good, to which the beings of the three realms all make offerings; the head that bears sentient beings upon it, accomplishing the mark of the fleshy cowl upon the crown; the head that does not slight or despise others, constantly honored and surpassing in all places; the head of the prajñā-pāramitā, nourishing and growing the dharmas of merit; the head of the union with the wisdom of skillful means, displaying everywhere bodies of the same kind as others; the head of teaching all sentient beings, taking sentient beings as disciples; the head that guards the Dharma-eye of the buddhas, causing the lineage of the three jewels not to be severed.

Clear away one mistake: the sixth clause, “the head that does not slight or despise others, for the reason that in all places he is constantly honored and surpassing,” turns the saying around — he is constantly honored and surpassing precisely because he does not slight others. Read standing above as being a cut above others, and this clause throws the reading back.

Bring it down to use: the fifth clause, “the head that bears sentient beings upon it,” is the most concrete of all. A head is for carrying things upon; what it carries is sentient beings.

Gate 39. Eyes — Ten Kinds of Seeing

Question: from this gate begin the six faculties, and the eye comes first. What relation do these ten eyes bear to the five eyes usually spoken of?

The first five eyes are exactly the fleshly eye, the divine eye, the eye of wisdom, the Dharma-eye, and the buddha-eye; the last five are the eye of knowing, the eye of light, the eye that goes forth from birth-and-death, the unobstructed eye, and the eye of all wisdom. To each eye one thing seen is fastened: the fleshly eye sees every form; the divine eye sees the minds of all sentient beings; the eye of wisdom sees the realms of the faculties; the Dharma-eye sees the true characteristic of dharmas; the buddha-eye sees the ten powers of the Tathāgata; the eye of knowing knows and sees dharmas; the eye of light sees the light of a buddha; the eye that goes forth from birth-and-death sees nirvāṇa; the unobstructed eye sees without hindrance; the eye of all wisdom sees the Dharma realm of the universal gate.

It may be noted in passing that in this gate the text has only “they have ten kinds of eye. Namely,” without the question “which are the ten?”; and the last sentence, “then they will obtain the unsurpassed eye of great wisdom of the Tathāgata,” is left without a closing stop. So the base text has it, and it is transcribed word for word.

Clear away one mistake: these ten eyes are not ten organs but ten things seen. The eye here is the name of a capacity for ‘seeing what.’

Bring it down to use: this gate may be taken as a table for checking oneself: when I look at a person now, is what I see form, or mind, or the disposition of his faculties?

Gate 40. Ears — Ten Practices Set Going upon Hearing

Question: why is the pattern of this gate on the ear different from that of the gate on the eye?

The eye is ten eyes each seeing one object; the ear is ten hearings each setting going one practice — hearing the sound of praise, he cuts off craving; hearing the sound of reviling, he cuts off anger; hearing the two vehicles spoken of, he neither grasps nor seeks; hearing the bodhisattva path, he is glad and exults; hearing of the places of suffering and difficulty, he brings forth great compassion and makes the great vow; hearing of the surpassing and marvelous matters of humans and gods, he knows their impermanence; hearing the virtues of the buddhas praised, he diligently applies vigor; hearing of the six perfections and the four means of gathering, he brings forth the mind and cultivates them; hearing every sound of the ten directions, he knows they are like echoes; from the first bringing forth of the mind until the site of awakening, he constantly hears the true Dharma and does not forsake the work of teaching sentient beings.

Clear away one mistake: the first two clauses are the easiest to read backwards. What is cut off on hearing praise is craving; what is cut off on hearing slander is anger — not that one is pleased on hearing praise and endures on hearing slander. Circumstance favorable and adverse, each counteracting what it ought to counteract: this is what the two clauses mean.

Bring it down to use: of the six gates on the six faculties, this one can be used the same day more than any other. How many words must an ear take in over a day; and as each comes in, what is it that arises?

Gate 41. Noses — Ten Kinds of Smelling Scent Without Being Turned by Scent

Question: what Dharma can a nose speak of?

