華嚴經 品三十九 入法界品 · 海雲比丘（寄治地住）Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Entering the Dharma Realm · The Monk Ocean Cloud (Assigned to the Abode of Governing the Ground)

Before Leaving, Walking Once More Through What the Last Friend Taught: The Ten Gates of Right Mindfulness

Sudhana leaves the monk Cloud of Virtue, and the sūtra text does not write of his hurrying along the road; it writes first that he “single-mindedly pondered the teaching of the good friend,” and then, ten times over, “rightly held in mindfulness and observed”—the gate of the light of wisdom, the gate of the bodhisattva's liberation, the gate of the bodhisattva's samādhi, the gate of the bodhisattva's great ocean, the gate of the Buddhas appearing before one, the gate of the quarters and places of the Buddhas, the gate of the rules and standards of the Buddhas, the gate of the Buddhas being equal to the realm of empty space, the gate of the order in which the Buddhas come forth, and the gate of the skillful means the Buddhas enter by.

Why recite it once through first? Chengguan outlines this stretch as ‘right contemplation in accord with the teaching,’ and says that this “makes clear the warming over of what is old,” while the journeying south below it is the seeking of the new. If what one has studied is not walked through once more before one sets out, it has only been heard, not learned.

A misreading has to be set aside: these ten gates are not ten new dharma gates; they are ten faces of the one dharma conferred by the good friend before. Chengguan glosses this saying, “In the calling to mind of what precedes, there are eleven sentences: the first is the general, the rest are the particular”—“single-mindedly pondered the teaching of the good friend” is the general sentence, and the ten gates below it are the particular. He further points out why all ten sentences use the four words “rightly held in mindfulness and observed”: “In the particular, all of them say rightly holding in mindfulness and observing, because there is neither sinking nor lifting, and stillness shines upon the flowing of change.” Not sinking is not being dull; not lifting is not being scattered; being still, one can shine; shining, one does not go turning along with the flow. Brought down to the ground: what is called review is not looking over one's notes again; it is bringing that once-seen objective realm to appear before one once more, with a mind neither dull nor scattered.

Chengguan does not stop at dividing general from particular; he rehearses each of the ten gates back to what was obtained in the stretch of the last good friend, and not one gate is passed over empty: “Among the ten, the first is the sovereign ease in contemplating objective realms above; the second is the liberation of functioning above; the third is the substance of the samādhi of one practice, together with the various gates of samādhi in the deferring to the superior; the fourth is the calling to mind of the various assemblies above; the fifth is the seeing of the Buddha above; the sixth is the ten directions above; the seventh is the life span and the spiritual powers and so forth; the eighth is the contemplating throughout of the Buddha's pervading; the ninth is the various accomplishings of right awakening; the tenth is the according with what the minds of various beings delight in.” Set them back one by one: what the gate of the light of wisdom holds in mind is the sovereign ease in contemplating objective realms, one of the two senses of ‘sovereign ease’ in the stretch before; what the gate of the bodhisattva's liberation holds in mind is liberation in the matter of functioning; what the gate of the bodhisattva's samādhi holds in mind is the substance of the samādhi of one practice, and it gathers in besides the various gates of samādhi raised when the last friend humbled himself and deferred to the superior; what the gate of the bodhisattva's great ocean holds in mind is the various assemblies seen in the stretch before; what the gate of the Buddhas appearing before one holds in mind is the seeing of the Buddha in the stretch before; what the gate of the quarters and places of the Buddhas holds in mind is the ten directions of the stretch before; what the gate of the rules and standards of the Buddhas holds in mind is such matters as the Buddha's life span and spiritual powers; what the gate of the Buddhas being equal to the realm of empty space holds in mind is the contemplating throughout of the Buddha's pervading; what the gate of the order in which the Buddhas come forth holds in mind is the various accomplishings of right awakening; and what the gate of the skillful means the Buddhas enter by holds in mind is the according with what the minds of various beings delight in.

First the question, then the answer: why must each gate be pointed back? Because if these ten gates were really ten new subjects, Sudhana would have to study them all over again on the road; Chengguan's tying each sentence back is precisely the proof that there is not one new thing among them—all that is held in mind is Dharma already obtained, only gone through once more in a changed posture. Brought down to the ground: to see whether what one calls review is review, see whether each item can be pointed back, sentence by sentence, to where it came from; the few that cannot be pointed back are most often imagined rather than learned.

Why ‘Pondering’ and ‘Cultivating’ Are Judged to Belong to the Later Assembly

There is a question about the outline over which Chengguan stops on purpose to explain. Sudhana's rightly holding in mindfulness and pondering, and his cultivating as told, are plainly matters of what he studied in the earlier assembly—why are they judged to stand at the head of the later assembly?

His answer is this: these four things are of themselves the four proximate causal conditions told of in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra—drawing near to a good friend, hearing the right Dharma, binding one's mindfulness and pondering, and cultivating as told. The first two belong to the earlier assembly; the latter two could of themselves also belong to the earlier assembly. But Chengguan says, “Now, the earlier sense is made to belong to the going forward of what follows, and the later sense to the pointing forward from the friend before; they are hook and lock to each other, showing that host and companion cross and take part, and for the present, judging by assembly, it is made to belong to the later one,” and he adds a further sentence: “below, all follow this.”

The meaning is: pondering and cultivating are both the fruit of the earlier assembly and the cause of the later one, and they can be hung on at either end; hanging them at the later end is in order to show that before and after are not two stretches broken apart, but a hook and a lock buckled into each other. A misreading has to be set aside: this is not Chengguan accommodating his divisions of the text; it is his telling of the real state of studying by visiting—what you carry to the door of the next good friend is precisely what the last one left you. Brought down to the ground: the moment one leaves a teacher is the moment one enters the door of the next.

At the Door, Four Things First: Bowing the Head, Circling to the Right, Joining the Palms, Setting Out What He Asks

Sudhana reaches the land of the Sea Gate, and the sūtra text writes that he “came to the dwelling place of the monk Ocean Cloud and bowed his head and face to his feet, and when he had finished circling around him to the right, he joined his palms before him,” and only then opened his mouth. Three acts, and not a word yet said.

Why write these three acts first? Because before seeking the Dharma there is first the karma of the body. Chengguan outlines this stretch as ‘seeing, paying respect, and inquiring,’ and divides it into three: first the setting up of reverence, next the stating of his own giving rise to the mind, and after that the inquiring about the essentials of the Dharma. The order cannot be reversed—first reverence, then the telling of where one has come from, and last of all the asking.

A misreading has to be set aside: this is not politeness in the matter of manners. What Sudhana states of himself is “I have already given rise, before this, to the mind of anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi”—he first makes plain where he himself stands, and then asks the road. Brought down to the ground: say plainly how far you have come before you ask a person, and only then does the other know where he is to take it up. The pattern of this stretch is walked in just this way at the door of every good friend in this chapter afterward.

The Ten Questions of Sudhana (one): The First Five Ask About One's Own Side

The ten questions are matched sentence by sentence, the first half breaking down and the latter half setting up. Leaving behind the household of the world and being born into the household of the Tathāgata; crossing over the ocean of birth-and-death and entering the ocean of the Buddha's wisdom; leaving the ground of the ordinary person and entering the ground of the Tathāgata; cutting off the stream of birth-and-death and entering the stream of the bodhisattva's practice; breaking the wheel of birth-and-death and accomplishing the wheel of the bodhisattva's vows.

First the question, then the answer: why is every question one breaking down and one setting up? Because cultivation is not a matter of throwing away the bad and having done with it; where something is thrown away, something must take its place. The five words household, ocean, ground, stream, and wheel are all the same word turned over—one and the same word, which in the standing of the ordinary is thus, and in the standing of the holy is so.

Of these, the term “the wheel of vows” Chengguan has glossed on purpose: “As to saying the wheel of vows here: vows exhaust the three periods and have neither end nor beginning, and so, over against birth-and-death, the name of wheel is set up.” Birth-and-death is a wheel because it turns without stopping and has no way out; vows too are a wheel because, exhausting the three periods, they likewise have neither end nor beginning. Using one and the same word is precisely to make a person see: it is not that there is no turning, but that the direction of the turning has changed. Brought down to the ground: examine the vow you yourself have set up, and see whether it looks like a wheel—whether it will come to a stop.

