華嚴經 義疏通講 · 冊14Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Exposition Throughout · Vol. 14

Why the Dharma of the Fruit of Buddhahood Must Be Requested by Two Beams of Light

When a sūtra comes to the point of saying what a buddha finally is, it meets a difficulty: who is the one able to speak of it, and to whom is it to be spoken? The Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata is the main text in which the eighty-fascicle Avataṃsaka speaks of the fruit of buddhahood; and in its opening the Buddha, from beginning to end, does not say a single word. The World-Honored One first sends a beam of light from between his brows, and the light enters the crown of the head of one bodhisattva — whereupon that bodhisattva rises and puts his question; then the Buddha sends a second beam of light from within his mouth, and the light enters the mouth of another bodhisattva — whereupon that bodhisattva becomes the one who expounds the Dharma. The whole of this prologue does one thing only: it sets up, each in his place, the one who asks and the one who answers.

Chengguan states the reason for this chapter’s coming with the utmost brevity: what the preceding chapter made clear was the cause that answers to the fruit, and what this chapter sets forth is the fruit that accords with the cause — cause first and fruit after, the sense running in sequence. This chapter, then, is what comes after the whole scripture has finished speaking of the practice of the cause, turning back to speak of the fruit head-on. The dharma of the fruit is deep, so deep that it cannot be stated by the Buddha of himself (for him to state it of himself would be self-praise, and hearers could hardly bear it); it must be spoken in his stead by a bodhisattva who has already entered that fruit, and the one who speaks in his stead must first receive empowerment. The two beams of light are the whole of that rite of empowering. The key to reading this passage is this: every gesture that looks like a marvel is a statement about how the Dharma comes to be handed on.

Why That First Beam Comes from the White Hair Between the Brows

Look first at where the first beam comes from. The scripture says that the World-Honored One sent it forth “from within the mark of the white hair between his brows.” Why between the brows? Chengguan glosses this thus: the place between the brows lies midway between the two brows, and displays that what is realized is the middle way, apart from the two extremes of being and non-being; it also displays the path of non-abiding, apart from the two extremes of the true and what answers. Why the white hair? Chengguan glosses this thus: the white hair is white and undefiled, and displays that the nature which appears is of itself without defilement; and the white hair is further the root from which the several teachings come forth, and so is able to set forth the dharma of the appearing. This is no forced fitting — where a scripture is speaking of the manifesting of the fruit of buddhahood, the light comes forth from the place of the undefiled middle way, and where the light comes from has already stated once over the dharma that is to be stated.

Some will misread this as the Buddha making a display of spiritual power. It is not. A display of power has no need to choose a part of the body. The scripture sets down “the white hair between the brows” on purpose, precisely because it is symbolic: the mark that is manifested is the meaning that is expounded. Read on, and the name of the light is of one piece with this — this beam is named “the Appearance of the Tathāgata,” the same as the name of the chapter. Chengguan says it plainly: in setting forth the name and substance of the light, it is “as what is expounded.” What the light is called is what this chapter is about.

One Beam of Light Doing Ten Things

Once the light has been sent forth, the scripture sets out a whole train of clauses: it shines universally upon the ten directions, circles to the right ten times, makes manifest the measureless mastery of the Tathāgata, awakens uncountable bodhisattvas, quakes the worlds of the ten directions, removes the suffering of the evil destinies, overshadows the palaces of the Māras, shows forth the buddhas seated upon the seat of awakening accomplishing right and equal awakening together with the assemblies of the places of awakening, and, having done all this, comes back and circles the assembly of bodhisattvas to the right. This long train is not a heaping up of rhetoric. Chengguan outlines it into ten segments and names the operation of each: where it comes from, its name and substance, and then eight segments that are all operations of the light — the light of the retinue is the “operation of cause” (it gathers in all dharmas as arising from this); under “this light” comes the operation of spreading; under “made manifest,” the operation of reverence; under “awakened,” the operation of awakening; under “removed,” the operation of stopping; under “overshadowed,” the operation of subduing; under “showed forth,” the operation of manifesting; under “having done these,” the operation of rolling back. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle text, likewise divides it into ten, and his third through tenth name the same eight operations, the titles slightly differing while the order is wholly the same.

Among the eight operations the one most to be noticed is the last: the operation of rolling back. The light goes out, does everything, and then “comes back and circles the assembly of bodhisattvas to the right” — it is gathered in again. This says that the virtue and function of the fruit of buddhahood are not scattered out and then gone: what makes appear and what appears are one from the first, and when the appearing is done it returns. To read this passage and see only ‘how mighty the Buddha is’ is to lose the whole of it; what should be seen is this: the going out and the gathering back of a single beam of light have already acted out the two words ‘the appearing’.

Why the Light Enters This Bodhisattva’s Crown

Once gathered back, the light enters the crown of the head of “the bodhisattva Wondrous Virtue of the Tathāgata’s Nature-Arising.” Why him? Chengguan glosses this thus: “because it is as his name displays” — the answer lies within the bodhisattva’s own name. Nature has two senses: first the sense of the seed-nature, from which all causes arise; second the sense of the nature of dharmas, from which both the true and what answers are born. The four graphs of “Wondrous Virtue of the Nature-Arising” are exactly the dharma this chapter is to expound. Upon whom the light of empowerment falls is already an announcement of what is to be expounded. As to its “entering by the crown,” Chengguan says that this is the mark of empowerment, because “only the utmost of wondrous knowing can display it” — the crown is the highest point of the body, and displays that this dharma is displayed only from the highest point of wisdom.

There is here an old divergent explanation worth knowing. Chengguan records an account that this bodhisattva Wondrous Virtue is Mañjuśrī, who, expounding this gate of the Dharma, is given the added designation of “nature-arising”; and Chengguan judges this account to “not go against the great principle” — Mañjuśrī’s great wisdom being that which displays and Samantabhadra’s Dharma realm that which is displayed, the two together forming the appearing of Vairocana. Li Tongxuan simply takes him to be Mañjuśrī, and throughout the chapter says that “the Tathāgata sends forth light and empowers Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra.” The two accounts stand side by side, recorded without adjudication.

The Assembly Has a Foreboding First, and Wondrous Virtue Receives the Buddha’s Intent First

After the light has entered the crown, the scripture writes two layers of response. The first is the whole gathering: “the whole great assembly of this place of awakening, exulting in body and mind, gave rise to great joy,” thinking within themselves that this is rare and seldom met with, and that since the Tathāgata has sent forth this great light he must be about to expound the very deep great Dharma. Chengguan outlines this as “the great assembly rejoices together” — they know that the Dharma is about to come down. The second layer is Wondrous Virtue himself: he rises from the lotus seat, bares his right shoulder, sets his right knee upon the ground, joins his palms, and with a single mind faces the Buddha. Chengguan says that this is “Wondrous Virtue receives the intent” — he is not merely glad; he has read the Buddha’s meaning: this light laid upon me means that I am to go and seek the one who is to expound.

The distinction between these two layers matters greatly. Gladness is what everyone has; receiving the intent belongs to the one empowered alone. Fazang outlines this passage of Wondrous Virtue as the three kinds of action changing their bearing and thereby forming the aspect of a request: in body he bares his shoulder and kneels, in mind he is without any other thought, in speech he praises and requests in verse — body, speech, and mind turning together, and only then is the posture of requesting the Dharma complete. To request the Dharma is not to open the mouth and ask a question; it is for the whole person to turn round first.

The Ten Verses: The First Five Praise the Buddha, the Latter Five Request the Dharma

Wondrous Virtue spoke ten verses. Chengguan outlines them in two sections: the former five praise, the latter five request. Within the former five, the first verse praises in general and offers reverence — praising that the merit and great wisdom of right awakening have come forth into the open, that he penetrates all objects and reaches the further shore, and that he is equal with the tathāgatas of the three times, and therefore bowing the head in reverence; the remaining four praise separately: praising that he has already ascended the shore of the markless object and yet manifests a body adorned with subtle marks, and sends forth a thousand kinds of undefiled light that break the armies of Māra entirely (praising his marks and his awesome function); praising that he quakes the worlds of the ten directions and yet has never made one sentient being afraid (praising the fineness of his awesome power); praising that he abides in the even nature of empty space and the Dharma realm and causes measureless living beings to extinguish evil and be rid of defilement (praising his evenness and his benefiting of beings); praising that through numberless kalpas of ascetic practice he accomplished the highest awakening, that toward all objects his wisdom is unhindered, and that he is one in nature with all buddhas (praising the practice of his cause and the virtue of his fruit).

The latter five verses turn to the request. Chengguan marks the intent of each in turn: the sixth verse relates the benefit he has himself gained — “the Guide has sent forth this great light … and it has turned back again and entered into my body” — and this is the receiving of the intent; the seventh requests on behalf of the assembly’s intent — measureless bodhisattvas have all come and gathered, causing me to give rise to the mind that asks about the Dharma; the eighth praises the assembly as fit to hear — the assembly of this gathering today are all pure, their wisdom boundless, undefiled and unattached; the ninth relates that the Buddha bids him ask — today with his light he shines upon the great assembly and causes me to ask about the unsurpassed Dharma; the tenth seeks the one who is to expound, directly — “who is able, concerning the very deep object of the Great Sage, to open it out truly and completely? Who is the eldest son in the Dharma of the Tathāgata?”

Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle text, outlines these ten verses into six sections (one praising the Buddha and offering reverence, five praising the Buddha for sending forth the light, one praising the benefit of that light, one praising the assembly as fit to hear, one praising the Buddha for the virtue of disclosing, one requesting the Buddha to show the one who is to expound). Chengguan divides them into two and Fazang into six; the opening and closing differ while the sense of what they judge is much the same, and both are recorded without adjudication.

Why He Does Not Simply Request the Buddha to Expound

The end of the ten verses is the place most worth pausing over: Wondrous Virtue does not request the Buddha to expound, but asks “who is the eldest son in the Dharma of the Tathāgata.” Within the rite of requesting the Dharma this is anomalous — the Buddha is sitting right there; why not request the Buddha?

Chengguan’s explanation is a single line: “having already received the Buddha’s intent, he does not request the Buddha.” When the light entered my body, I already knew that the Buddha’s meaning was that I should seek another to expound. Fazang sets the same question and answers it himself: at the time the light entered his body it had already made him know and perceive that this dharma was not for the Buddha to expound himself; and there are many like instances earlier in this scripture, from which one knows it is not the Buddha who is to expound, and therefore he seeks another. Li Tongxuan answers from the side of symbolic reading: the reason he does not expound it himself is “for the sake of the symbolic display, and so that those who study later may understand easily,” and not that the Tathāgata is unable to expound it.

The three houses answer from different angles, but they point to one thing: the dharma of the fruit of buddhahood has to be spoken by one who walked into that fruit, if hearers are to be able to take it in. For the Buddha to speak it himself would be a statement from the ground of the fruit; for a bodhisattva to speak it in his stead is testimony from one who has walked from the practice of the cause up to the ground of the fruit. What is anomalous in this passage is exactly where a scripture that means to teach shows its care.

The Second Beam: It Comes Out of the Mouth, and Enters a Mouth and Not a Crown

Wondrous Virtue seeks the one who is to expound, and the Buddha’s answer is still not speech but a second beam of light. This beam comes out from within the Buddha’s mouth, is named “Unobstructed and Fearless,” is likewise outlined into ten segments (Chengguan says “now the first is likewise ten,” the rest being as set forth before), likewise circles ten times, and at last enters the mouth of the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Samantabhadra.

Three comparisons bring out the doctrine. First, where it comes from: the earlier beam came from between the brows, this one from the mouth — Chengguan says that “its being sent forth from the mouth displays the handing on of the path of the teaching,” and Fazang likewise takes its being sent from the mouth as displaying the transmission of the path of the teaching. Between the brows displays what is realized, the mouth displays what sets forth: one beam establishes the dharma to be expounded, the other establishes the teaching that expounds. Second, the name of the light: it is named “Unobstructed and Fearless,” and Fazang glosses this as unobstructed displaying that his eloquence is unobstructed and his words and teaching have mastery, and fearless displaying that he does not dread the depth of the principle and dwells in the assembly without fear — the two powers an expounder of the Dharma needs, given him in the very name of the light. Third, where it enters: the earlier beam entered a crown, this one a mouth. Fazang sets a question and answer here and says it with great savour: if it were to come out of the mouth and enter the ear, that would be “so that he might hear”; now it comes out of the mouth and enters a mouth, and that is “so that he might speak.” Empowerment being alike in both, the one who requests is empowered at the crown (the utmost of wisdom), and the one who expounds at the mouth (the going forth of the teaching).

As to why Samantabhadra alone is empowered, Chengguan says that it is “because this is the fruit of the practice of Samantabhadra, and because the Dharma realm that is realized is displayed through principle,” and Fazang that it “displays that what is here expounded is the universal Dharma” — Samantabhadra is the practice that pervades all places, what this chapter expounds is the fruit that pervades all buddhas, and the one who expounds and what is expounded answer to one another. Li Tongxuan for his part matches the two beams to two kinds of wisdom: the light between the brows is the wisdom of the fruit of buddhahood, the middle way, poured upon the crown of Mañjuśrī so that he may raise the question; the light of the mouth displays the fullness of Samantabhadra’s differentiating wisdom, poured into his mouth so that he may expound the Dharma. Recorded without adjudication.

Body and Seat Surpass What They Were a Hundredfold, Only the Tathāgata Excepted

After the light has entered the mouth, the scripture records one concrete change: Samantabhadra’s body and lion seat surpass what they were before and surpass the bodies and seats of the other bodhisattvas a hundredfold, “only the lion seat of the Tathāgata excepted.”

This sentence is often read past, and it is in fact the most exact stroke in the whole passage. Chengguan points to four graphs only: “because it distinguishes master from disciple.” Empowerment may make the one empowered surpassing a hundredfold, but it may not be made equal to a buddha. Fazang says it more plainly: surpassing a hundredfold is “going beyond his own kind in order to display that the Dharma is surpassing,” and “lest it be confused with being the same as a buddha, it is set apart by this distinction.” That is to say, the scripture leaves this one exception on purpose, so that no reader shall suppose that to receive empowerment is to be the same as a buddha. Fazang further sets the Nirvāṇa Sūtra alongside it: there the Buddha sends light forth from his own mouth and it returns into his own mouth, displaying the mark of gathering in and entering extinction, which differs from the light here that comes out of a mouth and enters another’s mouth so that he may expound — the same light of the mouth, and the sense running the opposite way.

What Auspicious Sign Is This: The Answer Given by a Precedent

Here the portion of empowerment ends and the main portion begins. Wondrous Virtue asks Samantabhadra: the vast spiritual transformation the Buddha has manifested, which causes the bodhisattvas all to give rise to joy, is inconceivable and none in the world can know it — what auspicious sign is this?

Samantabhadra’s answer does not explain the workings of the transformation; it cites a precedent: in ages past I saw the Tathāgatas, the Arhats, the Perfectly Awakened Ones manifest a vast spiritual transformation such as this, and thereupon they expounded the gate of the Dharma of the appearance of the Tathāgata; as I reckon it, that this sign is manifested today must mean that that Dharma is to be expounded. Chengguan outlines this passage as “first, asking about the matter; next, answering by citing a precedent,” and adds that “the answer is itself the main thing” — this answer is the “main portion” of the whole chapter, because it names for the first time the dharma that is to be expounded.

Notice how careful Samantabhadra’s answer is: what he says is “as I reckon and weigh it,” not a flat assertion. The Buddha’s intent may not be settled for him by another; it can only be inferred from precedent. This is a thorough demonstration: even the one who is to expound, having received the empowerment of the Buddha’s light of the mouth, still uses the words of inference when he speaks of the Buddha’s intent.

The Great Earth Quakes, and the Light of Asking About the Dharma Comes Forth

When Samantabhadra had said this, “the whole great earth quaked entirely, and there came forth measureless lights of asking about the Dharma.” Chengguan outlines this as “the auspicious sign confirming it,” and explains why: the exposition is so rare that at the mere hearing of the Dharma’s name there is already a confirming sign. The earth moves because “the great Dharma is about to be displayed and the great delusion about to fall”; and of the light of asking about the Dharma that comes forth, Chengguan says that it “secretly empowers their wisdom and helps them to raise the request” — it empowers the wisdom of the assembly unseen, and helps them get their question out.

This stroke is worth remembering: the auspicious signs in a scripture function to help the asking, not to help the believing. The great earth quakes not so that people may believe, but so that people may become able to ask. This is why the light is named “asking about the Dharma” — the use of an auspicious sign is to light up what people cannot clearly ask into a question.

The Formal Request: First the Dharma Is Asked, Then the Assembly Is Praised, Then the Person

Only after the auspicious sign comes the formal portion of request. Chengguan outlines it into four sections, in a clear order.

The first section raises the Dharma in general and requests: “how should a bodhisattva-mahāsattva know the dharma of the appearance of the buddhas, the Tathāgatas, the Arhats, the Perfectly Awakened Ones? May you expound it for me!” — the dharma asked about is fixed first. The second praises the assembly as fit to hear: these measureless hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of assembled hosts of bodhisattvas have long cultivated pure deeds, their mindfulness and wisdom are accomplished, they have reached the shore of the ultimate great adornment, they are furnished with the deportment and conduct of all buddhas, they are rightly mindful of the buddhas and have never forgotten them, with great compassion they contemplate all sentient beings, they know with certainty the objects of the spiritual penetrations of the great bodhisattvas, they have obtained the empowerment of the spiritual power of the buddhas, and they can receive the wondrous Dharma of all tathāgatas — which is to say that the hearers are qualified. The third praises the one who is to expound as furnished with virtue: you have attended upon and made offerings to measureless buddhas, accomplished the highest wondrous practice, gained mastery in the gates of samādhi, entered the secret places of all buddhas, known the dharmas of the buddhas, cut off the doubts of the assembly, been empowered by the spiritual power of the tathāgatas, known the faculties of sentient beings, expounded for them the dharma of true liberation according to what they delight in, and followed the wisdom of the Buddha in expounding the Dharma and thereby reached the further shore — which is to say that the speaker is qualified.

Chengguan outlines the third section as “ten matters praised separately,” and marks the reason of each: having made offerings to many buddhas he must have heard; having accomplished the wondrous practice he has already cultivated it; having mastery in concentration he has something to rest upon; he has realized and entered in person; he knows the path of the teaching; he removes the doubts of others; he is empowered by the power from above; he examines the capacities; he is able to expound accordingly; he follows wisdom to the further shore and so his grasp of the sense is deep. These ten virtues are no flattery; they are a list of the qualifications for expounding the Dharma — what it is that entitles a person to speak of the dharma of the fruit of buddhahood is here set out item by item.

Setting Out the Headings and Asking Separately: Ten Questions, the Table of Contents of a Chapter

The fourth section is the “setting out of the headings and the separate asking.” After Wondrous Virtue has said “it is good, son of the Buddha” in approval, he opens the Dharma he requests into ten matters: the dharma of the appearance of the Tathāgata, the marks of his body, the sounds of his speech, his mind and thought, his object, the practice he practises, his accomplishing of the way, his turning of the wheel of the Dharma, even his manifesting of entry into parinirvāṇa, and the roots of goodness born of seeing him, hearing of him, and drawing near to him.

Chengguan judges these ten matters to be one general and nine particular: the first, “the dharma of the appearance of the Tathāgata,” is the general mark, gathering many conditions together to form the dharma of the appearing, the dharma holding within it both upholding and rule; the remaining nine are particular — the first three are the secrets of the three kinds of action, the fourth, the “object,” is what wisdom takes as its object and is also the object as its measure, the fifth is cultivating practice in dependence upon that object and runs through both cause and fruit, the sixth is accomplishing the path of awakening, the seventh is that having accomplished it he must turn the wheel of the Dharma, the eighth is that answering to the capacities he must manifest nirvāṇa, the ninth is that whether he abides or is gone, seeing and hearing of him alike bring benefit. These nine being furnished, the Buddha’s whole teaching career is complete from beginning to end. Chengguan further records a divergent account — “some say: the first is the dharma depended upon, and the remaining nine the virtues that depend upon it” — and remarks that “this too has its principle”; both stand, without adjudication.

These ten questions matter greatly, because the direct exposition of the whole chapter is nothing but the answering of them one by one: the portion of exposition, in its “first ten segments, answers the ten questions that went before.” In other words, this passage of requesting is the table of contents of the whole Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata. Read these ten questions through, and what each of the ten segments that follow is about becomes plain at a glance.

The Ten Verses in Repetition: Asking the Ten Questions Over Again

The prose request being finished, Wondrous Virtue, “wishing to make this meaning clear once again,” speaks ten verses. Verses in repetition are not mere repetition, and Chengguan’s outline into three sections shows their purpose: the first verse praises his virtue and states the request, repeating the third section above (the praising of the one who is to expound); the next four raise the dharmas and ask separately, repeating the fourth section above (the ten matters) — asking how one accords with and enters the buddhas and tathāgatas arising in the world, what the object of his body, speech, and mind is and the places wherein he practises, how right awakening is accomplished, how the wheel of the Dharma is turned, how parinirvāṇa is entered, what is obtained by seeing the Buddha and drawing near and increasing roots of goodness, and what benefit there is in hearing the name of the Tathāgata and giving rise to deep faith; and the last five praise his virtue and urge the request, repeating in general the last three sections.

Within those last five verses one stretch is of particular importance. Chengguan says that two of them are “the manner in which the exposition is urged,” because “the Dharma is deep and hard to take in, and therefore he requests that it be expounded by causes and similes.” The scripture asks in just this way: “may you, by causes and conditions and by similes, expound the meaning that answers to the subtle and wondrous Dharma,” and “may you, by a subtle and wondrous voice and by causes and similes, disclose the awakening of the Buddha in that same way.” The one who requests the Dharma asks not only that it be expounded but for the manner of the expounding — expound it by causes and conditions, expound it by similes. This is a thoroughly discerning request, and it also announces why this chapter is from beginning to end a chapter of similes. The last half-verse concludes the request, Wondrous Virtue asking that it be “opened out completely with a pure mind,” of which Chengguan says that “the pure mind spoken of displays that the exposition is without fault, and the complete setting out of text and meaning is full and round” — what is asked for is an exposition complete and free of fault.

The remaining verses fill out the weight of the request: these bodhisattvas have all joined their palms and gaze up at the Tathāgata and at the one who is to expound, thirsting for that object which is a great ocean of merit; and through the thousands and tens of thousands of buddha-lands of the ten directions and koṭis of nayutas of measureless kalpas, an assembly of bodhisattvas such as this one today would be hard to see — a verse and a half that Chengguan outlines as “praising the assembly as fit to hear.”

A Sentence Left Unfinished

The prologue and request stops upon a single sentence: “at that time the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Samantabhadra told the bodhisattva Wondrous Virtue of the Tathāgata’s Nature-Arising and the other great hosts of bodhisattvas, saying” — the words are not yet out of his mouth, and this portion is over.

This is exactly the manner of the portion. The whole work that the prologue and request does is to make ready, one item at a time, the conditions under which the Dharma can be expounded: the Dharma has its name (the light is named the Appearance of the Tathāgata), the one who asks is empowered (the light of the white hair enters his crown), the one who expounds is empowered (the light of the mouth enters his mouth), the auspicious sign confirms it (the great earth quakes), the hearers are qualified (the assembly is praised as fit to hear), the speaker is qualified (the ten virtues of the expounder are praised), what is asked is made definite (the ten matters of the headings), and even the manner of the expounding has been asked for (causes and similes). These eight things being in order, only then does Samantabhadra open his mouth. The highest chapter of a great sūtra is requested forth in just this way, inch by inch.

Lineage

The name of this chapter runs in two tracks in later times. The Jin translation in sixty fascicles titles it the Chapter on the Nature-Arising of the Jewel-King Tathāgata, and Fazang, following it, sets up “nature-arising” as the tenet, likening nature-arising by the three senses of the maṇi jewel king (that it can send forth jewels with mastery, that it is most surpassing among jewels, that it is what the many jewels rest upon) to its sense of sending forth wisdom, its sense of being most surpassing, and its sense of being that upon which things rest; he then cites the Foxing lun, “from abiding in its own nature it comes to the attaining of the fruit, and therefore it is named Tathāgata,” and divides this into the two readings “the nature-arising of the Tathāgata” and “the Tathāgata as nature-arising,” and opens the ten gates of the purport, within the gate of distinguishing the aspects setting up three natures and three arisings — the nature that is principle, the nature that is practice, and the nature that is fruit, each with its arising — of which this chapter “sets forth the last directly and the first two besides.” The root of the Huayan school’s term “nature-arising” lies just here.

The Tang translation in eighty fascicles titles it the Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata, and Chengguan, following it, takes the Tathāgata as the person who possesses the dharma (the common designation of the three bodies and the ten bodies) and the appearance as the dharma that depends upon the person (the general name for the function of the fruit and the function of transformation), explains the appearing by each of the three bodies in turn, and thereafter gathers them together as “the three buddhas perfectly interfused and the ten bodies unobstructed.” Chengguan does not discard the old name because the name was changed; on the contrary he gathers in and explains the Jin translation, saying: “though the graph ‘nature’ is added for the sense, it does not miss the general principle” — for what answers, though it follows upon conditions, does not go against nature, and there is nothing that does not flow forth from this Dharma realm. He states of himself that he takes “appearance” because “the sense of ‘arising’ holds much within it,” so that from nature, from cause, from the true, and from what moves it, all may be named appearing. As to the purport of the whole chapter, Chengguan sets it up as “the even appearing for its tenet, the interfusing of the differentiated fruits for its aim.”

Li Tongxuan goes another way, judging this chapter by the understanding of practice through the five positions: from within the ten faiths, not departing from the substance of immovable wisdom, one raises the vow and practice of great compassion and cultivates differentiating wisdom into great kindness and compassion, and when at this station it is full it is therefore named the Chapter on the Appearance; and he holds that the entrusting and circulating of the whole scripture lie in this chapter and not in the chapter on the Dharma realm, since that chapter comprises the whole substance of the teaching and is not a matter of establishing the cause and fruit of applied practice.

Fazang’s Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang cites the chapter by name as the Chapter on Nature-Arising in five places throughout the work, one of them citing this chapter’s scripture in substance and the other four being general citations, all of them serving as warrant for the outline of the doctrinal classification of the house. The three houses’ divergent explanations — by the name of the scripture, by the three bodies, by the five positions — are recorded together without adjudication. As to the treatises, the Awakening of Faith has no entry for “nature-arising” anywhere in the file, and the treatises of the lineage, within the range examined, likewise show no corresponding citation or explanation; the absence is recorded in accordance with fact.

This Question Is Not Asking for the Buddha’s Biography

The Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata has ten questions to answer, and the first of them is the marks of the appearance. What does mark mean here? Not what the Buddha looked like, and not the year and the place of his birth — if that were all we were asking, the reading would be over as soon as the biography was finished. What is being asked here is this: the Buddha’s coming forth into the world, what kind of event is it? What does it resemble, that such a thing should happen at all?

Samantabhadra passes judgment in his very first breath: this matter is inconceivable, and the Tathāgata, the Worthy of Offerings, the Fully and Rightly Awakened One appears by way of measureless dharmas. Then he at once puts the question to himself and answers it himself: why inconceivable? Because it is not by one condition, and not by one thing — it is not that some single circumstance, some one event, happened to ripen and out came a Buddha.

Let us clear away first the easiest misreading. This is not saying that the Buddha’s appearance has no cause. It is saying exactly the opposite: that the causes are too many to be counted. When people in the world think a thing through, they are in the habit of hunting for the one cause — a sage comes into the world, so there must have been some decisive occasion. The sūtra blocks that way of hunting in its opening sentence. Brought down to the reader, it comes to this: whenever some great matter stands before your eyes, if you take it to have been brought about at one moment, you have overlooked the measureless accumulation that lies behind it; and the appearance of a Buddha is the most extreme instance of that whole class of events.

Ten Measureless Things: The Cause Is Not a Line, It Is a Whole Expanse

Having ruled out the one condition and the one thing, Samantabhadra gives the positive side, the ten measureless things: the measureless mind of awakening in the past that gathered in all beings, the measureless pure and surpassing aspiration and delight, the measureless great kindness and great compassion that rescued and guarded beings, the measureless practice and vow continuing unbroken, the measureless gathering of merit and wisdom with a mind that never had enough, the measureless offerings made to the Buddhas and teaching given to beings, the measureless pure path of wisdom and skillful means, the measureless treasury of pure merit, the measureless wisdom that adorns the dharmas of the Way, and the measureless penetration of the sense of the Dharma — when these ten are brought to fullness, then a Tathāgata is accomplished.

The question worth asking is: why ten, and not three or a hundred? Chengguan, in his commentary, first blocks off one way of counting. The sūtra says ten measureless hundreds of thousands of asaṃkhyeyas, and the ancients once explained this by multiplication — the ten measureless things entering the ten similes make a hundred, and then the ten clauses of the concluding passage, each concluding a hundred gateways, make a thousand. Chengguan does not take that arithmetic: he says that the ten gateways set out below already speak of the measureless in themselves, so that they need not be made to enter one another to make up a sum, and therefore the words hundred thousand are only a general name for number. That one sentence is a key for reading the numbers of this sūtra: in the Avataṃsaka the numbers are very often not a count but a way of saying there is no end to this.

Clear away one common misunderstanding: the ten measureless things are not ten stages, and it is not that one finishes the first and then cultivates the second. Look at what they contain — rousing the mind, aspiration, compassion, practice and vow, merit and wisdom, offering to the Buddhas and teaching beings, skillful means, merit, adornment, penetration of the sense — this is one single bodhisattva path seen from ten sides, a whole expanse. Chengguan goes down the list one by one: the first is rousing the great mind at the outset and vowing to appear; the second is the surpassing aspiration that seeks upward; the third is the compassion that transforms downward; the fourth is continuing the vow by practice; the fifth is that merit and wisdom fall nowhere outside this; the sixth displays separately the adornment of merit; the seventh displays separately the adornment of wisdom; the eighth purifies the merit that went before; the ninth adorns the wisdom that went before; and the tenth is the true wisdom that exhausts the source of the Dharma. If you look for your own place among them, you will find that every one of them is still being done and not one of them is finished — and this is precisely where the word measureless comes to ground.

Why the Founding of a World Is Used as the Simile for a Buddha’s Appearing

The dharma has been stated; what follows is ten similes, and all ten take the same scene: how one three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system comes to stand out of nothing. Cloud, rain, wheels of wind, the great earth, mountains, seas, palaces — what is likened is, in every case, the world as vessel.

Why just this scene? Chengguan’s answer goes deep: within this one chapter, that which is depended upon is generally used to liken that which depends (the lands upon which beings depend liken the Buddha’s body and the Buddha’s wisdom), and this is not merely because the two are similar in kind — in truth the outer is transformed out of the inner, and so the outer vessel is made wholly to resemble the inner. That sentence is worth pausing over: the simile here is not a convenience of rhetoric; it is that the simile and the dharma are the outside and the inside of one and the same thing.

Clear away one misreading: this is not the mechanical analogy that as a world comes to be, so a Buddha comes to be. Chengguan cautions that each of the ten similes has three parts — the simile, the joining, and the conclusion; the simile answers to it is as though, and the joining answers to causes and conditions. Moreover the statement of the dharma speaks mostly of causes in the past, while the joining passage speaks mostly of conditions present now. In reading the ten similes, keep your eye fixed on the joining; the simile is only the doorway.

The First Simile: Four Wheels of Wind and Four Great Wisdoms

The first simile is called the simile of the raising up of the great thousand, and Chengguan judges it the general simile, with the nine below all lying within the rain that this one sends down. For a world to come to be, a great cloud must first rise and a great rain fall, and then four wheels of wind must follow one upon another as its support: the upholder (bearing up the great waters), the reducer (diminishing the great waters), the establisher (setting up all places), and the adorner (distributing them with skill in every particular).

Why are these four in this order? Chengguan’s explanation is wonderfully concrete: without the first wheel the rainwater would have nowhere to rest; if the waters were not reduced they would hinder the arising of the heavenly palaces; even when the waters have been reduced, the third wheel is still needed to establish things by them — as one measure of water recedes, one tier of heaven arises, like a swift current freezing layer upon layer in the depth of winter; and though great places have arisen, they have no adornment in particular, and so the fourth is required. The order is: a place, then rising into the air, then taking form, then coming to beauty — and not one step may be inverted.

In the joining passage the four great wisdom wheels of wind are these: the dhāraṇī that holds in mind and does not forget (a total holding that loses nothing, able to uphold all the cloud and rain of Dharma), the bringing forth of stopping and contemplating (able to dry up the afflictions), skillful dedication (able to accomplish all roots of goodness), and the bringing forth of the adornment that is free of defilement and distinguished in kind (making pure the roots of goodness of the beings taught in the past). Chengguan judges that the first three are cause and the last is the fullness of the twofold fruit, benefiting oneself and benefiting others — the cause being full and the fruit complete, a Buddha then appears. Brought down to practice, these four are the complete cycle that follows upon hearing the Dharma: to be able to hold it, to be able to dissolve what obstructs it, to be able to turn it outward, to be able to bring it to adornment. Let any one of the four be missing, and no amount of Dharma heard will come to a vessel.

There Is None That Makes, and Yet the World Still Comes to Stand

The first simile closes with a hard sentence: the nature of dharmas is such that there is none that gives birth, none that makes, none that knows, none that accomplishes, and yet that world does come to be accomplished. The joining passage closes in the same way: the nature of dharmas is such that without birth and without making it comes to be accomplished.

This sentence is the easiest of all to read as nihilism: if there is nothing that makes, then what was the point of speaking of all those causes and conditions? Chengguan’s reading preserves both sides. He says first that the phrase the nature of dharmas runs here through both nature and mark, and is the general clause; then he displays separately the emptiness of nature, and he points out that it is at the same time refuting the false reckonings of the outside ways — it is not born of some subtle nature or of atoms, it is not made by some sovereign lord or Brahmā, and there is no self-soul that knows. Those three clauses empty that which makes; there is none that accomplishes empties that which is made. And then the crucial turn: though maker and made are alike empty, this does not hinder the being of marks, and therefore the sūtra goes straight on to say that it does come to be accomplished.

So the sentence does not cancel causes and conditions; it cancels the one who is supposed to be pulling the strings behind them. The world really did come to stand, and the Buddha really did appear; it is only that no one can be found who made the decision from behind. This is the other face of not by one condition, not by one thing: because there is no one pulling the strings, the causes must be measureless; and because the causes are measureless, it is all the plainer that there is no one pulling the strings.

The Second, Third, and Fourth Similes: What Can Bear It, What Neither Comes Nor Goes, What Cannot Be Sounded

The second simile: the deluging rain. The rain that falls when a world is about to be formed is called the deluge, and no place whatever can bear it; only the moment when the great thousand is about to be formed can receive it. The joining passage says: the rain of Dharma is called the accomplishing of the appearance of the Tathāgata; those of the two vehicles, narrow and low in their aim, cannot bear or uphold it, save only for the power of continuity of mind in the great bodhisattvas.