The first four clauses speak of evenness: smelling the foul and not taking it as foul; smelling the fragrant and not taking it as fragrant; smelling fragrant and foul together with an even mind; where there is neither fragrant nor foul, abiding in equanimity. The last six speak of knowing by way of scent: smelling the scent of clothing, bedding, and the limbs, he knows their conduct as to greed, hatred, delusion, and equal portions; smelling the scent of hidden treasures and of grasses and trees, it is as clear as if before his eyes; smelling the scent of sentient beings from the Avīci hell below to the Summit of Existence above, he knows what they have practiced in the past; smelling the scent of the giving, the keeping of precepts, and the learning much of the śrāvakas, he abides in the mind of all wisdom unstirred; smelling the scent of the bodhisattva practice, with the wisdom of evenness he enters the ground of the Tathāgata; smelling the scent of the realm of the wisdom of the buddhas, he still does not abandon and forsake the bodhisattva practice.

Clear away one mistake: “smelling fragrant scents, he does not take them to be fragrant” is not numbness. The first four clauses speak of not being turned by circumstance, and the last six immediately prove that the nose’s power of discrimination is exceedingly fine — not being turned is not the same as not being able to tell apart. Only when the two halves are read together is the sense of this gate had.

Bring it down to use: the last clause weighs most: smelling the scent of the realm of the wisdom of the buddhas, he still does not abandon the bodhisattva practice. Not even the highest scent can pull a person out of practice.

Gate 42. Tongues — Ten Tongues That Cannot Be Exhausted in the Speaking

Question: the third gate has already spoken of speech; what does the tongue here speak of?

The third gate spoke of the manner of speaking; this gate speaks of the inexhaustibility of the capacity to expound the Dharma. The ten tongues: revealing and expounding the inexhaustible practices of sentient beings; revealing and expounding the inexhaustible gates of the Dharma; praising the inexhaustible virtues of the buddhas; setting forth inexhaustible eloquence of speech; opening up and elucidating the auxiliary path of the Great Vehicle; covering everywhere the space of the ten directions; illumining everywhere all the buddha-fields; everywhere causing sentient beings to understand; causing all the buddhas fully to sigh with joy; subduing the demons and the outsiders, extinguishing the afflictions of birth-and-death, and causing them to reach nirvāṇa. The first four clauses use the word ‘inexhaustible’ four times in a row; the last six speak of where it reaches and what it accomplishes.

Clear away one mistake: “the tongue that covers everywhere the space of the ten directions” is said in the sense of a buddha’s mark of the broad and long tongue, and is not a description of the size of an organ. This road is still taking the practices themselves as the body.

Bring it down to use: the difficulty of expounding the Dharma lies not in whether one can speak but in whether the speaking can be exhausted. The four ‘inexhaustibles’ of this gate are the homework of one who expounds.

Gate 43. The Body (the Second Occurrence) — The Same Gate-Name Appearing Again

Question: the first gate spoke of the deeds of the body, the second gate of the body, and here the body again; what are the differences among the three?

The first gate spoke of the body’s functioning; the second took the practices themselves as the body; this gate speaks of the body manifested for the sake of teaching. The ten bodies: a human body to teach humans; a nonhuman body to teach those in the hells, the animals, and the hungry ghosts; a god body to teach the beings of the three realms; a body of one in training, displaying the stage of training; a body of one beyond training, displaying the stage of an arhat; a pratyekabuddha body, causing them to enter the stage of a pratyekabuddha; a bodhisattva body, causing them to accomplish the Great Vehicle; a tathāgata body, anointing the crown with the water of wisdom; a mind-made body, brought forth by skillfulness; the untainted dharma-body, which without any exertion displays the bodies of all sentient beings.

Clear away one mistake: these ten bodies are not ten ranks; they are ten manifested bodies answering to ten classes of capacity to be taught. The last clause weighs most — “the untainted dharma-body, for the reason that without any exertion it displays the bodies of all sentient beings”: it manifests of itself, without any thought needing to be raised.