The Ten Questions of Sudhana (two): The Latter Five Ask About the Side of Beings

The latter five questions are: extinguishing the realm of Māra and bringing the realm of the Buddha to light; drying up the ocean of craving and desire and growing the ocean of great compassion; shutting the gate of the many calamities and the evil destinies and opening the gate of the heavens and of nirvāṇa; coming out of the city of the three realms and entering the city of all-knowing wisdom; giving up all things of delight and fondness and benefiting all beings.

Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle text, judges these ten sentences to be “the first five sentences asking about one's own practice, the latter five asking about the practice of benefiting others, each of them twofold, that is, turning the back on the ordinary and facing the Buddha, and giving up birth-and-death and facing the Buddha-fruit.” Zhiyan makes it “in the questions, the first seven are the practice of one's own portion, and the next five sentences the practice of benefiting others”—the number the two houses divide by differs; recorded without judgment.

A misreading has to be set aside: the last question, “giving up all things of delight and fondness,” is not asceticism. The latter half of the sūtra sentence is “taking them all to benefit all beings”—giving up is not for the sake of being empty-handed, but for the sake of handing over. Brought down to the ground: to give up a thing one is fond of playing with and feel in one's heart that one has lost by it is not yet to have reached this question; to give it up and feel that the thing has at last been put to its right use—that is.

Why, at the Very First Meeting, He Asks Back ‘Have You Given Rise to the Mind?’

Sudhana has only just finished asking, and Ocean Cloud does not answer but first asks a question back: “Son of good family! Have you already given rise to the mind of anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi?” Sudhana answers once more: “Just so! I have already given rise, before this, to the mind of anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.” The same sentence is said twice within one stretch.

First the question, then the answer: why must this sentence be asked? Chengguan glosses this saying, “because giving rise to the mind is hard; if one has not given rise to the mind, one is not fit to be conferred the Dharma, not being a vessel for the Dharma.” This is the testing of the vessel. Giving rise to the mind is not a form of entry; it is the capacity to take up what comes after.

A misreading has to be set aside: this is not doubting Sudhana. The sūtra text writes Sudhana's answer as beginning with a single word—“Just so”—answered without hesitation, from which one may see that what Ocean Cloud asks is not whether he has it, but whether he knows that he has it. Brought down to the ground: whether a person can be taught depends on whether he can say where he stands; the one who cannot say it will not catch what he is taught.

Ten Things: Behind the Person Who Can Give Rise to This Mind There Are Ten Things Being Done

Ocean Cloud does not straightway confirm him; he first states the reverse: “If beings do not plant roots of good, they cannot give rise to the mind of anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.” Then he lists ten things—the light of the roots of good of the universal gate, the wisdom-light of the samādhi of the true and real path, the vast ocean of merit, nourishing pure and white dharmas without slackening or resting, serving good friends without giving rise to weariness or aversion, not caring for body or life and having nothing hidden away or hoarded up, a mind level like the earth with no high and no low, a nature constantly kind and pitying toward all beings, being single in mindfulness in the various destinies and not abandoning them, and constantly delighting in observing the realm of the Tathāgata.

Chengguan judges of these that “there are ten sentences throughout: the first sentence is the general, that is, the planting in former lives of the dharma gate of Samantabhadra, because it forms the seed-nature”—the first sentence is the general, because the roots of good of the universal gate are the seed-nature; the nine sentences below it are the particular. He further points out that among these ten sentences “serving the friend is the condition, and the rest are all causes”: only the one sentence about serving good friends is an outward condition, and the other nine sentences are all causes in oneself.

A misreading has to be set aside: giving rise to the mind is not counted done the moment a thought arises. The sense of the sūtra text is ‘these ten things must first be obtained, and in this way one is then able to give rise to the mind of awakening’—these ten things must be there first, and then that mind can be given rise to. Brought down to the ground: the person who feels he cannot give rise to the mind need not exert himself upon the mind; let him look back and see which of these ten things he has not been doing.

The Eleven Sentences of Giving Rise to the Mind of Awakening (one): The Five of Kindness and Compassion

Of the eleven sentences from “as for giving rise to the mind of awakening” onward, Chengguan makes three groups: “The first five are the mind of great kindness and compassion; the first two are general and the other three particular.”

The first two sentences are the general—the mind of great compassion, “because one is to rescue all beings everywhere,” and the mind of great kindness, “because one is to guard and bless all the worlds equally.” Compassion draws out suffering and kindness gives ease: these are the two faces of kindness and compassion. The three sentences below them are the particular: the mind of ease and joy, “because one is to make all beings extinguish every sort of suffering”; the mind of benefiting, “because one is to make all beings leave behind evil dharmas”; the mind of pity, “because whatever has fear is to be guarded.”

First the question, then the answer: since the first two are already the general, why open out three more? Because there is present suffering, there is suffering to come, and there is the suffering of one who is at this moment afraid. Extinguishing every sort of suffering is drawing out present suffering; leaving behind evil dharmas is cutting off the cause of suffering to come; guarding those with fear is catching the alarm of the present moment. Fazang judges this more finely: “The first four are minds that gather beings in: one, rescuing present suffering; two, conferring present ease; three, extinguishing suffering to come; four, removing its cause, that is, evil karma.” Brought down to the ground: in giving rise to a mind of kindness and compassion toward a person, one must ask oneself which sort of suffering one is facing—different sufferings want different hands.

The Eleven Sentences of Giving Rise to the Mind of Awakening (two): The Four of the Deep Mind and the Two of the Straight Mind

The next four sentences Chengguan judges to be the deep mind: “The next four are the deep mind, cultivating the great vow, because it exhausts the realm of empty space.” The mind without obstruction, “because one is to leave behind and let go of all manner of obstacles”; the mind that is vast, “because one is to fill the whole Dharma realm everywhere”; the mind that is boundless, “because one is to be equal to the realm of empty space and reach everywhere without exception”; the mind that is broad and wide, “because one is to see all the Tathāgatas”—four sentences, each one wider than the last, from removing obstacles to pervading the Dharma realm to being equal to empty space to seeing all the Buddhas.

The last two sentences are the straight mind: “The last two are the straight mind, not going against the nature of dharmas, because it is the wisdom that realizes the fruit.” The mind that is pure, “because toward the wisdom of the dharmas of the three times there is nothing that goes against”; the mind of wisdom, “because one is to enter everywhere into the ocean of all wisdom.”

A misreading has to be set aside: the eleven sentences are not eleven kinds of mind of which one may pick out one to give rise to; they are eleven faces of one mind, and they have an order—rising from kindness and compassion, passing through the breadth of the deep mind, and gathered up in the straight mind that does not go against the nature of dharmas. Chengguan further says, “these ten minds are mostly the same as the ten minds of the own portion of the abode of governing the ground; fearing prolixity, I do not match them,” tying them back to the mind of this very stage. Brought down to the ground: the person who reckons his mind of kindness and compassion strong and yet constantly feels that the measure of his mind will not open out is lacking those four sentences in the middle.

Chengguan says “fearing prolixity, I do not match them”; the Yanyi chao matches them for him. The sub-commentary first brings out the ten minds of the own portion of the abode of governing the ground—the mind of benefiting, the mind of great compassion, the mind of ease and joy, the mind of abiding securely, the mind of pity, the mind of gathering in, the mind of guarding, the mind that takes others as oneself, the mind of the teacher, and the mind of the guiding teacher—and then matches them item by item: “Here the first is great compassion; the second is benefiting; the third is ease and joy; the fourth is the mind of abiding securely, because one leaves evil dharmas and abides in good dharmas; the fifth is pity; the sixth is guarding, because it makes one leave obstruction; the seventh is taking others as oneself, because it pervades the Dharma realm; the eighth is gathering in, because in the Dharma realm and empty space there is nowhere it does not go to gather; the ninth is the mind of the teacher, because one sees the Buddhas; the tenth is the mind of the guiding teacher, because one enters the wisdom of all kinds.”