What is meant by that power of continuity of mind? Chengguan gives two readings, a broad and a narrow, and lets them stand side by side without adjudicating. If it is taken only as receiving in faith, then it is those of perfect capacity, whose firm seed continues unbroken and can receive the deep purport. If it is taken as receiving in full, then one must be at the eighth ground or above and have gained the power of the inexhaustible dhāraṇī truly to be able to uphold it, and only at the tenth ground does one receive the Tathāgata’s teaching of the Dharma as cloud and rain. He explains for himself that the sūtra says only save for the great bodhisattvas because it takes the former sense, so that here it is merely sorting out the two vehicles. For the reader this is a step to stand on: you need not first ask whether you are at the eighth ground; ask first whether your own faith can catch what is falling.

The third simile: cloud and rain from nowhere. The rain, in coming, comes from nowhere; in going, it arrives nowhere. Chengguan puts it cleanly: the cloud and rain of Dharma appear at the stirring of capacity, and it is not that there is first some place where they are stored, from which they come when the time arrives and to which they return to their old lodging when the occasion has passed; and so their substance is without birth and without cessation. Clear away one misunderstanding: this is not saying that the Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma is an illusion. It is saying that there is no warehouse in which it can be stored — stirred, it appears; unstirred, it does not appear; and neither its appearing nor its not appearing moves its substance at all.

The fourth simile: the great rain that cannot be known. A great rain comes down — who can count how many drops? Try to reckon it, and you will only drive yourself mad; only Maheśvara, lord of the great thousand world, by the power of the roots of goodness cultivated in former lives, is not in the least unclear about so much as a single drop. The joining passage: the rain of Dharma cannot be known by any being, by the śrāvakas, or by the pratyekabuddhas; to try to think it through must bring the mind to disorder, save only for the bodhisattva-mahāsattva, for whom, down to a single line and a single phrase entering the mind of a being, there is nothing not clearly known. Chengguan judges this simile to liken depth, since it is not the object of the mind — it is not that one’s knowledge falls short, but that this matter does not fall within the province of discursive thought at all. And notice the most moving thing in the joining passage: what the bodhisattva knows clearly is not the number of the raindrops, but which line and which phrase has entered which being’s mind.

The Fifth and Sixth Similes: The Rain of Dharma Has Five Functions, and the Water Has Only One Taste

The fifth simile sets five names of rain side by side: the extinguisher (which puts out the calamity of fire), the raiser (which raises the great waters), the stayer (which stays the great waters), the accomplisher (which accomplishes all the maṇi jewels), and the divider (which divides the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system). The joining passage matches them one by one: extinguishing the afflictions of all beings, raising the roots of goodness of all beings, staying the delusions of view in all beings, accomplishing all the Dharma jewels of wisdom, and dividing what the minds of all beings delight in.

Chengguan’s way of explaining is worth learning. He looks first at the simile: the first is at the time of the world’s ruin, and the third is water stayed by water — the same water can both raise and stay. Then he looks at the joining: the first two extinguish delusion and accomplish wisdom and merit; the third extinguishes hindrance and accomplishes wisdom, which is stopping and contemplating practiced as a pair; and the last is the wisdom of expedients illumining capacity. Then he turns the matter around and sets out, by way of a question, what would follow if any one of the five were missing: without the second, one would be the same as the two vehicles (extinguishing but not raising); without the third, the same as the outside ways (raising but not staying); without the fourth, ignorance would be increased; without the fifth, the wisdom of all modes would not be accomplished. Set out that way, the five rains of Dharma are no longer five agreeable names; they are a line from which nothing can be spared.

The sixth simile is very short: water of one taste, and yet what it rains is measurelessly different; the Tathāgata rains the Dharma water of the one taste of great compassion, and teaches as is fitting, with measureless differences. Chengguan says it likens the Buddha’s one taste following the vessel. This simile is the ground of the one before it: the five functions differ so greatly, yet the source has only one taste. The difference lies on the side of the receiver, not on the side of the water.

The Seventh and Eighth Similes: Order and Priority, and This Is Not Made by Divine Power

The seventh simile: the superior places formed first. When a world is first formed, the palaces of the gods of the form realm are formed first, then the palaces of the gods of the desire realm, then the dwelling places of humans and the remaining beings. The joining passage: first arises the wisdom of the practices of the bodhisattvas, then that of the pratyekabuddhas, then that of the śrāvakas, then the wisdom of the practices of conditioned roots of goodness in the remaining beings. Chengguan judges it to liken the virtue by which the Buddha succors the superior conditions first.

Here the sūtra itself notices a contradiction, and so raises and resolves the objection on its own: if it is water of one taste, how can there be a before and an after? The answer lies in the latter half — water of one taste, and yet the palaces are of different kinds, because the roots of goodness in beings differ; the rain of Dharma has its differences according to the capacity of beings. Chengguan makes it plain: what is formed first is so by the power of deeds, and the dharma differs by the disparity of capacity, and this does not run counter to the one taste of the sixth simile. So the order is not a high and a low within the Buddha’s mind; it is the before and after of the stirring of capacity.

The eighth simile is the longest, and it is the eye of this section. The simile falls into three stretches: within the great waters a great lotus is born, named the jeweled adornment of the merit of the appearance of the Tathāgata, whose light illumines the ten directions, and Maheśvara and the gods of the Pure Abodes, seeing the flower, know at once how many Buddhas will appear in this eon; then ten wheels of wind in order accomplish the heavenly palaces, the mountains, the earth, the seas, the jewels, and the wish-granting trees; and last it is concluded in a sentence — the water of one taste has no discrimination in it, and because the roots of goodness in beings differ the wheels of wind differ, and because the wheels of wind differ the worlds differ. The joining passage is the Tathāgata’s unsurpassed great wisdom-light (one light having ten sights in turn), each accomplishing one of the Tathāgata’s virtues.

And the question and answer that follow are the most important thing in the whole section. Beings see the Tathāgata bringing forth measureless merits within one taste of liberation, and the thought arises in their minds: this is made by the divine power of the Tathāgata. The sūtra immediately denies it: this is not made by the divine power of the Tathāgata. Then it sets the matter right: that one who has never planted roots of goodness in the presence of a Buddha should gain even a small share of the Tathāgata’s wisdom — there is no such thing; and yet it is indeed by the power of the majestic virtue of the Buddhas that beings come to be furnished with the merits of a Buddha; and the Buddha, the Tathāgata, has no discrimination, no accomplishing and no ruining, no maker, and no dharma made.

Chengguan judges this stretch with great clarity. He says that the way of stirring and response has, in brief, three senses: that cause and condition complete one another, that they take one another away, and that what conditions complete is empty of nature. The disease in beings is that they let the condition take away the cause — crediting the whole of it to the Buddha’s power, and so losing the sense of causes and conditions. Therefore the sūtra first lets the cause take away the condition, saying not so outright, striking down the side that is clung to; then it states the right sense, so that cause and condition complete one another; and last it comes home to emptiness of nature — because it is completed by conditions there is no completing, and because there is no completing there is no ruining; and since what is completed is empty, where could there be a maker that completes it or a dharma that is made?

Brought down to a person, this stretch is the most practical balance in the whole of practice: to credit everything to the Buddha is laziness; to credit everything to oneself is conceit. The sūtra permits neither side, and it is not a compromise — it pierces one layer further down: since cause and condition complete one another, there exists nothing that could take the credit by itself.

The Ninth and Tenth Similes: Depending All the Way Down to What Depends on Nothing; To Be Accomplished Is Already to Benefit

The ninth simile: the four wheels in mutual dependence. Out of empty space four wheels of wind arise (abiding, constantly abiding, ultimate, and firm), and they uphold the water wheel, and the water wheel upholds the great earth. Hence it is said: the earth wheel depends upon the water wheel, the water wheel upon the wind wheel, the wind wheel upon empty space, and empty space depends upon nothing — and though it depends upon nothing, it can make the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system abide.

The four great wisdom wheels of wind in the joining passage are these: gathering in all beings and making them rejoice, establishing the true Dharma and making beings delight in it, guarding the roots of goodness of beings, and being furnished with all skillful means and penetrating the undefiled realm. Chengguan does not take the old explanation that matches them to the four means of gathering (he says that once so matched they would become a limitation when joined to the appearance of the Tathāgata), and sets up instead an order that follows capacity: for those who have not yet entered faith, they are gathered in by the four means and shown the right principle; for those who have received in faith, the teaching is established for them; for those who have entered the Dharma, they are made to complete the practice; for those who have completed the practice, they are made to gain the fruit. This line fits the order of delivering beings within an appearing better than the four means of gathering.

Further down, the sūtra sets out the whole chain of dependence: great kindness and great compassion depend upon great skillfulness in means, great skillfulness in means depends upon the appearance of the Tathāgata, the appearance of the Tathāgata depends upon the light of unobstructed wisdom, and the light of unobstructed wisdom depends upon nothing. Chengguan joins them one by one: compassion joins the earth (able to bear a heavy load), skillful means joins the water (bending to the vessel), the appearing joins the wind (whose force can uphold), and the unobstructed joins empty space (unobstructed as space is). He notices too that the verses have one tier more than the prose — the verses set all the dharmas of the Buddha before compassion, to be likened to the grove of trees, making five tiers of dependence.

The point is in that last depends upon nothing. Whatever depends upon something can have its support drawn away and be ruined; where nothing is depended upon, there is nothing to draw away. The root of the Buddha-dharma does not stand upon some further thing; it stands upon nothing to stand on — and this is not being left hanging in the air: precisely because it depends upon nothing, it can uphold everything.

The tenth simile closes most plainly: once the world is formed, it benefits beings — those of the waters gain the benefit of water, those of the land gain the benefit of land, those of the palaces gain the benefit of palaces, those of open space gain the benefit of open space. The joining passage: those who see the Buddha and rejoice gain the benefit of joy; those who abide in pure discipline gain the benefit of pure discipline; those who abide in the meditations and the measureless states gain the benefit of the great spiritual penetrations of the noble ones beyond the world; those who abide in the light of the gateway of Dharma gain the benefit of the unruined relation of cause and fruit; those who abide in the light of nothing-whatever gain the benefit of the unruinedness of all dharmas. Chengguan joins them in order: seeing the Buddha and rejoicing is like a fish gaining moisture; discipline is like level ground, from which the ten thousand goods are born; concentration is like a chamber in which one gains rest; wisdom is like empty space, which cannot be ruined. For the last two he further distinguishes the unruined phenomenon and the unruined principle. The founding of a world is itself the benefiting; no further act is needed. So it is with a Buddha’s appearing.

The Concluding Eleven Clauses: Gathering Ten Similes Back into a Single Word, Knows

The ten similes finished, the sūtra concludes with a passage of knowing: the bodhisattva-mahāsattva, knowing the appearance of the Tathāgata, then knows it as measureless, knows it as vast, knows it as neither coming nor going, knows it as without practice and without anything practiced, knows it as without a body, knows it as equal, knows it as inexhaustible, knows it as without retreat, knows it as unruinable, knows it as not two, and knows that all beings gain benefit from it.

Chengguan points out that there are eleven clauses here, one more than the ten gateways, the reason being that the ninth gateway is concluded with two clauses (unruinable, not two). And he matches them back to the ten similes one by one: because the causes are many, there is an appearing; because it is vast, it is hard to receive; because it is without birth, it comes from nowhere; because it is not the mind or consciousness, thinking it through must bring on madness; because it is like space, both delusion and view fall away; because it is equal and without self, it is of one taste; because it is inexhaustible, the vehicles are transformed universally; because there is no cutting off at the later limit, the Buddha-seed is not cut off; without opposite is precisely unobstructed wisdom; the equality of the conditioned and the unconditioned is precisely the gathering of the three wheels back into unobstructed wisdom; and because it was from the first for the sake of beings, benefit is now brought to fullness. He adds a caution as well: to match every clause through to all ten gateways would be to miss the sense — which is a reminder to the reader that a reckoning must be one that holds, and that tidiness must not be mistaken for depth.

Notice that every verb in this passage is knows. The ten similes speak of matters on the Buddha’s side; this passage speaks of matters on the bodhisattva’s side. To know the appearance of the Tathāgata is not to have the ten similes by heart; it is for these eleven kinds of knowing to have taken their stand in the mind.

The Thirty-Seven Stanzas: The Weight of the Verses Falls on Make Your Mind Pure as Empty Space

After the prose come thirty-seven stanzas. Chengguan divides them into three: the first fourteen praise the depth and grant the telling; the middle twenty-two put the ten similes above into verse (the first simile, being general, takes four stanzas, and the remaining nine two each); and the last one stanza concludes that the telling is endless and does not put the foregoing into verse. The part that versifies the ten similes matches the prose position by position, and since the sense has been fully stated in the prose it is not taught again here.

What deserves separate mention is the stanza that admonishes the hearer: if there be one who would know the realm of the Buddhas, let him make his mind pure as empty space, put far from him false imaginings and every grasping, and make all that his mind turns toward unobstructed. Here Chengguan sets down the weightiest stroke in the section. He says the latter two lines display it separately: the first is departing from false grasping, like a pure sky without cloud or film, and this is true stopping; the second is meeting objects without stagnation, like a pure sky without obstruction, and this is true contemplating. And then he brings out what is special about this stopping and contemplating — this contemplating does not stir the intent in order to illumine its object, and so what it illumines has no shore; this stopping is a substance from the first apart, and so it lays false things to rest, and every grasping falls silent. At that point, without wiping and without burnishing it is pure of itself, and purity that is not made pure is already in secret accord with the realm of the Buddhas. Chengguan marks it out himself: this is the heart’s essential, for those who come after to ponder and to practice.

This one stanza is where the ten similes come to ground. Ten similes have gone on at length about how unthinkable a Buddha’s appearing is, and the reader can hardly help asking: then what is there for me to do? The answer is not to think it through; it is to make the mind pure as empty space — not to polish it, but to stop adding to it.

The last stanza closes with great honesty: the dharma of the Tathāgata’s appearing has no bound, and the deluded of the world cannot know it; and it is in order to awaken every kind of conscious being that a simile has been spoken where no simile can be. The ten similes are not there because this matter resembles those things; they are there because it is from the first beyond all likening, and yet people cannot enter except through likeness. If, having read the ten similes, you still feel that it has not been fully said, you have not read carelessly — that is exactly what the sūtra admits of itself.

Lineage

The largest matter of lineage in this section rests on a single rendering of a name. The sixty-fascicle Avataṃsaka calls this chapter the Chapter on the Nature-Arising of the Jewel-King Tathāgata; the eighty-fascicle changes the rendering to the Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata. Throughout the sixty-fascicle text the phrase is the rain of Dharma of the nature-arising of the Tathāgata; throughout the eighty it is the appearance of the Tathāgata. Chengguan, at the outline of the verses, points out where this name comes from: the prose and its ten similes make nature and mark clear together, while the verses speak mostly with regard to nature, and so the old rendering nature-arising has all the more reason behind it. The doctrine of nature-arising, of which the Huayan school later made so much, has its scriptural ground precisely in this section — it is not a separate body of abstruse principle set up alongside, but something grown out of sentences like there is none that makes, and yet the world comes to be accomplished and this is not made by the divine power of the Tathāgata.

Three tracks of the ancient masters run side by side; they are recorded without adjudication. Chengguan follows the eighty-fascicle text, sets up the names of the ten similes passage by passage, and judges that nature and mark are made clear together while the verses speak mostly with regard to nature (the track of following the text). Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle text, judges its verses to be sixty-five and matches the ten similes to ten virtues of the Buddha (the simile of the motes of dust likening the Buddha’s virtue of having no limit, the simile of measuring space likening his virtue of vastness, and so on down to the simile of the bird’s track likening his virtue of substance and function); and he lets a second reading stand alongside, saying that these ten are the verses upon the ten clauses of the concluding passage, except that the ninth gateway instead versifies the seventh clause. Li Tongxuan reads by way of the display of principle through phenomena: he says that these ten stretches of scripture are Samantabhadra’s telling of the realm of the body of the appearance of the Tathāgata and of the dharma of the ten matters that his practice performs, and he takes Mañjuśrī as the gateway in which the wondrous principle of the dharma-body of all Buddhas manifests the fundamental wisdom, and Samantabhadra as the gateway of the differentiating wisdom, the myriad practices, and great compassion, the two dharmas being complete together being what is named one’s own Buddha appearing; and at the end he comes home to what beings already possess — his stanza on the priceless wisdom-pearl within the robe, and the man who for all his long poverty would rather stand outside the gate, brings the sense of the whole chapter back to the reader.

The differences between the two translations are recorded here as well. The eighty-fascicle text sets up its headings by mark (the first mark of the appearing down to the tenth mark), while the sixty sets up its headings by cause and condition (the first and most surpassing gateway of Dharma; the second cause and condition by which right and full awakening is accomplished and there is an arising in the world). In the third name of the fifth simile, the eighty has the stayer and joins it to the staying of the delusions of view, while the sixty has the ruiner and joins it to the ruining of every evil and false view. In the name of the lotus in the eighth simile, the eighty has the jeweled adornment of the merit of the appearance of the Tathāgata and the sixty has the arising of the Tathāgata. The stanzas number thirty-seven in the eighty and sixty-five in the sixty. The two texts differ in what they open out and what they draw together; all is recorded without adjudication.

As for lineage along the line of the treatises, the lack is recorded as it stands: in the treatises examined — the Cheng weishi lun, the She dasheng lun, and the Yogācārabhūmi — no explicit passage was found that attaches to the sense of this section, and nothing from elsewhere is put in its place. What is lacking is simply lacking; and this too is a continuation of the honesty of a simile spoken where no simile can be.

A Question That Looks Simple

Samantabhadra asks one sentence on behalf of the assembly: how should the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas see the body of the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly and Fully Awakened One? The question sounds ordinary, but it is in fact the first of the nine gates of the whole Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata that has to be answered. Chengguan judges this passage to be “the setting forth of the act of body”, and says that the eight gates that follow are all established upon this one; Fazang likewise says that the act of body is set forth first, because the body is the root upon which the rest depend. To put it another way: the speech of the Buddha, the mind of the Buddha, the field of experience of the Buddha, the practice of the Buddha — none of them can be spoken of at all until one is standing on an answer to the question ‘what kind of body is the body of the Buddha?’

And what is that answer? The scripture does not begin with a principle; it begins with a direction: “The bodhisattva-mahāsattvas should see the body of the Tathāgata in measureless places.” — it is in measureless places that he is to be seen. Then, with a sentence put negatively, it blocks off in advance the mistake a reader is likeliest to make: one should not see the Tathāgata in some one dharma, some one thing, some one body, some one land, or some one sentient being. And last it closes affirmatively: “He should see the Tathāgata everywhere, throughout all places.”

There is a misreading here that has to be cleared away first. ‘Everywhere, throughout all places’ sounds as though it were saying that the body of the Buddha is very large — so large that it fills up space. It is not. The very next sentence of the scripture takes that reading apart: space is everywhere because it has no substance. To pervade is not to be great in volume; it is to have no resistance of substance. If this one step is read wrongly, the ten similes that follow will all be read as a display of spiritual powers; read rightly, one can see that the ten similes are all saying one and the same thing.

Chengguan also makes a fine reckoning at this point. The five things raised in the negative sentence — dharma, thing, body, land, sentient being — turned the other way about become five measureless realms: pervading the Dharma realm, pervading the realm of the disciplined, pervading the realm of the applied practice of disciplining, pervading the world-realms, pervading the realm of sentient beings. He deliberately adds a remark: there are only these five realms, and this is not an abbreviation. Fazang, for his part, matches these five dharmas to the ten bodies, and matches those again to the ten gates of the concluding exhortation at the end, and reckons five hundred gates. The same passage of scripture: one man reckons it as five realms, the other as five hundred gates — and this is exactly the family manner of Huayan, in which one stretch of text may be opened out or drawn together.

The First Use of Space: Because It Has No Body, It Reaches Everywhere

The first simile says: space reaches everywhere, to every place of form and to every place that is not form, and yet “neither reaches nor does not reach”. How can it both not count as reaching and not count as failing to reach? The scripture answers itself in one clause: “because space has no body.”

This clause must be read slowly. Chengguan’s way of taking it is this: this single “no body” resolves both of the questions above at once — because it has no body, there is nothing that can be said to have ‘reached’; and just because it has none, there is no place it fails to reach. He also offers a very concrete comparison: if space had a body, that body would be a mass of resistance, and meeting form it would have to obstruct it, as when iron is put into water and the water cannot enter the iron. As it is, space has no body, and so it can enter wholly into form.

Applied to the body of the Buddha, the scripture puts it with the utmost economy: “Because the body of the Tathāgata has no body, he displays a body for the sake of sentient beings.” — first no body, then the displaying. The order cannot be reversed. If one were to speak of the displaying first and then add a remark about there being no body, it would read as though ‘the Buddha has a body of his own and deliberately manifests it’; the order in the scripture is: there is from the first no body of substance, and therefore it can pervade; and since it can pervade, it appears in accordance with sentient beings. Chengguan points out further that what this simile compares is the emptiness of principle, and the emptiness of principle is just the dharma-body — he cites a verse as witness, that the Buddha takes dharma as his body, pure as space. In the sixty-fascicle text on which Fazang comments, the wording here is “the dharma-body of the Tathāgata”, which on the face of it fits this level still more closely.

Where it lands in practice: for anyone who is forever trying to ‘find’ the Buddha in some one image, some one place of practice, some one experience of response, this simile is meant for him. It is not that there is no Buddha in those places; it is that this way of looking has assumed from the very start that the Buddha has a body that can be located.

The Second Use of Space: It Does Not Contend with Form for a Place, and Therefore Can Display All Forms

The second simile looks at the same space from another angle: space is not itself form, and yet it can let all forms appear within it, while space itself “has no discrimination and no frivolous talk”.

Ask first: is being able to make all forms appear a function of space? If it is called a function, does space not then become an agent? The answer of the scripture lies in the clause of application: the body of the Tathāgata, by the universal shining of the light of wisdom, brings to accomplishment all the karma of the roots of goodness of sentient beings, both worldly and world-transcending, while the body of the Tathāgata has no discrimination and no frivolous talk. Why can it be so? Because “from the very beginning every attachment and every frivolous talk has been cut off forever”.

Chengguan gives a matched pair of clauses here that joins the two sides very tightly: space has no discrimination, and yet does not hinder the appearing of forms; wisdom has no discrimination, and yet does not hinder the benefiting of beings. That sentence is worth writing down, because it resolves two common misunderstandings at a single stroke. The first misunderstanding reads “no discrimination” as torpor — as though the Buddha were absorbed in concentration and attending to nothing. The second reads “benefiting beings” as the raising of a thought — as though the Buddha had first to stir a thought before he could rescue anyone. The position of the scripture takes up neither side: it is just because every attachment and frivolous talk has been cut off from the first that he can shine everywhere without tiring; and it is just because he does not direct his attention that what he shines upon has no partiality.

In the sixty-fascicle text on which Fazang comments, what is taken here is that space is “vast in its spread, able to contain all sentient beings and yet without defiling attachment”, and so he calls this the simile of space free of defilement; Chengguan, following the eighty-fascicle text, makes it the simile of space without discrimination. The names of the simile differ because the two translations take different virtues of space — and on this the apparatus layer has its own collation.

The Eight Things at Sunrise, the Ten Things of the Sun of Wisdom

The third simile turns from space to the sun, and the topic turns with it from ‘substance’ to ‘function’. The scripture first counts up the benefits of sunrise to the world: it breaks the darkness and makes light, turns the damp and makes it dry, grows the grasses and trees, ripens the grain and the crops, clears and lights up the open sky, opens the lotus flowers, lets those who travel see the road, lets those who dwell at home get their business done. Eight things, and every one of them something a farming household or a traveler can verify daily. Then it asks: why can the sun do so many things? The answer is only one sentence: “because the disc of the sun sends forth measureless light everywhere.” — it is not that the sun went and did eight things by discriminating among them; it sends forth light, and the eight things accomplish themselves.

Applied to the body of the Buddha, the scripture lists eleven items: extinguishing evil and giving rise to good; breaking through folly and turning it into wisdom; rescuing and protecting with great kindness; delivering with great compassion; increasing the faculties, the powers, and the factors of awakening; giving rise to deep faith and casting off the turbid mind; getting to see and to hear, and not spoiling cause and effect; gaining the divine eye and seeing where beings die and are born; making the mind unobstructed and not spoiling the roots of goodness; making wisdom cultivated bright and opening the flower of awakening; causing them to raise the mind and to accomplish the practice that was theirs from the first. The closing clause is likewise only one sentence: because the sun-body of the vast wisdom of the Tathāgata sends forth measureless light that shines everywhere.

Chengguan matches these ten benefits back to the eight clauses one by one, and matches them very finely. Take two places to see the care he takes. For the third benefit, “rescuing and protecting with great kindness, delivering with great compassion”, what he matches is “turning the damp and making it dry” — drawing out the suffering of the four floods and giving world-transcending joy, and rescuing those of the two vehicles from the suffering of sinking in the water of concentration and giving them the joy of awakening: both are the sense of turning what is damp into what is dry. For the eighth benefit, “making the mind unobstructed and not spoiling the roots of goodness”, he says that one clause serves two purposes: making the mind unobstructed carries on from the clearing of the open sky above, and not spoiling the roots of goodness opens onto the blooming of the lotus below; and he adds an observation as witness — a red lotus that does not meet the light of the sun will assuredly wither and die, while the roots of goodness of the three vehicles, if they meet the sun of wisdom, will not be spoiled. Fazang, on the other hand, does not match them back clause by clause, but sets up ten names of his own for the benefits, counting from the benefit of extinguishing evil and giving rise to good all the way to the benefit of practice accomplished and brought to its end.

Where it lands in practice: this section is teaching something that is not at all recondite — the Buddha’s benefiting of beings is not a checklist of ten items, it is one shining of light. If a person reads practice as a checklist, he will forever be counting how many items he has finished; if he reads this simile through, he knows that what needs to be nourished is that light.

The Shining Is Earlier and Later, and Yet in the Mind There Is No Earlier and Later

The fourth simile is the only one of the ten that carries two successive resolvings of doubt, and it is also the one out of which a prejudice is most easily read.

The scripture says: the sun on rising shines first upon the great mountain kings such as Sumeru, next upon the black mountains, next upon the high plains, and afterwards everywhere upon the great earth. And then at once it stops up a thought: “The sun does not raise a thought: ‘I shall shine here first and there later.’” — “It is only because the mountains and the ground are high and low that the shining is earlier and later.” Applied to the Buddha it is the same: the wheel of wisdom shines first upon the bodhisattvas, next upon the pratyekabuddhas, next upon the śrāvakas, next upon sentient beings whose roots of goodness are settled, and afterwards everywhere upon all, down to those settled in wrongness; and “that great sunlight of the wisdom of the Tathāgata does not raise a thought such as this”.

The first mistake to be cleared away is this: it is not the Buddha lining people up into ranks. The reason for earlier and later is in the height and lowness of the mountains and the ground, not in any partiality of the sun. The second mistake to be cleared away is this: neither may one conclude from it that the Buddha has abandoned what is low. The scripture points out particularly that the shining upon sentient beings settled in wrongness is “so as to make for them the cause and condition of benefit in the future and to bring them to ripening” — the very purpose of that ray which reaches the lowest place is to nourish the lowest place into a place that can receive the light.

Chengguan here matches every level of the vehicle of the simile: the black mountains are matched to the pratyekabuddhas, because they have no light of the emptiness of dharmas and do not bring forth merit; the high plains are matched to the śrāvakas, because the lotus of the Buddha’s Dharma does not grow on high plains; and the single item of the great earth contains all three groups together — the ground where growth is assured is a simile for the group settled in rightness, that which grows only when it meets conditions for the unsettled group, sandy and salty ground for the group settled in wrongness, and Chengguan explains that “yet they are not abandoned either”, so that the three groups are shone upon equally. He also sets up a difficulty and answers it himself: sunlight is only of one kind, while the wisdom of a buddha has a thousand differences — how can the one be taken as a proper simile for the other? He answers: has it not been said already that it is only in accordance with the height and lowness of the mountains and the ground? — from which one sees that what differs is the wisdom of sentient beings, and that the Buddha has no partial wisdom and no several kinds of wisdom. And at the very end he turns up a further layer that repays reading: since the difference is spoken of with respect to capacity, then what shines on the high may not also take in the low, while what shines on the low still shines on the high as well; and if the Buddha were to abandon sentient beings, he ought to abandon the small first and the middling next, so that only the high mountain of the bodhisattvas would be shone upon all day long — and having said this much he does not go on to adjudicate, but leaves two words only: ponder it.

The scripture itself also raises one more simile to close: the sun and the moon appear in their seasons, and the great mountains and the deep valleys are shone upon everywhere with no partiality; the wisdom of the Tathāgata shines everywhere upon all without discrimination, and it is only that “as the faculties and the desires of sentient beings differ, the light of wisdom shows all its various differences”. Chengguan calls this body the body that responds evenly to all, and points out that its ground lies in that clause of the general conclusion at the end — dwelling in the true limit, and therefore impartial and even. The warrant of the evenness lies not in the intent of the Buddha, but in the place where the Buddha dwells.

Those Who Cannot See Are Receiving the Benefit Too

The fifth simile is the longest, because it has to deal with the least willingly borne question of all: what of those who cannot see the Buddha at all?

The scripture first sets up a fact anyone can grasp: one born blind has never seen the sun, and yet is benefited by the sunlight — by it he knows the seasons of day and night, makes use of clothing and food and drink, has his body made fit and is kept from many sicknesses. Then the application: those of the sort “born blind” — without faith, without understanding, breaking the precepts, ruining right view, sustaining life by wrong livelihood — because they have no eye of faith, do not see the sun-disc of the wisdom of the buddhas; and though they do not see it, they are still benefited by the sun of wisdom — by the majestic power of the Buddha all their bodily suffering, their afflictions, and the causes of their suffering in the future are made to be extinguished.

There is an important misreading to be cleared away here: what the scripture says is “no eye of faith”, not “no eye”. One who is blind is not without the qualification to be benefited; he is for the time being without the organ of seeing. Chengguan here gathers the five kinds of person into one general term — all five items are blindness, and the want of faith is the general one, which is why the scripture says “because they have no eye of faith”. He also matches these five to the three offenses of the icchantika as stated in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra: to be without faith and cut off the roots of goodness is to be an icchantika; to be without understanding and to ruin right view is to slander the Mahāyāna Vaipulya scriptures; to break the precepts and live by wrong livelihood is to commit the four grave prohibitions and to do the five heinous acts. And having finished the matching he says a sentence of great weight: these four utmost evils still have the buddha-nature, and so benefit is performed for them too, causing them to leave suffering and its origin behind.

Where it lands in practice: this simile is not a consolation, it is a criterion. It moves the question ‘can the Buddha save me or not’ one step away from ‘do I believe or not’ — belief and unbelief settle whether one sees, they do not settle whether one is benefited. And when benefit has accumulated long enough, the eye opens.

The Thousand Lights and the Four Classes Who Are Benefited

Next the scripture turns to the extended exposition. The Tathāgata has ten kinds of light, each with its name: the gathering together of all merit; shining upon all everywhere; the pure and sovereign shining; sending forth the great and marvelous sound; understanding every language and dharma-formula and making others rejoice; displaying the sovereign field of experience in which every doubt is cut off forever; the sovereign shining everywhere of the wisdom that does not abide; the sovereign wisdom that cuts off every frivolous talk forever; sending forth marvelous sounds according to what is fitting; sending forth pure and sovereign sound that adorns the lands and ripens sentient beings. And “from every single pore of the Tathāgata there are sent forth a thousand lights such as these”, five hundred shining everywhere below and five hundred above.

Ask first: why are the ten names these ten? Chengguan gives a matching: the first three complete two of the clauses within the wisdom of the two adornments, the one shining upon phenomena and the other illumining pure principle; the middle three complete the three wisdoms, the first two completing the wisdom of hearing and the last the wisdom of reflecting and of cultivating; and the last four are matched to the four wisdoms — the shining everywhere without abiding is the great perfect mirror wisdom, the cutting off of frivolous talk is the wisdom of the equal nature, the expounding in accordance with what is fitting is the wisdom of marvelous observation, and the adorning of lands and transforming of beings is the wisdom of accomplishing what is to be done. As for the number ‘a thousand’, he says it very plainly: because the sun has a thousand rays, the conclusion comes out as a thousand, though in truth they are numberless. The five hundred above and the five hundred below he matches to the practice of one’s own portion and the practice of advancement in the five positions.

Ask next: who are the ones benefited? The scripture lists four classes. The bodhisattvas, seeing the light, all at once attain the state of a Tathāgata, ten heads and ten eyes down to ten grounds and ten wisdoms all made pure, and the various points of entry and positions they had accomplished before become purer still, all their roots of goodness ripen and they head toward omniscience. Those who abide in the two vehicles have every defilement extinguished. The remaining portion of sentient beings born blind gain ease in body and purity in mind, become pliant and disciplined, and are fit to cultivate mindfulness and wisdom. And the sentient beings in the destinies of the hells, the hungry ghosts, and the animals all gain ease, are freed from every kind of suffering, and when their lives end are born among the gods and among human beings. Chengguan divides these four classes as the benefiting of the bodhisattvas, of the two vehicles, of those born blind, and of the evil destinies, and says that the benefiting of bodhisattvas is itself of two kinds — for those of round capacity, the sudden realization of the state of a buddha; for those of provisional capacity, being ripened so that the provisional gives way to the real.

Where it lands in practice: this section is teaching that ‘one and the same ray of light benefits shallowly and deeply’. From the same light, the bodhisattvas gain a state, those of the two vehicles the extinction of defilement, those born blind ease of body and purity of mind, and those in the evil destinies release from suffering and birth in the heavens. The light has no grades in it; it is the places where people stand that are shallow and deep.

Those Who Mistake Themselves for Brahmā

After the sentient beings of the evil destinies end their lives and are born in the heavens, there comes the most dramatic section of the whole passage: they “do not perceive and do not know by what cause and condition, by what spiritual power, they have come to be born here”, and so those who had been born blind raise a thought: I am Brahmā! I am produced by Brahmā!

This is an exceedingly accurate observation: when a person receives a benefit and does not know where it came from, he will make up an origin for himself, and what he makes up is usually something that raises him higher. What the scripture does next is equally careful — the Tathāgata, dwelling in the samādhi of universal freedom, sends forth sixty kinds of marvelous sound and tells them: “You are not Brahmā, nor are you produced by Brahmā, nor is this the work of Śakra or of the World-Protectors; all of this is the majestic spiritual power of the Tathāgata.” First he denies the three wrong origins, and then he states the true one. Chengguan outlines this passage in six sections: drawing out suffering and giving joy; wrong views arising from the cause; the kindly sound showing what is right; turning from the wrong and repaying the kindness; the Buddha conferring the prediction; the conclusion on the benefit of the light — the wrong view is not rebuked, it is corrected.

When the sentient beings have heard, by the spiritual power of the Buddha they all come to know their former lives, and great joy arises; and because of the joy there well up of themselves clouds of udumbara flowers, clouds of incense, clouds of music, and so on down to clouds of every kind of adornment, and with minds of reverence they all make offerings to the Tathāgata. The scripture asks why, and answers: because these sentient beings have gained the pure eye — whereupon the Tathāgata confers on them the prediction of unsurpassed perfect awakening. From being born blind to the pure eye, from mistaking oneself for Brahmā to receiving the Buddha’s prediction, what lies between is only one true statement.