Bring it down to use: the gate-name “body” recurs (the first gate is “bodily deeds”), and the text makes no attempt to avoid it. That the same word should speak of different things in different places is a common pattern in this scripture; in reading, look at the reason fastened to it, not at the gate-name.

Gate 44. The Mind — The Last of the Six Faculties, on the Manners of Thought

Question: the six faculties come to a close in this gate; what does the mind speak of?

The ten minds: the foremost mind brings forth all the roots of good; the mind that abides securely is firm and unmoving in deep faith; the mind that enters deeply understands in accord with the Buddha-dharma; the mind that understands within knows what the minds of sentient beings delight in; the undisturbed mind has no affliction admixed with it; the bright and pure mind cannot be stained by the adventitious dust; the mind that contemplates sentient beings well misses the moment in not one thought; the mind that chooses well what is to be done has never given rise to a fault in a single instance; the mind that closely guards the faculties tames them and does not let them run scattered; the mind that enters samādhi well enters deeply into a buddha’s samādhi, without self and without what belongs to a self.

Clear away one mistake: that “the mind that closely guards the faculties” is placed at the end of the six faculties is meaningful — eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body have been spoken of before, and at the last it is the mind that guards them. The six faculties do not each go their own way; the mind is what holds them all.

Bring it down to use: “the mind that contemplates sentient beings well, for the reason that not for a single thought does it miss the moment” is the hardest clause. To look at people is not hard; what is hard is not to miss the moment.

Gate 45. Walking — The First of the Four Postures, Ten Directions of Going

From this gate begin the six gates of the four postures as Chengguan outlines them: walking, standing, sitting, lying down, together with the places of abiding and the places walked in. This is an outline of the commentators, attributed to Chengguan.

Question: what does walking speak of?

The ten walkings: the walking of hearing the Dharma, loving and delighting in the Dharma; the walking of expounding the Dharma, benefiting sentient beings; the walking that leaves greed, hatred, delusion, and dread behind, taming one’s own mind; the walking in the realm of desire, teaching the beings of the realm of desire; the walking in the samādhis of the realm of form and the formless realm, causing them swiftly to turn back; the walking that heads toward the meaning of the Dharma, swiftly obtaining wisdom; the walking in every place of birth, teaching sentient beings with mastery; the walking in all the buddha-fields, paying homage and making offerings; the walking of nirvāṇa, not severing the continuity of birth-and-death; the walking that fulfills all the Buddha-dharma, not forsaking the dharma-practice of a bodhisattva.

Clear away one mistake: “the walking of nirvāṇa, for the reason that he does not sever the continuity of birth-and-death” — nirvāṇa and the not severing of birth-and-death set within one clause is precisely the old brushwork of this chapter. Nirvāṇa here is not entering extinction; it is the quiescence of the mind. The mind is quiescent and the work is not broken off.

Bring it down to use: among the ten walkings there is a going out and a coming back — entering the realm of desire to teach its beings, entering the samādhis of the realm of form and the formless realm and causing them swiftly to turn back. Only what can go in and can also come out may be called walking.

Gate 46. Abiding — Ten Places Where One Can Stand Firm

Question: walking is motion, abiding is stillness; what sort of stillness does this gate speak of?

The ten abidings: abiding in the mind of awakening, having never forgotten or lost it; abiding in the perfections, not wearying of the dharmas that aid the path; abiding in expounding the Dharma, wisdom increasing; abiding in the araṇya, realizing the great meditative concentration; abiding in the four noble lineages, in accord with all wisdom and with the shaking off of the dust and with contentment, few in desires and few in affairs; abiding in deep faith, shouldering the true Dharma; abiding in drawing near to the Tathāgata, learning the deportment of a buddha; abiding in bringing forth the spiritual penetrations, fulfilling great wisdom; abiding in the obtaining of forbearance, fulfilling the prediction; abiding at the site of awakening, complete in the powers, the fearlessnesses, and all the Buddha-dharma.