What is to be looked at is not the sameness of the names but the reason for the matching; and since the sub-commentary says only ‘is’ for each item, without rehearsing the names of the sūtra's sentences, the one road back to the sūtra text is by way of the reasons. The reason of the fourth is “because one leaves evil dharmas and abides in good dharmas”—the sūtra's mind of benefiting says exactly “because one is to make all beings leave behind evil dharmas,” and leaving evil and abiding in good are two faces of one thing, and so it is matched with the mind of abiding securely. The reason of the sixth is “because it makes one leave obstruction”—the sūtra's mind without obstruction says “because one is to leave behind and let go of all manner of obstacles,” and to remove another's obstacles is to guard him, and so it is matched with the mind of guarding. The reason of the seventh is “because it pervades the Dharma realm”—the sūtra's mind that is vast says “because one is to fill the whole Dharma realm everywhere,” and once the mind pervades the Dharma realm the boundary between others and oneself is gone, and so it is matched with the mind that takes others as oneself. The reason of the eighth is “because in the Dharma realm and empty space there is nowhere it does not go to gather”—the sūtra's mind that is boundless says “because one is to be equal to the realm of empty space and reach everywhere without exception,” and boundlessness is not open emptiness but there being nowhere it does not go to gather, and so it is matched with the mind of gathering in. The reason of the ninth is “because one sees the Buddhas”—the sūtra's mind that is broad and wide says “because one is to see all the Tathāgatas,” and what breadth reaches to is the seeing of all Buddhas, and the Buddha is precisely the teacher, and so it is matched with the mind of the teacher. The reason of the tenth is “because one enters the wisdom of all kinds”—the sūtra's mind of wisdom says “because one is to enter everywhere into the ocean of all wisdom,” and to enter all wisdom is to enter the wisdom of all kinds, and so it is matched with the mind of the guiding teacher.

A misreading has to be set aside: this is not two lists forced together. The sub-commentary lists ten and the sūtra has eleven, and the text of the sub-commentary does not say plainly which sentence it has folded in; yet the reason of each item answers to the ‘because’ tied to each sentence of the sūtra, and the substance of the matching is not shaken by the difference in number. Brought down to the ground: in reading a passage of matching, do not first look at whether the names agree; look first at whether the reason stands. If the reason stands, then even under different names it is one and the same thing.

Twelve Years: Why a Number of Years Must Be Read as a Stretch of Cultivation

Ocean Cloud states of himself: “I have dwelt in this land of the Sea Gate twelve years, constantly taking the great ocean as my objective realm.” This is the sentence of this section most easily read past.

Chengguan does not take it as a number of years: “As to saying twelve years: one cycle has come round, signifying that ten thousand kalpas have been passed and the second abode has been entered. It also signifies the observing in general of the twelve abodes and the twelve entries of the bodhisattva.” Twelve years are one cycle; one cycle having come round signifies that the stages of the ten faiths are full; entering the second abode is precisely the stage to which this section is assigned. The later “a thousand two hundred years” he ties to the same sense—“a thousand two hundred years, the sense signified is the same as twelve years.”

A misreading has to be set aside: to say that the twelve years signify a dharma is not to say that there were no such twelve years. The sūtra text says plainly “constantly taking the great ocean as my objective realm”—what was done for twelve years was one thing, looking at the ocean. Brought down to the ground: that a person is willing to spend twelve years upon one and the same objective realm is itself the stage of his position; the one in a hurry to change his subject will not get as far as the second abode.

The Ten Ponderings of the Great Ocean: Why One Ocean Must Be Looked At in Ten Lookings

The ten sentences of “pondering the great ocean”—vast and beyond measure, deep and hard to fathom, deeper and wider by stages, measureless jewels of many kinds wondrously adorning it, gathering measureless water, the colors of the water different and inconceivable, the dwelling place of measureless beings, holding and receiving beings of every sort with great bodies, able to receive the rain that the great clouds send down, and neither increasing nor decreasing.

First the question, then the answer: one and the same ocean—why must it be looked at ten times? Because there is only one ocean, and there are ten virtues; if one cannot see the ten, it amounts to having seen only water. Chengguan lays down here a weighty judgment: “The ten senses of the ocean of wisdom are as told in the Ten Grounds. Here it is the ocean of compassion.” The same ten virtues, which in the Ten Grounds are matched with wisdom, are here matched with compassion. The Yanyi chao matches the ten virtues one by one with the ten minds of compassion of this very stage, and says at the end, “taking these ten compassions and setting them over against these ten similes, it is as though they were tallies fitted together.”

The words “tallies fitted together” are not description; the sub-commentary buckles them on group by group, and of the ten groups not one is missing. The first, vast and beyond measure, is matched with the mind of benefiting, the reason being “because benefiting is broad and wide”—what makes benefiting benefiting is its breadth. The second, deep and hard to fathom, is matched with the mind of great compassion, the reason being “because great compassion is deep and none can fathom it”—compassion at its depth is precisely what cannot be sounded to the bottom. The third, deeper and wider by stages, is matched with the mind of ease and joy, the reason being “because it begins from worldly joys, giving them in every sort”—the giving of joy starts from the joys of the world, and so it is by stages. The fourth, measureless jewels wondrously adorning it, is matched with the mind of abiding securely, the reason being “that is, beings of evil conduct are made to abide in good conduct, and this is the many jewels”—to settle one who acts badly upon good conduct: that is the jewel in the ocean. The fifth, gathering measureless water, is matched with the mind of pity, the reason being “because it wraps in and takes in all”—the mark of pity is that it takes everything without picking. The sixth, the colors of the water being different, is matched with the mind of gathering in, the reason being “because those of the various outside ways are gathered in and made to have right faith, as water of many colors is alike in one ocean”—colors differ and yet are alike in one ocean, just as the views of those outside the way differ and yet are alike gathered into right faith. The seventh, the dwelling place of measureless beings, is matched with the mind of guarding, the reason being “because all who have given rise to the mind are guarded, and this is the dwelling and resting of measureless beings”—all who have given rise to the mind are guarded, and so it is called the place where beings dwell and rest. The eighth, holding and receiving beings of every sort with great bodies, is matched with the mind that takes others as oneself, the reason being “that is, gathering in the great vow of awakening, beings are as one's own body, and therefore there is a great body”—to take beings as one's own body: only then is that body great. The ninth, able to receive the rain that the great clouds send down, is matched with the mind of the teacher, the reason being “that is, one who practices and goes forward upon the road of the great vehicle is deferred to as a teacher, since a teacher must inquire of and receive the great Dharma rain”—one willing to go forward on the road of the great vehicle is deferred to as a teacher, and one who is a teacher must receive the great Dharma rain. The tenth, neither increasing nor decreasing, is matched with the mind of the guiding teacher, the reason being “that is, one complete in merits is revered as a Buddha, and so it is limpid, without increase or decrease”—to revere one complete in virtue as a Buddha: such a mind is limpid, and therefore without increase or decrease.

Li Tongxuan does not take the road of matching the minds of compassion; he takes what each sentence of the ocean's marks signifies, and the six items each signify their own. First, gathering measureless water: “taking the waters of the several cravings as the water of great compassion, he ponders the great ocean”—the craving-water of beings is not sought elsewhere and exchanged; the craving-water itself is taken as the water of great compassion, and it is just in this that the ocean gathers measurelessly. Second, the colors of the water being different: “within fundamental wisdom there arises the kindness of measureless differentiating wisdom”—one ocean and the colors are many, just as fundamental wisdom is of one taste while the differentiating kindness of wisdom that arises from it is measureless. Third, the dwelling place of measureless beings: “it is to make clear that within the ocean of the Buddha there is the dwelling place of measureless beings, who do not awaken to it and do not know it”—what is dwelt in is the ocean of the Buddha, and yet the dwellers neither awaken to it nor know it; what is lacking is not the place dwelt in but the awakening and the knowing. Fourth, holding and receiving beings of every sort with great bodies: “it makes clear that measureless bodhisattvas all dwell within the ocean of birth-and-death, and each one's body and land fills it completely, like shadows and like light, not obstructing one another”—the bodies and lands of the bodhisattvas each fill this ocean and yet do not hinder one another, and so the ocean can hold great bodies. Fifth, able to receive the rain that the great clouds send down: “the ocean of the bodhisattva's mind is fit to receive the Dharma rain of the Buddhas from the great clouds”—that the rain can be received lies in the ocean's fitness to receive, and that the Dharma can enter lies in the mind's fitness to receive. Sixth, neither increasing nor decreasing: “the ocean of the nature of the wisdom of the Buddhas has neither increase nor decrease”—what has no increase or decrease is not a quantity that does not alter, but the nature of wisdom, which of itself has no increase or decrease. The six run as one: what Tongxuan signifies is that the ocean of birth-and-death is itself the ocean of wisdom, and so the craving-water is the water of compassion, the dwelling place of beings is the ocean of the Buddha, and within the ocean of birth-and-death are the bodies and lands of the bodhisattvas. It stands together with Chengguan's matched reading of the ocean of compassion, and the roads differ; it is recorded, and no judgment is made.