Where it lands in practice: what this section speaks of is the weight of the matter of ‘mistaking where something came from’. Those who practice often fall into the same illness, only under other names — reading the sustaining power of the Buddha as one’s own natural gifts, reading the coming together of many conditions as the sufficiency of one’s own effort. The remedy in the scripture is not self-reproach; it is the joy that arises once one has been told the truth.

The Four Marvels of the Moon

The sixth simile uses the moon. The moon has four marvelous and unprecedented properties: it outshines the light of all the constellations; it displays waning and waxing in accordance with the seasons; in the clear water of Jambudvīpa there is nowhere its reflection does not appear; and all who see it feel that it faces them directly — while this moon-disc “has no discrimination and no frivolous talk”.

Applied to the body of the Buddha, there are likewise four: it outshines all the śrāvakas, the pratyekabuddhas, and the assemblies of the learners and of those beyond learning; “in accordance with what is fitting for them he displays a life-span now long and now short, while the body of the Tathāgata neither increases nor decreases”; “in the vessel for awakening of sentient beings of pure mind in every world there is nowhere its reflection does not appear”; and all who gaze upon him and face him say that the Tathāgata appears before themselves alone.

Of these four, the ones most to be attended to are the second and the third. The second says that the length or shortness of the Buddha’s life-span is a display, not any real increase or decrease in the body of the Buddha — and if this is read wrongly, one will read nirvāṇa as the disappearance of the Buddha. The third supplies a condition: the reflection appears “in the vessel for awakening of sentient beings of pure mind”. Chengguan explains this clause very beautifully: what one who is fit to receive awakening sees is the mind-made body, and if the ocean of the mind is clear and deluded thoughts are wholly quieted, then he truly sees the Buddha. He assigns to this body the name of round return and even abiding, saying that it abides evenly in the three times without increase or decrease. Fazang here preserves both an ancient and a present explanation: the ancients said that because the ocean of the mind is clear and free of deluded thoughts the reflection of the Buddha appears; and he himself adds one more — the vessel for awakening is the vessel in which awakening is accomplished. The two explanations stand side by side, with no adjudication of which is higher.

Where it lands in practice: if the water is not clear there is no reflection, and yet the moon has never failed to shine. Before complaining that one cannot see the Buddha, ask first whether the water is still — this is the plainest sentence this simile has for a reader.

The Brahmā King Does Not Divide His Body

The seventh simile is the shortest, and yet it supplies a corner that had not been spoken of before. The great Brahmā king of a three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system, by a very slight application of means, makes his body appear everywhere throughout the great-thousand world-system, and all sentient beings see the Brahmā king appearing before themselves, while the Brahmā king “neither divides his body nor has bodies of various kinds”. Applied to the Buddha: the buddhas, the tathāgatas, likewise have no discrimination and no frivolous talk, do not divide their body and have no bodies of various kinds, and yet display their body according to what the minds of all sentient beings delight in, and do not raise the thought ‘I have displayed so many bodies’.

The mistake to be cleared away is this: appearing everywhere is not the same as dividing the body. Dividing the body presupposes an original whole that gets divided up, and on that presupposition the body of the Buddha would become something that can be added to and subtracted from. The scripture uses the Brahmā king as its simile precisely because the universal appearing of the Brahmā king’s body is a matter known to gods and human beings alike, and can be used to show that ‘appearing in one place and being seen in every place’ does not have to rely on any cutting up. Chengguan therefore calls this body the body that responds universally without mind — the body is not divided, and yet it pervades. The name Fazang sets up is the body in which one and many are unobstructed, and he says likewise that there is no raising of any thought in the matter.

This simile answers at a distance to the first: the first says that because there is no body it pervades; this one says that without dividing the body it pervades. The one speaks from the side of substance, the other from the side of characteristics, and only taken together do they leave no room for anything else.

The King of Physicians Goes On Healing After His Death

The eighth simile is the strangest of the ten. A king among physicians knows well the many medicines and the treatises on spells; of all the medicines in Jambudvīpa there is none he cannot use; and further, taking as his means the power of the roots of goodness of former lives and the power of the great luminous spell, when sentient beings do no more than see him there is no sickness that is not healed. Knowing that his life is about to end, he thinks: after my life ends, all sentient beings will have nothing to rely on; I ought to display a means for them. And so “the king of physicians compounded a medicine and smeared it on his body, and by the power of a luminous spell sustained it”, so that after his life ended his body did not disperse, did not wither and did not dry, and his bearing, his seeing and hearing were no different from before, and whatever he treated was healed.

What this simile has to resolve is the question of what follows the Buddha’s passing into nirvāṇa. The clause of application puts it very finely: the Tathāgata, this unsurpassed king of physicians, through measureless hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of kalpas has refined and prepared the medicine of Dharma and brought it to accomplishment, and has reached the far shore in the study and cultivation of every skillfulness in means and of the power of the great luminous spell; he is well able to extinguish the sickness of the afflictions of all sentient beings and to sustain his life-span; and through measureless kalpas his body is pure, without deliberation and without contrived activity, while not one of the deeds of a buddha has ever rested, and in those sentient beings who see him the sickness of the afflictions is extinguished.

Chengguan calls this body the body that reaches to the very end of the future, and points out that the reason the clause of application does not again speak of the medicine and the spell being able to sustain it is that the spell and the medicine spoken of earlier have already sustained it for many kalpas. Fazang divides the clause of application into three sections: reaching the far shore properly matches the ending of the life, for since birth and death are forever exhausted it says ‘reaching the shore’; the clauses about being well learned and the rest match the smearing of the medicine and the sustaining by the spell, causing transformation to arise wherever there is need and the sustaining not to cease; and the last matches the fact that, though there is no thought, he possesses the four postures and heals the many sicknesses.

Where it lands in practice: what this simile answers is ‘what are we to do now that the Buddha is gone’. The answer is not the consoling ‘the Buddha is always in your heart’, but a structural one — the reason the deeds of a buddha do not cease is that they have never depended on the Buddha’s stirring a thought to keep them going. No deliberation, no contrived activity, and yet the deeds of a buddha do not rest: this is exactly that ‘no discrimination, and yet the benefit is brought to its very end’ which the ten similes have been speaking of all the way to this point.

Whatever Touches the Light Becomes One and the Same Color

The ninth simile uses the great maṇi jewel in the ocean, named the Vairocana treasury that gathers all light. If there are sentient beings who touch its light they all become of its color; if anyone sees it his eyes are made pure; and wherever the light shines it rains down maṇi jewels named ease, causing sentient beings to leave suffering and be made fit.

Applied to the body of the Buddha: the body of the tathāgatas is a great heap of jewels, the great treasury of wisdom of all merit; “if there are sentient beings who touch the wisdom-light of the jewel that is the body of the Buddha, they take on the color of the body of the Buddha”, those who see it have the dharma-eye made pure, and it “causes sentient beings to leave the suffering of poverty behind, and even to be complete in the joy of the awakening of a buddha”. The closing clause is still the same old sentence: the dharma-body of the Tathāgata has no discrimination and no frivolous talk, and yet can perform the great deeds of a buddha universally for all sentient beings.

The words “of one and the same color with it” are the eye of this simile. What they say is not resemblance but sameness — the one touched by the light is of one color with the jewel, and the one touched by the light of the Buddha’s wisdom is of one color with the body of the Buddha. This is the first time in the ten similes that it is said squarely that there can be no distance between sentient beings and the Buddha, and the manner of saying it is exceedingly reserved: it does not say that you have become a buddha, it says that the light has fallen upon you, and you are that color. Chengguan calls this body the body that adorns the lands and benefits beings, saying that to rain down jewels and benefit the poor is just the sense of adorning the lands. Fazang names it the body that accomplishes benefit by substance and function, and divides it into substance and function: merit and wisdom are the substance, and because they can bring forth they are called a treasury, which properly matches the maṇi treasury that can bring forth the many jewels; and the section on the function of the light is divided into three — first causing the followers of other paths to abandon the wrong and take on the right color, next the accomplishing of the pure cause, and last the gaining of the fruit of joy.

When One Cannot See, Where Does the Fault Lie

The tenth simile uses the great wish-granting maṇi jewel-king named the treasury that adorns every world, complete in a million merits, which wherever it abides causes the calamities of sentient beings to be removed and their wishes to be fulfilled — and then adds a clause: this jewel-king is not what sentient beings of scant merit are able to see.

Applied to the body of the Buddha: this wish-granting jewel-king that is the body of the Tathāgata is named able to cause all sentient beings to rejoice, and those who see his body, hear his name, or praise his virtue all leave forever the suffering and trouble of birth and death; and if all sentient beings in all worlds should at one time single-mindedly wish to see the Tathāgata, they are all made to see him and their wishes are all fulfilled. Yet immediately afterwards it says: “The body of the Buddha is not what sentient beings of scant merit are able to see, save only for those whom the Tathāgata by his sovereign spiritual power is to discipline” — if there are sentient beings who plant roots of goodness because they have seen the body of the Buddha, and whose roots ripen in the end, it is for the sake of bringing them to ripening that they are made to see him.

There is an evident tension here: the earlier sentence says that all sentient beings who wish to see him at one time can see him, while the later sentence says that sentient beings of scant merit cannot see him. It is out of just this tension that Chengguan reads two successive resolvings of doubt: the first doubt is that if all who think of him see him, why is he not seen now — hence it says that those of little merit do not see him; the second doubt is that there are also poor and lowly people of scant merit who do get to see him, and how is this to be accounted for — hence it says, save for those who can be disciplined. With two questions and two answers laid one on the other, the passage no longer contradicts itself: whether one can see is not a single rule, it is a matter of both sides at once, the capacity and the power of the Buddha.

As for which side the responsibility falls on, the scripture itself gives the last word in the verses of repetition: “Sentient beings without faith do not see the Buddha, but it is not that the mind of the Well-Gone One has cast them away.” Not seeing is not the Buddha having dropped anyone. That line is the gentlest close of the whole passage, and also the one that leaves the least room for anything else.

The General Conclusion in Ten Clauses: Each of the Ten Bodies Has Its Own Reason

At the end of the prose, ten clauses conclude the whole: because the mind is measureless and pervades the ten directions; because what he practices is unobstructed as space; because he enters everywhere into the Dharma realm; because he dwells in the true limit; because he neither arises nor ceases; because he dwells evenly in the three times; because he leaves every discrimination behind forever; because he dwells in the vow that reaches to the very end of the future; because he purifies and adorns every world; because he adorns every single buddha-body.

Chengguan says it plainly: these ten clauses conclude the preceding ten bodies in order. So these are not ten clauses of praise, they are ten ‘reasons why’ — the pervading of the first simile has its reason in the mind being measureless and pervading the ten directions; the freedom from attachment of the second has its reason in what he practices being unobstructed as space; the evenness of the fourth has its reason in dwelling in the true limit; the even abiding of the sixth has its reason in abiding evenly in the three times. Only here does the whole passage close: the ten similes before gave ten visible characteristics, and these ten clauses give ten invisible grounds. In reading Huayan one often meets a difficulty, namely that the similes are so beautiful and the line of reasoning so hidden; this section sets out the line of reasoning once and for all, and it is just the moment to go back and read the ten similes again.

The Twenty Verses of Repetition: They Do Not Teach Again, They Only Match

When the prose is finished, Samantabhadra proclaims twenty verses over again. A rule of reading has to be set up first: what the prose has already taught, the verses only match and do not teach again; what the verses alone contain is what has to be taken in separately.

The matching part is easy to recognize. The verse on space pervading the ten directions matches the first simile, and adds a line, “he cannot be seen and cannot be grasped; it is to transform sentient beings that he shows a form”; the verse on space not being graspable matches the second simile; the verse on the sun rising over Jambudvīpa matches the third; “it is like the time when the light of the sun appears: it shines first on the mountain king, next on the other mountains” and “so it is with the light of the Well-Gone One: it shines first on the bodhisattvas, next on the pratyekabuddhas” match the fourth; “it is like one born blind who does not see the sun, and yet the sunlight brings him benefit still” matches the fifth; the pure moon in the sky and “so it is with the pure moon that is the Tathāgata: it can eclipse the other vehicles and display a life-span long or short” match the sixth; “it is like a Brahmā king dwelling in his own palace, who appears everywhere in the places of all the Brahmās of the three-thousandfold world” matches the seventh; “though his life is already ended, the medicine is smeared on his body, and it causes his work to be done just as at first” matches the eighth; “it is like the jewel-king in the ocean, which sends forth measureless lights everywhere” matches the ninth; and “it is like the wish-granting maṇi jewel, which fulfills whatever is sought of it” together with “sentient beings of scant merit cannot see it, and it is not that the jewel-king has any discrimination” match the tenth.

There are three places where what the verses alone contain is worth pausing over. First, where the prose in the second simile says only that the karma of the roots of goodness of sentient beings is brought to accomplishment, the verses set up a name outright: “so it is with the act of body of the buddhas: it causes the host of beings everywhere to cultivate good dharmas” — once the words ‘act of body’ appear, the place of this whole passage within the chapter marks itself out, answering exactly to the outline under which Chengguan and Fazang both judge this passage to be the act of body. Second, where the prose in the ninth simile says “the dharma-eye becomes pure”, the verses open this into five: “whoever gets to see them has the five eyes opened, breaks through all the darkness of dust, and dwells on the ground of a buddha” — opening one eye into five is a way of spreading out the levels of the benefit. Third, the last verse turns the prose’s “not what sentient beings of little merit are able to see” into “it is not that the mind of the Well-Gone One has cast them away” — the prose states the condition from the side of sentient beings, the verses cut off the doubt from the side of the Buddha. The same matter, spoken once in each direction, and only then is that little grievance in a reader’s heart truly set down.

Chengguan reckons these verses as twenty. In the sixty-fascicle text on which Fazang comments the number of verses and the form of the lines are both different; that is a difference of translations, and the apparatus layer has its own collation of it.

Lineage

Of the ten bodies in this passage, Chengguan judges that they are just the ten bodies spoken of in the eighth ground, the Immovable Ground, of the Chapter on the Ten Grounds, only in a different order — he matches the body that pervades the ten directions down to the body of excellent marks fulfilling wishes one by one to the dharma-body, the wisdom body, the body of majestic power, the body of awakening, the body of adornment, the mind-made body, the emanation body, the body of sustaining power, the body of merit, and the vow body, and explains the reason for two of them: the reason the fourth is the body of awakening is that on first accomplishing the path he shines first upon them; the reason the fifth is the body of adornment is that every single pore is adorned with the light of the secondary signs. For the Huayan school’s teaching of the ten bodies of a buddha, the scriptural ground lies in one place in the eighth ground of the Chapter on the Ten Grounds and in another in the ten similes of this passage, and the two places attest one another.

As for the names of the ten bodies, the two houses differ entirely. Chengguan has the body that pervades the ten directions, the body without attachment and without obstruction, the body that enters everywhere and accomplishes benefit, the body that responds evenly to all, the body that benefits in hiding without arising, the body of round return and even abiding, the body that responds universally without mind, the body that reaches to the very end of the future, the body that adorns the lands and benefits beings, and the body of excellent marks fulfilling wishes; Fazang has the body that is boundless and universal, the body that pervades everywhere without attachment, the body of great function accomplishing benefit, the body that responds evenly to the capacity, the body of hidden light and secret function, the body of round return and self-mastery, the body in which one and many are unobstructed, the body that accomplishes deeds without thought, the body that benefits beings by substance and function, and the body that fulfills wishes in accordance with thought. The names correspond while the wording is wholly different, each following the text he comments upon; recorded without adjudication. So too with the names of the ten benefits: Chengguan sets up no separate names but matches them one by one back to the preceding eight clauses, while Fazang sets up ten names of his own from the benefit of extinguishing evil and giving rise to good to the benefit of practice accomplished and brought to its end. So too with the reckoning of the number of gates: Chengguan sets up five measureless realms and sets up no number of gates, while Fazang sets up five hundred gates. So too with the reckoning of the number of verses: Chengguan twenty verses, Fazang forty-two — because the texts they rely on differ. All of the above divergences are the settled sayings of the ancient worthies, and are recorded together without adjudication.

For this chapter Li Tongxuan gives only a general account of the ten senses and the ten similes, saying that each of the ten measureless dharmas of the appearance of the Tathāgata has ten similes and that the scripture sets them forth in full, and then passes straight on to the section on entrusting and circulation, without treating the nine gates such as the act of body one by one. For this passage there is therefore no phrase-by-phrase explanation of his that can be attested; the lacuna is recorded as it stands, and nothing from elsewhere is used to fill it.

In the fifth simile, in the passage on those born blind, the sections on the light benefiting the evil destinies, on the ending of life and birth in the heavens, and on the Buddha conferring the prediction are noted by Chengguan as being for the most part the same as in the Chapter on the Merit of the Light of the Secondary Signs of the Tathāgata — the two chapters may be read alongside each other. And since this passage is the first of the nine gates of the arising from the nature and that on which the eight that follow depend, The Speech of the Appearance which comes next, and the gates after it, all have to come back to the ‘no discrimination, and yet the benefit is brought to its very end’ that is established here before they can be read through.

Why Ask ‘How Should One Know the Voice of the Tathāgata’

The appearance of the Tathāgata has ten senses; the sense before this one spoke of the body, and this one speaks of the speech. Fazang points out the reason for this order very plainly: “Earlier the body is set forth, next the speech; earlier form, next sound — because such is the order of the sense.” What the eye faces is form, what the ear faces is sound; first the visible body of the Buddha is spoken of, and then the audible voice of the Buddha.

But Samantabhadra does not open with a description. He opens with a question: “Sons of the Buddha! How should a bodhisattva-mahāsattva go about knowing the voice of the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One?” — the question is not ‘is the Buddha’s voice pleasant’ but ‘how are you to know it?’ This one question moves the reader out of the seat of the listener and into the seat of the observer. For the Buddha’s voice is not an object that the ear-consciousness could ever finish taking in: that sentence a sentient being hears is brought about jointly by his own faculties, his own vessel, his own wishes and delights, and the power of the Buddha’s dharma of merit. So the sūtra’s answer walks along both sides from beginning to end: on one side, ‘it reaches everywhere, it makes everyone rejoice’; on the other, ‘it has no master, it does not come forth from the body, it cannot be told.’ To hold both sides in view at once — that is what is called knowing the voice of the Tathāgata.

The First of the Ten Voices · Reaching Everywhere: Why One Sound Can Pervade

The first clause says, “the voice of the Tathāgata reaches everywhere, because it universally embraces measureless sounds of every kind.” A misunderstanding easily arises here: that “reaching everywhere” means the Buddha’s voice is very loud and carries very far. But the reason the sūtra itself gives is not volume; it is “universally embracing measureless sounds” — it contains within it measureless kinds of sound, and therefore beings of every class, human and divine, ghost and animal, each hear the speech of their own kind. Chengguan sets up two senses in explaining this clause: “First, taken with respect to the breadth of the substance: there is no sound it does not reach, and so it is said to embrace universally measureless sounds; and thus the myriad classes, human, divine, and the rest, hear alike”; “Second, each and every one of the foregoing sounds is itself able to pervade alone, as Maudgalyāyana could not find the far edge of it.” The former is pervasion in the whole; the latter goes one step further: it is not that the ten classes of sound added together pervade, but that any one of them by itself pervades. Chengguan further points out that this is what is called the sound that accords with each class. Brought down to the reading of the sūtra: do not read “pervasion” as a spatial notion; read it as ‘not one kind of capacity is left outside.’

The Second of the Ten Voices · According with What the Mind Delights In: The Dharma Is Expounded Clearly, and Therefore There Is Rejoicing

“It accords with what their minds delight in and makes them all rejoice, because it expounds the Dharma clearly.” The question to ask is: where does the rejoicing come from? The reason the sūtra gives is not that the Buddha coaxes people into being pleased; it is “expounds the Dharma clearly” — the Dharma is set out plainly, and those who hear it naturally rejoice. This clause rules out a common misreading: that to accord with sentient beings means to accommodate sentient beings. What is accorded with is “what their minds delight in” (what they like to hear, what they are concerned about); what is handed over is still the Dharma itself, and precisely because it is handed over plainly, rejoicing is born. Chengguan calls this the sound that accords with wish and delight, and says, “taking up any one class of sound, it is able, according to their wishes and delights, to expound dharmas of every kind” — first the sound is given forth according to class, then within that same class of sound dharmas of every kind are expounded according to their delight: a twofold according. He cites an earlier passage of this sūtra as attestation: “Within a single utterance the Tathāgata expounds an ocean of sūtras without bound,” and again: “With one wondrous sound the Buddha is heard throughout the lands of the ten directions. The manifold sounds are all complete in it, and the rain of Dharma fills them all.”

The Third of the Ten Voices · According with Faith and Understanding: One Sound Expounds, and Each Understands According to His Own

“It accords with their faith and understanding and makes them all rejoice, because their minds attain coolness.” Where does this differ from the clause before? The former accorded with “delight”; this one accords with “faith and understanding” — the depth or shallowness of the power to understand. In one and the same preaching, great capacities receive greatly and small capacities receive in small measure; what each understands differs, and each gains his own use of it. Chengguan says it flatly: “That is, within what has been expounded above, in the expounding of any one dharma, great and small each hear their own; hence it is said, according with their faith and understanding.” And he cites the Ratnakūṭa as attestation: “The Buddha with one sound expounds the Dharma, and sentient beings each understand according to their own.” The fruit of this clause is “their minds attain coolness” — what coolness counters is feverish distress; which is to say, understanding is itself a kind of quieting. This clause is often quoted as the standard sentence for the sense of the perfect sound, but note where it stands in the sūtra: it is only one of the ten voices, not the whole of them.

The Fourth of the Ten Voices · Never Missing the Season in Transforming Beings: No One Who Ought to Hear Fails to Hear

“It never misses the season in teaching and transforming, because there is no one who ought to hear it who fails to hear it.” The weight of this sentence falls on “season.” The delivering of sentient beings has its seasons: speak too early and there is alarm, too late and the opportunity has passed. The sūtra does not say that the Buddha can calculate the right moment; it says “there is no one who ought to hear it who fails to hear it” — of all who at this moment ought to hear, not one is left out. This shows the unerringness of the Buddha’s wisdom from the side of the result. Chengguan names it the sound that accords with the season, and says, “that is, of the great and small dharmas above, whether they hear or do not hear, all is in his sovereignty” — hearing and not hearing are alike within the Buddha’s sovereign freedom; not hearing is not a failure, it is that the season has not come. He adds a further layer: “it also takes in the difference between gladness and sorrow in hearing one and the same dharma,” citing the line from the Ratnakūṭa, “Some are afraid and some rejoice,” as attestation.

The Fifth of the Ten Voices · Neither Arising nor Ceasing: Because It Is Like an Echo

“It neither arises nor ceases, because it is like an echo.” This is the first use of a simile among the ten voices, and it is the forerunner of the second simile that comes later. Why is it said to have no arising or ceasing? Because the echo is not a thing that was already stored up inside the valley, nor is it the shout that ran into the valley and turned into something else; where the conditions are complete it is there, where they scatter it is not; to call it arising will not do, and to call it ceasing will not do either. Chengguan explains this clause as “outwardly it answers as conditions strike, while in itself there is no arising or ceasing” — someone comes and strikes from outside, and this side answers; it answers, and yet there has never been an “I” that arose. This clause first loosens the intuition that ‘the Buddha is talking’: it is not that the Buddha stirred a thought and decided to open his mouth, but that where capacity and response meet, a sound is there of itself.

The Sixth of the Ten Voices · Without a Master: Because It Arises from the Cultivation of All Deeds

“It has no master, because it arises from the cultivation of all deeds.” “No master” means there is no one presiding behind it, working it. The reason the sūtra gives repays close attention: it does not say that the voice is there out of nothing, but that it “arises from the cultivation of all deeds” — it is the fruit brought to completion by cultivation over measureless kalpas, the gathering of manifold conditions. Chengguan’s comment on this is of the utmost brevity: “Inwardly it is formed by the gathering of conditions; how should there be one presiding?” A thing formed by the gathering of manifold conditions has no owner in whom all the conditions could be summed up. This clause rules out two misunderstandings: first, that the Buddha’s voice is the Buddha’s self-expression (having a master); second, that the Buddha’s voice appears without a cause (without a cause). It is neither mastered nor uncaused — it is what the cultivated causes call forth, and it has no master. And this is exactly the sense that the first simile is going to set out at length.

The Seventh of the Ten Voices · Exceedingly Profound: Neither Side, One or Many, Can Be Made to Stand

“It is exceedingly profound, because it is hard to fathom.” This clause carries the heaviest doctrinal weight among the ten voices. Chengguan’s comment takes “exceedingly profound” apart into a dilemma: “If you would call it one, then to the myriad classes it answers differently; if you would call it different, then in substance it is one and without arising.” Say it is a single sound — yet what the myriad classes hear is not the same; say it is many sounds — yet in substance there is no arising and no duality. He takes it apart once more from another angle: “If you would call it one, within any one sound it is able to contain many sounds,” citing the line, “The dharma of the speech of all sentient beings — in a single utterance he expounds them all with nothing left over”; “if you would call it different, those many sounds above serve only to make one thing heard,” citing the simile from further on in this chapter, “It is like the heavenly drum giving forth sounds of every kind, while the slothful gods hear only the sound of impermanence that awakens them.” Neither side, one or many, can be made to stand, and so it is called exceedingly profound. Note here: exceedingly profound does not mean ‘very hard to understand’; it means ‘the frame of one-and-many does not apply at all.’

The Eighth Through Tenth of the Ten Voices · Nothing Crooked · Never Cut Off · Not Altering

For the last three clauses the sūtra gives one reason each, and Chengguan judges each with a single phrase. “Nothing crooked in it, because it is born of the Dharma realm” — Chengguan makes this “purely answering to the Dharma realm”: what is born of the Dharma realm will of course not be crooked. Crookedness means a way of expounding that does not answer to the nature of things; and since the Buddha’s voice is born of the Dharma realm, what comes out of it is the very look of the Dharma realm itself. “Never cut off, because it enters universally into the Dharma realm” — Chengguan makes this “crosswise it enters, and is not cut off”: crosswise pervasion is that there is not one place it fails to enter, and therefore there is not one moment at which it breaks off; the transforming is unbroken precisely because what it enters has nothing outside it. “Not altering, because it reaches to the ultimate” — Chengguan makes this “lengthwise it comes home to the one utmost”: lengthwise penetration is going straight through from beginning to end to the ultimate, without turning bad along the way.

For these ten voices Chengguan has one overall division: “The first four are mostly taken with respect to the function that is the substance itself; this is the sense of the perfect sound. The latter six are mostly taken with respect to the substance that is the function itself; this reveals the sense of the one sound.” The first four clauses speak of how this voice puts forth its function (pervading, according with delight, according with understanding, according with the season); the latter six speak of the substance of the voice that puts forth function (no arising or ceasing, no master, exceedingly profound, answering to the Dharma realm, uncut, coming home to the utmost). At the end he joins them in a single sentence: “These ten are perfectly interfused and of one taste; this is the Tathāgata’s perfect sound.”

The Threefold Double Negation: Why It All Has to Be Taken Back

The ten voices having been spoken, the sūtra abruptly turns: “One should know that the voice of the Tathāgata is not measured, nor measureless; not with a master, nor without a master; not showing, nor without showing.” It has just said reaching everywhere, and no master — why now deny them together?

This is the barring of clinging. The preceding ten clauses were affirmative and are easily grasped as fixed marks: hearing “measureless” one pictures an infinitely large thing; hearing “no master” one pictures that there is nothing at all. Hence the double negation. Chengguan’s explanation is matched clause for clause with great neatness: “Because no one can exhaust its far edge, it is not measured; because according to capacity and season some hear and some do not, it is not measureless; because it is the gathering of many conditions, there is no master; because it is born purely of the one Dharma realm, it is not without a master; because in its very substance there is no arising, there is nothing that shows; because it skillfully reveals the meaning and principle, it is not without showing.” Notice that in each pair he gives a reason on the affirmative and a reason on the negative — this is not vagueness; it is that each side has its own good reason, and therefore neither side may be taken alone. Chengguan says the purpose of doing so is “to reveal the middle way.”

One misunderstanding must be ruled out: the double negation is not agnosticism. The sūtra goes straight on to set the matter out perfectly clearly by means of ten similes. What the double negation denies is the fixed mark of the concept; it does not deny that the thing can be understood.

The Four Clauses on Substance and Function: Pervading Equally Without Spoiling the Tune

Beneath the double negation Chengguan further sets up four clauses making clear the unobstructedness of substance and function, and this is the passage in this unit where the eye of the Huayan house is most on display. The first clause, “taking function as following from substance”: because the substance is everywhere without exception, therefore all ten classes of sound above are able to pervade everything, “not only pervading sound, but pervading all times and places, sentient beings, tathāgatas, the Dharma realm, and the rest,” and moreover “though it pervades form and the rest alike, it is never jumbled.” The second clause, “taking substance as following from function”: “each and every sound wholly contains the true nature.” The third clause, “function is substance”: the ten classes of sound are all unobtainable, only the highest truth remains, and therefore “the conch of the Dharma sounds unceasingly, and the wondrous sound is constantly still.” The fourth clause, “substance is function”: still, and yet forever proclaiming — “like the heavenly drum that has no mind and yet answers all, like the long wind that follows the hollows and blows in ten thousand ways.”

Of the four clauses, the most essential thing is the definition he gives of the perfect sound: “If it does not pervade equally, then the sound is not perfect; if by pervading equally it loses the tune of the sound, then the perfect is not sound. Now, pervading equally without spoiling the tune, differing in melody without stirring from pervasion — this is what makes the perfect sound.” Not pervading, it is not perfect; but if for the sake of pervading the tune of the sound is flattened out, then it has become perfect and ceased to be sound. Both pervading and still each having its own tune — this is the perfect sound. From this Chengguan refutes two old readings: “So it is that the opinion that there is no sound and an echo issues as it is struck, and the opinion that there is only a single straight sound with no difference of scale or key, are alike a single mote of the great earth.”

The First Simile · The Sounds Uttered at the Kalpa’s Dissolution: How Can a Masterless Sound Deliver Anyone

For the common pattern of the ten similes, Chengguan says: “each section has three, namely the simile, the matching, and the conclusion” — first the simile is set up, then it is matched to the Dharma, then the name is concluded. The first simile takes the four sounds that come forth of themselves by the nature of things when the world is about to be destroyed: they utter the ease of the first dhyāna, the ease of the second dhyāna, the ease of the third dhyāna, the stillness of the fourth dhyāna; and sentient beings, having heard, cast off in order the body of the realm of desire and are born in the Brahmā heaven, cast off the body of the Brahmā heaven and are born in the Radiant Sound heaven, cast off the Radiant Sound body and are born in the Universally Pure heaven, cast off the Universally Pure body and are born in the Vast Fruit heaven. The sūtra makes a point of noting that “these sounds have no one directing them and no one making them; they are born solely out of the power of the manifold good deeds of sentient beings.”

Here one must ask: if there is no one directing and no one making, how does it happen to utter exactly the sequence of the four dhyānas? Chengguan’s answer is that these four sounds are not simultaneous: “The first two are the fire kalpa, when the realm of desire and the first dhyāna are about to be destroyed; the third is the water disaster, when the second dhyāna is destroyed; the fourth is the wind disaster, when the third dhyāna is about to be destroyed” — as the three disasters destroy in sequence up to a given point, the sound answers by arising accordingly. Hence “the four sounds are each distinct, and therefore they are not without arising; but they arise from conditions, and therefore they have no master.” For the words “by the nature of things” in the simile, Chengguan cites the Abhidharmakośa in explanation: “For birth in the formless realm there are two causes: first, the power of cause, that is, recent habituation and repeated habituation; second, the power of deeds, that is, the retribution to come in the higher realms, the fruit of deeds being about to arrive. For birth in the form realm there are three causes, adding the power of the nature of things, since when the vessel world is destroyed there is by the nature of things a sound.” Fazang cites the same passage and adds a further layer on sequence: “Moreover one cannot skip the order and be born in the second dhyāna and so on; one must wait until the fire reaches the first dhyāna to begin to be born in the second, and until the wind reaches the third dhyāna to begin to be born in the fourth.”

Chengguan judges which voice this simile is matched to: “The first, the simile of the sounds uttered at the kalpa’s exhaustion, figures the sixth above, having no master.”

The Matching of the First Simile · The Four Vast Sounds: How the Teaching of Five Vehicles Comes Forth All at Once

In the matching, the sūtra says that the Tathāgata, “solely out of the power of the Tathāgata’s dharma of merit, gives forth four vast sounds.” The first utters that all the formations are suffering — listing the suffering of the hells, of the animals, of the hungry ghosts, of being without merit, of clinging to self and what belongs to self, of committing evil deeds — and urges the planting of roots of goodness so as to be born among humans and gods and to be far from the difficult conditions; and sentient beings, having heard, cast off inversion and are born among humans and gods. The second utters that the formations blaze with the mass of suffering like a heated iron ball, that the formations are impermanent and dharmas that wear away, that nirvāṇa is still, unconditioned, and at ease; and sentient beings, having heard, attain within the vehicle of the hearers the forbearance that accords with the sound of the teaching. The third utters that those of the vehicle of the hearers understand only by following the words of another and their wisdom is narrow and inferior, that there is a higher vehicle named the vehicle of the pratyekabuddhas whose awakening does not depend on a teacher; and those who delight in the surpassing path, having heard, cast off the path of the hearers and cultivate the vehicle of the pratyekabuddhas. The fourth utters that beyond the standing of the two vehicles there is a more excellent path named the Great Vehicle — according with the six pāramitās, not cutting off the bodhisattva’s practice, not forsaking the mind of awakening, dwelling amid measureless birth-and-death without weariness — and lists the seven names of the Great Vehicle; and those whose faith and understanding are vast, whose faculties are keen, who planted roots of goodness in former lives, and who are sustained by the spiritual power of the tathāgatas, having heard, give rise to the mind of awakening.

A misreading must be ruled out: these four sounds are not a historical record of the Buddha preaching on four separate occasions; they are four landing-places of one and the same voice upon four kinds of capacity. Hence in the matching Chengguan uses only a single sentence: “It makes clear that when the Buddha would destroy the world of birth-and-death, he too gives forth four sounds expounding the dharma of the five vehicles.” The destruction of the world is the destruction of the vessel realm; the “destroying” of the Buddha’s voice is the destruction of the world of birth-and-death — simile and matching are aligned with great exactness. The last sentence of this section is the one most to be remembered: “The voice of the Tathāgata does not come forth from the body, nor come forth from the mind, and yet it can benefit measureless sentient beings.” Not from the body — this breaks the clinging to form and sound; not from the mind — this breaks the clinging to intention and will; and yet it benefits — this breaks the clinging to annihilation.

The Second Simile · The Echo: Able to Follow Every Speech and Yet in the End Without Discrimination

The second simile takes the echo in a mountain valley. The sūtra says it “arises because there is a valley and because there is a sound; it has no shape and cannot be seen, and it has no discrimination, and yet it is able to answer every kind of speech.” In the matching it says that the voice of the Tathāgata is “not in any direction or place, nor without direction or place; it appears solely as the wish and understanding of sentient beings furnish the condition, and its own nature, at the ultimate, is without word and without showing, beyond all telling.”