Clear away one mistake: “abiding in the araṇya” and “abiding in expounding the Dharma” stand side by side, the one still and the other in motion, and the text finds no conflict in it. Abiding is not where the body is; it is where the mind comes to rest. Read the araṇya as requiring that one live in the mountains and forests, and this gate has been narrowed.

Bring it down to use: the first abiding is abiding in the mind of awakening, and its reason is only four words — “he has never forgotten or lost it.” The lowest requirement of abiding is not to forget.

Gate 47. Sitting — Ten Seats upon Which He Sits

Question: what does sitting speak of?

The ten seats: the seat of a wheel-turning king, raising up the path of the ten good deeds; the seat of the four world-guarding kings, establishing the Buddha-dharma with mastery throughout the world; the seat of Śakra, being a surpassing lord for sentient beings; the seat of Brahmā, obtaining mastery over his own mind and the minds of others; the lion seat, being able to expound the Dharma; the seat of the true Dharma, revealing it by the power of holding all things and of eloquence; the firm seat, oaths and vows brought to their end; the seat of great loving-kindness, causing evil sentient beings all to be glad; the seat of great compassion, enduring all sufferings without weariness; the adamantine seat, subduing the host of demons and the outsiders.

Clear away one mistake: the first four seats take the kingly stations of the world as their names, but they do not say that a bodhisattva must go and be a king. A seat is the station one occupies, and what is said by borrowing a kingly station is the function that station can set going — a wheel-turning king can raise up the ten good deeds, and so it is borrowed to speak of the station that raises up the ten good deeds.

Bring it down to use: “the seat of great loving-kindness, for the reason of causing evil sentient beings all to be glad” — only one who can stay seated can make the difficult person glad. This clause brings the sense of sitting alive: to sit is to be able to stay seated.

Gate 48. Lying Down — Ten Ways of Lying Down at Ease

Question: can lying down too be practice?

The ten lyings down: the lying down of quiescence, body and mind still and untroubled; the lying down of meditative concentration, cultivating in accord with the principle; the lying down of samādhi, body and mind supple; the lying down of Brahmā, vexing neither himself nor others; the lying down of good deeds, giving rise to no regret afterward; the lying down of right faith, not to be shaken; the lying down of the right path, the good friend revealing and awakening him; the lying down of the marvelous vow, skillfully dedicating and directing; the lying down in which all affairs are finished, everything undertaken brought to completion; the lying down that relinquishes all exertion, all of it having become habitual.

Clear away one mistake: these ten clauses are not postures of sleep. “The lying down of good deeds, for the reason that afterward he gives rise to no regret” — that one has no regret after lying down rests on the deeds done in the daytime; and “the lying down in which all affairs are finished, for the reason that everything he undertakes has been brought to completion” is the same. What lying down speaks of is whether the mind is at ease in the moment of lying down.

Bring it down to use: the last clause, “the lying down that relinquishes all exertion, for the reason that all of it has become habitual and natural,” is the deepest — cultivated to the point where no force is needed, because it has become habit. This answers at a distance to the seventeenth gate, on habit-energies.

Gate 49. The Places of Abiding — From That Which Abides to That Which Is Abided In

Question: the forty-sixth gate has already spoken of “abiding”; how does this gate’s “places of abiding” differ?

Chengguan divides it very clearly here: “fifth, the places of abiding, for the reason that wisdom has a place where it perches and rests. Before, that which abides was made clear; here, that which is abided in is set forth.” The gate before spoke of the mind that abides; this gate speaks of the dharma that is abided in. The ten places of abiding: great loving-kindness, a mind even toward sentient beings; great compassion, not slighting those who have not yet studied; great joy, leaving every sorrow and vexation behind; great equanimity, even toward the conditioned and the unconditioned; all the perfections, with the mind of awakening as foremost; all emptiness, contemplating with skillfulness; signlessness, not going forth from the right station; wishlessness, contemplating taking birth; mindfulness and wisdom, the dharma of forbearance brought to fullness; the evenness of all dharmas, obtaining the prediction. The four measureless minds stand at the head, the three gates of liberation in the middle, and mindfulness and wisdom together with the evenness of dharmas close it.