A misreading has to be set aside: this is not fitting ten good points of the ocean with ten fine-sounding names. The joint of every group lies in that word ‘because’—the virtue of the ocean and the mind of compassion can be set against each other because the reason of the two is one and the same reason. Brought down to the ground: in reading these ten groups, ask of each in turn what single reason this virtue and this mind hold in common; only when one can answer has that group been read.

A misreading has to be set aside: these ten sentences are not the observing of nature; they are an examination of the mind—every sentence of the ocean's virtue is a sentence about the mark of a mind of compassion. Brought down to the ground: to see a thing that is vast and have one's mind not grow vast along with it is not yet the pondering told of here.

The Four Questions: At the Very Height of Contemplation, Asking Instead ‘Is There Anything Greater?’

The ten ponderings being complete, Ocean Cloud says that he “gave rise to this further thought,” and asks four sentences in a row: is there anything more broad and wide than this ocean, is there anything more measureless than this ocean, is there anything more deep than this ocean, is there anything more rare and outstanding than this ocean.

First the question, then the answer: since he has already praised the virtues of the ocean to the full, why ask further whether there is anything that surpasses it? Chengguan judges this one turn as “second, forgetting the wording and seeking the point is the intimate cause of seeing the Buddha,” and the Yanyi chao, in the reader's stead, breaks this seeming contradiction open: “Since he has praised it as rare and outstanding, how can it be called forgetting the wording? Leaving the ten marks before and seeking further what surpasses this is precisely the meaning of forgetting the wording and seeking the point. It is by this forgetting and seeking that he gets to see the Buddha.”

There is a further question to ask: since he contemplated ten times before, why does the forgetting of the wording come to only four sentences and not ten? The sub-commentary accounts for them sentence by sentence: “Here there are only four sentences: one, broad; two, much; three, deep; four, outstanding. The first two are opened out from the first above; the third is the second; the fourth is the sixth, for one ocean with many colors is therefore rare and outstanding. The remaining six sentences do not go beyond deep and broad, and so only four are raised. Further, what the other six sentences tell of other places may also have, and so these four are rehearsed to show what is rare in it.”

The provenance of the four is this: the sentences broad and much are the first of the ten ponderings, ‘vast and beyond measure,’ opened out into two; the sentence deep is the second, ‘deep and hard to fathom’; the sentence outstanding is the sixth, ‘the colors of the water different and inconceivable’—one ocean holding colors of every sort, and so it is called rare and outstanding. Why are the other six not asked about separately? The sub-commentary gives two layers of reason: first, the virtues those six tell of do not go beyond the two senses of deep and broad, and the four sentences have already gathered them all in; second, what those six tell of, waters elsewhere may also have, and only these four are the rare thing proper to this ocean alone, and so only these four are rehearsed.

A misreading has to be set aside: it is not that six sentences have been dropped, but that those six are already within the four. Brought down to the ground: when a stretch of work comes to the point of being gathered up, one does not count over again item by item all that was done; one picks out the few things in it that are truly not shared with anywhere else—and to be able to pick them out is to know what it is one has been doing.

The ten virtues are the wording, the marks that words can reach to; asking ‘is there anything that surpasses’ is not stopping upon these ten marks. What is forgotten is not what is contemplated, but the mark of what is contemplated. A misreading has to be set aside: this is not finding the ocean not good enough; it is not taking the ocean as the terminus. Brought down to the ground: any objective realm one has cultivated well, if one stops there, is a wall; only if one is willing to ask, ‘is there anything deeper,’ is it a door.

The Great Lotus Flower Suddenly Appears: The Flower Was Not Sought For

No sooner does the thought arise than “below this ocean a great lotus flower suddenly appeared.” The stalk is the indranīla jewel, the calyx is the vaiḍūrya jewel, the leaves are jāmbūnada gold, the dais is aloeswood, the filaments are agate, and it “spread open and scattered wide, covering the great ocean over.”

First the question, then the answer: why “suddenly”? Because it was not called for. Chengguan glosses this saying, “First, the general marking of substance and marks: when one contemplates deeply the ocean of mind and the ocean of dharmas, then the flower of the mind and the flower of practice blossom of themselves, because there is nothing of the untainted virtues of the nature that is not complete”—when the ocean of mind is contemplated deeply, the flower of the mind opens of itself; it is not that one goes off and plants another flower.

The laying out of the retinue is not decoration either: the sentences of “a million” are met with twenty-two times running in the base text, the first twelve sentences being the retinue and the latter ten the maṇi jewels. Chengguan judges this stretch as “the outward marks serving as adornment.” Li Tongxuan, on the other hand, takes what each item signifies, as when he glosses “a million asura kings holding up its stalk: a million are the functionings that follow wisdom, dwelling in birth-and-death and not sinking,” taking the likeness of the asura who dwells in the great ocean and yet sinks only half his body, to signify the ten thousand practices dwelling in birth-and-death and not sinking. The roads the two houses take differ; recorded without judgment. Brought down to the ground: when the work has come, the objective realm will come of itself; if one has not come to it and seeks the objective realm first, what comes will not be the flower.

Li Tongxuan takes what each item signifies one by one, and treats not one of them as a foil. Of the maṇi-jewel adorning nets covering it over, he says it “makes clear that with fundamental wisdom one gives rise to differentiating wisdom, and that this is born as the recompense of setting up the teaching everywhere”—that the nets cover over takes the mark of the teaching being set up everywhere. Of the nāga kings raining down fragrant water, he says it “makes clear that with wisdom one follows the practice of compassion, raining down the fragrant water of the precepts, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation, to bathe the defilements of beings' minds”—what is rained down is the precepts, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation, and what is bathed is the defilement of beings' minds. Of the garuḍa kings holding strings of jewels and jeweled bands hanging down all around, he says, “wisdom follows the ten thousand practices, and great kindness and compassion are let down to be one with birth-and-death; this is the sense of drawing beings in and taking them up”—the mark of hanging down takes the drawing in. The rākṣasa kings observing with minds of kindness he ties to guarding: the rākṣasa king is Vaiśravaṇa, dwelling on the northern face of Sumeru, and this “makes clear the sense of guarding and protecting; his likeness is taken in order to signify the Dharma.” Of the yakṣa kings reverently bowing, he says their “likeness is taken to signify the leaving behind of arrogance and of cruelty and harm”—in people's minds the yakṣa is one who harms, and the sūtra writes him reverently bowing, and it is just this reversal that is taken. Of the gandharva kings with music of every sort praising and making offerings, he says it “makes clear that with the joy of the Dharma one gives joy to beings.” Of the deva kings raining down heavenly flowers, garlands and incense, and garments, banners, pennants and canopies and the like, he says it “makes clear that vast benefiting is in every case sovereign and at ease, the ten thousand affairs being complete and all-round like a deva king.” At the end he gathers this long string into one sentence: “signifying with ten kings, it makes clear that within the ocean of birth-and-death one penetrates ignorance and the practices of the twelve conditions, and all that is unwholesome becomes the fullness of the wholesome practice of great wisdom and great compassion, set forth by simile as kings”—what the ten kings signify is one and the same thing, the turning of everything unwholesome within the ocean of birth-and-death into the wholesome practice of great wisdom and great compassion.