This simile treats one particular problem: if there is no discrimination, how can it answer so exactly? The echo’s reply is — precisely because it has no position of its own, whatever you say is what it answers; if it had something of its own to say, it would answer less exactly, not more. The verses put this even more plainly: “though the echo can follow the words of another, it is in the end without discrimination”; “bringing them to be tamed and to rejoice, while there arises no thought that he is now able to expound.” Because the Buddha raises no thought that ‘I am preaching the Dharma,’ the preaching is unobstructed. Chengguan judges what this simile is matched to: “The second, the simile of the echoing sound following conditions, figures the fifth above, no arising.”

The Third Simile · The Heavenly Drum: A Drum That No One Beats

The third simile takes the great Dharma drum of the gods, the drum named Awakening. When the sons of the gods are heedless, the drum of itself gives forth a sound in empty space and tells them: all pleasures of desire are impermanent, false and inverted, spoiled in a moment, merely deceiving the foolish into clinging fondly; and it admonishes them not to be heedless, for heedlessness means falling into the evil destinies with regret too late. The heedless gods, having heard, give rise to great sorrow and fear, cast off the pleasures of desire in their palaces, and go to where the king of the gods dwells to seek the Dharma and to practice. The sūtra concludes the simile: “That sound of the heavenly drum has no one directing it and no one making it, neither arises nor ceases, and yet it can benefit measureless sentient beings.”

In the matching, the Tathāgata, in order to awaken heedless sentient beings, gives forth eleven kinds of subtle sound of Dharma: the sound of being without attachment, the sound of heedfulness, the sound of impermanence, the sound of suffering, the sound of non-self, the sound of impurity, the sound of stillness and extinction, the sound of nirvāṇa, the sound of the spontaneous wisdom that has no measure, the sound of the indestructible practice of the bodhisattva, the sound of the ground of the Tathāgata’s effortless wisdom that reaches everywhere. These eleven sounds are not arranged at random. Chengguan judges that they are “divided in sense into four sections, and there are two intents”: the first way of reading is “the first two run through the five vehicles, the next six through the three vehicles, the next one through the first and second vehicles, the last two are exclusively of the Great Vehicle”; the second way of reading is “the first section is humans and gods, and the remaining three sections are matched to the three vehicles.” He lets both ways of sectioning stand without choosing between them. Sentient beings, having heard, “each within his own vehicle seeks deliverance” — some the vehicle of the hearers, some the vehicle of the pratyekabuddhas, some the bodhisattva’s unsurpassed Great Vehicle; while “the voice of the Tathāgata does not dwell in any direction or place, nor has it any speech.”

Chengguan divides this simile into three: first the power to awaken, second the benefit of the awakening, third the concluding of function back into substance; and the voice it is matched to is “the ninth, the sound never cut off, because it enters universally into the Dharma realm and the transforming is unbroken.” He further points out that “because it does not dwell in any direction and so forth, it is therefore able to pervade universally above,” citing the Sūtrālaṃkāra as attestation: “If the Buddha’s voice were a thing existent and not non-existent, it could not reach everywhere in the ten directions; because it is the reverse of this, it can.”

The Fourth Simile · The Goddess Fair-Mouth: The Hundred Thousand Sounds Within a Single Sound

The fourth simile takes the attendant maiden Fair-Mouth of the king of the gods who are free at will, who “from her mouth gives forth a single sound, and that sound answers together with a hundred thousand kinds of music, and within each kind of music there are again a hundred thousand differentiated sounds.” In the matching it says that the Tathāgata “within a single sound gives forth measureless sounds, and following the differences in what the minds of sentient beings delight in, they all reach everywhere and all bring them to understanding.”

Why set up a further simile here? The clause on “exceedingly profound” above already said that one sound contains many sounds, but that was said by way of barring; here what is wanted is to show positively that “one” is no obstacle to “many.” The sound of the maiden Fair-Mouth is not a single sound that first goes forth and then splits into a hundred thousand; that one sound itself answers together with a hundred thousand kinds of music — the one is the many, not the one turned into many. The verses put this point very crisply: “a single sound is able to give forth a hundred thousand sounds, and within each sound there are again a hundred thousand”; “a single sound gives forth all sounds, and following the differences in dispositions and wishes.” Chengguan judges the voice it is matched to: “The fourth, the simile of the goddess’s wondrous sound, figures the third, the sound according with faith and understanding, because the many sounds follow their delight.”

The Fifth Simile · The Brahmā Sound: Everyone Thinks the Buddha Is Speaking to Him Alone

The fifth simile takes the great Brahmā king dwelling in the Brahmā palace and giving forth the Brahmā sound: among the Brahmā host there is none who does not hear it, and yet the sound does not pass beyond the host, and each of them gives rise to the thought, “The great Brahmā king is speaking with me alone.” In the matching it says that the wondrous sound of the Tathāgata is likewise: among the assembly at the site of awakening there is none who does not hear it, and yet it does not pass beyond the assembly; the sūtra asks itself the question and answers it, and the reason is a single sentence: “Because those whose faculties are not yet ripe ought not to hear it.” Those who hear all give rise to the thought, “The Tathāgata, the World-Honored One, is speaking for me alone.”

The misunderstanding this simile must rule out is: that the Buddha’s voice not passing beyond the assembly means the Buddha is holding something back. But the sūtra’s reason lies not with the Buddha but with capacity — it is not that the Buddha is unwilling to speak; it is that hearing would be of no benefit to those not yet ripe. The verses make the point harder still: “moistening only the assembly and not carrying afar, because sentient beings who have no faith are not yet able to receive it.” Not able to receive is not the same as not able to hear. Chengguan judges what this simile is matched to: “The fifth, the simile of the Brahmā sound reaching the host, figures never missing the season in transforming. The ripe must hear it; that is, the ripening of the faculties is what constitutes the host.” — “the ripening of the faculties is what constitutes the host” is a phrase of the first importance: the “host” of the Dharma assembly is settled not by seating but by ripeness. At the end of this passage the sūtra concludes, “the voice of the Tathāgata neither goes forth nor stays, and yet it accomplishes every undertaking.”

The Sixth Simile · The Waters of One Taste: The Difference Is in the Vessel, Not in the Water

The sixth simile takes waters of every kind being of one and the same taste, “and it is because the vessels differ that the water comes to have differences; the water has no thinking and no discrimination.” In the matching it says that the speech and sound of the Tathāgata “has but one taste, namely the taste of liberation; following the differences in the vessel that is the mind of sentient beings, there come to be measureless differences, while there is no thinking and no discrimination.”

What this simile answers is a very practical doubt: with one and the same sūtra, why does each person read something different out of it? The sūtra’s answer is not that the Buddha said different things; it is that the vessels of mind differ. Note the three words “the taste of liberation” — for all the thousand differences in how the Buddha’s Dharma is expounded, its taste, examined to the end, is one taste only, and that is liberation. Whatever is read out of it that does not lead toward liberation is a problem of the vessel, not of the water. The verses add one detail: “the taste of the eight qualities has no difference in it, while the ground where they lie and the vessels that hold them are each unlike” — not only the vessel but also the “ground” (the ground on which the water lies), the two together accounting for where the differences come from. Chengguan judges what this simile is matched to: “The sixth, the simile of the waters of one taste, figures the sound with nothing crooked in it, born of the Dharma realm, because it is of one substance and nature.”

The Seventh Simile · The Rain That Makes Things Flourish: Not Coming Forth from Body or Mind, and Yet Enriching

The seventh simile takes the dragon king Anavatapta raising great dense clouds and raining sweet rain everywhere over Jambudvīpa, so that the hundred grains and sprouting crops all grow and the rivers, springs, and pools are all filled, while “this great rainwater does not come forth from the body or the mind of the dragon king.” In the matching it says that the Tathāgata raises the cloud of great compassion filling the worlds of the ten directions and rains down everywhere the unsurpassed sweet-dew rain of Dharma, causing sentient beings to rejoice, to increase in good dharmas, and to fulfill the vehicles; “the voice of the Tathāgata does not come from outside, nor come forth from within, and yet it can enrich all sentient beings.”

The first simile already said “not coming forth from the body, not coming forth from the mind”; why is it said again here? The difference is in the angle: the first simile said it from the side of having no master, this simile says it from the side of benefit. Chengguan’s comment supplies both the outer and the inner side: “Apart from the Buddha there is no sound, so it does not come from outside; apart from capacity there is no sound, so it does not come forth from within.” Apart from the Buddha this sound is not there, and so it cannot be said to come from outside; apart from the capacity that senses in sentient beings this sound is not there either, and so neither can it be said to come forth from the Buddha’s mind alone. Both ends fail to stand, and yet the working is plainly there. Chengguan judges the voice it is matched to as “the sound of rejoicing, because it answers to the faculties and makes them increase” — the rain answers to the nature of the root and makes it grow; the Dharma answers to the nature of the capacity and makes it rejoice.

The Eighth Simile · Raining by Degrees to Ripen Them: The Compassion of Seven Days Without Rain

The eighth simile takes the dragon king Manasvin, who, about to send down rain, does not send it at once but first raises great clouds covering empty space and gathering and staying seven days, waiting until sentient beings have finished their business; the sūtra asks itself the reason and answers, “because that great dragon king has a mind of kindness and compassion and does not wish to trouble sentient beings,” and only when the seven days have passed does he send down a fine rain moistening the whole earth. In the matching it says that when the Tathāgata is about to send down the rain of Dharma he likewise does not send it at once, but first raises the cloud of Dharma to ripen sentient beings, “so that in their minds there may be no alarm or dread,” and when they are ripe rains down the sweet-dew rain of Dharma, expounding the most profound and subtle good dharmas, “bringing them by degrees to be filled with the unsurpassed savor of the Dharma of the Tathāgata’s wisdom of all wisdoms.”

This is the simile in the whole unit that comes closest to the sequence of training. The misunderstanding to be ruled out is: that the Buddha’s not immediately expounding the most profound Dharma is a withholding. The reason the sūtra gives is alarm — the Dharma too deep and the capacity not yet ripe, and hearing it becomes an obstruction instead. Chengguan’s comment matches the passage clause by clause with great fineness: “‘About to send down the rain of Dharma’ means he intends to expound the one. ‘He does not send it down at once’ means he fears they would break the Dharma and fall into the evil destinies. ‘First he raises the cloud of Dharma’ is the expounding of skillful means. Skillful means contain what is real, as the cloud contains water.” Skillful means are not a separate apparatus set apart from the real Dharma; they are ‘the cloud that contains water’ — the real Dharma is in the skillful means from the start. He further uses the sun shining first on the high mountains, from an earlier passage of this sūtra, to set sudden and gradual side by side: “Above, the shining first on the high mountains reveals the sudden perfect; here, the small first and the great after is the gradual perfect.” Sudden and gradual are both perfect. The voice it is matched to is “the sound that does not alter, because all of it reaches to the ultimate.”

The Ninth Simile · A Downpour Beyond Thought: The Water Has No Discrimination While the Adornments Are a Hundred Thousand

The ninth simile takes the great dragon king in the ocean named Great Adornment, who in the great ocean sends down ten kinds of adorned rain, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand kinds; “the water has no discrimination; it is solely by the inconceivable power of the dragon king that it comes to be adorned.” In the matching it says that the Tathāgata, expounding the Dharma for sentient beings, uses ten differentiated sounds, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand, “or with eighty-four thousand kinds of sounds proclaims eighty-four thousand practices,” on up to expounding severally with measureless hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of sounds, causing all who hear to rejoice; while “the voice of the Tathāgata has no discrimination in it, and it is solely because the buddhas are full and pure within the most profound Dharma realm that they can follow what suits the faculties of sentient beings.”

Note where the sūtra places the cause of the differences: not in the water, not in the sound, but in the inconceivable power of the dragon king, in the fullness and purity of the buddhas within the Dharma realm. That is to say, the measureless differences of the Dharma-gates are not the Buddha raising measureless discriminating thoughts; they are that, the ground of realization being full, he can answer capacities spontaneously. The verses say it with the least effort of all: “in his mind there arises no thought of anything being different” — no thought is raised that ‘I must say it differently,’ and what is said comes out different of itself. Chengguan judges the voice it is matched to: “The ninth, the simile of the downpour beyond thought, figures the exceedingly profound sound above, for though the differences are many, they all flow from the most profound Dharma realm.”

The Tenth Simile · Raining Everywhere in Every Kind (Part One): The Dragon King’s Cloud, Lightning, Thunder, Wind, and Rain

The tenth simile is the longest. It takes the dragon king Sāgara wishing to display his great sovereign power, raising from the four continents up to the place of the heaven of those free at will over others’ emanations a great net of clouds covering all around. Chengguan judges that this simile “has in it the general, the particular, and the conclusion,” and that within the particular there are five: first cloud, second lightning, third thunder, fourth wind, fifth rain. The clouds have twelve colors and appearances (Jambū-river gold, beryl, white silver, crystal, musāragalva, agate, the excellent treasure, red pearl, measureless fragrance, the undefiled garment, pure water, adornments of every kind); the lightning then issues color from color, the golden cloud giving forth beryl light and the beryl cloud giving forth golden light, on up to “clouds of colors of every kind giving forth lightning of a single color, and clouds of a single color giving forth lightning of colors of every kind”; the thunder is then like goddesses singing, like the music of the gods, like dragon maidens singing, like gandharva maidens singing, like kiṃnara maidens singing, like the great earth quaking, like the waves and tides of the ocean waters, like the king of beasts roaring, like fine birds warbling; and when the thunder has pealed, a cool wind arises making the minds of sentient beings delight; and only then are the rains of every kind sent down.

What rains down differs in each place: in the great ocean cool water named No Cutting Off; in the heaven of those free at will over others’ emanations the sounds of flutes and pipes named Fair and Wondrous; in the Heaven of Delight in Emanations a great maṇi jewel named Giving Forth Great Light; in the Tuṣita heaven great adornments named Hanging Topknot; in the Yāma heaven great and wondrous flowers named Adornments of Every Kind; in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three manifold wondrous fragrances named Delighting the Mind; in the heaven of the four god-kings heavenly jeweled garments named Covering Over; in the palace of the dragon kings red pearls named Welling Forth Light; in the palace of the asuras weapons named Subduing the Enemy; in Uttarakuru of the north flowers named Blossoming Open; and in the remaining three continents each according to its own place. And “although the mind of that dragon king is even, without this side or that, it is solely because the roots of goodness of sentient beings differ that what rains down has differences” — the cause of the differences is stated by the sūtra itself with perfect clarity. Chengguan notes one further thing here: “This and the passage in the Chapter on the Worthy Chief are elliptical of each other.” The same set of matters is spoken of in two places in this sūtra, each at its own length.

The Tenth Simile · Raining Everywhere in Every Kind (Part Two): The Tathāgata’s Body-Cloud, Lightning, Thunder, Wind-Wheel, and Rain of Dharma

The matching too has the general, the particular, and the conclusion, and within the particular there are likewise five, answering one by one to the five matters of the simile. The clouds of the body are ten: the cloud of the birth-body, of the emanation-body, of the body of sustaining power, of the form-body, of the body of the marks and signs, of the body of merit, of the body of wisdom, of the body of powers that cannot be broken, of the body of fearlessness, of the body of the Dharma realm. Chengguan brings them together with the ten bodies of a buddha, saying that among them “there are four bodies whose names differ while the sense is the same”: the first is the body of vow, since the vow is to be born in Tuṣita; the fourth is the body born of intention, since it is born as intended and is like the form of the world; the eighth is the body of awakening, since it is complete in the buddha’s ten powers and accomplishes awakening; the ninth is majesty, since it is complete in the four fearlessnesses and can subdue what is outside — and he adds a further matching that stands alongside it: “It may also be that the ten powers subduing Māra are majesty, and fearlessness is right awakening, since it has the sense of right awakening.” The remaining six agree in name and in sense alike.

The lights and flashes of lightning are ten: Reaching Everywhere, Boundless Light, Entering the Secret Dharma of the Buddhas, Light Appearing in Reflection, Light Shining Brilliantly, Entering the Gate of the Inexhaustible Dhāraṇī, Right Mindfulness Unconfused, Ultimate and Indestructible, Entering Compliantly into the Destinies, Fulfilling Every Vow and Making All Rejoice; Chengguan matches them, saying they “do not go beyond the penetrations, the clarities, and the fearlessnesses.” The thunder of samādhi: well-awakened wisdom, the ocean of brilliance apart from defilement, sovereignty over all dharmas, the adamantine wheel, the banner of Mount Sumeru, the ocean seal, the sun-lamp, the inexhaustible treasury, the power of indestructible liberation; Chengguan explains the matching of samādhi with thunder by three senses: “First, as with the thunder of autumn the hibernating creatures hide themselves, so when one enters samādhi the evils do not act. Second, as the thunder of spring rouses the hibernating and opens the sprouts, so that samādhi gives rise to merit. Third, thunder is the forerunning sign of rain, and samādhi is the forerunning token of expounding; ponder the ten names and explain them.” The wind is the wheel of the wind of great wisdom, manifested out of the mind of great kindness and compassion in which there is no obstruction, named “Able to Make All Sentient Beings Give Rise to Inconceivable Rejoicing and Ease”; when this sign has been manifested, all the bodhisattvas and the manifold sentient beings attain coolness in body and mind; Chengguan explains, “because with the wisdom subsequently attained he observes capacities and rouses them, sustaining them so that they become vessels of the Dharma.”

The Ten Great Rains of Dharma: One Rain Falling on Ten Kinds of People

Last comes the rain. Out of the Tathāgata’s cloud of the great Dharma-body, cloud of great kindness and compassion, and cloud of the great inconceivable, there falls the inconceivable and vast rain of Dharma, making all sentient beings pure in body and mind — for the bodhisattvas seated at the site of awakening, the rain named “No Differentiation in the Dharma Realm”; for the bodhisattvas in their last body, the rain named “The Bodhisattva’s Sporting in the Tathāgata’s Secret Teaching”; for the bodhisattvas bound to one more birth, the rain named “Pure Universal Light”; for the bodhisattvas of consecration, the rain named “Adorned with the Tathāgata’s Adornments”; for the bodhisattvas who have attained forbearance, the rain named “The Flower of Wisdom, Treasure of Merit, Blossoming Open — the Bodhisattva’s Unceasing Practice of Great Compassion”; for the bodhisattvas of abiding, dedication, and practice, the rain named “Entering the Most Profound Gate of Manifest Transformation and Carrying On the Bodhisattva’s Practice Without Rest and Without Weariness”; for the bodhisattvas who have first raised the mind, the rain named “Giving Rise to the Tathāgata’s Practice of Great Kindness and Compassion, Rescuing and Protecting Sentient Beings”; for the sentient beings who seek the vehicle of the pratyekabuddhas, the rain named “Knowing Deeply the Dharma of Dependent Arising, Departing from the Two Extremes, and Attaining the Indestructible Fruit of Liberation”; for the sentient beings who seek the vehicle of the hearers, the rain named “Cutting Off Every Enemy That Is an Affliction with the Sword of Great Wisdom”; for the sentient beings who have amassed roots of goodness, settled and unsettled, the rain named “Able to Bring About the Accomplishment of Dharma-Gates of Every Kind and to Give Rise to Great Rejoicing.”

The names of the ten rains each answer to the capacity they fall upon. Chengguan explains them one by one: the first, “about to accomplish right awakening, the marks of thought being about to be exhausted, on hearing this rain of Dharma the fine thoughts are all forgotten,” hence it is said, expounding that there is no differentiation in the Dharma realm; the second is “after leaving the womb and before sitting at the site of awakening,” and in explaining “sporting” he gives two senses, taken apart and taken together — taken apart, sporting is the great function of the spiritual penetrations and the secret teaching is what the mind and wisdom accord with; taken together, it makes one free to come and go within the secret teaching; the third, bound to one more birth, is “as with Maitreya, who takes birth below once more,” and the reason for the one further birth is that “subtle ignorance is able to obstruct the knowable” — these first three are all the position of virtual awakening. The fourth, the bodhisattvas of consecration, is “the position of receiving office on the ten grounds, where the buddhas of the ten directions consecrate one with the water of the Dharma, and one falls within the number of the buddhas.” For the fifth, the bodhisattvas who have attained forbearance, he gives two ways of taking it: if purity of forbearance is taken, it is the eighth ground and above; if first attainment is taken, then “some say that it is attained on the first ground.” The sixth, abiding, dedication, and practice, is “the three worthy positions.” The seventh, first raising the mind, “takes in both the first raising of the mind in faith and the raising of the mind at the fullness of faith.” On the eighth and ninth gates Chengguan says there are “two intents throughout”: one taken with respect to the open expounding for those first seeking, which speaks of their own vehicle; the other taken with respect to the secret expounding for those already abiding, which secretly confers the Great Vehicle — for the gate of the pratyekabuddhas, the open expounding is that the cause perishes so it is not permanent and the fruit continues so it is not annihilated, thereby departing from the two extremes, while the secret expounding is that “the twelvefold dependent arising is itself the middle way, and the middle way is named the buddha-nature”; for the gate of the hearers, the open expounding is cutting off with the sword of the wisdom of the emptiness of persons, while the secret expounding is that “one should cut off every delusion with the emptiness of dharmas, and hence it is named the great sword.” The tenth is “for the two groups of sentient beings”: those wrongly settled are not yet able to bear the rain of Dharma; the unsettled are brought to attain what is called ripening; the already settled are made to increase in Dharma-gates of every kind.

At the end of the section the sūtra draws itself up: “The mind of the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One is even, and toward the Dharma he is not grudging; it is solely because the faculties and the wishes of sentient beings differ that the rain of Dharma sent down shows differences.” This answers exactly to the simile’s “the mind of that dragon king is even, without this side or that.”

The General Conclusion in Ten Measurelessnesses: Taking Ten Measureless Things to Measure With

The ten similes being finished, the sūtra concludes generally with “one should know that the voice of the Tathāgata has ten kinds of measurelessness”: measureless as the realm of empty space, because it reaches everywhere; measureless as the Dharma realm, because there is nowhere it does not pervade; measureless as the realm of sentient beings, because it makes every mind rejoice; measureless as the deeds, because it proclaims their fruits and retributions; measureless as the afflictions, because it makes them all be removed; measureless as the speech and sounds of sentient beings, because it makes them hear according to their understanding; measureless as the wishes and understandings of sentient beings, because it observes them universally and delivers them; measureless as the three times, because it has no bounds; measureless as wisdom, because it discriminates everything; measureless as the realm of the buddhas, because it enters the Dharma realm of the buddhas.

The construction of these ten clauses repays attention: each is ‘measureless as such-and-such’ plus a “because.” That is, it does not say directly that the Buddha’s voice is measureless; it takes ten already known measureless things and matches them against it, giving for each the reason why. The first three take the realms pervaded (space, the Dharma realm, the realm of sentient beings); the middle four take the matters countered and accorded with (deeds, afflictions, speech and sounds, wishes and understandings); the last three take the measures penetrated (the three times, wisdom, the realm of the buddhas). Chengguan judges only with a single sentence: “The third, from ‘furthermore, Sons of the Buddha, one should know’ onward, generally concludes that the ten similes are all without measure; the text is plain and can be known.” Fazang says it in more detail: “The ten measurelessnesses each generally conclude the ten sounds above” — the ten measurelessnesses are not ten further matters set up separately; they turn back and conclude each of the ten voices once more. The sūtra draws to a close with “the voice of the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One accomplishes asaṃkhyeyas of measurelessnesses such as these; the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas should know it in this way,” answering the question raised at the opening.

The Twenty Verses in Repetition: The Verses Only Match Position, They Do Not Teach Again

The prose being finished, the compilers narrate: “At that time the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Samantabhadra, wishing to make this meaning clear once more, spoke in verse, saying.” The verses give two stanzas to each of the ten similes, the former stanza singing the simile and the latter the matching, and the order is exactly that of the prose: the sounds at the kalpa’s dissolution answered by “so too the World-Honored One of the ten powers”; the echo by “so too are the speech and sounds of the buddha of the ten powers”; the heavenly drum by “so too is the Dharma drum of the buddha of the ten powers”; Fair-Mouth by “so too is the voice of the Well-Gone One”; the Brahmā king by “so too is the buddha of the ten powers, this Brahmā king”; the waters by “so too is the voice of all-wisdom”; the Heatless Dragon King by “so too are the wondrous sounds of the buddhas”; Manasvin by “so too does the buddha of the ten powers expound the meaning”; the Great Adornment dragon by “so too is the ultimate eloquence of the Buddha”; Sāgara by “so too are the buddhas, the kings of the Dharma.”

The verses do not repeat what the prose has already taught; they only add an eye-opening word or two where they match position. Four places are worth remembering: in the verse of the echo, “there arises no thought that he is now able to expound,” which brings “no discrimination” down onto the mind of the Buddha; in the verse of the Brahmā king, “because sentient beings who have no faith are not yet able to receive it,” which restates the reason for “not passing beyond the assembly” from “the faculties not being ripe” as “having no faith”; in the verse of the waters, “the taste of the eight qualities has no difference in it, while the ground where they lie and the vessels that hold them are each unlike,” which adds the “ground” alongside the vessel; and in the verse of the Great Adornment dragon, “in his mind there arises no thought of anything being different,” which seals with the prose’s “has no discrimination.” The last stanza — “so too are the buddhas, the kings of the Dharma: the body-cloud of great compassion fills the ten directions, and for those of every kind of practice what rains down is each different, while toward all of it there is no discrimination” — the whole unit begins at “how should one know” and ends at “no discrimination,” and beginning and end are one and the same matter.

Lineage

For the sense of the speech-deed in this unit, the ancient worthies carry it forward along three tracks, all of which are set down here without any judging between them.

Chengguan’s Commentary, following the eighty-fascicle text, sets up the ten voices (pervading everywhere · according with wish and delight · according with the understanding of the faculties · according with the season · no arising or ceasing · no master · exceedingly profound · answering to the Dharma realm · uncut · coming home to the one utmost), opens the matter with the four gates of the perfect sound, completes it with the four clauses of substance and function, and matches the ten voices simile by simile. Fazang’s Tanxuan ji, following the sixty-fascicle text, sets up the ten voices (breadth of substance · wonder of virtue · gladdening of capacity · expounding of Dharma · awakening · answering to the season · increase of moral discipline · increase of concentration · increase of wisdom · answering to the nature), judges the passage by ‘first the general summary expounding of ten, second the particular extended distinguishing of ten, third the general conclusion by ten gates,’ so that a hundred gates and a thousand gates come of the multiplication, and at the end of the section gathers it all up with “thus by mutual multiplication a full thousand gates of distinguishing the voice are complete.” Li Tongxuan’s Xin Huayan jing lun, at this passage, does not set out the nine gates one by one, but with the single phrase “these measureless dharmas of the appearance of the Tathāgata set out above, each dharma having ten similes, are fully made clear in the sūtra” leaves the reader to return to the text of the sūtra itself. The text followed differs, the headings set up differ, and the manner of fullness or brevity differs as well: the three tracks run side by side.

The variant readings between the two translations also bear in places upon the doctrine of this unit. In the third of the double negations, the eighty-fascicle text has “not showing, not without showing,” while the sixty-fascicle text has “not knowing, not without knowing”; Chengguan, following the former, explains it by what shows and what is shown, while Fazang, following the latter, explains it as “measure is taken with respect to bounds, master with respect to the substance and nature, knowing with respect to the working of the deed.” In the matching of the ten rains of Dharma to the positions, Chengguan makes the bodhisattvas of consecration the position of receiving office on the ten grounds, and for the bodhisattvas who have attained forbearance takes purity of forbearance as the eighth ground and above, or first attainment as the first ground; Fazang makes those who have received the prediction the eighth ground, those who have attained forbearance the first ground through the seventh, and those who have first raised the mind the beginning of the position of the ten abodes. As for the number of the verses in repetition, the eighty-fascicle text has twenty stanzas, while Fazang, explaining the sixty-fascicle text, says “forty stanzas,” “four to each.” All of these are settled sayings of the ancient worthies; they are set down and not judged between.

Of the carrying forward of the doctrine of the Huayan house, the most direct strand is the “perfect sound.” Chengguan’s phrase “pervading equally without spoiling the tune, differing in melody without stirring from pervasion — this is what makes the perfect sound” is where later talk of the mutual identity of one and many, and of one sound expounding the Dharma, has both its scriptural ground and its ground in explanation; while the sixth simile’s “it has but one taste, namely the taste of liberation,” together with the verse “the nature of the Dharma has but one taste, without discrimination, while following the differences in the conduct of sentient beings,” is the settled sentence of the Dharma-gate of nature-origination on the side of the speech-deed.

He Says “Cannot Be Obtained” in the First Breath, and Then Says “Should Know It in This Way”

Question: since it says that “the mind, the mentation, and the consciousness of the Tathāgata are all unobtainable,” why should the bodhisattva still “know it in this way”? Is this not self-contradictory?

Samantabhadra’s answer lies in the second half of that very sentence: “it is only because wisdom is measureless that one comes to know the mind of the Tathāgata.” What cannot be obtained is that thing which the three names “mind, mentation, and consciousness” point to; what can be known is this road called “wisdom is measureless.” Chengguan glosses this by saying that the first half is “a negating statement made with respect to the substance,” and the second half “an affirming statement lodged in the function” — negating is the pushing back of the hand you were reaching out to grasp with; affirming is the giving of another road you can actually walk.

What is easily misread is taking “cannot be obtained” to mean ‘there is none.’ Chengguan blocks this step in particular: since it says “by measureless wisdom one knows the mind of the Tathāgata,” it is not saying there is no mind; if the mind truly were not there, on what would wisdom stand by itself? So “cannot be obtained” means deep beyond the reach of words, not empty of anything at all.

Bringing it home: in reading this sense, do not rush at the outset to give the Buddha’s mind a definition. The whole passage of ten similes is doing one and the same thing — it does not tell you what the Buddha’s mind is, it only leads you to watch how the Buddha’s wisdom works; watch long enough, and the mind is seen of itself.

The Ancients Contended over This One Sentence in Three Rounds, and Chengguan and Fazang Gathered Them Up Differently

Question: “mind, mentation, and consciousness are all unobtainable” — how in fact did the ancient worthies read this?

Chengguan records three explanations in his commentary. The first: consciousness has two parts, defiled and pure; on the ground of buddhahood there is no defiled mind and mental factors subject to outflows, but there is the pure part of mind and its mental factors, so that what is negated is only the defiled; and if the king of the mind necessarily were not there, upon what would the mental factors be established? The second: because there is no meaning of accumulating or of deliberating, it is said that mind and the rest cannot be obtained; this is said with respect to non-discriminating wisdom, and is not to say there is no substance of mind. The third: on the fruition of buddhahood there truly is no mind, mentation, mental consciousness, or other mental factor; there is only great wisdom.

Chengguan objects that the first two explanations “do not escape adding something,” and that the third “does not escape subtracting something,” and then sets up his own reconciliation: as for the one who says “there is only suchness and the wisdom of suchness,” the mind is itself the same as the true nature, and so it is said to be only suchness; its illuminating function is not lost, and so it is said to be the wisdom of suchness; as for the one who says “there is a pure mind,” since the mind is itself suchness, what harm is there in its being there? His concluding line is: “the being that is itself the true, and the true that is itself the being, are two senses that bring each other about, and being and non-being are without obstruction.”

Fazang, in the Tanxuan ji, does not reconcile the several senses in his own explanation but assigns them to the four teachings: the first explanation he judges to be the initial teaching; what the second and third disclose he judges to be the final teaching; “inwardly the same as the true nature, since illuminating is itself quiescent” he judges to be the sudden teaching; and at the end he sets up “it is at once principle and wisdom, at once the king of the mind and the mental factors, now unfolded and now folded together” as the perfect teaching.

The one reconciles and the other judges: these are two family methods. Chengguan wants to gather the several explanations into one flavor; Fazang wants to array them in a ranking of stages. Both are recorded here, without adjudicating which stands higher.

The Ten Similes Are Not Ten Comparisons but Ten Steps of a Stair

Question: why must ten great similes be used? Would not one, made clear, be enough?

Chengguan points out the rule governing these ten similes: “ten great similes are raised, to figure the ten kinds of great wisdom of the Tathāgata, and the substance and function of the ten wisdoms are neither one nor different”; moreover the first nine similes each have three parts — the simile, the conjoining, and the conclusion — while for the tenth, the simile of the sūtra scroll contained in the dust, Chengguan judges for himself that “in the text there are four, namely the dharma, the simile, the conjoining, and the conclusion.” More important still is the summing up in ten phrases that he gives at the end of the prose section: the first is being what all rest upon while resting on nothing; the second, being able to bring forth; the third, being able to flow hidden and pervade; the fourth, possessing the four wisdoms crosswise; the fifth, possessing the four capacities lengthwise; the sixth, the substance being broad and containing all; the seventh, the function being without end; the eighth, knowing without anything left unknown; the ninth, skillfully being able to gather and uphold; the tenth, being fully present in every place. The first nine speak directly of the Buddha’s wisdom; only the tenth merges self and other.

The misreading is to take the ten similes as ten angles arrayed side by side, from which one might pick a few at random and call it done. In fact the later similes are often “an explanation in turn of the resting spoken of earlier” — the second simile explains in turn the word “resting” in the first; the third explains both the earlier resting and the bringing forth; and the sixth pushes the “resting” of the first simile from an outward resting on to the pervading of the substance and its universal containing. Between simile and simile, one layer is peeled away after another.

Bringing it home: read this sense following the sequence. Read it by skipping about, and you will get only ten fine-sounding comparisons; read it in order, and you will see a single question pressed all the way down.

The First Characteristic · Resting on Nothing While Being What All Rest Upon

Question: to say that the Buddha’s wisdom “rests upon nothing” — is that to say it hangs there all alone?

The sūtra’s two clauses go as a pair: space is what all things rest upon, while space rests upon nothing; the Buddha’s wisdom is what all worldly and world-transcending wisdom rests upon, while the Buddha’s wisdom rests upon nothing. So “resting upon nothing” is not isolation; it is precisely because it is the final resting-place — there is nothing further beneath it.

Chengguan sets up a pointed question to himself here: does the Buddha’s wisdom not rest upon the mind, does it not rest upon principle? His answer is: “it is because the Buddha’s wisdom illuminates to the utmost that there is no suchness outside of wisdom for wisdom to rest upon, and therefore the substance of wisdom is wholly suchness. If it had something to rest upon, it would not be called the wisdom of suchness.” When illumination has reached the utmost, there is no “suchness” standing outside wisdom for it to rest upon; the substance of wisdom is entirely suchness. Fazang too, in the Tanxuan ji, asks himself “why does it not say that it rests upon suchness?” and answers still more plainly: resting has the sense of seeking after; when the realization of the true is complete, there is nothing further to move toward or seek, and so it is named resting upon nothing.

The misreading is to hear “resting upon nothing” as nihilism. Bringing it home: the mind of an ordinary person is forever looking for something to lean on — a principle, a state, a person to lean on; what this simile speaks of is the step at the very end of cultivation, where one has not lost one’s support but no longer needs a support outside.

The Second Characteristic · Bringing Forth Measurelessly While the Substance Neither Increases Nor Decreases

Question: since it is bringing forth wisdom without cease, surely some of it must get used up?