Clear away one mistake: “taking great compassion as his place of abiding, for the reason that he does not slight those who have not yet studied” — the landing place of great compassion turns out to be not despising a beginner. This clause pulls great compassion back from an emotion to an attitude.

Bring it down to use: this gate is the most solid reading of the four measureless minds: loving-kindness is a mind that is even; compassion is not slighting those who have not yet studied; joy is leaving sorrow and vexation behind; equanimity is evenness toward the conditioned and the unconditioned. Each of the four clauses gives a behavior that can be checked.

Gate 50. The Places Walked In — The Last Gate Closes at the Site of Awakening Without Severing the Bodhisattva Practice

Question: the last gate and the one before are a pair; how are they told apart?

Chengguan says: “sixth, the places walked in: before, that which walks was set forth; here, that which is walked in is made clear. Within these, the first four are one’s own practice.” And in explaining the first clause he attaches a passage: “first, relying upon the four mindfulnesses — the four questions of Ānanda, and the Buddha bidding them rely and abide. Now the practice of relying is set forth.” — this is an explanation of the commentators, attributed to Chengguan. The ten places walked in: right mindfulness, fulfilling the stations of mindfulness; the destinies, perfectly awakening to the destinies of the dharmas; wisdom, obtaining the gladness of the buddhas; the perfections, fulfilling the wisdom of all wisdoms; the four means of gathering, teaching sentient beings; birth-and-death, gathering the roots of good; idle talk and play together with sentient beings, teaching them as is fitting and causing them to leave it behind forever; the spiritual penetrations, knowing the realms of the faculties of sentient beings; skillfulness in means, joined with prajñā; the site of awakening, accomplishing all wisdom and yet not severing the bodhisattva practice.

Clear away one mistake: the seventh clause, “taking idle talk and play together with all sentient beings as his place walked in,” looks like going along with the world, but the text adds a qualification of its own — “for the reason that he teaches them as is fitting and causes them to leave it behind forever.” Within the very same idle talk, the purpose is to make them leave it behind forever. Take the qualification away, and this clause becomes a license for indulgence.

Bring it down to use: the last clause is the close of all fifty gates — “taking the site of awakening as his place walked in, for the reason that he accomplishes all wisdom and yet does not sever the bodhisattva practice,” with the sentence of superior benefit, “then they will obtain the unsurpassed place walked in of the great wisdom of the Tathāgata.” To accomplish all wisdom and yet not sever the bodhisattva practice: one sentence sets down both ends at once. From “with a single body to fill all the worlds” to this clause, the fifty gates have walked a full circle, and what they speak of is still one and the same thing.

Lineage

For the division of these fifty gates the two houses, ancient and later, each have a set, and both stand side by side without any ranking being passed. The ancient worthies divide it in four sections: the first twelve gates are the surpassing practice of the three kinds of deed, lodged in the first ground; the next nine gates are the practice of building up cultivation and leaving obstruction behind, lodged in the second and third grounds; the next nine gates are the practice of building up cultivation to ripeness, lodged from the fourth ground upward; the last twenty gates are the practice in which the marks of recompense are complete and full, lodged from the eighth ground upward. After citing and recording this, Chengguan passed an explicit judgment, “this explanation comes rather close, yet the text is not exhausted in its principle,” and set up instead an assignment ground by ground among the ten grounds: the first ground ten gates, the second ground six gates, the third and fourth five each, the fifth ground two gates, the sixth ground one gate, the seventh and eighth grounds three each, the ninth ground two gates, the tenth ground thirteen gates. Fazang in the Tanxuan ji carries on the same fourfold road, counting the four divisions by gates and giving the total as five hundred phrases — one hundred and twenty gates, ninety gates, ninety gates, two hundred gates; and his second division begins from “the ten kinds of skillful means” where Chengguan has “the ten kinds of diligent cultivation,” and his third division he gives as “the ten kinds of leaving birth behind” where Chengguan has “the ten kinds of path that leaves birth behind.” One and the same manner of division, two ways of measuring and two starting points. All of the above are settled statements of the ancient worthies, recorded without adjudication.