A misreading has to be set aside: this is not reading the retinue as ten symbols. What Tongxuan takes is the likeness, not the name—the likeness of the asura who dwells in the ocean and does not sink, the likeness of the yakṣa who is constantly reverent, the likeness of Vaiśravaṇa who dwells in the north and guards; the likeness lies in the thing, and the sense lies beyond the thing. The roads the two houses take differ; recorded without judgment.

Where This Flower Is Born From: Like an Illusion · Like a Dream · Pure Karma

The sūtra text next gives an account of where the flower comes from: “this great lotus flower was given rise to by the roots of good of the Tathāgata's coming forth into the world,” and it is “born from dharmas like an illusion, born from dharmas like a dream, born from pure karma,” adorned by “the dharma gate free of contention,” and it “enters the seal of the unconditioned and abides in the gate without obstruction.”

First the question, then the answer: since it is said to be given rise to by roots of good, why is it further said to be born from dharmas like an illusion and like a dream? Because if it were said to be really existent, it would become an outward objective realm; and if it were said to be altogether nothing, the twelve years of contemplation before would come to nothing. The sūtra text's use of illusion and dream says that it appears and yet has no nature of its own; its use of birth from pure karma says that it appears and yet has somewhere it comes from. Only the two sentences together are the whole sentence.

A misreading has to be set aside: like an illusion does not amount to false. Brought down to the ground: a good objective realm that appears in the course of cultivation is neither to be taken as a real gain and stored away, nor to be taken as a hallucination and refused—see which karma it comes from, and one knows whether to go on from there.

The Tathāgata Upon the Flower: Nineteen Sentences of the Inconceivable

“At that time I saw that upon that lotus flower there was a Tathāgata seated with legs crossed, and his body reached from here up to the Summit of Existence.” Below this, “inconceivable” is met with nineteen times running in this stretch: the first thirteen sentences speak of the Buddha's marks of virtue—the jeweled lotus-flower seat, the assembly of the place of the way, the accomplishing of the marks, the fullness of the signs that follow the form, the spiritual powers and transformations, the purity of form and mark, the mark of the crown that cannot be seen, the mark of the broad and long tongue, the skillful telling, the fullness of the voice, the strength without bound, the pure fearlessness, and the vast eloquence; the latter six sentences, from “I further called to mind that the practices that Buddha cultivated in the past were inconceivable” onward, speak of the Buddha's cause and function—the practices cultivated in the past, accomplishing the way with sovereign ease, telling the Dharma with a wondrous voice, displaying by the universal gate, the differences in what those on his left and his right each saw, and bringing all benefits to fullness.

The thirteen sentences are to be looked at one by one first, because they are not praises of one kind. The jeweled lotus-flower seat and the assembly of the place of the way tell of where the Buddha sits and the multitude he faces—the seat is what he rests on, the assembly is who is reached; with these two set up first, the Buddha is not one body hung alone. The accomplishing of the marks and the fullness of the signs that follow the form tell of the marks and signs—the marks are the large body of it, the signs are the fine that follow upon the marks; only when the marks are accomplished and the signs full is the bodily form called complete. The spiritual powers and transformations and the purity of form and mark tell of the function of the body and the substance of the body—the function can transform, the substance is unstained. The mark of the crown that cannot be seen and the mark of the broad and long tongue raise one mark apiece: that the crown cannot be seen states the endlessness of its height; that the tongue is broad and long states that his speech is without falsity. The skillful telling and the fullness of the voice turn to the karma of speech—skillfulness stated of what suits those told, fullness stated of the measure of the voice that tells. The strength without bound and the pure fearlessness are virtues—strength without bound, and fear altogether absent. The last sentence, vast eloquence, gathers it upon the capacity to tell the Dharma; and so the thirteen sentences rise from the seat and the assembly, pass through marks and signs, bodily karma, and karma of speech, and are gathered upon eloquence.

The latter six run another road. The practices cultivated in the past are the cause, and accomplishing the way with sovereign ease is the fruit; these two together tell where the Buddha comes from. Telling the Dharma with a wondrous voice and displaying by the universal gate tell what the Buddha sets forth—the one by voice, the other by display. The differences in what those on his left and his right each saw tells that those reached differ in capacity and so differ in what they see: one and the same Buddha-body, and what each sees is different. Bringing all benefits to fullness gathers it up: though those reached differ, the benefit obtained is alike full.

First the question, then the answer: since the first thirteen sentences have already praised the inconceivable, why must the latter six praise it again? Because the former is what was seen present before him and the latter what his calling to mind reached; seeing is of the moment, calling to mind runs through the three times. The two words “further called to mind” are exactly where the sūtra text changes breath.

The sūtra text says of this flower that “all the bodhisattvas gave rise to faith and delight in it, and in the worlds of the ten directions there was none where it was not present”—all bodhisattvas who saw it gave rise to faith and delight, and there was not one place in the worlds of the ten directions where it was not present; and it says that it “filled all the lands of the ten directions, followed along with the deep realm of the Buddhas, and though its merits were praised for countless hundreds of thousands of kalpas they could not be exhausted”—it fills the lands everywhere, accords with the deep realm of the Buddhas, and its merits cannot be praised to the end in countless hundreds of thousands of kalpas. Read the four together: the bodhisattvas' faith and delight is stated of those who can see it, the presence throughout the ten directions of where it appears, the according with the Buddhas' deep realm of the objective realm it rests upon, and the praise that cannot be exhausted of the measure of its virtue. A misreading has to be set aside: this is not making a flower large. The flower is the mark of contemplation come to completion, and to tell of the flower's greatness is to tell of the contemplation's completion; the sūtra praises this flower as inexhaustible in merit, and from the merit of the flower the reader may see what the contemplation has accomplished.

Chengguan judges these two divisions as “first making clear that the marks of virtue are complete, and after ‘I further called to mind’ the cause is full and the function is wide,” and the Buddha seen he judges to be original awakening: “Second, from ‘at that time I saw that’ onward makes clear the seeing of the direct recompense: when the practice of the mind has blossomed, the Tathāgata of original awakening appears suddenly.”

Fazang has another judgment, resting upon a different text from Chengguan's. Upon the sixty-fascicle text he judges this stretch of the seeing of the direct recompense into twenty sentences: “the first ten make clear that the virtues of the Buddha-fruit are complete, and the latter ten that the wondrous functioning is sovereign and at ease”—the first ten stated of the completeness of the virtues of the fruit, the latter ten stated of the sovereign ease of the wondrous functioning; the twenty sentences are thus cut into virtue and functioning. This judgment is not to be run together with Chengguan's thirteen-and-six above: what Chengguan divides are the nineteen occurrences of 『inconceivable』 that run on in the eighty-fascicle text, the first thirteen stated of the marks of virtue and the latter six, from “I further called to mind” onward, stated of cause and function; what Fazang divides are the twenty sentences of the sixty-fascicle text, the first ten stated of the completeness of virtue and the latter ten of the wondrous functioning. The two rest upon different texts, and so the numbers divided do not answer to one another. The two houses each set up upon their own text, and they are stated separately, not forced into one saying; a reader who stacks thirteen-and-six upon ten-and-ten has taken the sentence-counts of two texts for one and the same string of sentences.

A misreading has to be set aside: the nineteen sentences are not a heaping up of adjectives. The first thirteen are what was seen present before him, the latter six what his calling to mind reached—seeing and calling to mind are two things, and the sūtra text has divided them with the two words “further called to mind.” Brought down to the ground: to read through a long string of “inconceivable” and feel that it is only praise is to have missed this turn.

Stroking the Crown of the Head: The Dharma Is Conferred, Not Taken

“At that time, this Tathāgata stretched out his right hand and stroked the crown of my head, and expounded for me the dharma gate of the universal eye.”

First the question, then the answer: Ocean Cloud contemplated for twelve years—why must the Dharma still wait for the Buddha to confer it? Because contemplation can make the vessel; it cannot bring forth the Dharma of itself. The order of the sūtra text is very clear—first contemplating, then seeing the Buddha, the Buddha stroking the crown of the head, and then the telling of the Dharma; not one step has been spared.

Chengguan here sets up a question and answers it himself: “The reason it is told within the ocean is that it signifies its flowing forth from the ocean of compassion and wisdom.” The place where the Dharma is told is in the ocean because this is to show that this Dharma flows out of the ocean of compassion and wisdom, and is not carried in from somewhere else.