The sūtra takes the Dharma realm as its simile: the Dharma realm constantly brings forth the liberation of the śrāvakas, the pratyekabuddhas, and the bodhisattvas, while the Dharma realm neither increases nor decreases; the Buddha’s wisdom constantly brings forth the various kinds of worldly and world-transcending wisdom, while the Buddha’s wisdom neither increases nor decreases. Chengguan glosses this as “explaining in turn the resting spoken of before” — the first simile said only ‘it is that which is rested upon’; this simile accounts for “resting: it is because from this they are brought forth,” and adds one further and most important line: “though it brings forth the several wisdoms, it is not thereby lessened. When the liberation of a bodhisattva becomes the wisdom of a buddha, neither is it thereby increased, because they are even as one substance.”

Setting the error right: do not think of it on the model of a reservoir letting out water. Water lessens when it is let out because the water and the reservoir are two things; what is spoken of here is “even as one substance” — the wisdom brought forth and the buddha-wisdom that brings it forth are fundamentally not two things, so where would increase or decrease come from?

Bringing it home: this point bears directly on the largeness of a student’s heart. If one takes the Dharma to be a limited resource, one will be miserly in teaching others; knowing that what the Dharma realm brings forth is never lessened, one dares to give away everything one has.

The Third Characteristic · What Is Obtained Differs in Each Case, While What Gives Is Equal and Without a Second

Question: it is the same buddha-wisdom, so why is what one person obtains so much deeper or shallower than what another obtains?

The sūtra’s answer lies in the simile of the ocean flowing hidden. The water of the ocean flows hidden beneath the ground of the four continents and beneath the eighty koṭis of small islands; whoever sets his hand to digging never fails to get water, and the great ocean makes no discrimination, saying ‘the water comes forth from me.’ So too the ocean-water of the Buddha’s wisdom flows into the minds of all sentient beings; and if sentient beings are willing to contemplate the object before them and cultivate the gate of Dharma, they obtain a wisdom pure and clear. And the wisdom of the Tathāgata is equal and without a second, without discrimination; “it is only because the workings of the minds of sentient beings are each different that the wisdom obtained is in each case different.”

The difference is not on the side that gives; it is on this side, the side that digs. Chengguan names this simile “the buddha-substance evenly benefiting the wisdom of beings,” and glosses the two words “flowing hidden”: because it is of one substance with the minds of sentient beings, it is called flowing hidden; “when one digs one’s own mind and obtains wisdom, that is precisely to see the buddha-wisdom of another” — the well you dig out on the ground of your own mind reaches the very ocean of the Buddha’s wisdom.

Setting the error right: do not understand this as the Buddha playing favorites. Bringing it home: when the well yields no water, do not ask why the ocean will not give water; ask first how many feet you have dug.

The Fourth Characteristic · The Four Wisdoms That Bring Forth, and Why They Are Hidden in a Deep and Secret Place

Question: since the four wisdom-jewels can bring forth every jewel of wisdom, why do sentient beings not see them?

The vehicle of the simile is the dragon king Sāgara setting the four jewels — Accumulation, Inexhaustible Store, Far Removed from Blazing, Perfect Adornment — straight and square in the deep and secret place of his palace, where neither ordinary people nor any of the dragons and spirits can see them. What is figured is the four great wisdom-jewels within the great ocean of wisdom of the Tathāgata — unstained and skilled in means, discriminating well between conditioned and unconditioned dharmas, expounding measureless dharmas without spoiling the nature of dharmas, knowing what is the time and what is not the time and never once letting it slip; sentient beings of scant merit do not see them, “because they are set in the deep and secret treasury of the Tathāgata.”

On matching the four jewels to the four wisdoms the ancient worthies have two explanations. Chengguan first records what the masters of the Yanying line said: the first is the wisdom of the path of realization, which cuts off the obstruction of the afflictions; the second the wisdom of the auxiliary path, which cuts off the obstruction to knowledge; the third the wisdom of the non-abiding path, which discards the obstruction of retribution — these three being for one’s own benefit; and the fourth, the wisdom of benefiting sentient beings, is benefiting others; and he remarks that “this explanation too is without great fault.” Chengguan then sets up an explanation of his own, matching them to the four wisdoms of awakening: unstained and skilled in means to the great mirror-like wisdom; discriminating well to the wisdom of the equality of nature; expounding measureless dharmas without spoiling the nature of dharmas to the wisdom of marvelous contemplation; and knowing what is the time and what is not to the wisdom of accomplishing what is to be done. He at once marks his own measure: “this is a matching taken separately” — the four wisdoms are of themselves perfectly interfused, and the four virtues too should run through all four jewels.

Setting the error right: on seeing two ways of matching, one is quick to ask which is correct. Chengguan himself says plainly that the matching is to help a person see the text, not to hand down a verdict. Bringing it home: when you come upon an ancient worthy’s table of correspondences, ask first which sentence of the sūtra it has helped you see clearly.

The Fifth Characteristic · Shining upon You Layer by Layer, Making You Put Down Even the Good Things

Question: the bodhisattva cultivating the factors that aid the path gives rise to “waves of scattered good” — how is it that even what is good must be extinguished?

This is exactly the sharpest place in the fifth simile. The four blazing jewels — Sun-Store, Free of Moisture, Flame-Light, Exhausting Without Remainder — shine and touch the water of the ocean, causing the water to turn to milk, the milk to curds, the curds to butter, and the butter to become ghee, blazing like fire until it is all exhausted without remainder. Conjoined to the light of the Tathāgata’s four wisdom-jewels, this is four layers of turning and casting off: first the waves of scattered good are extinguished, so that the mind is held upon a single object and abides in samādhi; then attachment to the Dharma is removed, so that the relishing of samādhi is cast off and vast spiritual penetrations arise; then the light of insight shines everywhere, so that the vast spiritual penetrations are cast off and one abides in the practice of great brightness that involves effort; and last the jewel-light that is equal to the Tathāgata, boundless and without effort, causes the practice of great brightness with effort to be cast off, so that one reaches the ground of equality with the Tathāgata and all effort comes to rest.

At every step what is cast off is the achievement of the step before. Good dharmas must be cast off, samādhi must be cast off, spiritual penetrations must be cast off, and even effort itself must be cast off. Chengguan names this simile “the wisdom by which the Buddha extinguishes delusion and completes virtue,” and marks off its division of labor from the preceding simile: the fourth simile is the possessing of the four wisdoms crosswise, this simile the possessing of the four wisdoms lengthwise — the one speaks of full possession, the other of sequence.

The ancient worthies once matched four kinds of samādhi to these four wisdoms, and Chengguan remarks that “in following the order it goes against the principle,” setting up instead a lengthwise matching to the several positions, while marking for himself that it is “not to be applied throughout without exception.” Both explanations are recorded, without adjudication.

Bringing it home: what a practitioner finds hardest to cast off is usually not what is bad but the good things he has cultivated himself. This simile draws up that list for you all the way to the last item.

The Sixth Characteristic · Not Leaning against It, but Being inside It

Question: the first simile has already spoken of “resting”; why does the sixth simile say it again?

Chengguan answers with the greatest clarity: “above it said only resting, which still allows of an outward resting on the power of another; now what is made clear is that the substance pervades and universally contains, and thus the wisdom of the five vehicles and the rest are all things within the great wisdom of the Tathāgata.” The “resting” of the first simile might still be heard as one thing leaning against another; what the sixth simile means to say is pervading and containing — from the water-limit up to the Heaven of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception, the places of beings of the desire, form, and formless realms, there is none that does not arise in dependence on space and abide in dependence on space, and yet space universally contains the three realms without discrimination; and the wisdom of the śrāvakas, of the pratyekabuddhas, of the bodhisattvas, of conditioned practice and of unconditioned practice, all of it arises in dependence on the wisdom of the Tathāgata and abides in dependence on the wisdom of the Tathāgata, and yet the wisdom of the Tathāgata universally contains measureless wisdom, likewise without discrimination.

Chengguan here cites the words of Sengzhao to seal it: “Now the sage, with a mind made empty, illuminates in the dark, and there is no principle he does not comprehend. He holds the six directions within his breast, and his numinous mirroring has yet to spare; he mirrors the myriad existents within a square inch, and his spirit is constantly empty.” Holding the six directions and still having mirroring to spare, illuminating the myriad existents and yet with the spirit constantly empty — containing and non-discrimination are two faces of one and the same thing.

Bringing it home: to place the fruit of one’s own cultivation in the position of ‘standing outside the Buddha’s wisdom and drawing near to it’ is to keep forever a grasper and a grasped; this simile asks you to see that this little wisdom of yours was from the beginning a thing within the great wisdom.

The Seventh Characteristic · The Practice of the Bodhisattva Is the Nature of the Tathāgata

Question: why is the king of medicine trees named “Inexhaustible Root”? Is the root and trunk growing each other merely a curiosity?

The sūtra itself gives the answer, and it is the weightiest sentence of the whole sense: “because it is ultimately without rest, and because it does not cut off the practice of the bodhisattva; the practice of the bodhisattva is the nature of the Tathāgata, and the nature of the Tathāgata is the practice of the bodhisattva, and therefore it is given the name: Inexhaustible Root.” That the root can bring forth the trunk and the trunk the root is precisely to figure that the cause can bring forth the fruit and the fruit does not forsake the cause. Chengguan conjoins this and says: “gaining the fruit he does not forsake the cause, and so it says he does not cut off the practice of the bodhisattva, and by this cause and fruit interpenetrate and bring each other forth in turn.”

The six limbs of the tree each have their correspondence: the vow of great compassion is the root; the firm and unshakable skillful means is the trunk; the wisdom that pervades the Dharma realm together with the perfections are the branches; meditative concentration, liberation, and the great samādhis are the leaves; dhāraṇī, eloquence, and the factors of awakening are the flowers; and the ultimate and unchanging liberation of the buddhas is the fruit. And as the tree grows one limb, the bodhisattva gains one virtue — when the root grows, the root of great kindness and compassion that does not forsake sentient beings is grown; when the fruit grows, the fruit of the forbearance of non-arising and even of the forbearance of consecration is gained.

What most deserves attention is ‘the two places where it does not grow yet which it does not hold in aversion or forsake.’ The two places selected out are the vast deep pit of the unconditioned into which those of the two vehicles have fallen, and the water of great wrong views and craving in which are drowned those beings who have spoiled their roots of goodness and are not fit vessels; and the sūtra adds immediately the line “and yet toward those it has never felt aversion or forsaken them.” Chengguan here sets down a most weighty warning: some take the text of what is selected out to prove that there is no buddha-nature and to prove fixed natures, without looking at the two words “not forsaking” that follow immediately, and without regard for the tenth simile’s plain statement that all equally have it in common; he says this is “to subtract from the buddha-nature, and it is to be feared it slanders the One Vehicle,” and he charges those who come after to “take warning and be careful of this, and not to be stuck in a provisional teaching.”

Bringing it home: the most dangerous thing in reading a sūtra is not failing to understand it, but reading only half a sentence. The selecting out is meant to make people feel aversion and dread and go straight on into the One Vehicle; it is not the nailing down of anyone’s coffin lid.

The Eighth Characteristic · That Blade of Grass May Perhaps Not Burn, but There Is Nothing the Buddha’s Wisdom Does Not Know

Question: why does this simile set up a question and an answer, and set the answer as “it could not”?

This is the one passage of question and answer in the whole sense. Samantabhadra asks: the kalpa fire burns the Iron Ring Mountains blazing without remainder; if a man takes dry grass in his hand and casts it in, could it fail to burn? The answer: it could not. Then Samantabhadra turns it up a level: “for that grass cast in, there may perhaps be room for its not burning” — for that blade of grass there is still room for the one chance in ten thousand that it does not burn; whereas the wisdom of the Tathāgata, discriminating all the sentient beings of the three times, all lands, all numbers of kalpas, and all dharmas, leaves nothing unknown, and to say there is something unknown would be “an impossibility.” The reason is a single line: “because its wisdom is equal and understands everything through and through.”

Setting the error right: do not read this as exaggeration for effect. What it uses is a strict comparison — the most impossible thing in the world still retains a sliver of room, while the Buddha’s wisdom, in leaving nothing unknown, does not retain even that sliver. Chengguan names this simile “the wisdom of the Buddha by which knowing leaves nothing unexhausted,” and adds a line gathering up what went before: “by this the Buddha’s wisdom rests upon nothing further” — since knowing leaves nothing unexhausted, it naturally rests upon nothing further, which answers back to the first simile.

Bringing it home: what this characteristic establishes is the floor of faith. If there were still something the Buddha’s wisdom did not know, then the resting, the bringing forth, the pervading, and the possessing spoken of in the nine similes before would all have holes in them.

The Ninth Characteristic · Besides Being Able to Extinguish, One Must Also Be Able Not to Extinguish

Question: since there is a wisdom-wind that can extinguish all habitual tendencies of affliction, why not extinguish them all at one stroke?

The weight of the ninth simile lies not in “being able to extinguish” but in “skillfully upholding.” At the kalpa of destruction there is a Scattering-Destruction wind able to shatter the great-thousand world-system, and there is another wind, Able to Block, which encircles the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system and blocks the Scattering-Destruction wind, not letting it reach the worlds of other quarters; and were there no wind Able to Block, there would be no world in the ten directions not destroyed entirely. Conjoined to the Tathāgata: there is the great wisdom-wind Able to Extinguish, which extinguishes the habitual tendencies of affliction of the great bodhisattvas; and there is the great wisdom-wind of Skillful Upholding, which skillfully sustains those bodhisattvas whose faculties are not yet ripened, not letting the wisdom-wind-wheel Able to Extinguish cut off all their habitual tendencies of affliction. Were there no skillfully upholding wisdom-wind, “measureless bodhisattvas would all fall into the stage of the śrāvakas and the stage of the pratyekabuddhas.”

Chengguan names this simile “the wisdom by which the Buddha skillfully causes delusion to be retained,” and points out that it is the Buddha’s skill: “not only able to cut off, but also able to retain.” The Buddha confers this skill upon bodhisattvas whose faculties are not yet ripened and whose myriad practices are not yet complete, causing them to retain the delusion that moistens rebirth; and by this retaining of delusion, delusion comes at last to exhaustion and omniscience is gained — unlike those of the two vehicles, who do not act for the sake of awakening and whose minds look to a quick way out.

Setting the error right: to read the retaining of delusion as indulging the afflictions is to get it entirely wrong. What is retained is the delusion that moistens rebirth, and the purpose of retaining it is not to cut off the practice of the bodhisattva — which takes up directly the seventh simile’s “because it does not cut off the practice of the bodhisattva.”

Bringing it home: a practitioner set on ‘cutting it all off quickly and cleanly’ often cuts the very line that binds him to sentient beings. This characteristic says: cut too early, and you fall into the stage of the two vehicles.

The Tenth Characteristic · The Great Sūtra Scroll inside One Mote of Dust

Question: to say “there is no place the wisdom of the Tathāgata does not reach” — how far does the pervading go?

Samantabhadra first sets out the dharma: “there is not one sentient being who is not fully furnished with the wisdom of the Tathāgata; it is only on account of deluded thought, inversion, and attachment that they fail to realize it; and if they part from deluded thought, then the wisdom of omniscience, spontaneous wisdom, and unobstructed wisdom become present before them.” Then he gives the simile: there is a great sūtra scroll in measure equal to the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system, and the affairs within the Iron Ring Mountains, the affairs within the great earth, the middling-thousand and small-thousand systems, and on to the four continents, the great ocean, Sumeru, and the palaces of the gods, are each and every one written down in equal measure, and yet this sūtra scroll abides entire within a single mote of dust; and so it is with all motes of dust. There is a man of clear and penetrating wisdom, accomplished in the pure divine eye, who sees the scroll inside the dust, of not the slightest benefit to sentient beings, and thereupon vows to break the dust and bring out the sūtra, so that all sentient beings may universally be enriched.

Chengguan here opens three senses. First, since there is not one sentient being who does not have it, then “what has no nature is not counted among sentient beings,” grasses and trees and the like never being counted among sentient beings in the first place — and this has already passed beyond the view of the five natures. Second, the cause of sentient beings while still in bonds already fully possesses the fruit-dharma of being out of bonds, and so it says they “have the wisdom of the Tathāgata” — not that they merely have the nature and will only afterward accomplish it, nor that principle comes first and wisdom after. Third, the fruit-wisdom within the cause of sentient beings is precisely the fruit-wisdom of the buddhas — and he judges this sense outright to be the school of Huayan’s alone: “because in the tenet of the perfect teaching self and other, cause and fruit, are not two in substance … were it not the Huayan school, there would be no such principle.”

Chengguan further explains that “lying hidden in one mote” has three senses: first, the deluded covering the true; second, the small containing the large; third, the one possessing the many. And he explains that “as for the great sūtra scroll, the Buddha’s wisdom is without shore, and the virtue of the nature is perfectly complete.” Fazang, in the Tanxuan ji, on the same passage, shows from the reverse side that sentient beings originally possess it, with “if it were not there beforehand, where would it be gotten at the time of parting from inversion?” — and on this basis he blocks the notion of sentient beings without the nature.

Someone doubts: if the buddha-wisdom is already there, how could one still be a sentient being? Chengguan answers both directly and from the reverse: it is on account of inversion that they do not realize it, so how can one say it is not there — “like a strong man deluded about the jewel in his forehead: shall we say there is no jewel beneath the skin?”; and if it were originally not there beforehand, then after parting from inversion where would it come from? He cites two lines from the Nirvāṇa Sūtra as his measure: for fear that people will not cultivate, it says “to say that it definitely exists is to be attached”; for fear that people will not believe that it exists, it says “to say that it definitely does not exist is to speak falsely”; and then he settles it in a line — better to be attached than to speak falsely.

Bringing it home: this characteristic is not a piece of good news and nothing more. What the sūtra goes on to give is the Tathāgata’s exclamation, “How marvelous! How marvelous!” together with that most practical line — “I ought to teach them the noble path, causing them to be forever free of deluded thought and attachment.” The original possessing is the premise; the parting from delusion is the work; acknowledge the premise and do not do the work, and the dust is still dust.

Conclusion · The Ten Similes Do Not Exhaust a Hair’s Breadth of the Buddha’s Mind

Question: with the ten similes finished, has the Buddha’s mind been made clear?

Samantabhadra gathers it up with the greatest care himself: “the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas should know the mind of the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One, by way of vast characteristics such as these, measureless, unobstructed, and inconceivable.” One word “such as these” and one word “measureless” prise open the number ten. Chengguan too, after summing up the ten similes, says plainly that these ten are perfectly interfused and only “display in brief the characteristics of the Buddha’s wisdom, lodging therein a display of the mind of the Tathāgata, without exhausting a hair’s breadth of the Buddha’s mind, and therefore one should further know it by way of the measureless and unobstructed and the rest.”

There is one further point of format to account for: this sense is titled “knowing the mind of the Tathāgata,” yet the ten similes figure wisdom throughout. Chengguan explains this: “since the mind cannot be known by way of wisdom, he lodges his praise in wisdom for the time being. Wisdom is a mental factor, and if even it takes ten similes to make its profundity clear, then the mind it rests upon is profounder than the profound; therefore the end of each of the ten similes concludes with a characteristic of the mind.” And so the closing clause of every simile is ‘this is such-and-such a characteristic of the mind of the Tathāgata,’ not ‘such-and-such a wisdom.’

Bringing it home: if on finishing the ten similes you feel ‘so that is how it is,’ you have most likely read them as ten pieces of information. What the sūtra’s ending points out is precisely this: these are only characteristics, and characteristics stated in brief at that.

The Verses in Repetition · Twenty-Two Verses, Matching the Positions and Not Teaching Again

Question: since the prose section has already said it all, why are verses in repetition still needed?

Chengguan outlines this section as “second, the verses. Twenty-two verses,” and sets out the distribution: the two opening lines display the whole with respect to dharma, the rest putting the preceding ten similes into verse; the first simile gets a verse and a half, the tenth simile four verses, and the eight in between two verses each. So the office of the verses is to match the positions and to hold up the sense, not to teach it all over again.

And precisely for that reason, wherever the verses let slip a turn of phrase that the prose did not state outright, it is all the more worth noticing. Thus the verse on the eighth simile says “even adamant is burned right through, here there is no principle by which it would not burn,” pushing the dry grass of the prose section on to adamant; and thus the final verse of the tenth simile — “the buddhas, out of great kindness and compassion, cause them to remove deluded thought; and it is just this that is called the appearance, enriching the host of bodhisattvas” — only in the last two lines brings the word “appearance” back to the chapter title: the appearance of a buddha is the causing of sentient beings to remove deluded thought and to see the wisdom of the Tathāgata originally present in themselves.

One thing must be recorded: what Fazang commented on was the sixty-fascicle text, and his outline of its verses makes them thirty-seven; the eighty-fascicle text has twenty-two verses. The two texts fold and unfold differently, each following the text commented upon, and both are recorded without adjudication.

Bringing it home: in reading the verses in repetition there is no need to look for a new sense in every line; take them as a table of contents, and go back to check which simile you read past in the prose.

Lineage

This sense is the root of the Huayan school’s doctrine of nature-arising. Fazang’s Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang cites in a general way, in four places, ‘the chapter on nature-arising speaks of ten minds’ to establish the sense of the ten virtues of the One Vehicle, and what is cited is what the text of these ten characteristics bears — yet without taking up the ten similes of this sense phrase by phrase; it is recorded here that the citation is general, without adjudicating whether what it points to is these ten characteristics. The eighty-fascicle text retitles the chapter “The Appearance of the Tathāgata,” while the sixty-fascicle text titles it “The Nature-Arising of the Jewel-King Tathāgata”; Fazang commented on the sixty-fascicle text, and so his outline name still reads “the mental action of nature-arising,” while Chengguan commented on the eighty-fascicle text and his outline name reads “the mental action of the appearance” — a difference of one name that shows exactly the difference in the titles of the two texts, recorded without adjudication.

Within the tenth simile, ‘one mote containing the great sūtra scroll,’ the senses of “the small containing the large” and “the one possessing the many” among the three senses of lying hidden in the dust that Chengguan opens up lie at the same scriptural ground as the later discussions of the freedom of the broad and the narrow and of the mutual containment of one and many; and the seventh simile’s “the practice of the bodhisattva is the nature of the Tathāgata, and the nature of the Tathāgata is the practice of the bodhisattva,” together with Chengguan’s gloss of “cause and fruit interpenetrating and bringing each other forth in turn,” is likewise a textual ground for the non-duality of cause and fruit in the perfect teaching. Chengguan further cites the nine similes of the Tathāgatagarbha and other sūtras — the blue lotus in the mud, the poor woman bearing a holy embryo, the jewel of great price wrapped in a filthy garment, the maṇi fallen into a deep privy, the true golden image covered by a worn-out garment, the mango tree whose flower and fruit are not yet formed, the rice grain within the husk, the gold within the ore, the image within the mould — as collateral evidence that “these are all the sense of there being a buddha-body within the dust, much the same as this”; whether the similes of those sūtras are the same as or different from the simile here the ancient worthies did not adjudicate, and it is not adjudicated here either.

As for the three explanations of the one sentence of the general statement, Chengguan gathers them up by reconciling and Fazang judges them by the four teachings; the two tracks run side by side, and both are settled sayings of the ancient worthies. They are recorded, without adjudicating which stands higher.

Why We Should Ask about ‘the Realm of the Tathāgata’

The portion before this spoke of the mind and intent of the Tathāgata — that is the wisdom which knows; and this portion turns of a sudden to ask: then the object that this wisdom faces, what is that? Samantabhadra opens with a question: “How should the bodhisattva-mahāsattva know the realm of the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One?” The manner of the asking is worth noticing. He does not ask ‘what is the realm of the Tathāgata’, but ‘how should a bodhisattva know it’. The realm itself is past thinking; the way by which the realm may be known can nevertheless be pointed out.

Some will suppose that, the Buddha’s realm being past thinking, there is no need to ask at all, and that asking is asking in vain. This is the first misunderstanding that the portion means to clear away. Chengguan judges this passage thus: it directly displays the realm that is the bounds, and along with it sets forth the realm that is the object; and of the preceding portion and this one he says that “the two senses complete each other, as a lid answers to its box” — the former makes clear the wisdom that knows, and this one sets forth what that wisdom takes as object, for it is because the object is boundless that the bounds of the wisdom are seen to be hard to think; and conversely, it is because those bounds are hard to think that the object can be exhausted. Fazang marks this section outright as “making clear the realm of nature-arising,” and puts it still more plainly: “since there was already the great wisdom that is able to know, now what is known is made clear.”

So this question is not the opening of some abstruse talk; it is the opening of practice. Only when you know how great the fruit-virtue of a buddha is do you know how great the thought you arouse ought to be. And the scriptural text at once places in your hands the very rod by which the Buddha’s realm is measured — and that rod is not up in the heavens.

The Ten Realms: Counting from the World All the Way to “the Realm That Is No Realm”

Samantabhadra first gives the condition of the one who is able to know: “with wisdom that has no obstruction and no hindrance.” Chengguan puts it very hard: “he first has one take unobstructed wisdom as that which is able to know, because without this one cannot measure the Buddha’s realm.” Fazang says the same: “if one does not obtain this measureless and boundless wisdom, there is no way to speak of the vast realm.” Without this rod, not one of the ten clauses below can be measured at all.

Then the ten realms are laid out: the world, the three times, the lands, the dharmas, sentient beings, suchness without difference, the Dharma realm without obstruction, the true limit without bound, empty space without measure, and the realm that is no realm. These ten clauses are not strung together at random. Chengguan allots them clause by clause: the first raises in general those who are to be transformed; the second is the time of the transforming; the third the place of it; the fourth the dharma used in it; the fifth the persons transformed. The sixth, seventh, and eighth all speak of what is realized — suchness names the substance, and because it is constantly of one taste it is called without difference; the Dharma realm is that upon which beings and dharmas depend, and so is called unobstructed; the true limit is the exhausting of affairs to their reality, and so is called without bound. The ninth is the bounds of the place of transforming, and the last runs through all of them universally.

What must be guarded against is reading these ten clauses as ten separate things heaped together. They are ten faces of one thing: from the world, which is the coarsest, they gather inward to suchness and the true limit, which are the finest, and then gather in further to that one clause where even the name “realm” will not stand. The sequence gathers inward; it does not spread outward.

“The Realm That Is No Realm”: This One Clause Is the Eye of the Whole Passage

At the end of the ten clauses it says of a sudden that “the realm that is no realm is the realm of the Tathāgata” — that realm which is no realm is the realm of the Tathāgata. Of all the sentences here this is the easiest to read as mystification. What it does is in fact something very exact: it gathers up, all at once, the nine clauses that went before. Chengguan says: “the last is a double negation, displaying that the nine realms before are the same as not being.”

Fazang’s explanation goes a step nearer. He first distinguishes: “as for saying ‘the realm that is not a realm’, it is because it is not a realm transformed by consciousness that it speaks so.” It is not that sort of realm, the sort that consciousness turns out. Any realm that consciousness turns out must stand over against the consciousness that takes it as its object: where there is this, there is that. The Buddha’s realm is not a realm of that kind. And so he says further: “the tenth is that realm and wisdom are not two, and this is named no realm; because it is a realm not other than wisdom it is named no realm, and it is just this no-realm that is taken as the realm of the Tathāgata.” Realm and wisdom are no longer two; the realm is not some further end lying outside wisdom — this is what is called “no realm,” and it is precisely this “no realm” that is set up as the realm of the Tathāgata.

Brought down to where the reader stands: if you are still picturing ‘a landscape, exceedingly vast, that a buddha sees’, that is still a realm turned out by consciousness, still two ends. What the portion means to say is that at the ground of buddhahood the knower and the known are no longer parted, and therefore the Buddha’s realm cannot be treated as an object and pointed at. That it cannot be pointed at is not because it is too far off; it is because it is not over against you.

Because the Realm Is Measureless the Wisdom Is Measureless; Because the Realm Is Nowhere the Buddha Too Is Nowhere

The ten realms listed, the scriptural text at once makes two rounds of extension. The first: the realm of all worlds is measureless, and the realm of the Tathāgata is measureless too; the realm of the three times is measureless, and the realm of the Tathāgata is measureless too; and so on even to this, that the realm which is no realm is measureless, and the realm of the Tathāgata is measureless too. Chengguan explains this as “because realm and wisdom answer to each other, both are measureless” — realm and wisdom are a pair that answer to each other, and to measure the realm is to measure the wisdom.

The second round matters more: “just as that realm which is no realm is in no place at all to be found, so it is with the realm of the Tathāgata — in no place at all is it to be found.” Having just spoken of realms of every kind, it now says of a sudden that in no place at all is it to be found. Is this not self-contradictory? It is not. Chengguan follows it admirably: “afterwards, with respect to no-realm, he displays that it is not existent, even to this, that suchness itself cannot be got at. And therefore the realms rise like clouds and are yet constantly still.” The realms rise like clouds and are yet of themselves constantly still — the clouds are indeed up in the sky, and yet you cannot seize a piece of cloud and hold it in your hand. To be everywhere, and to be at a place that can be pointed at, are two different things. Readers commonly misread ‘nowhere absent’ as ‘pointed at everywhere’; here the portion cuts that misreading off.

Measuring the Buddha’s Realm with Your Own Mind

Here the scriptural text makes a turn that takes one by surprise: “the bodhisattva-mahāsattva should know that the realm of the mind is the realm of the Tathāgata.” That rod for measuring the Buddha’s realm turns out to be this one thought of yours, now.

The text gives the realm of the mind four qualifiers: measureless, boundless, without bondage, without release. Chengguan reads them in two halves: “‘measureless and boundless’ speaks of the breadth of its characteristic and function; ‘without bondage and without release’ makes clear the depth and stillness of its substance and nature.” The first pair speaks of function, the second of substance. Then the text raises a question of itself: why is this? And it answers: “because it is in just such and such a way that the mind ponders and discriminates, and in just such and such a way that measureless things appear.” Chengguan states the sense of this question and answer very plainly: “the bodhisattva’s own mind displays according as he thinks, and therefore has no measure. The Buddha’s realm is so as well, manifesting according to what meets it, whether body or wisdom — how should it have measure?”

One misunderstanding to be cleared away: this is not saying ‘your mind is the Buddha’s realm, and so you are already a buddha’. What the text uses is comparison — comparing the far by the near, taking something you experience every day and have never looked at closely, in order to compare with it something you have never experienced at all. Your mind appears just as you think, and no one has ever measured its far edge; the Buddha’s realm manifests body and wisdom according to the capacities of beings, and its edge likewise cannot be measured. Here is where it comes to ground: you need not go elsewhere to look for the inconceivable — this ‘displaying according as you think’, in the very stirring of your thought at this moment, is the readiest sample of the inconceivable there is. Fazang ties it in the same way: “yet wisdom must depend upon mind, and therefore it says ‘the realm of the mind’.”

The Dragon Does Not Leave His Own Place, and Yet the Rain Covers the Earth

The first simile: a great dragon king sends down rain according to his mind, and that rain comes neither from within nor from without; and so it is with the realm of the Tathāgata, which appears measurelessly according to pondering and discriminating, while in the ten directions there is nowhere at all that it comes from.

Ask one question first: the rain plainly falls — how can it have no place it comes from? If you say it comes out from inside the dragon’s body, how much water can the dragon’s body hold; if you say it comes in from outside the body, then why must it wait upon the dragon’s mind. Neither within nor without will serve, and so one can only say: it is there according to the mind, and there is nowhere it comes from. Chengguan is exactly the one who judges this simile a simile for “without bondage and without release”: “since there is no place it comes from, what bondage or release should there be?” — if there is no place it comes from at all, on what are bondage and release to be set up? Fazang for his part judges it “a simile for the wisdom of a buddha which depends on mind and has no root.”

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is this: it is not saying that the rain is unreal. The rain has really fallen, the earth is really wet; only, its ‘being there’ is not a being there carried in from somewhere. The manifesting of a buddha is the same: when beings see the Buddha and hear the Dharma, what they receive is real, and yet the Buddha has not set out from some place and come. Brought down to the reader, this simile undoes a very deep clinging: we always suppose that a response is the Buddha ‘having come over from that side’, whereas in truth it is that where the mind is pure it appears, as the dragon’s rain follows the mind.

The Ocean’s Water Comes from the Vow

The second simile follows at once: the water of the great ocean all arises from the power of the dragon king’s mind, and the ocean of all-knowing wisdom of all the buddhas is likewise, arising from the great vows the Tathāgata made in ages past.

The former simile spoke of “no place it comes from”; this one supplies “that from which it comes.” Chengguan states it clearly: “afterwards he makes clear the simile of the ocean’s water arising from mind, a simile for that on which the absence of bondage and release depends. The water has the power of mind for its cause, and is not fixed as within or without. Wisdom comes from the vow of long ago, and because it arises from conditions its coming is a coming that is no coming.” To have no place it comes from is not to be without a cause; only, that cause does not fall within the frame of within and without. The Buddha’s ocean of wisdom is not some expanse of water ready-made out of nothing; it has a provenance, and the provenance is that vow of long ago.

This sentence is also the bone of the whole Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata. What is called “appearance” is not that a buddha springs up where formerly there was none, but that an old vow comes now into act — which is why Fazang simply writes the name of this portion’s section as “making clear the realm of nature-arising.” The most solid stroke of all for the reader lies here: the vow you make today is the ocean of your wisdom hereafter. As deep as the vow, so deep the ocean; a vow never made will never become water later on.

The Rivers of the Four Continents: First Say Out Honestly, to the End, How Much “Much” Is

The third simile is the longest stretch of the whole portion, and yet the easiest to skip over — because it looks like nothing but a string of numbers. Two thousand five hundred rivers in Jambudvīpa, five thousand in Godānīya of the west, seven thousand five hundred in Pūrvavideha of the east, ten thousand in Uttarakuru of the north: twenty-five thousand rivers in all, flowing on without break into the great ocean. And having said it, Samantabhadra still stops to ask: “is this water much or not?” The great assembly answers: “very much indeed.”

Why lay it out in this way? Because in order to display “does not reach,” one must first say “much” to its utmost. Chengguan outlines this simile in four sections: first the water of the four continents, second the rain-water of the dragon kings, third the water pouring from the palaces, fourth Sāgara both raining and pouring forth; and he points out the general rule — “in each the later doubles the earlier, so as to display the depth and breadth.” This is a stairway mounting upward, each step twice the one below it.

Should the reader find the numbers trifling, he has just missed what the text is at: the work of this long stretch is not to report figures but to build a platform beforehand for the sentence that comes after, “does not amount to one part in a hundred.” The higher the platform is built, the more real is the drop when that sentence throws it down.

Eighty Koṭis of Dragon Kings Doubling by Turns

The stairway goes on up: the water that the dragon king Ten Lights rains into the sea doubles what went before, and Hundred Lights doubles it again; Great Adornment, Manasvin, Thunder-Peal, Nanda and Upananda, Measureless Light, Unceasing Downpour, Great Victor, Great Rousing — eighty koṭis of great dragon kings such as these each send down rain upon the great ocean, turn after turn doubling what went before; and Jambu Banner, the crown prince of the dragon king Sāgara, doubles it again. Then the same round comes over once more from the beginning: the water in the palaces of these dragon kings flows into the great ocean, and each again doubles what went before. Last comes Sāgara himself, raining upon the sea without break and pouring up from his palace, doubling once more; and his water is of the colour of dark-blue beryl, and wells up at a set season, and therefore the tides of the great ocean do not miss their time.