Li Tongxuan does not explain these fifty gates gate by gate; what he explains is the name of the whole chapter and the place of the whole chapter: the Chapter on Detachment from the World stands after the Chapter on the Appearing of the Tathāgata, and “makes clear the practice of benefiting beings that follows upon one’s own buddha-fruit”; and he further says that a bodhisattva, “although he practices the myriad practices of Samantabhadra, he is not stained by the world, and hence it is named the Chapter on Detachment from the World.” This is Tongxuan’s determination of the whole chapter, attributed to him, and not the direct speech of the scriptural text. Chengguan himself further wrote the Yanyi chao to explain his own Shu, and for this stretch its text is indeed there: in it he divides “leaving birth behind” into two senses — leaving birth behind and casting it off, and leaving behind the rawness of the unripe; he divides into four parts the Shu on gate twenty-eight, the measureless auxiliaries to the path, raising an objection there and answering it himself; he divides into four parts likewise the Shu on gate twenty-nine, the measureless cultivation of the path, gathering the first three of its ten clauses into three senses — not arousing the mind, according with the original nature, and dispelling the mark of cultivation; he points out that the seven similes display non-attachment throughout; he names the five viscera plainly as the spleen, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs, and the liver; and at the gate of the eyes he sets up five parts, first distinguishing the five ways in which the fleshly eye does and does not see, and then going on to the heavenly eye, the wisdom-eye, and the Dharma-eye. These are all Chengguan’s own words explaining his own commentary, attributed to him, and each is recorded without adjudication.

The relation of this stretch to the Chapter on the Ten Grounds must be made plain. Chengguan judges this to be “the characteristics of the practice within the stations of the ten grounds,” and the ten grounds in which it is lodged are the very ten grounds directly expounded in the Chapter on the Ten Grounds; but lodging in the stations is a borrowing of the sequence in order to display the shallowness or depth of the characteristics of practice, and this chapter itself has not set up another set of ten grounds. The Chapter on the Ten Grounds directly expounds the characteristics of the grounds; here the grounds are borrowed in order to speak of practice. The two places may be read against each other, but must not be confounded.

As for the parallel translations: the corresponding passage of the sixty-fascicle Avataṃsaka is likewise Samantabhadra answering Universal Wisdom, and its first gate is likewise “ten kinds of bodily deed”; the fifty gates agree in number and correspond broadly in order, while their names mostly differ — the sixty’s “ten kinds of skilful means” answers to the eighty’s “diligent cultivation,” the sixty’s “ten kinds of leaving birth behind” to the eighty’s “the path that leaves birth behind.” The separately circulating Dushipin jing gathers more than fifty questions into a single asking in front, and only then answers gate by gate in continuous succession; the name of the questioner is also translated as “Universal Knowing.” Reading the three recensions together, the names of the gates confirm one another — where the eighty-fascicle recension has “the place of abiding,” the Dushi has “chamber”; where the eighty-fascicle recension has “the place walked in,” the Dushi has “roaming and dwelling”; and the four graphs “he does not slight those who have not yet studied” are wholly identical in the two recensions. The differences among the recensions are recorded word for word side by side, without adjudication as to which is to be taken.

Looking further before and behind: this stretch is the fifth of the six rounds of the part of the speaking, carrying on from the twenty-nine gates of the practice of the ten dedications and followed by the fifty-one gates of the practice in which cause is complete and fruit is full. The fifty gates begin from the deeds of the body and close with the places walked in, taking the bodhisattva from what he can do, what he can say, and what he can think, all the way through to what he can walk, abide, sit, and lie down as — the one thing this stretch truly teaches a person is to read every part of the body over again as the name of a practice. Having read it through, look once more at this body of one’s own, and what is seen is no longer merely a frame of flesh.