A misreading has to be set aside: the stroking of the crown of the head is not the adding of a power to him; it is the confirming that he is fit to receive. Brought down to the ground: the person who has cultivated to a certain step and is long without advance is most often not lacking in effort, but has not yet been willing to lower his head and let another stroke it.

The Dharma Gate of the Universal Eye: Within One Dharma Seeing All

After the stroking of the crown of the head, the sūtra text uses eleven sentences to tell what this dharma gate sets forth: opening up and showing the realm of all the Tathāgatas, bringing to light all the practices of the bodhisattvas, making clear the wondrous dharmas of all the Buddhas, all the wheels of the Dharma being gathered into it; being able to purify all the lands of the Buddhas, able to crush all the false doctrines of those outside the way, able to extinguish all the armies of the Māras, able to make beings all give rise to gladness, able to shine upon the workings of the minds of all beings, able to know completely the faculties of all beings, and, following the minds of beings, making them all awaken.

First the question, then the answer: why is it called the “universal eye”? Chengguan glosses this saying, “As to the universal eye: because it sets forth the universal dharma, and because it universally sets forth all dharmas. One who obtains this dharma, within one dharma, sees all.” Three senses: the dharma set forth is the universal dharma, the setting forth reaches to all dharmas, and the one who obtains the dharma sees all within one dharma. The third sense is the most direct sentence of doctrinal eye in this section—the universal does not lie in manyness; it can be seen within one dharma.

A misreading has to be set aside: the eleven sentences are not eleven functions; they are eleven aspects of one dharma gate, and the last sentence, “following the minds of beings, making them all awaken,” is the gathering up—all that the ten sentences before it open out falls upon the mind of the one who receives the Dharma. Brought down to the ground: to judge whether what one has studied is the universal dharma, see whether one can see all the remaining dharmas within this one dharma in one's hand.

Ocean of Ink and a Brush of Sumeru: That It Cannot Be Written Out Is Not Exaggeration

“Suppose there were someone who, with as much ink as the great ocean and a brush heaped up like Sumeru, wrote out this dharma gate of the universal eye—of one gate within one chapter, of one dharma within one gate, of one meaning within one dharma, of one sentence within one meaning—he could not obtain even the smallest part of it, how much less be able to finish it!”

First the question, then the answer: why is it that the greatest ink and the greatest brush cannot set down even the smallest sentence? Chengguan gives the reason: “First, showing in general that the dharmas held are many, because this is the endless dharma gate in which one and many are mutually identical.” It is not that the quantity is too great; it is that the pattern is of another kind—within one sentence all is already contained, so that to set down one sentence amounts to having to set down all, and therefore it cannot be finished.

The Yanyi chao rehearses a similar simile in an ancient treatise and judges the difference in what the two take it to mean: “This is stated of writing the text and not finishing; that is stated of receiving the many and not finishing.” The one says the words cannot be written to the end; the other says that what is received is too much to be finished. Brought down to the ground: the person who, reading the Avataṃsaka, feels the sentences repetitious and long-winded is reading it as a text that can be written to the end; if within one sentence one sees all, then repetition is not repetition.

A Thousand Two Hundred Years: Ten Lights of Dhāraṇī

“I was at the place of that Buddha a thousand two hundred years, receiving and holding this dharma gate of the universal eye,” receiving it each day with ten lights of dhāraṇī—hearing and holding, the gate of stillness, boundless turning, observing ground after ground, majestic strength, the adornment of the lotus flower, pure speech and sound, the treasury of empty space, the gathering of light, and the treasury of the ocean.

First the question, then the answer: why must there be ten? Because receiving and holding is not one thing. Chengguan divides them saying, “The first one is the holding of what is heard; the rest are all the holding of the meaning”—the first kind is remembering the words, and the other nine are holding the meaning. He further glosses one by one the reason of each: boundless turning is able to “enter everywhere” because “within one meaning it turns measurelessly”; observing ground after ground is able to “distinguish” because “ground after ground the meaning differs”; the adornment of the lotus flower takes the sense of the flower opening and the fruit being seen; and of the treasury of the ocean he says, “the tenth is like the ocean containing ten virtues, each being sorted out and analyzed,” and at the end he adds a word of exhortation—“those who hold the sūtras should model themselves on this passage.”

For the other four Chengguan likewise brings out the reason of each. Why the gate of stillness stands next after the holding of what is heard: “the second is because one accords with the fundamentally still wisdom, and only then can one enter”—after one has taken it in, one must first accord with the wisdom that is still from the first, and only then can the holding of the meaning below it get in; which is to say, the second is not one more accomplishment, but the pass at which the first either turns into the eight that follow or does not. Why majestic strength is called strength: “the fifth, majestic strength, is because it gathers everything universally into one's bosom”—that the meanings held can be taken in all together and kept in the bosom: this is what is called majestic. And Chengguan gives a second reading: “if it be stated of what is set forth as gathering in, then by majestic strength one gathers in beings, the same as what is told of the dhāraṇī of majestic virtue in the ninth ground”—stated of the Dharma set forth, this majestic strength is the strength that gathers beings in, and it runs the same road as the dhāraṇī of majestic virtue told of in the ninth ground. Why the treasury of empty space is called a treasury: “the eighth is like space, which is without mark and yet contains all, bringing the wondrous principle to light and showing the marks of dharmas”—space itself has no mark, and yet there is nothing it cannot hold; when the holding of meaning is held to the point of being markless and yet containing all, only then does the wondrous principle come to light and the marks of dharmas get shown plainly. Why the gathering of light is called a gathering: “the ninth is because, when many lights of wisdom are gathered upon one dharma, the meaning and principle are enlarged”—gather many beams of the light of wisdom upon one dharma, and the meaning and principle of that one dharma widen out.

A misreading has to be set aside: these four are not four higher objective realms. The reasons of the four sentences run along two roads—the gate of stillness and the treasury of empty space tell of the ‘not’ (according with stillness, being without mark), while majestic strength and the gathering of light tell of the ‘is’ (gathering universally, gathering light); one who holds the meaning must walk both roads, and to walk only one is to go lopsided. Brought down to the ground: when one cannot get in, ask which road is missing—the road of the ‘not’ (the mind not still, the mark not forgotten), or the road of the ‘is’ (being unwilling to gather what was obtained elsewhere onto the one sentence before one's eyes).

A misreading has to be set aside: these ten are not spiritual powers; they are a way of reading. Brought down to the ground: when one cannot get into a sūtra, it is often not that one's memory is poor, but that one has used only the first—hearing and holding; and of the latter nine holdings of the meaning not one has been roused.

Beings of the Ten Directions Come to Hear: A Dharma Gate Must Be Able to Be Handed On

“If there were beings who came from the ten directions,” the sūtra text lists ten kinds, and for each kind raises both its multitude and its king: gods, nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, human beings, and Brahmās. Ocean Cloud “opened up and explained for them all, extolled and praised, and made them all delight in, go into, and abide securely within this dharma gate of the universal eye of the light of the practice of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas.”

Chengguan outlines this as ‘handing on’—after receiving and holding there must be a handing on, and this is the third of the three divisions of this stretch (expounding, receiving and holding, and handing on).

First the question, then the answer: why must those who come be divided into ten kinds? Because their capacities differ. One and the same dharma gate must be opened differently for ten kinds of differing capacity, while what they are made to abide securely in is still one and the same dharma gate. A misreading has to be set aside: handing on is not repeating. The sūtra text uses four verbs—opening up, explaining, extolling, and praising—and only then delighting in, going into, and abiding securely; the one who tells does four things, and the ones who hear accomplish three. Brought down to the ground: if the Dharma one uses oneself cannot be spoken into another's mind, it is most often that one has done only the one thing of “explaining.”

Humbling Himself: I Know Only This Dharma Gate of the Universal Eye

“Son of good family! I know only this dharma gate of the universal eye.” Twelve years of contemplation, a thousand two hundred years of receiving and holding, ten dhāraṇīs, and the handing on to the ten directions—at the end it all falls upon the one word “only.”