That sentence, “the tides do not miss their time,” is no idle stroke. Chengguan explains: “because it wells up, the tide rises; because it is swiftly consumed by the jewels, the tide falls — this is speaking to the utmost.” The water wells up and so the tide rises; the water is consumed by the jewels and so the tide falls — and “speaking to the utmost” means speaking to the place beyond which one cannot speak. The text pushes “much” to the very end of language, and in passing accounts as well for the tides, a thing men see every day and do not understand.

And so Samantabhadra asks once more: “is that great ocean measureless or not?” This time the answer of the assembly has changed — “it is measureless indeed, and cannot be told by any simile.” It is no longer “very much”; it is ‘beyond any simile’. The platform has been built to its top.

Having Spoken to the End, He Must Still Speak: The Simile Does Not Reach

The platform built to its top, the text throws it down in a single sentence: this measurelessness of the great ocean, set against the measurelessness of the Tathāgata’s ocean of wisdom, “does not amount to one part in a hundred, nor to one part in a thousand, nor even to one part of the upaniṣad part”; and it says so outright — “it is only in accordance with the minds of sentient beings that a simile is made for them, and the Buddha’s realm is not what a simile can reach.”

This is the most honest place in the whole portion. Having set up so long a simile, at the end it declares of itself that the simile does not reach. Here the reader must clear away two opposite misunderstandings. The first is to suppose that, since a simile has been given, the Buddha’s realm is roughly of that size, and so to take the ocean for the measurement of the Buddha’s realm — it is not so; the ocean is only an expedient made to suit your mind. The second is to suppose that, since it does not reach, the simile was set up for nothing — that is not so either; had you not climbed, step by step, by the rivers and by the dragons’ rain, up to “it cannot be told by any simile,” you would not know at all how high the platform was that has been thrown down. First you are given a measure, and then you are told that this measure is not enough; and only then do you feel, for the first time, the weight of the words “past thinking.” Chengguan gathers the passage thus: “the Buddha’s wisdom in a single thought is already without end; how much more, exhausting the three limits of time and encompassing the ten directions, layer upon layer upon layer — how should a simile display it?”

The Four Measureless Things: The Ocean of Wisdom · the Mass of Jewels · Sentient Beings · the Ground They Dwell On

The simile thrown down, the dharma must still be joined to it. The text gathers up with four clauses of “should know”: he should know that the Tathāgata’s ocean of wisdom is measureless, because from the first arousing of the thought he has cultivated all the practices of a bodhisattva without break; he should know that the mass of jewels is measureless, because all the factors of awakening and the lineage of the Three Jewels have never been cut off; he should know that the sentient beings who dwell there are measureless, because all the learners and those beyond learning, the śrāvakas and the pratyekabuddhas, take their enjoyment therein; he should know that the ground they dwell on is measureless, because from the first Joyful Ground to the ultimate Ground of No Obstruction the bodhisattvas dwell there.

These four clauses answer exactly to the four things of the great ocean before: the water, the many jewels, the sentient beings, and the great earth upon which it rests. Fazang points the correspondence out very clearly: “the first arousing of the thought and the rest are joined to the measurelessness of the water in the ocean; the second, the factors of the path and the rest, are joined to the measurelessness of the maṇi and other jewels in the ocean; the third, measureless sentient beings and the rest, are joined to the measurelessness of the sentient beings in the ocean; the fourth, the great earth and the rest, are joined to the measurelessness of the great earth that the ocean has.” And Chengguan adds a sentence that matters: “it is not that wisdom alone is the Buddha’s realm; the factors of awakening and the rest are all realms that are the bounds.” The realm of a buddha is not that wisdom only; the dharmas, those who take the enjoyment, and even the stages on which the bodhisattvas dwell are all counted within the bounds of the Buddha’s realm.

Here the reader may look back at himself: every portion of Dharma you have learned is one of the jewels in that ocean; the place where you stand at this moment is an inch of that great earth. The Buddha’s realm is measureless, and you are not outside it.

Conclusion: To Know the Buddha’s Realm Is for the Benefit of Beings

The last sentence of the prose brings the whole intent of the passage back to the human world: “for the sake of entering measureless wisdom and benefiting all sentient beings, the bodhisattva-mahāsattva should know in this way the realm of the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One.” Chengguan explains this general conclusion: “that is, it concludes by stating the intent of knowing: not knowing the Buddha’s realm, how should one be able to benefit beings?” — it makes plain why one must know: not for the increase of learning, but because one who does not know the Buddha’s realm cannot benefit beings to the end. How great a thought one arouses is settled by how great a fruit one sees; and if the fruit one sees is small, the practice too will be small. This one sentence ties all the measurelessness and all the similes that went before back to the single matter of “benefiting all sentient beings.”

The Five Repeated Verses

The prose ended, Samantabhadra makes the meaning clear again in five verses. Chengguan outlines them thus: “the five verses divide in two: the first one is a verse on the exposition in terms of dharma; the rest are verses on the similes that went before” — the first verse is on the realm of the mind, the next two on the dragon’s rain and on the Buddha’s body neither coming nor going, and the last two on the vastness and depth of the great ocean.

There is only one place in the verses where something is marked that the prose never stated outright: “The Muni who is furnished with the ten powers is likewise so: there is nowhere he comes from and nowhere he goes; and if there be one whose mind is pure, the Buddha manifests his body before him — a body whose measure equals the Dharma realm, and yet able to enter a single pore.” The prose used the dragon’s rain as a simile for the realm’s having no place it comes from; the verse sets ‘neither coming nor going’ directly upon the body of the Buddha, and supplies besides the condition of that manifesting — “if there be one whose mind is pure.” This is the sentence that brings all the foregoing doctrine down onto the reader: the Buddha does not come from outside; what comes is the purity of your mind. And in “a body whose measure equals the Dharma realm, and yet able to enter a single pore,” the measure of the body equals the Dharma realm and yet it enters one pore — here is where the obstruction between great and small gives way.

The remaining four verses all answer to the prose and bring out no new doctrine: the verse on the realm of the mind answers to the passage on the realm of the mind; the verse on the dragon’s rain answers to the simile of the dragon’s rain; the verse on the rare treasures, the sentient beings, and the great earth within the ocean answers to the four measureless things; and the last verse, “the learners, those beyond learning, and those who dwell on the grounds all obtain abundant benefit within it,” answers to the joining of the dharma to the four measureless things.

Lineage

This portion is where the scriptural ground of the Huayan house’s sense of nature-arising lies. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle text, marks the section outright as “the realm of nature-arising,” and explains the last of the ten clauses by “realm and wisdom being not two is named no realm”; and the sense that the ocean of wisdom arises from the great vows of long ago is the ground of the teaching that the fruit-virtue is not newly made but is an old vow coming into act. Chengguan, upon the eighty-fascicle text, opens two tracks, ‘the realm that is the bounds’ and ‘the realm that is the object’, and gathers the ten realms under three schemes, the two truths, the three truths, and the five realms. The two houses differ in how they gather and divide the ten clauses (Chengguan: the first five conventional, the next three real, the ninth running through both, the last a double negation; Fazang: the first five conventional, the latter five real); Fazang sets out besides one track of the three natures (the first five other-dependent, the next four perfectly accomplished, the last one wholly imagined), which Chengguan does not give. As to the reckoning of the number of the verses, Chengguan, following the eighty-fascicle text, makes five verses, and Fazang, following the sixty-fascicle text, makes ten — the texts the two commented upon are themselves different. There were divergent explanations among the ancients; they are recorded here, and no judgment is made.

The divergences of the parallel translation are likewise recorded in the apparatus: the sixty-fascicle text gives the number of the rivers of the third continent as eight thousand four hundred and the total as twenty-five thousand nine hundred, while the eighty-fascicle text gives seven thousand five hundred and twenty-five thousand; the sixty-fascicle ‘the realm that is not a realm’ is the eighty-fascicle ‘the realm that is no realm’, and ‘suchness undestroyed’ is ‘suchness without difference’. They are recorded as they stand, without forcing an explanation.

As for the Dasheng qixin lun, the Awakening of Faith, and the Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang, and for the Cheng weishi lun, the She dacheng lun, and the Yuqie shidi lun — in all of them the clauses that would quote this portion specifically are simply not found. This portion has no direct textual warrant for a lineage along the consciousness-only axis; the lack is recorded in accordance with fact, and nothing from elsewhere is used to fill it.

Why Ask About “the Practice of the Tathāgata”

The sense before this one asked about the realm of the Buddha — that is the object known; this sense turns all at once and asks: then what does the Buddha do upon that object? Samantabhadra opens his mouth and it is still a question: “How should a bodhisattva-mahāsattva know the practice of the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One?” Notice that what he asks is still not “what the practice of the Tathāgata is,” but “how a bodhisattva should know it.” The practice itself is inconceivable; the way of knowing the practice can nevertheless be pointed out.

Someone may feel that since the foregoing has already said that the Buddha’s realm is measureless and boundless and beyond the reach of similes, asking about his practice is superfluous. This is precisely the first misunderstanding this sense has to clear away. Chengguan states the reason for the coming of this passage: “what was set forth earlier was the measure of the realm and the boundlessness of wisdom; now what is made manifest is the functioning, and there compassion and wisdom are inexhaustible — for though the ocean of wisdom is already full, compassion does not rest.” The ocean of wisdom is full, yet the compassionate mind will not stop on that account; wisdom spoken of at its point of fullness is the realm, and compassion flowing outward is the practice. Fazang ties it more directly still: “earlier what was set forth was the realm upon which wisdom depends; now what is discerned is the practice accomplished in dependence upon that realm.”

So this question carries the previous sense back into the place of movement: having come to know how vast the fruit-virtue of a buddha is, one must further know how a fruit-virtue like that operates in the world. Brought down to the reader, this is the question, ‘does someone who has realized that far still do things, and how does he do them?’

The Two Names of Practice: The Unobstructed Practice and the Practice of Suchness

Samantabhadra’s answer first sets up two names: “one should know that the unobstructed practice is the practice of the Tathāgata, and should know that the practice of suchness is the practice of the Tathāgata.” Why set up two?

Chengguan here gives four paired readings one after another, and expounds them very finely: “First, the unobstructed practice is the practice of phenomena that is identical with principle. The practice of suchness is the practice of principle that is identical with phenomena. The former is the characteristic of practice, the latter is the substance of practice. Again, the former is the compassion that is identical with wisdom, the latter the wisdom that is identical with compassion. The former is the conventional that is identical with the true, the latter the true that is identical with the conventional; and their fusing without obstruction is the practice of the Tathāgata.” What the four pairs say is in fact two sides of one and the same thing — the unobstructed practice is the practice seen upon phenomena, yet these phenomena are not apart from principle; the practice of suchness is the practice spoken of upon principle, yet this principle is not apart from phenomena. The former is the look of the practice, the latter its substance; the former is compassion flowing out of wisdom, the latter the wisdom that is not lost within compassion.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is this: taking the two practices to mean that the Buddha has two sets of behavior, one set for the true and one set for the conventional. Chengguan’s last clause has already blocked it — “their fusing without obstruction is the practice of the Tathāgata”: only when they fuse and there is no partition between them is it called the practice of the Tathāgata. The two names are there so that the reader can see both sides, not because the Buddha really has two kinds of practice. Here is where it comes to ground: if you suppose that doing things is one matter and cultivating the path another, you have fallen into exactly the discrimination this passage breaks.

The Practice of Suchness: Cutting Off the Notion of a ‘Beginning’ by Way of the Three Limits of Time

The first section explains the practice of suchness, and what it uses is suchness itself: “It is like suchness: in the prior limit it has not been born, in the later limit it will not move, and in the present it does not arise; so it is with the practice of the Tathāgata — not born, not moved, not arisen.”

First a question: practice is plainly something in motion; how can it be unborn and unmoving? Chengguan explains it very aptly: “this makes clear that its substance cuts off the three limits of time, and therefore it is the same as suchness. Tallying with suchness, practice is accomplished, and the practice is itself suchness. Past and future are not its conditions, and therefore it is said to be unborn and unmoving; the present is apart from conditions, and therefore it does not arise.” The pivot lies in “tallying with suchness, practice is accomplished, and the practice is itself suchness” — this practice is not some separate stretch of activity produced on the side; it is a practice accomplished by tallying with suchness, and so the practice itself is suchness. Past and future are not its conditions, and hence it is called unborn and unmoving; the present too does not arise in dependence on conditions, and hence it is called not arisen.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is this: unborn, unmoving, and unarisen do not mean that the Buddha does not move. They mean that this practice has no point in time to which one could point and say ‘it begins from here.’ Fazang lists this clause as the first of the five similes, calling it “the simile of the true that does not shift or alter, figuring the Buddha’s practice that reaches to the cutting off of the three limits of time.” Brought down to the reader: whatever you can name a starting point for, you will one day be able to name its ending too; the Buddha’s practice admits of no beginning to point to, and therefore it has no day of exhaustion either.

The Dharma Realm Has No Form: Neither Measured nor Measureless

The second section changes what it depends upon: “It is like the Dharma realm: it is not measured, it is not measureless, because it has no form” — and so it is with the practice of the Tathāgata.

This is the easiest place to read straight past. Since it says the practice is not measured, one will readily add, ‘so it is measureless’ — and this sense blocks that way of retreat as well. Chengguan puts his finger on it exactly: “Since there is no measure, how could there be the measureless? For if one calls it measureless, that is precisely a measure.” If the measureless is set up as a characteristic, it turns into a kind of measure all over again. Hence the double negation. And the whole reason for the double negation is just three words: “because it has no form” — with no form to depend on, neither measure nor the measureless has anywhere to be established.

From this Chengguan pushes on to say: “Second, he further raises the formlessness of the Dharma realm to make clear that the double negation tallies with the middle; from which one knows that true reality and the like are all the practice of the Tathāgata.” Whatever bears a name of the sort ‘true reality’ is the practice of the Tathāgata. Then he sets down the most forceful summing-up in the whole passage: “The double negation, everlastingly still, is the practice of the Tathāgata; therefore the more the mind is empty, the more the practice is vast — practicing all day long and yet never having practiced.” The emptier the mind, the vaster the practice; a whole day spent practicing, and yet no ‘I am practicing’ lodged anywhere. He cites the Nirvāṇa Sūtra as well for a witness.

Where it comes to ground: do not be in a hurry to find a size for the Buddha’s practice — even ‘infinitely large’ is a size.

The Bird Flying in Space: However Much Is Said, It Will Never Be Said Out

The third section sets out the first formal simile: a bird flies in space for a hundred years, and neither the region it has flown through nor the region it has not can be measured — because space has no bound. Brought over to the dharma: even were someone to spend a hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of kalpas explaining the practice of the Tathāgata distinctly, what has been said and what has not been said alike cannot be measured — because the practice of the Tathāgata has no bound.

Chengguan points out here that “not measured” in fact has two layers: “First, because the practice is vast and measureless, it says that the practice of the Tathāgata has no bound. Second, phenomena being identical with the true, there is simply no quantity, and therefore space is used as the simile.” The first layer belongs to quantity — the practice is too vast; the second belongs to substance — phenomena being identical with the true, there is from the first no quantity to be spoken of. The sūtra text uses both layers: first it says the places the bird has flown cannot be measured (vastness), then it says space has no bound (no quantity).

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is the notion that this simile is merely exaggeration. It is not exaggeration; it is stating a structure — the part that is said will never make the part that is unsaid any smaller, because what is being measured has no bound in the first place. That this sūtra expounds the practice of the Tathāgata again and again without wearying is the necessary consequence of “what has been said and what has not been said alike cannot be measured.” Brought down to the reader: you need not wait until you have heard the whole of it to cultivate, nor be disheartened because you cannot hear the whole of it.

Manifesting While Dwelling Nowhere: In the Very Place Where He Cannot Stand, He Lets Others See the Road

The fourth section returns from simile to dharma and states the proper character of the unobstructed practice: “The Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One dwells in the unobstructed practice and has no place of dwelling, and yet he is able to manifest universally to all sentient beings the practice that he practices, so that having seen it they go beyond every path of obstruction.”

To dwell, and yet to have no place of dwelling — the sentence looks self-contradictory. Chengguan takes it apart into the two sides of compassion and wisdom and says it through in a single line: “Wisdom dwells nowhere, compassion manifests what is practiced; that is, compassion and wisdom are unobstructed — he is himself without the two obstructions and he causes others to be unobstructed, and all of this is the unobstructed practice.” On the side of wisdom there is no place of dwelling; on the side of compassion the practice is manifested; because wisdom does not dwell it does not fall, and because compassion manifests it can ferry others across. And what is called unobstructedness is not merely one’s own not being obstructed — “he is himself without the two obstructions and he causes others to be unobstructed”: to be unobstructed oneself and also to make others unobstructed, both together, is what is called the unobstructed practice.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is this: dwelling nowhere is not the same as not acting. The sūtra says immediately afterward that “he is able to manifest universally to all sentient beings the practice that he practices,” and the effect is stated plainly — having seen it, beings “go beyond every path of obstruction.” Where it comes to ground: what the Buddha lets people see is not a conclusion but a road that has been walked; only one who sees the road can walk his way out of obstruction.

The King of the Golden-Winged Birds: One Beat of the Two Wings, and the Sea Opens

The fifth section is the most vivid simile in the whole passage. The king of the golden-winged birds wheels in space and does not go away; with pure eyes he looks at the dragon palaces at the bottom of the sea; he rouses his valiant strength, gives one beat of his left and right wings, and the sea water parts on both sides; and knowing which of the dragon males and females are about to come to the end of their lives, he takes them up.

Brought over to the dharma, every item corresponds with perfect neatness: the bird king dwelling in space answers to the Tathāgata dwelling in the unobstructed practice; the pure eyes answer to the pure buddha-eye; watching the dragon palaces within the sea answers to watching all the sentient beings in the palaces throughout the Dharma realm; the valiant strength answers to the valiant ten powers; the left and right wings answer to calming and contemplation; the sea water answers to the great sea of the water of craving that is birth-and-death; and the seizing answers to seizing them up and setting them within the Buddha’s Dharma. Chengguan judges this simile to be “the first, the simile of the golden-winged bird parting the sea, figuring the compassion that is identical with wisdom,” and Fazang judges it to be “the simile of the golden-winged bird seizing through the sea. It figures the Buddha’s practice of surpassing function that rescues the living.”

There are two places to attend to. The first is “if there are those who have planted roots of goodness in the past and have already ripened” — the bird king takes the dragons whose lives are about to end, and the Buddha takes the people whose roots of goodness have ripened. This is not that the Buddha has a picking-and-choosing mind; it is that the capacities differ in ripeness and rawness, and one already ripe comes out at a touch. The second is “the two wings of calming and contemplation”: parting the sea of craving takes two wings, and calming alone will not do it, nor contemplation alone. Brought down to the reader, this simile is in fact speaking of your own portion — whether your roots of goodness are ripe decides whether you are the one seized up at this moment or the one still in the water.

The Sun and Moon Without Thought: Shining a Whole Day and Never Giving Rise to a Single Thought

The sixth section changes to an extremely quiet simile: the sun and moon travel alone through space, without companion, benefiting sentient beings, and yet they never give rise to the thought “where have I come from, and where am I going?” Brought over to the dharma: the buddhas, “their nature from the first quiescent and without discrimination,” nevertheless manifest themselves as journeying through the whole Dharma realm and do buddha-work without rest, and do not give rise to the frivolous, discriminating thought “I have come from over there, and I am going toward over there.”

The previous simile was one of valor, this one is one of thoughtlessness — Chengguan states the division of labor between the two similes very clearly: “the first, the simile of the golden-winged bird parting the sea, figures the compassion that is identical with wisdom; the latter, the simile of the sun and moon without thought, figures the compassion that does not lose wisdom.” One displays the power of compassion, the other the wisdom that is not lost within compassion. Fazang for his part calls it “the simile of the sun and moon traveling in space. It figures the Buddha’s practice of accomplishing affairs without effort” — there is no work of contrivance, and the affair is accomplished.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is this: to be without discrimination is not the same as not knowing. The sun and moon frame no thought, and yet when they shine, not one place that ought to be lit is missing. Where it comes to ground is very concrete: when you are truly benefiting someone, if the mind still keeps in it ‘I am benefiting him · where did I come from for his sake,’ that stretch of keeping-in-mind is what this sense calls frivolous talk. To act and yet be without thought about it — that is what this simile would have you learn.

The Concluding Exhortation: Take Measureless Gates to Know and See a Measureless Practice

The last sentence of the prose section draws back to the bodhisattva: “A bodhisattva-mahāsattva should use measureless means such as these, and measureless natures and characteristics, to know and to see the practice that the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One practices.” Chengguan places this in his outline as a double conclusion, and points out the deftness of the way it concludes: “nature concludes suchness, characteristic concludes the unobstructed.” — within the four words “measureless natures and characteristics,” the word nature answers to the practice of suchness and the word characteristic answers to the unobstructed practice; the two practices set up in pairs at the beginning each return to their own place in the concluding sentence.

This sentence is also a reminder of one thing: the five matters raised earlier are only “such as these,” instances and not the whole. To know and to see a measureless practice, one must know by measureless gates — no one simile, no one line of reasoning, is enough to exhaust it.

Where it comes to ground is in the two words “know and see.” To know is to understand, to see is to behold for oneself; once one has understood what kind of practice the Buddha’s practice is, the very shape of one’s own resolve and one’s own doing will change along with it — one will no longer be in a hurry to leave a self behind in the things one does.

The Five Verses in Repetition

When the prose section is finished, Samantabhadra sets the meaning forth again in five verses. The five verses answer to the five prose passages with perfect neatness and put forward no new meaning: the first verse, “It is like suchness, neither born nor ceasing,” answers to suchness cutting off the three limits of time; the second, “The Dharma realm is not a realm, nor yet is it not a realm,” answers to the Dharma realm having no form; the third, “It is like a bird that has flown for a koṭi of thousands of years,” answers to the bird flying in space; the fourth, “The golden-winged bird in the air watches the great sea,” answers to the king of the golden-winged birds; the last, “It is like the sun and the moon journeying through space,” answers to the sun and moon without thought.

What is worth attending to in the verses is the choice of words. The prose says the Tathāgata; the verses change to “the one of great bountiful benefit,” “the one of great merit,” “the one of ten powers,” “the World-Honored One” — one and the same buddha, named according to the virtue he displays: bountiful benefit is said with respect to compassion, merit with respect to fullness, the ten powers with respect to the working of power. So too the last verse’s line “teaching and transforming sentient beings without a single thought stirring,” which compresses the prose’s “he does not give rise to a frivolous, discriminating thought like this” into five graphs: this is the strength of the verse form — prose lays out the reasoning, and verse compresses the reasoning into a sentence one can carry along.

Lineage

This sense is where the scriptural ground of the Huayan school’s doctrine of the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena lies. Chengguan explains the two practices as “the practice of phenomena that is identical with principle” and “the practice of principle that is identical with phenomena,” and closes with “their fusing without obstruction is the practice of the Tathāgata” — principle and phenomena are not set up separately outside the two practices; they lie in the very mutual identity of those two practices. Fazang for his part names this sense in his outline straightforwardly as “the practice of nature-arising,” tying it to the realm of the preceding sense — “earlier what was set forth was the realm upon which wisdom depends; now what is discerned is the practice accomplished in dependence upon that realm.” The practice does not arise separately; it is accomplished precisely in dependence upon the realm realized — which, together with the earlier sense’s line ‘the ocean of wisdom arises from the great vows of ages past,’ forms the backbone of the doctrine of nature-arising in this chapter, The Appearance of the Tathāgata.

The judgments of the two masters also differ, and both are recorded here. On the explanation of the two practices, Chengguan makes four paired readings, while Fazang sets out three: the ancients divided them by the conventional truth and the true truth; the further explanation divides them by the gathering of phenomena into sameness with principle and by phenomena being exhausted and principle appearing; and the additional explanation divides them by discerning wisdom and principial wisdom. On the assignment of the similes, Chengguan assigns the three sections — suchness cutting off the three limits of time, the Dharma realm having no form, and the bird flying in space — to the practice of suchness, and the two similes of the golden-winged bird and of the sun and moon to the unobstructed practice; Fazang assigns only the one simile of the true that does not shift or alter to the practice of thusness, and the remaining four similes all to the unobstructed practice — so that on the assignment of the two sections, the Dharma realm having no form and the bird flying, the two masters judge differently (Fazang says “the four below explain the unobstructed practice,” the four being the Dharma realm having no form, the bird flying, the golden-winged bird, and the sun and moon). On the judgment of the number of verses, Chengguan follows the eighty-fascicle text, whose text has five verses of seven graphs; Fazang follows the sixty-fascicle text and makes it ten verses setting forth the five similes, two verses each. The texts the two commented upon are different texts; the ancients held differing views, and these are recorded without adjudication.

The divergences of the parallel translation are likewise recorded in the apparatus: the sixty-fascicle text has “the practice of thusness” where the eighty-fascicle text has “the practice of suchness”; it has “not ceasing, not arriving, not arisen” where the eighty has “not born, not moved, not arisen”; and it has “measureless and unbound” and “because it has no body” where the eighty has “not measured, not measureless” and “because it has no form.” In the simile of the sun and moon the eighty-fascicle text has in addition the two phrases “alone and without companion equal to them” and “benefiting sentient beings,” and its dharma correlate reads “their nature is from the first quiescent and has no discrimination,” whereas the sixty-fascicle text reads “traveling everywhere through the space of unobstructed liberation, discriminating the whole Dharma realm.” These are recorded as they stand, without forcing an explanation.

As for the Dasheng qixin lun, the Wujiao zhang, and the Cheng weishi lun, the She dacheng lun, and the Yuqie shidi lun — for all of these, a dedicated citation of this sense yields no hits at all: this sense has no direct textual warrant carried forward on the consciousness-only line, and the lack is recorded as it stands, with nothing from elsewhere put in its place. The line from the Nirvāṇa Sūtra that Chengguan cites beneath the double negation belongs to Chengguan, and is not text of this sūtra.

Why the Question Is ‘How to Know’ and Not ‘How the Buddha Became a Buddha’

The senses before this one spoke in order of the marks of the Tathāgata’s appearance, then his body, his speech, his mind, his realm, and his practice; and here the text drops all at once to the most concrete matter of all: the Buddha’s becoming a buddha. Yet the way the scripture asks about it still takes a turn: “How should the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas know the accomplishing of right awakening of the Tathāgata, the Arhat, the Perfectly Awakened One?” What is asked is not how the Buddha became a buddha, but with what sort of knowing a bodhisattva should know this matter.

If this one question is read past, the whole passage will be read as a biography of the Buddha; if it is held fast, one sees that the whole passage is about a turn in the manner of knowing. Chengguan judges this sense to be “the awakening of the appearance, the fruit of the perfect practice,” saying that since what came before set forth the practice of cultivating in response to conditions, there must be this fruit to gather it up; and he divides the prose into three parts — the raising of the question, the explanation of the characteristics, and the general conclusion. Fazang labels this sense with the outline name “the awakening of nature-arising” — and that one word already lets the secret out: this fruit is not newly made, it is what the nature that one already has arises and manifests. So the question is ‘how to know’ precisely because this matter is nowhere else; it lies only in how you look.

What the Accomplishing of Right Awakening Is Like: A Whole String of Negations With an Affirmation Hidden Inside

The general statement in the scripture pours out one negation after another: toward every meaning there is no observing; toward all dharmas there is one equality and no doubt; nondual and without characteristic; without moving and without halting; measureless and without bound; leaving far behind the two extremes and abiding in the Middle Way; passing beyond all letters and speech. On first reading it is very easy to fall into a misunderstanding — to suppose that the Buddha’s becoming a buddha is an entering into some blank in which nothing at all is known. The scripture at once blocks that misunderstanding itself: he “knows the thoughts and the deeds in the minds of all sentient beings, their faculties and desires, their afflictions and the habit-energies perfumed into them,” and moreover “in a single thought knows completely all the dharmas of the three times.”

So “no observing” is not a failure to know; it is a knowing that does not use that whole apparatus of an observer set over against something observed. Chengguan glosses this line with great exactness: “‘every meaning’ means the objects both real and conventional. … Observing carried to its limit becomes non-observing” — observing carried to its limit no longer has the posture of standing opposite something in order to observe it, and yet it is not that nothing is understood. He points out, further, that in the Jin translation this line reads “understands every meaning,” and says that only when the two witnesses are read together does the sense come out full and subtle: the one speaks from “non-observing,” the other from “understanding,” two faces of a single thing. Fazang here opens ten gates to explain this string, saying “awakened understanding is its nature,” “the cutting off of the hindrances is its nature,” “the realizing of principle is its nature,” and so on down to “the Middle Way is its nature.” Brought home to the reader, this passage is a measuring rod handed to a practitioner: to judge whether one has made progress in “knowing,” do not look at how much one has come to know; look at whether one is still using the posture of opposition in order to know.

Why the Great Ocean Is Called the Great Ocean: It Seals All Images Universally and Yet Nothing Is Manifested

The first simile arrives very quickly. The great ocean is called the great ocean because it can universally seal and make appear the bodily forms and images of all the sentient beings within the four continents; and the awakening of the buddhas is so as well, universally manifesting the thoughts, faculties, and desires of all sentient beings — and then the scripture adds the crucial four words: “and yet there is nothing manifested.”

A contradiction? Chengguan takes “nothing manifested” apart into three senses: first, the ocean has no mind that manifests, and so it is like the ocean; second, what is manifested is empty, and so it is like the images; third, there is no separate substance, and so it is as water and image cannot be pulled apart into two. Put together, the three come to this: what manifests without manifesting does so precisely because what can manifest and what is manifested were never two things. Two misreadings are to be guarded against: one supposes that the Buddha reflects passively, like a mirror; the other supposes that the Buddha actively works out what sentient beings are thinking. Neither is it — it is the self-substance revealing itself, and that is why it is called “awakening.” Chengguan here cites the Awakening of Faith, “apart from seeing and conceiving, there is nowhere it does not pervade,” to establish it. What the later Huayan school calls the ocean-seal samādhi has one of its scriptural grounds just here. A student can test it against himself: the harder one tries deliberately to “see through” another person, the less accurately one sees; let the mind be at ease and unoccupied, and on the contrary everything is mirrored with perfect clarity.

It Cannot Be Said, and Yet It Is Not That It Cannot Be Spoken

Immediately after, the scripture says something even more absolute: of the awakening of the buddhas, “no letters are able to proclaim it, no sounds are able to reach it, no words are able to tell of it.” The disease most easily contracted here is to read this as a prohibition of speech, and thereupon to leave unsaid even what ought to be said. But the scripture supplies its own second half: “it is only in accordance with what suits them that it is revealed by skillful means.”

The first half says that the substance of awakening does not fall within the reach of words; the second says that revealing is to be done just the same, only that its standing has changed — words are no longer a vessel holding awakening, but a skillful means set up according to capacity. Chengguan judges this gate to be “the profundity of nature and characteristic,” on the ground that “the nature is apart from speech, and principle is round while speech is partial”: it is not that there are too few words to go around, but that words are by their very nature partial and principle is by its nature round. Brought home to the reader, this section is a reminder: if one reads this chapter and comes away with ‘so nothing at all need be said’, the direction is wrong; what should be come away with is this — when one expounds the Dharma, one knows that what one speaks is the raft and not the shore.

The Thirteen Bodies Equal in Measure: How the Measure of the Buddha’s Body Is Measured

The scripture next lists the bodies obtained when the Tathāgata accomplishes right awakening: equal in measure to all sentient beings, to all dharmas, to all lands, to all the three times, to all buddhas, to all speech, to suchness, to the Dharma realm, to the realm of space, to the unobstructed realm, to all vows, to all practices, and to the realm of quiescent nirvāṇa — thirteen bodies, concluded at the end with the word “measureless.”

The two words “equal in measure” must be seen clearly. Chengguan glosses “measure” as the quantity of that to which they are equal, and “equal” as the three wheels which do the equalling; and he says that equalling has two senses: first, equalling the quantity of those principles and phenomena; second, equalling the substance of those principles and phenomena. He then goes a step deeper and lays bare the reason such equalling is possible: “those principles and phenomena are the very things I have realized; knower and known merge, and they are already myself — what difficulty is there in being equal to them?” It is not that the Buddha swells his body until it is as large as the Dharma realm; it is that knower and known were already merged, and so equality follows of itself. Chengguan further judges the order of these thirteen bodies: the first six are equal to phenomena, the next three to principle, the next one to the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena and of phenomena among themselves, and the last three to cause and fruit. The scripture then adds one line of the greatest importance: as with the body obtained, so “his speech and his mind are likewise” — the three wheels of body, speech, and mind are equally pure. This gathers the Tathāgata’s body, speech, and mind, set forth in the senses before, into this one fruit, the accomplishing of right awakening.

When the Buddha Becomes a Buddha, He Sees All Sentient Beings Becoming Buddhas Too

Here the scripture utters the most startling line of the whole passage: when the Tathāgata accomplishes right awakening, “within his own body he universally sees all sentient beings accomplishing right awakening,” and so on until he universally sees all sentient beings entering nirvāṇa — and all of one and the same nature, which is to say, naturelessness. Then it lists twelve clauses of naturelessness: no nature of characteristic, no nature of exhaustion, no nature of arising, no nature of ceasing, no nature of self, no nature of non-self, no nature of a sentient being, no nature of a non-sentient-being, no nature of awakening, no nature of the Dharma realm, no nature of space, and so on until there is not even a “nature of accomplishing right awakening.”

This passage is the most perilous place in this sense, and Chengguan himself sets the question first: is this “accomplishing” an accomplishing in principle or an accomplishing in fact? If it is in fact, why is it explained as being of one and the same nature? If it is in principle, why does it say accomplishing right awakening, and entering nirvāṇa? He gives no cheap answer; he only marks it out: “This is the great articulation of Huayan, the sense of the perfect school; it is hard to grasp if one does not set it against the other schools.” He then goes through in turn how the schools of men and gods, of the Lesser Vehicle, and of the Great Vehicle look at sentient beings, and at the end sets out the view of his own school: “If one follows this school, they have long since been accomplished, and have long since entered nirvāṇa.”

Then how is one to speak of the sentient beings plainly before us who have not yet become buddhas? Chengguan answers with great honesty: “If one looks from the standpoint of the position of sentient beings, one does not even see that they are mind-only and empty; how should one see the matters within the perfect teaching?” He offers an image: like a man who has lost his way and takes east for west — it is not that east has really changed. Let the graspings of feeling be broken through all at once, and the Dharma realm manifests in its roundness, and from the first there is nothing not already accomplished, as when that man wakes up and the very place he called “west” is entirely east. Then why do the buddhas still teach and transform sentient beings? He says: precisely because sentient beings do not know it thus, transforming is required; and one who transforms in this way transforms ultimately, and there is no time when he is not transforming. He sets up another simile: sentient beings are the mold upon the image — take the mold away, and this buddha of one’s own appears, and with that one sees the accomplishing of others as well. Chengguan also gathers the twelve clauses into six pairs (the characterized and the characterizing, arising and ceasing, self and non-self, condition and non-condition, the realizer and the realized, the joined and the unjoined), and at the end of the section draws out where the scripture comes to rest: just because thing after thing is without nature, the knowledge of all modes is accomplished; and realizing this shared substance one gives rise to great compassion, and once gained it is forever constant, and so it is called “continuing unbroken.” What the reader must catch here is that line, and not the abstruse principles: to know that all dharmas are without nature is not to know it and then have done with it; it is to know it and thereupon be unable to stop wanting to rescue people.

Space Is Not Increased or Decreased by the Forming and Ruin of Worlds

The second simile is gathered up very briefly: within space all worlds may form or be ruined, and space is ever without increase or decrease — because space is from the first unarisen. The awakening of the buddhas is so as well: accomplishing right awakening and not accomplishing it neither increase nor decrease it, because “awakening has no characteristic and no non-characteristic, is not one and is not manifold.”

Chengguan judges this gate to be “the substance free of waning and waxing,” and glosses it through in a single line: “Space is unarisen, and so the substance is without increase or decrease. Awakening is without characteristic, so how should accomplishing and not accomplishing differ?” The misunderstanding to be cleared away is this: it is not being said that becoming a buddha is of no significance. The forming and ruin of a world is a matter of the greatest moment to the people within that world; it is only that space is not made one part more or one part less by it. Just so, becoming a buddha is a matter of the greatest moment for a sentient being; it is only that awakening itself is not increased because someone has accomplished it. The real use of this section is that it strips away the subtlest sort of calculation within practice — the treating of attainment as a stock that can be accumulated and compared. If awakening could increase or decrease, it would be a thing; it is not a thing, and so it cannot be moved.

Conjured Minds and Conjured Buddhas: One Exchange That Draws Out the Bone of This Sense

Next the scripture sets a question: suppose someone were able to conjure up minds as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, and each of those minds in turn conjured up buddhas as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, all without color, shape, or characteristic, and this went on for kalpas as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā without stopping — then the tathāgatas he conjured, how many would there be in all?

The one who answers is not Samantabhadra. This is the one and only place in the whole chapter’s prose where another person breaks in: the bodhisattva Wondrous Virtue of the Tathāgata’s Nature-Arising answers that, as he understands the meaning of what Samantabhadra has said, “the conjured and the unconjured are equal and without difference,” and if that is so, what is the point of still asking “how many are there in all”? Samantabhadra confirms him on the spot with “excellent, excellent,” and pushes the saying to its limit for him: suppose all sentient beings in a single thought were entirely to accomplish right awakening, this is equal to and not different from their not accomplishing right awakening — and why? Because awakening has no characteristic; and if it has no characteristic, then there is neither increase nor decrease.

Chengguan judges this gate to be “the characteristic free of increase and decrease,” and glosses the correspondences of the simile: the conjuring of many minds is a simile for cultivating many causes, the conjuring into being of many buddhas a simile for realizing many fruits, and the conjured appearing without shape a simile for accomplishing and not accomplishing being from the first without difference. Two slants are to be guarded against in reading this passage: one hears it as ‘it is all the same anyway, so it makes no difference whether one practices’; the other hears it as ‘this is abstruse talk and has nothing to do with me’. The answerer’s footing is in fact very hard: he is not saying that whether sentient beings become buddhas is of no importance; he is saying that the very form of the question “how many” is wrong. Whatever can be asked after by quantity must be a thing that has characteristics; awakening has no characteristic, and so this measuring rod of number cannot be pushed in. And the real use of it for a practitioner is this: do not use ‘what stage of practice I have reached’ to measure the Way; that rod can measure the number of conjured buddhas, but it cannot measure awakening.

The Samādhi of the Wisdom of Good Awakening: Taking the Single Characteristic as Skillful Means

The single characteristic being the absence of characteristic having been made clear, the scripture turns to function: when the Tathāgata accomplishes right awakening, “he takes the single characteristic as skillful means and enters the samādhi of the wisdom of good awakening”; and having entered concentration, within this one vast body of the accomplishing of right awakening he manifests bodies equal in number to all sentient beings, abiding within that body; and as this one body is, so are all the vast bodies of the accomplishing of right awakening. And so the Tathāgata has measureless gates of accomplishing right awakening, and the bodies he manifests are without measure, and it is said that the Tathāgata’s body is a measureless realm, equal to the realm of sentient beings.

There is a joint here that is easily slid past: the name of the samādhi is “good awakening.” Chengguan glosses it well — “awakening that does not stall in quiescence, and so it is named good awakening”: only one who can enter concentration without sticking inside concentration deserves the word “good”; and he says further, “because what is awakened to is the single characteristic, the single characteristic is used as skillful means,” for it is precisely because what is awakened to is one characteristic that one characteristic is taken as the means. He pushes it one step further: “since the single characteristic is taken as skillful means, then all things are of the single characteristic, and therefore the one manifests the many.” Here the relation of one and many shows itself: it is not that the one is broken into many; it is that since all things share this one characteristic, to raise any one place at random is to manifest all. Chengguan says at the end that as it is with the gate of concentration, so it is with the gates of compassion, wisdom, dhāraṇī, and the rest, and therefore it is called a “measureless realm” — that is to say, so high there is nothing above it, so broad it cannot be exhausted.

Within a Single Pore There Are Buddha-Bodies Equal in Number to Sentient Beings

Function being measureless, the scripture comes down to its most inconceivable line: within a single pore of the Tathāgata’s body there are buddha-bodies equal in number to all sentient beings. Why? “Because the body of the Tathāgata’s accomplishing of right awakening is ultimately without arising or ceasing.” One pore fills the Dharma realm, and so do all the pores, and therefore there is not the least place standing empty and without a buddha-body — because when the Tathāgata accomplishes right awakening there is no place he does not reach.

Chengguan particularly points out how this section is marked off from the one before: what was set forth there was the mutual entering of unlike kinds (the manifesting of bodies equal in number to sentient beings), while what is set forth here is the mutual regard of like kinds (within the pore only buddha-bodies are manifested); there it was abiding in the substance and responding pervasively, here it is containing in accordance with principle and also pervading in accordance with principle. He also raises a doubt on the reader’s behalf: a body that accords with non-arising may be said to contain the Dharma realm; but space is not a matter of according or not according — how does it contain as well? The answer: since there is no place he does not reach, there is nothing that is not the Buddha’s body. As for why he must still attain the Way beneath the tree of awakening at the place of the Way, his answer is plain: “only according to what capacities are able to receive” — and he takes the occasion to add that if even the sudden accomplishing of many bodies while seated beneath the tree of awakening is called an accommodation, then the attainings of the Way at other places are still further from the ultimate. What this section gives the reader is an overturning of the sense of space: it is not that the Buddha’s body is large enough to hold the Dharma realm; it is that a body without arising has from the first no inside or outside, and so pore and Dharma realm are not divided into large and small.

Within Your Own Mind, in Thought After Thought, There Is a Buddha Accomplishing Right Awakening

The last gate is the nearest to a person. The scripture says: the bodhisattva-mahāsattva should know that in his own mind, thought after thought, there is ever a buddha accomplishing right awakening — and why? “Because the buddhas, the tathāgatas, do not accomplish right awakening apart from this mind.” As with one’s own mind, so with the minds of all sentient beings: in all of them there is a tathāgata accomplishing equal and right awakening, vast and all-pervading, present everywhere, neither apart nor cut off, and without a time of rest.

This line is very easily read as the self-satisfied ‘my mind just is the Buddha’. Chengguan first glosses “not apart” in two senses: first, the bodies and minds of sentient beings are the very object the Buddha has realized; second, they are wholly the Buddha’s own nature of awakening. He then lays down a distinction as hard as nails: “This is the other’s fruit within my cause; it is not that the person in the causal stage has a buddha-nature of his own, for this text sets forth precisely the awakening of a buddha.” What is being said is that the fruit-virtue of the Buddha is present in your mind now — not that you carry about a seed of your own that will sprout some day. Fazang, glossing this place in the Jin translation, likewise uses it to distinguish the teachings: the schools of the lesser vehicle do not treat of buddha-nature at all; the schools of the three vehicles say that within the position of a sentient being there is only the nature that is cause; only the school of the one vehicle says that within the bodies of sentient beings the fruit-dharmas too are complete. He also asks a question on another’s behalf: might this be called “not apart” only because one has given rise to the mind of awakening and takes awakening as one’s object? He answers himself: if that were so, then those sentient beings who have not yet given rise to that mind and do not take awakening as an object ought not to be reckoned along with the rest — yet the scripture plainly says that the minds of all sentient beings are thus; whence it is clear that this is not said with respect to the object, but with respect to the very substance of the mind. At the end the scripture ties it off doubly with “neither apart nor cut off,” and Chengguan glosses these two: not apart, because sentient being and buddha are not different; not cut off, because sentient being and buddha are not one. And he admonishes the reader: to think of them as sentient beings will not do, and to think of them as buddhas will not do either; that they are identical will not do, and that they are not identical will not do either; one should only purify the eye of wisdom and take up none of the feelings.

The Concluding Exhortation: Therefore One Should Know in This Way

The prose closes with a single line: “Sons of the Buddha! The bodhisattva-mahāsattva should know the Tathāgata’s accomplishing of right awakening in this way.” Chengguan, glossing this general conclusion, says that knowing according to this and mirroring the ten gates before, nothing hidden remains unexhausted; and that apart from a knowing such as this, where would there be a true awakening?

This conclusion is not a courtesy. From beginning to end the passage has taught no procedure for becoming a buddha; what it has taught throughout is a manner of knowing: to know that awakening has no characteristic, to know that sentient being and buddha are not two, to know that it manifests without manifesting, to know that it is present in the tip of a hair, to know that it is in one’s own mind thought after thought. And so the four words “should know in this way” are just where the gate of practice of this sense lies — the practice of this sense is to correct one’s knowing.

The Six Verses in Repetition

The prose being finished, Samantabhadra speaks the matter again in verse, six verses shining back over what came before (Chengguan judges the last verse to set in verse the fourth, fifth, ninth, and tenth gates together): the first verse sets in verse the substance and characteristic of the general statement (nondual and apart from the two, its own nature pure as space, self and non-self not discriminated); the second sets in verse the ocean-seal’s manifesting of capacities (as the ocean seals and makes appear the bodies of sentient beings, so awakening universally seals all the workings of the mind); the third sets in verse the substance free of waning and waxing (the world has its forming and ruin while space neither increases nor decreases, and awakening is of one characteristic and ever without characteristic); the fourth sets in verse the characteristic free of increase and decrease (the conjured and the unconjured are of no different nature, and accomplishing and not accomplishing are without increase or decrease); the fifth sets in verse the function that embraces motion and stillness (a buddha has a samādhi named Good Awakening, and beneath the tree of awakening he enters this concentration); the sixth sets in verse the body’s manifesting of the measureless (the thoughts and faculties and desires of the kalpas and lands and sentient beings of the three times, and bodies equal in number to these all made to appear).

There is one line in the verses that the prose does not have: “He sends forth measureless lights equal in number to sentient beings, awakening the whole host of beings as a lotus flower opens.” The prose, in speaking of the samādhi of good awakening, spoke only of the manifesting of bodies, while the verse supplies a further section, the sending forth of light and the awakening of beings, and takes the opening of a lotus flower as its simile — concentration is not a stillness enjoyed for oneself; its fruit is a whole host of beings opening. When Chengguan judges which gates the six verses set in verse, he says that the third gate only reveals the being apart from speech, and so it is passed over and not set in verse — and even this passing over has its reasoning: the sense of being apart from speech was never fit to have a further verse said about it.

Lineage

The text of this sense was directly inherited by the later Huayan school. A work on the contemplative method of the house cites the concluding sentence of this passage on conjured minds and conjured buddhas, “Suppose all sentient beings in a single thought entirely accomplish right awakening; this is no different from their not accomplishing right awakening,” and carries it on with “thing after thing being without characteristic, this principle manifests; sentient being and buddha are both forgotten” — from which one may see that this sentence had long been a standing proof-text within the house. Fazang, on the Jin translation, labels the outline of this sense straightforwardly as “the awakening of nature-arising,” holding that the fruit of buddhahood is not newly made but nature-arisen, and from the passage on one’s own mind draws out the judgment that ‘the one vehicle has the fruit-dharmas too’; Chengguan, for his part, establishes his school’s position with “they have long since been accomplished and have long since entered nirvāṇa,” while preserving the gate of transforming beings with “because they do not know it thus, transforming is required.” The two houses have the same number of gates, ten, but differ in the names and the assignments (Chengguan gives: the general setting forth of substance and characteristic, the manifesting of the myriad capacities, the profundity of substance and characteristic, the equality of the three wheels, the mutual interpenetration of cause and fruit, the substance free of waning and waxing, the characteristic free of increase and decrease, the function that embraces motion and stillness, the pervading of the Dharma realm, the universal pervading of all minds; Fazang gives: clarifying the substance, revealing the function, discerning the profundity, revealing the vastness, manifesting cause and fruit, being free of waning and waxing, being without increase or decrease, arising in dependence on concentration, pervading the Dharma realm, pervading within all minds). The opening and closing of the kinds of awakening also differ, and Fazang further assigns them to the four teachings (the three awakenings with respect to the initial teaching, the two and the five with respect to the final teaching, all dharmas with respect to the sudden teaching, and the ten with respect to the perfect teaching), while Chengguan gives no assignment to the doctrinal classifications and takes the ten as the perfect. The Jin translation has twelve verses in repetition and the Tang translation six, and the two commentaries each outline the verses according to the witness each was commenting upon. There are divergent explanations of old; they are recorded, and no adjudication is made.

Why, After the Realizing of the Way, the Very Next Question Is the Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma

The sense before this one spoke of the Tathāgata’s accomplishing of right awakening — that was the realizing of the virtue of the fruit; this sense turns all at once to ask about the turning of the wheel of the Dharma — that is the bestowing of the virtue of the fruit. The order is one that Chengguan lays bare: in explaining the reason for the coming of this sense he uses only eight graphs, “having gained the great awakening, in principle he must of necessity turn it over and transmit it.” Fazang says the same: “Eighth, making clear the turning of the wheel of the Dharma as nature-arising: that is, before, he gained awakening, and next he turns the wheel of the Dharma — such is the order.”

Samantabhadra’s way of asking still keeps the sentence-form that runs through this whole chapter: “How should the bodhisattva-mahāsattva know the turning of the wheel of the Dharma by the Tathāgata, the Arhat, the Perfectly Awakened One?” He does not ask ‘what wheel of the Dharma does the Buddha turn’, but ‘how should a bodhisattva know it’. That difference of a single word is worth marking: the wheel of the Dharma is itself a matter of the ground of the fruit, but the way of knowing it can be pointed out to you.

Someone will suppose that since the Buddha has realized the Way, his speaking the Dharma naturally follows as one more item of business, and there is nothing much to look into. This is exactly the first misunderstanding this sense clears away. The nine clauses that follow in the scripture are, one and all, saying something unexpected: at the time the Buddha turns the wheel of the Dharma there is no such act as ‘I am turning it and he is receiving it’; and just because there is not, that wheel turns without end and without exhaustion. Realizing and bestowing are not two segments; they are the inside and the outside of one and the same thing.

How the Nine Clauses Are Laid Out: The First Five Speak of Substance, the Latter Four of Function

The prose of the answer is made of nine sentences, and every one of them has the same format — first ‘how it is turned’, and then ‘because he knows what’. Chengguan lays this structure out very plainly: “The text has nine clauses, one short of the number ten; each first sets up and afterward explains. The first five reveal that the substance and nature are still and vacant; the latter four discern that the characteristic and function are profound and vast.” The Huayan is accustomed to take ten as the round number; here one is subtracted to make nine, the first five speaking of the stillness of the wheel’s substance and nature, the latter four of the profundity and vastness of its characteristic and function.

The first five clauses have names as well. Chengguan matches them to five gates: “first, the mind that turns; second, the substance that is turned; third, the fruit that is gained; fourth, the teaching that expresses; fifth, the principle that is revealed.” — the mind that does the turning, the substance that is turned, the fruit that is gained, the teaching that expresses, the principle that is revealed. He then lets fall the single most important judgement in this sense: “Now, the turning of the wheel of the Dharma goes no further than these five; here all of them tally with the real in the very midst of the phenomenal.” As for this matter of turning the wheel of the Dharma, what the teachings of old have said goes no further than these five items; the names and the numbers are the same. What is different here in the Huayan is that all five of them, just as they stand, tally with the real in the very midst of the phenomenal.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is this: it is not being said that the Huayan has set up a new sort of wheel of the Dharma. The names and numbers are the same as in the other teachings, and a reader who only counts the items will feel there is nothing fresh here. Chengguan, in the Yanyi chao, settles the point once for all: “It sorts out the real as differing from the provisional: the names and numbers are the same, but the intent lies far apart.” The names and marks are the same while the point aimed at lies far apart — and so the five clauses below must be watched one by one to see how each of them ‘tallies with the real in the very midst of the phenomenal’.

The First Clause: At the Time of the Turning, There Is No ‘I Am Turning’ in the Mind

“By the power of the mind’s mastery, with nothing arisen and nothing turned, he turns the wheel of the Dharma, because he knows that all dharmas are constantly unarisen” — first a question: speaking the Dharma is plainly a matter with an act in it; how can it be “with nothing arisen and nothing turned”?

Chengguan’s explanation answers as concretely as could be wished: “First, the mind that turns: because he knows that dharmas do not arise, at the very time of turning the Dharma he does not raise the thought that says ‘I am turning it over and transmitting it to the person before me’; this is named the mind’s mastery, and only thus is it truly a turning.” The pivot lies in “does not raise the thought that says ‘I am turning it over and transmitting it to the person before me’” — in the very moment of speaking the Dharma, the thought ‘I am handing the Dharma over to the person across from me’ has never once stirred in the mind. So “nothing arisen and nothing turned” does not say that there is no such thing as speaking the Dharma; it says that there is no mind in which a doer stands over against a receiver.

Clear away one misunderstanding: this is not telling a person to empty out and think of nothing while speaking the Dharma. The ground of the mind’s mastery is in the second half of the clause — “because he knows that all dharmas are constantly unarisen”. Because he sees through to the fact that no dharma has ever arisen at all, there is likewise no dharma that could be carried from me over to you. Brought down to where the reader stands: any speaking of the Dharma that still carries ‘I am teaching you’ is still inside the characteristic of turning-and-transmitting; the one who can truly turn is the one who cannot turn out so much as one thing turned.

The Second Clause: The Three Turnings, Cutting Off What Ought to Be Cut Off

“By the three turnings he cuts off what ought to be cut off and turns the wheel of the Dharma, because he knows that all dharmas are apart from extreme views” — what are the three turnings? Chengguan says: “Second, the substance that is turned: that is, demonstrating, exhorting, and witnessing, which are named the three turnings. That these three are named a wheel is because they crush obstruction and vexation.” Demonstrating, exhorting, witnessing — the turning that demonstrates the characteristics points them out for you to see, the turning that exhorts to cultivation urges you to cultivate, and the turning that bears witness testifies from one’s own realization so as to win trust. Three rounds of exposition: these are called the three turnings. As for why they are called a “wheel”, it is because they can crush obstruction and vexation.

The Yanyi chao states the first turning very concretely: “As for the first, the turning that demonstrates the characteristics: the buddhas, the world-honored ones, having rightly realized all dharmas, point them out according to what sort of vessel one is. As when they turn the four truths, saying, this body is suffering, deeds and afflictions are its arising, this cessation is cessation, and what is able to bring cessation is the path.”

The hard place is the clause “because he knows that all dharmas are apart from extreme views”. If what ought to be cut off is to be cut off, then surely there is an affliction that can be cut off? Chengguan takes the question head-on: “As for the words ‘apart from the extremes’: if there were an affliction that could be crushed, one would not yet be apart from permanence; and if there were no affliction that could be crushed, how would one escape annihilation?” — if there really were an affliction sitting there waiting to be crushed, that affliction would be something permanently abiding; and if it were said that there is no affliction at all to be crushed, one falls into annihilation. Neither end will bear standing on. And so he says: “Now, being forever apart from the extremes of annihilation and permanence and the rest, only then is it truly a cutting off of what ought to be cut off” — the true cutting off of affliction is a cutting off that does not so much as set up the view that ‘there is an affliction being cut off’.

The Third Clause: The Fruit That Is Gained — Even the ‘Being Free From’ Is Dispelled

“Apart from the limit of desire and apart from limit as such he turns the wheel of the Dharma, because he enters that limit of all dharmas which is like space” — the limit of desire is the limit where there is desire, and ‘limit as such’ is limit itself; both limits are left behind.

Chengguan explains this as the fruit that is gained: “Third, the fruit that is gained: because he cuts off affliction, he gains the limit that is freedom from desire; and because he realizes that the nature is empty, there was from the first nothing to be free from, and so this limit too is dispelled.” The way to read it is in two steps: first, because affliction has been cut off, the fruit called ‘freedom from desire’ is gained; and then, because emptiness of nature has been realized, one finds that there was never anything to be free from, and with that even the boundary-marker ‘the limit of freedom from desire’ is dispelled along with the rest.

Clear away one misunderstanding: this is not saying that cultivation has no fruit. The fruit is truly gained; only that, looking back once it has been gained, the thing one was freed from was never real. Here is where it comes to earth — many a person who has cultivated to the point of some slight enjoyment of freedom from desire sets that enjoyment up as a landmark and holds fast to it; this sense tells you that whoever holds fast to the landmark has in fact not yet arrived at the place the landmark points to. As for the limit that is like space, there is no limit there to point at, and only that is the true limit.

The Fourth Clause: Speaking the Whole Day Long, and Never Having Spoken a Single Graph

“With no speech at all he turns the wheel of the Dharma, because he knows that all dharmas cannot be spoken” — since it is called a wheel of the Dharma, how can there be no speech?

Chengguan explains it as the teaching that expresses: “Fourth, the teaching that expresses: principle borrows words to be expressed; but now that he understands that it is from the first still, and that the quiescent cannot be spoken, then he speaks the whole day long and has never spoken.” Principle must lean on speech in order to be set forth, and this cannot be helped; yet the principle so set forth is of itself quiescent, and the quiescent cannot be uttered — and so he is speaking all day long and has never spoken a single graph.

Clear away one misunderstanding: this is not urging that silence is better than speaking the Dharma, nor that verbal teaching may be discarded. The scripture says plainly “and turns the wheel of the Dharma” — the wheel turns as ever, the Dharma is spoken as ever. What is to be discerned is the speaker’s bearing toward words: knowing that words cannot express that principle, he speaks and does not grasp at words; the one who does not know takes words to be the principle itself, and the more he speaks the further he goes. The reader hearing the Dharma should examine himself in the same way — is what you have kept those words, or the place those words point to?

The Fifth Clause: The Wheel of the Dharma Was Pure from the First

“In utter quiescence he turns the wheel of the Dharma, because he knows that all dharmas are of the nature of nirvāṇa” — this clause speaks of the principle that is revealed.

Chengguan’s explanation makes a turn in it: “Fifth, the principle that is revealed, namely quiescence itself. Now, understanding the nirvāṇa that is pure by nature, dharmas were from the first not aflame, and so now there is no extinguishing; and only this is the utter extinguishing.” — what is called quiescence is not the putting out of a fire that is burning; because dharmas were never aflame from the first, there is today nothing that could be called an extinguishing, and this ‘extinguishing that is no extinguishing’ is what is called utter quiescence. He at once lets fall a general judgement: “From this one knows that this wheel is from the first constantly pure.”

Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle text, has the same eye: in explaining the sixty’s clause “all of them pure” he says that this is the Brahmā wheel and is pure by nature, and cites the scriptural line “this wheel is from the first constantly pure” in witness.

This is the deepest layer in this sense: the wheel is not something that becomes pure once it has begun to turn; it is a thing pure from the first that turns. Brought down to where the reader stands — what is called cultivation making a person pure is in fact cultivation making a person recognize the purity that was there from the first; to take purity as some new thing produced by cultivation is to fall back into the frame of ‘what was never aflame is now put out’.

The Sixth Clause: All Letters and Speech Are the Wheel of the Dharma

The first five clauses speak of substance; at this point the text turns into characteristic and function. “By every letter and every kind of speech he turns the wheel of the Dharma, because there is no place the Tathāgata’s voice does not reach.”

Chengguan judges the latter four clauses thus: “Among the latter four, whose characteristic and function are profound and vast: the first, that whatever speech one touches upon is the wheel, is the vast.” The first of them speaks of the vast — whatever kind of speech one comes upon, that kind of speech is the wheel. Fazang, in his explanation of the sixty-fascicle text, brings out the ground of it: the Tathāgata’s voice reaches everywhere among all the letters and speech of the world, and therefore all of them are turning the wheel of the Dharma.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is the reading that ‘the Buddha can speak a great many languages’. What the scripture means goes much further than that: it is not that the Buddha is master of many tongues, but that not one tongue is left unpervaded by the wheel of the Dharma. This clause and the clause of bounds further on are one and the same thread — this sense will say at the end that even the speech of sentient beings themselves is not outside the wheel of the Dharma.

The Seventh Clause: Sound Is Like an Echo, and Therefore It Is Profound

“Knowing that sound is like an echo he turns the wheel of the Dharma, because he understands the true nature of dharmas” — an echo in an empty valley can be heard, and yet no sounding substance can be found in the valley. The sound of the Buddha’s speaking of the Dharma is just so.

Chengguan judges this clause to be the profound: “the second is that in the very midst of function it is still — this is the profound.” — in the very moment of arising into function it is still, and therefore it is called profound. Fazang, in his explanation of the sixty-fascicle text, judges likewise: “In the second, he first sets up ‘exceedingly profound’, and the words ‘because of the real nature’ explain and establish the sense of the profound.” Why should being like an echo be profound? Because of “he understands the true nature of dharmas” — only when one has seen the true substance and nature of dharmas does one know that the being of sound is a being without own-nature.

Clear away one misunderstanding: being like an echo does not amount to being false. The echo really did carry to your ear; only that it has no independent sounder. The Buddha’s voice is likewise: you did indeed hear it and did indeed profit by it, and yet that voice does not issue from a really existing “speaker”. The grasping that this clause undoes is the taking of the speaker of the Dharma to be a substance, to be worshipped or followed as such.

The Eighth Clause: Within a Single Sound All Sounds Come Forth, Ultimately Without a Master

“Within a single sound he brings forth all sounds and turns the wheel of the Dharma, because it is ultimately without a master” — how can one sound bring forth all sounds?

Chengguan judges this to be both profound and vast, explaining it as “the third is that the one is the many and yet without a master” — the one is the many, and within it there is nothing that plays the master. Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle text, states the reason most transparently: “Since each is formed from conditions and has no substance of its own, they are alike of one nature, and all of them are the wheel of the Dharma.” Every single sound is formed from conditions and has no substance of its own; having no substance of its own, they are alike of one nature; being alike of one nature, there is no hindrance in all sounds coming forth within a single sound.

Clear away one misunderstanding: this is not saying that the Buddha’s throat is uncommonly able to make sounds. The two graphs “without a master” are the pivot — if sound had a master, then one could only ever be one; it is just because it is ultimately without a master that there is no wall between one and many. The Huayan talk of one being all has here a very plain scriptural ground: it is not that many are conjured forth, but that there was never anything there to hold one and many apart.

The Ninth Clause: Crosswise It Is Without Omission, Upright It Is Without Exhaustion

“Without omission and without exhaustion he turns the wheel of the Dharma, because he has no attachment within or without.” Chengguan’s explanation of this clause shows his hand at its best: “The fourth is that in the very midst of the crosswise and the upright it is ever void: crosswise it is without omission, since there is nothing it does not turn; upright it is without exhaustion, since it goes to the end of the future. And as he is attached neither within nor without, the profound and the vast are without shore.”

Spoken crosswise, it is space — there is not one place omitted, and therefore it is called without omission; spoken upright, it is time — it goes to the very end of the future, and therefore it is called without exhaustion. And what holds up these two ‘withouts’, the crosswise and the upright, is the last clause, “no attachment within or without”: attached neither to the inner nor to the outer, and so the profound and the vast have no shore. Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle text, likewise makes a division of two: without outflow, therefore profound; without exhaustion, therefore vast.

Brought down to where the reader stands: “without omission and without exhaustion” is not an extravagant adjective; it has its reason — it is just because there is no attachment that there is no boundary, and the moment there is attachment there is a boundary. This answers back to the first clause as well: only a mind with nothing arisen and nothing turned can turn a wheel without omission and without exhaustion. With this the nine clauses are gathered up, and substance and function close into one ring.

The Simile of the Inexhaustibility of Letters: Though One Spoke Till the Kalpas of the Future Were Spent, It Could Not Be Told to the End

The Dharma having been stated, a simile is next set up. “It is like all letters and speech: though one spoke to the exhaustion of the kalpas of the future, they could not be told to the end; the Buddha’s turning of the wheel of the Dharma is like this too — with all letters he sets it up and reveals it, and there is no rest and no exhaustion.”

Chengguan points out what this simile answers to: “first, the simile of the inexhaustibility of letters, which is a simile for the inexhaustibility of the ninth clause” — it is a simile specifically for the ‘without omission and without exhaustion’ of the ninth clause above. Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle text, judges it the third gate, the gate of inexhaustibility, and says the same: first the simile of the inexhaustibility of letters, then the matching of it to the inexhaustibility of the wheel of the Dharma.

The deftness of this simile lies in how near at hand its material is. Letters and speech are what everyone uses every day; if you really set out to count them, a whole lifetime would not exhaust their combinations. The inexhaustibility of the Buddha’s turning of the wheel of the Dharma need not be imagined off in some other place — it is just such an inexhaustibility as this, one you are already inside of and have never looked at closely. And the scripture adds four graphs: “there is no rest”. Inexhaustibility is a matter of quantity; restlessness is a matter of the characteristic; the wheel of the Dharma is not turned now and again — it has never stopped.

The Simile of Universal Entry Without Abiding: It Gets In, and Does Not Stay Inside

The second simile shifts to another eye. The scripture first states the Dharma: “The Tathāgata’s wheel of the Dharma enters entirely into all speech and letters and yet does not abide anywhere.” Then it sets up the simile: “It is like a written graph, which enters universally into every affair, every utterance, every reckoning, and every place both worldly and world-transcending, and yet does not abide anywhere.” Then it matches them: the Tathāgata’s voice enters universally into every place, every sentient being, every dharma, every deed, and every recompense, and yet abides nowhere.

Chengguan judges this to be “second, the simile of universal entry without abiding, which is a simile for the sixth, seventh, and eighth, since they are in function and yet constantly still” — what it likens is the sixth, seventh, and eighth clauses, arising into function and yet constantly still. Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle text, judges it the fourth gate, the gate of non-abiding, and states it in more detail: within it there are three passages, the Dharma stated, the simile, and the matching; what the simile of the non-abiding of the letters of the alphabet likens is the virtue of entering conditions without abiding; and among the places entered there is first a general statement, and then a separate raising of five places.

What the simile rests on is easy enough to grasp: the written letters of the alphabet enter every affair, every utterance, every reckoning, and you cannot say that a given letter abides in reckoning, or abides in the world. It gets in, and does not stay inside.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is the reading of “does not abide anywhere” as ‘it did not really get in’. The scripture’s “enters universally” is said in earnest — the Tathāgata’s voice does indeed enter into every deed and every recompense. Non-abiding speaks not of how deep it goes but of whether it sticks. The most practical stroke of this simile for the reader is this: whatever can truly reach everywhere must be a thing that takes up no place; whatever occupies one place can only be at that place.

The Sentence Within the Matching: What It Enters Is Not Speech Alone

At the matching of the simile Chengguan points out one further layer of opening and folding. He says that within the matching there are two passages, first the matching of the universal entry into all, and he explains why this further matching is needed: “Since above, in the statement of the Dharma, it said only that it enters into all speech, here it is made clear that it enters into the remaining dharmas as well, so that whatever kind one comes upon is the wheel of the Dharma” — the statement of the Dharma above spoke only of entering all speech, while the matching here says that it enters dharmas, deeds, and recompenses too; and this being so, whatever kind one comes upon, not one of them is not the wheel of the Dharma. He then sets a question: “How should this be the same as the three vehicles, which use only the Buddha’s voice as the wheel and so forth?”

This question is the watershed of this sense, and it is also where the divergent interpretations of the commentators lie; here only the question is recorded, and no choice is made between them 〔the divergent accounts of the commentators are recorded together under ‘Lineage’〕.

Chengguan also records one point of form: “Because the first five are easy, they are passed over and no simile is given for them.” — the first five clauses speak of substance, and their sense is plain, and so no simile is set up for them. Similes are set up only for the latter four clauses. From this the reader may know that the two similes of this sense are not general ornament, but each has something it answers to.

The True Character of Speech-Sound Is Itself the Wheel of the Dharma

At this point the prose lets fall an exceedingly weighty sentence: “All the various kinds of speech of all sentient beings are none of them apart from the Tathāgata’s wheel of the Dharma. Why is this? Because the true character of speech-sound is itself the wheel of the Dharma.”

First the question: the speech of sentient beings can be coarse and false, praising and cursing; how should it not be apart from the wheel of the Dharma? The scripture’s answer runs to seven graphs only — the true character of speech-sound is itself the wheel of the Dharma. What it hangs upon is not the content of the speech-sound but the true character of the speech-sound. Whatever the sentence, whatever it says, the true character it has as speech-sound is one and the same; and that true character is the wheel of the Dharma.

Two misunderstandings are to be cleared away. First, this is not saying that whatever one says at random is the speaking of the Dharma, nor that content does not matter — what the scripture speaks of is the true character, not the content. Second, neither is it a diluting of the wheel of the Dharma into a vague figure of speech; on the contrary, it widens the bounds of the wheel of the Dharma to their widest: the wheel of the Dharma is not bounded by who is speaking.

Brought down to where the reader stands, this sentence gives a very close-at-hand gate: you need not wait until you hear the Buddha’s voice for it to count as hearing the Dharma. Of any sentence you hear at this moment, if upon it you can see the true character of speech-sound, then the wheel of the Dharma is turning right there. And this is just where the sixth clause, “by every letter and every kind of speech he turns the wheel of the Dharma”, comes home.

Where the Wheel of the Dharma Is Born

The earlier part of the prose spoke of ‘how it turns’; the latter part turns to ask ‘where it is born’. The scripture sets its own question and answer: “The bodhisattva-mahāsattva who wishes to know the wheel of the Dharma that the Tathāgata turns should know the place where the Tathāgata’s wheel of the Dharma is born. What is the place where the Tathāgata’s wheel of the Dharma is born?”

The answer is unexpected — the place where it is born is not on the Buddha’s side but on the side of sentient beings: “The Tathāgata, following the measureless differences in the workings of the minds of all sentient beings and in what they desire and delight in, issues sundry sounds and turns the wheel of the Dharma.”

Chengguan states this principle in the hardest terms: “first, discerning the cause from which the wheel arises, since the cause is the difference of capacities. For if one were apart from the capacities of beings, the Buddha would have nothing to say.” — the wheel of the Dharma arises because the faculties and capacities of sentient beings differ; apart from the capacities of beings, the Buddha would have nothing at all to say. And again he says: “Since beings differ in the force that shapes them, the teaching must be fitted to them and differ accordingly.”

Clear away one misunderstanding: this is not saying that the Buddha’s Dharma must watch people’s faces. It is saying that the Dharma has of itself no fixed measure; the measure is in the receiver. And so one and the same wheel of the Dharma is heard by this person as this sentence and by that person as that sentence — not that the Buddha has changed his words, but that the capacities differ. Here is where it comes to earth: if a reader feels that some passage of scripture has nothing to say to him, it is not necessarily the scripture that is at fault; it may only be that the capacity that passage answers to is not upon him at this moment — and there will always be a passage that answers to him.