Chengguan outlines this as ‘humbling oneself and deferring to the superior,’ and explains what is intended by it: “Humbling oneself concludes what precedes; deferring to the superior advances toward what follows.” Humbling oneself gathers up what has been told before; deferring to the superior pushes Sudhana on toward the next friend. He says a further sentence of great weight: “I am only one ocean—how could I be spoken of in the same breath as they?” I am only one ocean; how could I be put on a level with the bodhisattvas.

A misreading has to be set aside: humbling oneself is not courtesy. What Ocean Cloud knows is indeed only one dharma gate; this is the plain truth—and just because what he says is the plain truth, Sudhana will not stop with him. Brought down to the ground: the mark of a true good friend is that he knows where his own boundary lies, and is willing to send a person out beyond that boundary.

The Ten Oceans: What It Is That the Deferring to the Superior Defers To

The stretch of deferring to the superior lists ten oceans—the ocean of the bodhisattva's practice, the ocean of great vows, the ocean of all beings, the ocean of the minds of all beings, the ocean of the faculties of all beings, the ocean of all lands, the ocean of all the Buddhas, the ocean of all dharmas, the ocean of all merits, and the ocean of the words and speech of all beings—and under each sentence a “because” is tied: because they cultivate in accord with the power of their vows, because they dwell in the world through measureless kalpas, because they follow what their minds delight in and benefit them vastly … and at the end it is gathered up in “and how could I know, or be able to tell of, their merits and their practice?”

The ten ‘becauses’ do not say the same thing. The cause of each ocean the sūtra text ties plainly, sentence by sentence: entering the ocean of the bodhisattva's practice, “because they cultivate in accord with the power of their vows”; entering the ocean of great vows, “because they dwell in the world through measureless kalpas”; entering the ocean of all beings, “because they follow what their minds delight in and benefit them vastly”; entering the ocean of the minds of all beings, “because they bring forth the unobstructed light of the wisdom of the ten powers”; entering the ocean of the faculties of all beings, “because they teach and transform in season and bring all under discipline”; entering the ocean of all lands, “because they fulfill their original vows and adorn and purify the lands of the Buddhas”; entering the ocean of all the Buddhas, “because they vow constantly to make offerings to the Tathāgatas”; entering the ocean of all dharmas, “because they are able with wisdom to awaken to and enter them all”; entering the ocean of all merits, “because they cultivate each one and make it complete”; entering the ocean of the words and speech of all beings, “because they turn the wheel of the right Dharma in all lands.”

First the question, then the answer: why must a ‘because’ be tied to every ocean? Because the ocean is the place entered and the ‘because’ is the thing done—without that ‘because’ tied on, the ten oceans are only ten large words. Read down sentence by sentence and the road shows itself too: the first two oceans are tied to one's own vow and time (practicing in reliance on the vow, dwelling long in the world), the middle three to beings (benefiting what they delight in, opening their minds, disciplining their faculties), and the last five to the affairs of the Dharma realm (adorning and purifying lands, making offerings to the Buddhas, awakening to and entering the dharmas, completing the merits, turning the Dharma wheel in all lands). A misreading has to be set aside: the ten oceans are not ten pieces of scenery; they are ten things being done. Brought down to the ground: one who says the measure of his mind is vast should check through these ten ‘becauses’ sentence by sentence—as many as he can actually do, so much measure his mind has.

First the question, then the answer: why does the deferring to the superior also use the ocean? Because the whole of this section is threaded on the ocean—what is asked is an ocean, what is contemplated is an ocean, the ink with which it is written is an ocean, and the surpassing practice deferred to at the end is still an ocean. The ten oceans follow the order of the sūtra text: the first five are “the ocean of all the practices of the bodhisattvas,” “the ocean of great vows,” “the ocean of all beings,” “the ocean of the minds of all beings,” and “the ocean of the faculties of all beings”; the latter five are “the ocean of all lands,” “the ocean of all the Buddhas,” “the ocean of all dharmas,” “the ocean of all merits,” and “the ocean of the words and speech of all beings.”

A misreading has to be set aside: these ten sentences are not that Ocean Cloud cannot, but that Ocean Cloud has not reached. Brought down to the ground: to know that there is an ocean one has not yet gone down into matters more than keeping to the one already gone down into.

Pointing to the Next Friend: Sixty Yojanas and Beside the Laṅkā Road

“Son of good family! Going south from here sixty yojanas, beside the Laṅkā road there is a settlement named Ocean Shore; there is a monk there named Well-Abiding. Go to him and ask: how is a bodhisattva to purify the practice of a bodhisattva?”

First the question, then the answer: why must even the number of miles and the name of the road be written? Because in Chengguan's reading these are all Dharma. He glosses the sixty yojanas saying, “as to sixty yojanas, it is because one cultivates the practice of the six perfections and purifies the six faculties”; he glosses the name of the place saying, “the settlement being named Ocean Shore, it is on the road that goes to Mount Laṅkā, next to the north shore of the southern sea”; he glosses the name of the mountain saying, “now, Laṅkā is a Sanskrit word, and here it means hard to go to,” and says of what it signifies, “that it signifies that the abiding of cultivation is the entering of the ocean of wisdom, the road that cuts off the four propositions and leaves discrimination behind”; and he glosses the name of the friend to come saying, “as to the monk Well-Abiding, it is because his body abides in empty space.”

Of this mountain Laṅkā, Chengguan does not only translate the name; he lists four senses: “one, it is formed of jewel-natures of every sort, because its adornment is rare and wondrous; two, it has a great light, because it outshines sun and moon; three, it is high and open, broad and wide; four, the Laṅkā king and the rest dwell there, and the Buddha too opened and transformed the multitude there, doing the work of surpassing benefit.” Taking the four together, he says, “now, its substance is jewel; being complete in these four senses, it is named the unsurpassed jewel, and so the Sanskrit sound is kept”—the substance of the mountain is jewel, and only when complete in these four senses is it called the unsurpassed jewel, and so the Chinese keeps its Sanskrit sound rather than rendering the meaning. As for what “hard to go to” really is, he accounts for that too: “this mountain lies within the ocean, with no gate on any of its four sides, and none but one who has gained the spiritual powers goes there, and so it is said to be hard to go to”—the mountain is in the ocean, there is no gate on any side, and one who has not gained the powers cannot reach it.

The name of the friend to come joins on as well. Why Well-Abiding is named Well-Abiding, Chengguan says, is “because his body abides in empty space,” and what empty space signifies is “that within this abode one observes all dharmas as being like empty space, without place.” For this sentence the Yanyi chao brings out the full text: the ten practices of contemplation of this abode are observing that all dharmas are impermanent, are suffering, are empty, are without self, are without doing, are without savor, are not as named, are without place, are apart from discrimination, and are without solidity. The commentary takes only the third, ‘empty,’ and the eighth, ‘without place’; the sub-commentary says that this is “raising only the third and the eighth sentences, so as to accord with abiding in emptiness,” and adds, “yet the other eight are also the sense of emptiness”—to take two sentences is not to say that the other eight do not count, but to raise those that accord with the ‘abiding in emptiness’ of this very abode. Chengguan further says, “that he too is a monk is because he has entered the way not long since, and ought to rely on the Saṅgha,” and then points out the order of the three stations: “further, at first he was mindful of the Buddha, next he heard the Dharma, and now he cultivates in reliance on the Saṅgha.”

First the question, then the answer: why must the pointing of the road point to a mountain hard to go to? Because the ease or hardness of the road is precisely the shallowness or depth of the stage—Laṅkā being hard to go to, what it signifies is “that it signifies that the abiding of cultivation is the entering of the ocean of wisdom, the road that cuts off the four propositions and leaves discrimination behind,” and that road was never one walked at ease. A misreading has to be set aside: abiding in emptiness is not stopping upon emptiness. What the sūtra signifies is the observing of all dharmas as being like empty space and without place: what is observed is all dharmas, and where it comes to rest is without place; to take emptiness for a place one can abide in is exactly to have a place. Brought down to the ground: after mindfulness of the Buddha, the hearing of the Dharma; after the hearing of the Dharma, cultivation in reliance on the Saṅgha—only when the Three Jewels have been walked station by station does that stretch of road hard to go to come round.

A misreading has to be set aside: to read in this way is not forced attachment; it is the pattern of this chapter—the names of places, of persons, and of dharma gates in this chapter are all set up from what is contemplated. Brought down to the ground: whether the next stretch of road is hard to walk is seen from what mountain it leads to; the place that is hard to go to is precisely the place to go.

Bowing and Taking Leave: A Stretch That Ends Upon Acts

“At that time, the youth Sudhana bowed to the feet of Ocean Cloud, circled around him to the right and gazed up and beheld him, and then took his leave and went.”

This answers exactly to the “bowed his head and face to his feet, and when he had finished circling around him to the right” at the head of the stretch—three acts on coming, three acts on going, and one whole dharma gate in between. Chengguan outlines this stretch as the sixth, “from ‘at that time Sudhana’ onward, cherishing his virtue and bowing and taking leave,” and the sūtra text he outlines is indeed here. Cherishing is toward the virtue already obtained; taking leave is for the sake of the next friend.

A misreading has to be set aside: the two words “gazed up and beheld” are not a lingering unwillingness to go. Chengguan has glossed this pair at the end of the previous sub-stretch—because he thinks of him he cherishes, and because he is glad to see the friend to come he takes leave; cherishing and taking leave are present at the same time, not one before the other. Brought down to the ground: only the person who can take leave well can walk the next stretch of road; the one who cannot walk it has usually never truly obtained anything.

Lineage

The text of this section opens out below it along three lines.

The first is the line of the name of the stage. The judgment that Ocean Cloud is assigned to the abode of governing the ground comes out of the outlines of the ancient worthies; the sūtra text itself, from first to last, shows no name of a stage. Chengguan's Yanyi chao glosses this stage saying, “Second, Ocean Cloud is assigned to the abode of governing the ground. That is, constantly following the mind of emptiness, he purifies and governs the eighty-four thousand dharma gates, and because he purifies and whitens the ground of the mind, it is so called,” and what his words carry on from is the second of the glosses of the names of the ten abodes in the Benye—“as to the abode of governing the ground: constantly following the mind of emptiness he purifies the eighty-four thousand dharma gates, and because he is pure and white, it is named the abode of governing the ground.” So the name of this stage has that upon which it rests, and what it rests upon is the sense of the stage, not the sūtra text of this section.

The second is the line of the substance of the sūtra. Fazang's Huayan jing zhigui sets up ten kinds of substance of the sūtra, and the third of them takes this very section as its proof, rehearsing the sūtra that Ocean Cloud received and held and the simile of the ocean of ink and the brush of Sumeru, and judging that it is not what writing can set down, and is held only by the power of dhāraṇī. One simile of this section is by this turned into a pillar of a doctrine of the substance of the sūtra for the whole house. Zhiyan's Huayan jing kongmu zhang, for its part, records this section as the third in the list of the names of the good friends, with the monk Merit Cloud above it and the monk Well-Abiding below it.

The third is the line of the glossing of the meaning, in which the ancient worthies each have their own road. Chengguan matches the ten ponderings of the great ocean to the ten minds of compassion, matches the twelve years to the fullness of the stage, takes forgetting the wording and seeking the point as the intimate cause of seeing the Buddha, and takes the universal eye as seeing all within one dharma—this is the eye with which the Huayan line reads this section. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle text, sets up five gates, and upon the name of the good friend takes the two sides of objective realm and wisdom and sets up three glosses. Li Tongxuan sets up another road, taking the ocean of birth-and-death of the twelve links of existence to be itself the ocean of the wisdom of all-knowing wisdom of the Tathāgata, so that what he weighs is not the matching of the ocean of compassion but the substance in which birth-and-death is itself wisdom, and he says that apart from this ocean of birth-and-death there is no other place of becoming a Buddha. Zhiyan gathers it in three divisions, and judges the good friend of this section to have “entered the dharma gate of Samantabhadra.” What these several houses set up each has its own road; it is recorded, and no judgment is made as to which is higher.

What Fazang's road opens out, besides the three glosses upon the name, has three places that the other houses do not have. The first is the frame of this stretch: he judges Ocean Cloud's account of himself into five divisions—observing the great ocean is the skillful means of the gate of realization, obtaining the sight of the unobstructed dependent and direct recompense of the Dharma realm is what is realized, receiving the boundless teaching Dharma that flows forth is the teaching obtained, handing it on to beings so that they enter the Dharma realm alike is what is practiced, and concluding that what he knows is one only and not the rest is the concluding; the five divisions run in one line, from contemplating to realizing, from realizing to the teaching, from the teaching to the handing on, and from the handing on to the concluding—after which a fifth, the looking up and deferring to the superior advance, is separately raised, and that is the deferring, and the order of this stretch is by this plain at a glance. The second is the gloss on the twelve years: he sets up no saying of his own but records three of other houses—someone says it is contemplating the great ocean of the twelve links of dependent origination, another that it is dwelling in the twelve abodes of the bodhisattva, another that this is the second of the ten abodes and therefore says twelve; the three are recorded together, and like Chengguan's one cycle come round they are all signifying, while what they signify differs among them. The third is the judgment of the three worlds: the twenty sentences of the outward adornment of the lotus flower he divides into the first eleven as the adornment of the world of beings and the latter nine as the adornment of the receptacle world, while the ten sentences of the stretch that raises what it comes forth from he judges to be the adornment of the world of the wisdom of right awakening—the adornment of one flower is read as the three worlds complete. He further points out, in the stretch on receiving and holding, the sense of receiving anew day after day: ink as much as the great ocean cannot write out even one chapter to the end, and yet within a single day, with the ten holdings, that many chapters are received, and thus through a thousand two hundred years they are received anew day by day, and so this sūtra is said to be an endless sūtra of the one vehicle. Of the ten sentences of deferring at the end, he judges the first five to be the practice of one's own portion and the latter five the practice of entering the Buddha-fruit, and glosses why all of them are called oceans: this monk knows only his own one ocean, and there are further many oceans that he himself cannot know, and so in every sentence he defers. What these several houses set up each has its own road; it is recorded, and no judgment is made as to which is higher.

Li Tongxuan's road, besides the ocean of birth-and-death being itself the ocean of wisdom, has also the practice of this stage to tell of. He sets the stretch of Cloud of Virtue and this stretch side by side: the former, by the gate of calming and contemplation, showed the dharma gate of universally seeing the light of the wisdom of the realm of the Buddhas and so accomplished the ultimate truth, while this stretch directly with wisdom observes the twelve links of existence, the conventional truth of the world, to be the realm of the Buddha, and cultivates throughout the vow-practice of great compassion and of Samantabhadra—the station before accomplishes the ultimate truth, this station the conventional truth, and what the conventional truth observes is precisely the twelve links of existence. The practice of this stage he ties to the precepts: “the perfection of the precepts is taken as host, and the other nine as companions”—among the ten perfections the precepts are host and the other nine companions, which answers to the very name of the abode of governing the ground. What is governed he divides into two readings: “stated of wisdom, the three realms are observed throughout and governed alike; stated of the stage, it governs in particular the hindrance of delusion of the desire realm”—stated of wisdom, the three realms are contemplated and governed all together; stated of the stage, this one stage governs in particular the hindrance of delusion of the desire realm. At the end he sets up a general rule for the stages that follow: “in the stages below, whatever objective realms are seen and whatever names of Tathāgatas there are, all of them are dharmas met with in the Buddha-fruit of one's own mind. If one's own mind does not meet with them, then face to face there is no occasion of seeing”—at every station onward, the objective realms seen and the Buddha-names heard are dharmas met with in the Buddha-fruit of one's own mind; if one's own mind does not meet with them, then though the Buddha be face to face one does not see him. This general rule is not for this section alone; it is recorded.

As for the consciousness-only line and the remaining treatises of the Huayan house, upon the three terms of this section nothing at all was found by search; the opening out of this section runs in its line only among the several houses of the one Huayan school and the line of the name of the stage of the Benye.

The text of one section is question in its first half and ocean in its second. The question is what Sudhana brought; the ocean is what Ocean Cloud looked out in twelve years—and that flower is what opened of itself after the question and the ocean had met.