The Samādhi of Ultimate Unobstructedness and Fearlessness

The place where it is born has a still deeper thing on which it depends. The scripture says: “The Tathāgata, the Arhat, the Perfectly Awakened One, has a samādhi named: Ultimate Unobstructedness and Fearlessness; and having entered this samādhi, from each single body and each single mouth in which he accomplishes right awakening he issues words and sounds equal in number to all sentient beings, and within each single sound all sounds are complete, each of them different, and so he turns the wheel of the Dharma, causing all sentient beings to give rise to joy.”

The name of the samādhi must be read graph by graph. Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle text, explains it word for word: “‘Unobstructed’ is eloquence. ‘Fearless’ means without timidity or dread.” Unobstructed is eloquence unobstructed; fearless is to have nothing timid or dreading in the mind. And as for the word “ultimate”, Chengguan points out its bounds especially: “As for the name of the concentration on which the speaking of the Dharma depends: eloquence unobstructed, and nothing timid or feared. That it is gained ultimately is because only a buddha has it.” — unobstructedness and fearlessness are not the Buddha’s alone; ultimate unobstructedness and fearlessness are what is the Buddha’s alone.

Fazang also makes clear why the speaking of the Dharma must take a samādhi as that on which it depends: “That is, his entering this samādhi when he would turn the wheel of the Dharma is because it is the gate on which it depends.” And as for why all sounds being complete within each single sound can cause sentient beings to rejoice, he answers plainly: “because the Dharma is bestowed to match their faculties, they are made to rejoice.” — the Dharma bestowed answers exactly to his faculties, and so he rejoices.

Mark the words “from each single body and each single mouth in which he accomplishes right awakening”: they take up directly the accomplishing of right awakening of the sense before — the turning of the wheel of the Dharma is not a further piece of business begun after the realizing of the Way; it is the immediate matter of that very body and that very mouth in which right awakening is accomplished.

According and Not According

The prose gathers up with a sentence of judgement: “One who is able to know the turning of the wheel of the Dharma in this way — know that this person is one who accords with all the Buddha’s Dharma; one who does not know in this way does not accord.” And it concludes with one more sentence: “The bodhisattva-mahāsattvas should know the Buddha’s turning of the wheel of the Dharma in this way, because it enters universally into the measureless realms of sentient beings.”

Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle text, judges this to be the gate of the benefit of knowing, explaining: “It makes clear that to know as above is to accord with the great awakening, and that not to do so is not to accord.” One who knows as above accords with the great awakening; one who does not know as above does not accord.

The weight of this sentence is often read too lightly. It is not a word of encouragement but a word of judgement — and what it judges is the manner of the knowing, not the presence or absence of faith. A person may believe with the utmost reverence that the Buddha is speaking the Dharma and yet think of it throughout as a great personage addressing a crowd; on this sense’s showing, that sort of knowing does not accord. What, then, is the knowing that accords? It is just what the nine clauses said — knowing it as having nothing arisen and nothing turned, knowing it as like an echo and without a master, knowing it as entering universally without abiding, knowing it as born from the capacities of sentient beings.

And the reason the scripture gives is that last sentence: “because it enters universally into the measureless realms of sentient beings.” The wheel of the Dharma is to be known in this way because it is of itself a thing that enters universally into the realms of sentient beings; to know it according to how it actually is — that is what is called according.

The Five Verses in Repetition

The prose finished, Samantabhadra restates it in five verses. Chengguan outlines them: “the verses are five”, and again, “the first two verses praise the substance and function of the wheel of the Dharma”.

The opening line of the first verse is the very bone of this whole sense: “The Tathāgata’s wheel of the Dharma has nothing that is turned; in the three times there is neither arising nor anything got.” The nine clauses of the prose are here gathered into one sentence — nothing is turned. And “in the three times there is neither arising nor anything got” goes one step beyond the prose: the prose said “he knows that all dharmas are constantly unarisen”, while the verse sweeps away the “got” along with it; not only is there no dharma that is turned, there is also no fruit that is gained. Then “just as letters have no time when they are told to the end, so too is the wheel of the Dharma of him of the ten powers” is matched to the simile of the inexhaustibility of letters.

The second verse is matched to the simile of universal entry without abiding, the third to the giving birth from samādhi, the fourth to the coming forth of all sounds from a single sound — all of them following the prose, and bringing forth no new sense.

The last verse is worth marking: “Letters come out neither from within nor from without; they are not destroyed and have no accumulation; and yet for the sake of sentient beings he turns the wheel of the Dharma — such mastery is exceedingly marvelous.” The simile of the written graph in the prose spoke only of universal entry without abiding, while the verse adds two further senses, “neither from within nor from without” and “not destroyed and without accumulation” — coming neither from within nor from without, they have no place they come from; not destroyed and without accumulation, they are not diminished by being used nor stored up by being unused. If letters are already so, how much more the wheel of the Dharma. And the three graphs “exceedingly marvelous” are a word of praise seldom met with in this chapter: what is marvelous is not how much Dharma the Buddha can speak, but the very matter of ‘turning with nothing turned’.

Lineage

This sense is where the scriptural ground of the Huayan school’s doctrine of nature-arising lies. Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle text, straightaway labels the outline “the turning of the wheel of the Dharma as nature-arising”, and opens seven gates to discern it — substance and characteristic, the profound and vast, inexhaustibility, non-abiding, bounds, giving birth, and the benefit of knowing — differing in its opening and folding from Chengguan, who on the eighty-fascicle text sets up the division of two, ‘revealing the substance and function · revealing whence it comes’, and beneath it opens nine clauses 〔the first five revealing substance, the latter four revealing function〕. The texts the two of them follow differ in themselves: the sixty separately brings out the two items “all the vows” and “all of them pure”, and it is precisely on these two items that Fazang’s ten senses establish “that on which the wheel of the Dharma depends” and ‘the Brahmā wheel and the purity of the nature’; the eighty makes pairs of setting up and explaining in nine clauses, and Chengguan accordingly sets up five gates. Which of the nine clauses and the ten senses is the proper outline — the ancients held divergent accounts; these are recorded, and not adjudicated.

On the one sense of bounds too the words of the two differ. Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle text, sets up the gate of bounds and lists three judgements side by side: for the lesser vehicle, only the five sounds are the sound of the wheel of the Dharma, and the rest, such as asking Ānanda whether the sky is raining, are not embraced by the wheel of the Dharma; for the three vehicles, all the Buddha’s sounds are the wheel of the Dharma and the rest are not; for the one vehicle, the speech-sounds of all sentient beings also enter the wheel of the Dharma, since with respect to function all of them can become the wheel of the Dharma. Chengguan, on the eighty-fascicle text, does not set up this gate, but at the matching of the simile sets a question: “How should this be the same as the three vehicles, which use only the Buddha’s voice as the wheel and so forth?” The judgements of the two are recorded, and not adjudicated.

The judgement of the number of verses likewise hangs on the difference of the texts: Chengguan, following the eighty-fascicle text, makes five verses, and judges the first two to praise the substance and function of the wheel of the Dharma; Fazang, following the sixty-fascicle text, makes ten verses, and judges the first one to praise the gate of substance and characteristic, the next one the gate of inexhaustibility, the next two and a half the gate of non-abiding, the next three and a half the gate of giving birth, and the last two to turn back and praise the gate of the profound and the vast. The number of verses differs in the two texts themselves, and each of the two commentaries follows the text it comments on; it is recorded in full without adjudication.

The divergences of the parallel translation are recorded separately in the apparatus: the sixty’s “because no sound at all is apart from the sound of the wheel of the Dharma” is the eighty’s “because the true character of speech-sound is itself the wheel of the Dharma”, the one established with respect to the mutual embracing of sounds and the other with respect to the true character; the sixty’s “accords with the whole household of the buddhas” is the eighty’s “accords with all the Buddha’s Dharma”, the one spoken with respect to the lineage and the other with respect to the Dharma; and the sixty’s “all sounds are alike a single sound” and the eighty’s “within a single sound he brings forth all sounds” have the direction of what acts and what is acted on reversed. These are recorded as they stand, without forcing an explanation.

As for the Dasheng qixin lun, the Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang, and the Cheng weishi lun, the She lun, and the Yuqie among the treatises, in all of them the passages taking up this sense specifically come to zero hits — this sense has no direct textual warrant of lineage on the other axes; only that Chengguan, in the Yanyi chao, cites the five aspects of the Yuqie so as to gather in the five clauses of the present scripture, and that is a bridge cited by an ancient worthy, not a lineage belonging to this sense itself. It is marked as lacking, as the facts stand, and nothing from elsewhere is put in its place.

Why Nirvāṇa Comes Directly After the Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma

The sense before this one spoke of the Tathāgata turning the wheel of the Dharma — the work of transforming and liberating sentient beings in full course; and this sense turns all at once to nirvāṇa, which reads like the drawing down of a curtain. But the way Samantabhadra asks the question deserves to be seen clearly first: “How should the bodhisattva-mahāsattva know the parinirvāṇa of the Tathāgata, the Worthy of Offerings, the Fully and Rightly Awakened One?” What he asks is not ‘when the Buddha entered nirvāṇa’, but ‘with what sort of knowing a bodhisattva should know this matter’. This one question shifts the whole weight of the thing — nirvāṇa is not a past event awaiting verification, but a substance-nature awaiting understanding.

There are those who, hearing the words “the Buddha’s nirvāṇa”, understand at once that the Buddha is no longer here and that all that is left is his teaching and his traces; and there are those who go the other way and say flatly that ‘the Buddha never went’, and yet cannot say why it is that between those twin trees there truly was that showing of extinction. Both readings fall to one side. Chengguan, in attaching this sense to what came before it, puts the matter most steadily: “The transforming being now complete, he abides in the secret treasury, and for the sake of beings shows extinction; and therefore it is made clear next.” Teaching and transforming have gone everywhere, and so he abides in the secret treasury (that is, the substance of nirvāṇa), and for sentient beings manifests one showing of passing away. Fazang, in attaching this sense, labels it outright as “the nirvāṇa of nature-arising”: even this matter of nirvāṇa is something that arises and manifests out of the Buddha’s own substance-nature. Brought down to the reader, what this sense is tuning is the most universal sense of loss there is — if you have read it and understood, you will no longer ask ‘is the Buddha here or not’; you will only ask ‘is my vessel clean or not’.

First Ask After the Root Nature: Where to Take Hold So That the Asking Is Not Wasted

The first sentence with which the scripture answers the question does not say straight out what nirvāṇa is; it gives first a place at which to take hold: “If one would know the Tathāgata’s great nirvāṇa, one must come to know the root nature.” To know the Tathāgata’s great nirvāṇa, one must first come to know that fundamental substance-nature.

Why go this way round? Because if the substance is not first established, the ten occurrences of the word “just as” that follow will be read as ten similes, whereas in fact they are not similes at all. Chengguan makes the point plainly: “As for the root nature, it is just the ten, suchness and the rest, listed below, for they are the root of both the true nirvāṇa and the responsive nirvāṇa.” What is called the root nature is precisely the ten names, suchness and the rest, that are about to be listed; they are the root shared by the true nirvāṇa (the substance) and the responsive nirvāṇa (the trace that is manifested). And so he goes on to say a thing that saves an immense labour: “Only understand suchness and you have understood nirvāṇa.” To penetrate suchness is to penetrate nirvāṇa — there is no need to go looking for some further thing called nirvāṇa. What this step clears away is the commonest of misunderstandings: taking nirvāṇa for a place one arrives at only when the cultivation is finished. It is not a place; it is a substance-nature.

The Ten Occurrences of “Just As”: Why Not Say “Is Identical With”

The scripture then gives ten clauses in a row, all built alike: “Just as suchness has its nirvāṇa, so is the Tathāgata’s nirvāṇa too” — suchness has the nirvāṇa of suchness, and the true limit, the Dharma realm, space, the nature of dharmas, the limit free of desire, the limit without characteristic, the limit of the nature of self, the limit of the nature of all dharmas, and the limit of suchness each have their own; and the Tathāgata’s nirvāṇa is just so as well.

The question most easily raised at this point is this: if the Tathāgata’s nirvāṇa and the nirvāṇa of suchness are not two, why not simply say ‘is identical with’, and why insist on saying “just as”? Fazang sets up here a question and answer of his own, and it is the deepest stroke in the whole sense: “If one takes suchness and the true limit as being identical with nirvāṇa, this is only the nature without any sense of arising; and if one takes only that nirvāṇa which is manifested in transforming, this is only arising without any sense of nature. Now, showing the arising to be the same as no arising, it is made clear that this is nature-arising.” If one says only that suchness is nirvāṇa, one has spoken of the ‘nature’ and left out the ‘arising’; if one takes only the nirvāṇa that is manifested, one has spoken of the ‘arising’ and left out the ‘nature’. Only the one word “just as” gives ‘the arising that is the same as no arising’ — that one showing of extinction that arises, and that substance-nature which has never once stirred, are one and the same matter. This is what the Huayan school calls nature-arising. And so Chengguan says that the intent in listing these ten names is “to make clear that the ultimate and wondrous path, exhausting principle and fulfilling nature, is in nothing not the same”: the ten names are not ten things, but one substance-nature entered by ten gates. Brought down to the reader: if you conceive the Buddha’s nirvāṇa as an event, you will forever be asking in what year it happened; if you know it as the arising of a substance-nature, you will understand that it is arising still, at this moment.

No Arising and No Coming Forth, and Therefore No Extinction

After the ten ‘just so’ clauses, the scripture states its reason itself: “Because nirvāṇa has no arising and no coming forth; and if a dharma has no arising and no coming forth, then it has nothing that can be extinguished.” Nirvāṇa has no arising and no coming forth; and a dharma that neither arises nor comes forth has nothing about it that could be extinguished.

This sentence is easily read as a piece of mystification, when in fact it has an extremely tight line of reasoning. Chengguan fills in a further step for it: “Why does it not arise? Because it is only what is displayed by the cause that reveals, and not what is produced by the cause that produces.” Nirvāṇa is displayed by the ‘revealing cause’ (it comes to light because it is illumined), and is not produced by a ‘producing cause’ (it is not something fabricated). Only what is made can be ruined; of what was never made, ruin cannot be spoken. He therefore pushes it through to the end: “Since it has no arising, neither is it a coming out from obstruction. Since at the beginning there is no arising, then forever and always it is not extinguished.” If at the outset there is no arising, then at the last there is never any extinction. Here one misunderstanding must be cleared away: no arising and no ceasing does not amount to ‘there being nothing at all’. Chengguan says it decisively at the close: “Know then that nirvāṇa is named extinction, and yet this lies in that which has no extinction.” Nirvāṇa is called extinction, and yet this ‘extinction’ is seated precisely upon that which cannot be extinguished. Brought down to use: the reason you fear losing the Buddha’s Dharma is that you have been guarding it as a thing that can arise and can perish; know that it does not arise at all, and only then can you guard it.

Why He Does Not Speak to Bodhisattvas of an “Ultimate Nirvāṇa”

There follows a sentence rather beyond expectation: “The Tathāgata does not proclaim to bodhisattvas that the Tathāgatas have an ultimate nirvāṇa, nor does he manifest this matter for them.” The Tathāgata does not proclaim to bodhisattvas this matter that ‘the buddhas have an ultimate nirvāṇa’, nor does he manifest it for them.

Is this concealment? It is not. Chengguan points out that this sentence is “displaying the real with respect to the person addressed” — with reference to the person before him he displays what is true: to say that the Buddha is extinguished forever is a provisional teaching spoken for the two vehicles (the hearers and the pratyekabuddhas); and that scene between the twin trees, where the traces come to their end, is likewise manifested for the ordinary and for the lesser vehicle. And so he gives this gate a further name, “distinguishing it from the ashes-and-cutting-off” — it is to be marked off from that annihilation of the two vehicles in which ‘the body is reduced to ashes and the knowing is extinguished’. Fazang sets up a further question that presses finer still: since the Buddha in truth has no nirvāṇa, why not say straight out “there is no nirvāṇa at all”, rather than “he does not speak of an ultimate nirvāṇa”? He answers himself: “Because to bodhisattvas too there is spoken a nirvāṇa manifested by skillful means; only it is not ultimate.” The nirvāṇa that is manifested by skillful means is spoken of as before; it is only that it is not said to be ultimate. What this clears away is the misunderstanding that ‘for the Buddha’s Dharma to say different things to different people amounts to insincerity’: the truth is that it is one and the same matter, told to the end to those who can bear it, and told by halves first to those who cannot.

And the purpose of not speaking of it the scripture states plainly: “Because he would have them see all the Tathāgatas ever abiding before them” — he would have the bodhisattva see all the Tathāgatas ever abiding before him, and in a single thought see all the buddhas of past and future with “their form and marks perfect and complete, all just as in the present”. And there is one more sentence bound up with this that matters: “Nor does he give rise to the thought of ‘two’ or of ‘not two’.” He forms neither the thought that ‘extinction and no extinction are two matters’ nor the thought that ‘the two are not two’. Why may even ‘not two’ not be clung to? Because the scripture answers this itself: “Because the bodhisattva-mahāsattva has forever left behind every kind of thought and attachment.” Once one falls into a thought and an attachment, then even if what is thought is ‘not two’, it is still a thought. Brought down to use: if in reading this sense you come away with a new opinion and hold it fast, that is precisely to have read it backwards.

Coming Into the World and Showing Extinction Are Both Arranged for People

The scripture then sets the coming into the world and the nirvāṇa side by side: “The buddhas, the Tathāgatas, appear in the world in order to make sentient beings give rise to delight and gladness; and they manifest nirvāṇa in order to make sentient beings give rise to longing” — the coming into the world is so that people may rejoice, and the showing of extinction is so that people may yearn.

This sentence is often read lightly over, and yet it repays much turning: the Buddha’s coming and his going are alike arrangements in teaching. People see the Buddha appear in the world and are gladdened, and so are willing to draw near; people see the Buddha pass into extinction and are filled with longing, and so are willing to treasure what he gave. If the Buddha were always there before their eyes and never departed, sentient beings would take him as a matter of course. The misunderstanding to be cleared away here is the reading of “manifesting” as ‘putting on a show’: manifesting is not play-acting to deceive, but a true function that appears according to the occasion — as a physician, so that the sick will consent to take the medicine, explains how hard the medicine was to come by. Brought down to the reader: that sense of urgency you feel at this moment about the Buddha’s Dharma, that ‘there may not be time’, is itself the very thing this showing of extinction was meant to draw out.

And In Truth There Is No Coming Forth and No Nirvāṇa: He Abides Ever in the Pure Dharma Realm

Immediately after, the scripture turns the matter over a layer itself: “Yet in truth the Tathāgata neither comes into the world nor passes into nirvāṇa. Why is this? Because the Tathāgata abides ever in the pure Dharma realm, and manifests nirvāṇa in accordance with the minds of sentient beings.” In truth the Tathāgata neither came into the world nor passed into nirvāṇa; for the Tathāgata abides ever in the pure Dharma realm, and merely manifests nirvāṇa in accordance with the minds of sentient beings.

This sentence and the one before it must be read together if one is not to lean to one side. The former says that the coming into the world and the showing of extinction have their purpose in the work of teaching; this one says that, on the Tathāgata’s own side, these two matters have never once stirred. Chengguan names this gate “appearing and sinking away, ever clear and still” — the appearing and the sinking away (the manifesting and the withdrawing) do not obstruct each other, while the substance-nature is ever limpid. He also gathers up in passing those two terms, ‘nirvāṇa with remainder’ and ‘nirvāṇa without remainder’, which are so often taken for two stages: “To display the trace is birth, and this is the remainder; to still the trace is extinction, and this is the absence of remainder; and so remainder and no remainder are but provisional titles in response to beings.” To let the trace show is called ‘with remainder’, to gather the trace in is called ‘without remainder’, and both alike are provisional names set up in response to sentient beings. Brought down to use: there is no need to go on asking whether the Buddha is ‘with remainder’ or ‘without remainder’; that is language spoken with reference to the one who looks, not language spoken about the Buddha.

The Simile of the Sun’s Reflection: Whose Fault Is It That the Reflection Does Not Appear

The scripture accordingly sets up the first simile: “It is like the sun coming forth and shining universally upon the world: in every vessel of clean water there is not one in which its reflection fails to appear; it is everywhere in every place and yet there is no coming and no going in it; and should one vessel break, the reflection no longer appears there.” The sun shines universally, and in every clean vessel of water its reflection appears; it is everywhere present and yet neither comes nor goes; one vessel breaks, and there the reflection does not appear. Samantabhadra then asks in return: that the reflection no longer appears — is this a fault in the sun? The assembly answers straight out: “It is not. It is only because the vessel is ruined; it is not that the sun has any fault.”

The whole force of this simile lies in that one question and its answer. Chengguan makes the conjoining for it: “Since the Dharma body has no image, there is no vessel in which it does not take form; since the sacred wisdom has no mind of its own, there is no stirring to which it does not respond.” The Dharma body has no fixed image, and therefore there is no vessel that cannot show it forth; the sacred wisdom raises no discriminating mind, and therefore there is no calling upon it that does not get its response. He then fixes the assigning of responsibility past all shifting: “The image is not the sun’s own; it follows the waning and the filling of the vessel yonder. The mind is not of my producing; how then should there be a before and an after in that universal manifesting?” The reflection does not belong to the sun; everything depends on the fullness or the lack of the vessel. He further cites a verse in evidence: “Sentient beings, through their offenses, do not see, as the moon is not seen in a broken vessel. Filling all the worlds everywhere, the light of the Dharma is like the sun.” The misunderstanding to be cleared away here is that ‘the Buddha does not appear before me because the Buddha has abandoned me’. And brought down to use, Chengguan’s reading of the vessel as four matters of practice is the most intimate thing of all: “When the vessel of the precepts is broken, the water of concentration has nothing to rest in; when the vessel of the awakening-mind is broken, how shall the water of wisdom be held? And lacking the clear pearl of faith, the water of the mind is turbid — by what means should one see the Buddha?” Break the precepts and there is nothing to hold concentration; break the mind set on awakening and wisdom has nowhere to rest; lack faith and the water is muddied — all three are matters on one’s own side.

The Conjoining of the Sun of Wisdom: When the Vessel of the Mind Is Always Clean, the Buddha’s Body Is Always Seen

The text of the conjoining is utterly plain: “The sun of the Tathāgata’s wisdom is like this too: it appears universally throughout the Dharma realm, with nothing before and nothing after; within the clean vessel of the mind of every sentient being there is not one in which the Buddha fails to appear; when the vessel of the mind is always clean, the Buddha’s body is always seen; and if the mind is muddied and the vessel broken, then he cannot be seen.”

The four words “with nothing before and nothing after” deserve notice: the sun of wisdom does not shine first upon this one and then upon that one; it is wholly manifest all at once, and the aspect of before and after lies only on the side of the one who receives it. And “when the vessel of the mind is always clean, the Buddha’s body is always seen” is a sentence one can act upon: it does not say ‘you will see the Buddha in time to come’; it says ‘keep the vessel always clean and you will always see’. Brought down to use: from here on, this sense is no longer a discussion of doctrine but a mirror — whether or not one sees the Buddha is a thing one may turn back and examine in oneself at any moment.

Those Who Ought to Be Liberated by Nirvāṇa: This Is Why He Manifests Extinction

There follows a sentence that completes the reasoning of the showing of extinction: “If there be sentient beings who ought to be liberated by nirvāṇa, the Tathāgata manifests nirvāṇa for them; yet in truth the Tathāgata has no birth, no demise, and no passing into extinction.” There is a class of sentient beings who can be liberated only upon seeing the Buddha pass away — because that scene alone can break their sloth and their dependence; and for such people the Tathāgata manifests nirvāṇa.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is the taking of manifesting for something arbitrary: manifesting has its capacity to answer to, and does not appear without cause. Chengguan establishes this as the gate “showing extinction, wondrously abiding”, and his words are as brief as they are complete: “Since it is for the sake of beings that extinction is shown, then in substance there is no extinction.” Brought down to the reader: if you have ever been cut to the heart by the death of some good spiritual friend and thereby set your mind on awakening, you have already lived through this gate.

The Simile of Fire: That the Fire Goes Out in One Place Does Not Mean There Is No Fire Under Heaven

The second simile takes fire: “It is like the fire element, which can do the work that fire does throughout the whole world; and it may be that at some time and in some one place that fire dies out.” Fire does the work of fire throughout the whole world, and the fire in some one place at some time goes out — does this mean that the fires of the whole world have all gone out? The assembly answers: “They have not.”

This simile and that of the sun’s reflection put their force in different places. The simile of the reflection speaks of ‘whether one sees or not lying with the vessel’; the simile of fire speaks of ‘whether it dies out or not lying with the conditions’. Chengguan’s conjoining of it shows a fine hand: “Take the capacities of beings as the firewood and nirvāṇa as the fire.” The capacities of sentient beings are like firewood, and nirvāṇa is like fire. He carries it through: those whose roots of goodness have not ripened are to be waited upon until they ripen, and those that can ripen are brought to accomplish right awakening, and this work of ripening is the “work that fire does”; “if all those who ought to be liberated have been liberated, then he manifests parinirvāṇa, still and doing nothing, as the fire dies out.” Those who ought to be liberated having all been liberated, he manifests parinirvāṇa and is still and without anything to do, as when the firewood is spent and the fire goes out. He further cites a sentence from the Lotus in confirmation: “The Buddha this night passes into extinction, as when the firewood is spent and the fire goes out.” The misunderstanding to be cleared away here is the reading of the dying out of the fire as the absence of fire: the wood being spent there is no fire in this place, but fire as fire has not been diminished.

The Conjoining of the Simile of Fire: That the Work Is Finished in One World Does Not Mean the Buddhas Have All Passed Away

The conjoining follows immediately: “He performs the work of a buddha in all worlds; and it may be that in some one world, the work he can do there being finished, he manifests his entry into nirvāṇa — does this mean that the buddhas, the Tathāgatas, of all worlds have all alike passed away?” In all worlds he performs the work of a buddha, and in some one world, the work there being finished, he manifests his entry into extinction — does this mean that the buddhas of all worlds have all passed away?

This question stretches the reader’s field of sight from one Sahā world out to the whole Dharma realm. The reason we feel that ‘the Buddha has passed away’ is an accomplished fact is that we stand within one world only, and count one stretch of time only. At the end of this passage the scripture repeats its summing sentence: “In this way should the bodhisattva-mahāsattva know the great parinirvāṇa of the Tathāgata, the Worthy of Offerings, the Fully and Rightly Awakened One.” Each of the three similes is closed with this sentence, and it is a reminder to the reader: these are not three ingenious comparisons, but three ways of knowing that one must have. Brought down to use: to ask ‘where is the Buddha’ as one reads the news, and to ask on the strength of this way of knowing ‘is the work of a buddha finished in this place’, are two entirely different capacities of mind.

The Simile of the Conjuror: That He Hides Himself in One Place Does Not Mean He Has Vanished Everywhere

The third simile takes the conjuror: “It is like a master of conjuring who is well versed in the art of conjuring: by the power of that art he manifests a conjured body in all the lands, cities, and villages of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system, and by the power of conjuring he sustains it and abides through eons; yet in some other place, the business of conjuring being finished, he hides his body and appears no more.” A master conjuror by the power of conjuring manifests his conjured body everywhere and can sustain it through eons; the business of conjuring in one place being finished, he hides his body and appears no more — does his hiding in one place mean that he has vanished in every place? The assembly again answers: “He does not.”

This simile looks like a repetition of the simile of fire, but what it takes hold of is not the same. Chengguan divides them with great precision: “The former simile is with respect to seeing the extinction and seeing the accomplishing; this simile is with respect to the constantly seeing and the not seeing.” The simile of fire speaks of some seeing his extinction and some seeing his accomplishing; the simile of the conjuror speaks of his being constantly seen in that place and not seen in this, the two subsisting at once. He therefore establishes this gate as “abiding and vanishing manifested throughout one another”, which is exactly “not that the Tathāgata’s body is unable to be long-lasting”. The misunderstanding to be cleared away is the hearing of ‘conjuring’ as ‘false’: what is taken here is only that portion of it which is ‘manifested here, withdrawn there, and yet itself undiminished’; it is not to say that the Buddha’s body is unreal.

The Conjoining of the Simile of the Conjuror: Well Versed in the Conjuring Arts of Skillful Means, He Sustains It So That It Abides

The conjoining says it more plainly still: “He is well versed in the manifold conjuring arts of measureless wisdom and skillful means, and manifests his body universally throughout the whole Dharma realm, sustaining it so that it abides to the very exhausting of the future; yet in some one place, following the minds of sentient beings, the work he had to do being finished, he manifests nirvāṇa.” The Tathāgata is well versed in the manifold conjuring arts of measureless wisdom and skillful means, manifests his body universally throughout the whole Dharma realm, and sustains that body so that it abides to the very limit of the future; it is only that in some one place, following the minds of sentient beings, the work he had to do being finished, he manifests nirvāṇa.

That “sustaining it so that it abides to the very exhausting of the future” and ‘in some one place he manifests nirvāṇa’ stand together in one passage is the key construction of this sense: the abiding is stated in general, the showing of extinction is manifested in particular, and the two do not obstruct one another. Brought down to use: what is called ‘the age of the Dharma’s decline, with no buddha in it’ is said only with respect to what is seen in this one place of ours; it is not said with respect to the Buddha.

The Immovable Samādhi: The Moment of Showing Extinction Is Exactly the Moment When the Cloud of Bodies Is at Its Fullest

The fourth passage sets up no further simile, but says outright what actually happens at that moment of showing extinction: “When the Tathāgata, the Worthy of Offerings, the Fully and Rightly Awakened One manifests nirvāṇa, he enters the immovable samādhi” — and having entered this concentration named “immovable”, “from each and every body he sends forth measureless hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of great light-rays”, and in the light come lotus flowers, and in the flowers flower-stamens, and in the stamens lion seats, and upon the seats Tathāgatas sitting cross-legged.

This is the most moving turn in the whole sense: the moment which the world sees as the showing of extinction is precisely the moment when the buddha-bodies are at their most abundant. Chengguan establishes this as the gate “the great function without bound”, and explains the two words “immovable” thus: “As for the immovable samādhi that exhausts the future, it is ultimate quiescent extinction. Because it is so still that it does not move, therefore there is nothing it does not move.” Just because the stillness goes to the point of not moving, therefore there is nothing it does not move. One misunderstanding must be cleared away here: concentration is not a standing still that does not function; the deepest concentration is precisely that out of which the greatest function comes. Chengguan also records one comparison: the place in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra where the offering of Cunda is received is largely the same as this passage, only that the number of the buddhas there is smaller, because the capacities being answered to are not the same. Brought down to the reader: you take it for the emptying of the hall; the scripture says it is the hall at its fullest.

The Number of the Buddha-Bodies Equals the Number of Sentient Beings: They Arise From the Power of the Original Vow

There follows a sentence that fixes the measure of this cloud of bodies past all doubt: “The number of those buddha-bodies is exactly equal to the number of all sentient beings; all of them are furnished with the adornment of the finest and most wondrous virtues, and they arise from the power of the original vow.” The number of the buddha-bodies is exactly equal to the number of all sentient beings — no more and no fewer, one buddha to one person.

Why exactly equal? Because they “arise from the power of the original vow”: the vow was made for the sake of sentient beings, and so the bodies that arise are exactly matched to the beings. The scripture goes on to say, “If there be sentient beings whose roots of goodness have ripened, then upon seeing the buddha-bodies they are all alike taught and transformed”, and says further that these bodies “abide ultimately to the very exhausting of the future, transforming and liberating all sentient beings as is fitting, and never once missing the moment”. The misunderstanding to be cleared away here is the taking of the number of the buddha-bodies for some marvellous statistic: what it states is in fact an equality — there is no one who goes without a share. Brought down to use: you need no longer ask ‘has the Buddha still any attention to spare for me’; the only thing to ask is whether the roots of goodness have ripened.

The Body Has No Fixed Place, and Is Neither Real Nor Empty

He draws it in one layer further: “The body of the Tathāgata has no fixed quarter or place; it is neither real nor empty; only by the power of the original vows of the buddhas, when sentient beings are fit to be liberated, does it appear.” The Tathāgata’s body has no fixed quarter or place; it is neither really existent nor empty and void; it is only by the power of the original vows that, when sentient beings are fit to be liberated, it appears.

Chengguan establishes this as the gate “the substance apart from the two extremes”, and his deduction is perfectly clean: “If the body were real, then having existence it could not be extinguished; if the body were empty, how could there be any arising and ceasing of it?” If the Buddha’s body were really existent, it ought not to be extinguished; if it were empty and void, whence should this matter of arising and ceasing come? And so he says: “Because it is not real, its arising and ceasing are not constant. Because it is not empty, there is nothing in which it does not appear. Because it has no fixed place, wherever it is called upon, there it takes form.” Because it is not real, the arising and ceasing are not fixed; because it is not empty, there is nothing in which it does not appear; because it has no fixed place, wherever there is a calling upon it, there it takes form. The misunderstanding to be cleared away is that “neither real nor empty” amounts to speaking vaguely: in fact the two negations each break something of their own — the negation of real existence explains why it can be extinguished, and the negation of emptiness explains why it can appear. Brought down to use: there is no need to seek the Buddha in some particular quarter or place; what is to be asked is whether there is a calling upon him here, in oneself.

The Concluding Return: Because the Original Vow Sustains Him, He Forsakes Nothing

The last passage of the prose is the summing up: “The Tathāgata abides in the measureless and unobstructed ultimate Dharma realm and realm of space, in the nature of dharmas that is suchness, without arising and without ceasing, and in the true limit; and for the sake of all sentient beings he manifests himself as the time requires. Because the original vow sustains him, there is no time when he rests, and he forsakes not one sentient being, not one land, not one dharma.”

Chengguan judges this passage to be “the concluding return to non-abiding”, and points out that its two halves each conclude something of their own: the abiding in the true limit and the rest concludes in general the substance of all the gates before, while what follows “for the sake of all sentient beings” concludes in general the function of those gates. Most important of all, he reads out of these two halves the “nirvāṇa of non-abiding”: “Thus, because he first abides in the true limit, he does not abide in birth-and-death; and because he afterwards does not forsake sentient beings, he does not abide in nirvāṇa. Because he abides in both, he is able not to abide in either. The former is great wisdom, the latter great compassion.” Because he abides in the true limit he does not fall into birth-and-death; because he does not forsake sentient beings he does not fall into nirvāṇa; and just because he abides in both sides, he abides in neither; the first half is great wisdom, the second great compassion. He therefore says that “great compassion and prajñā ever attend upon one another, and this is the nirvāṇa of non-abiding”, and marks off the several ranges of the four kinds of nirvāṇa: the nirvāṇa that is pure in its own nature is possessed alike by sentient beings; the two vehicles at the stage beyond learning may have the first three; and the Buddha, the World-Honored One, alone is furnished with all four. The last misunderstanding to be cleared away here is this: nirvāṇa is not the practitioner’s final rest. The scripture says plainly, “there is no time when he rests” — not forsaking sentient beings, not forsaking lands, not forsaking dharmas: this is the Buddha’s nirvāṇa. Brought down to the reader: if you conceive of nirvāṇa as being at last able to stop caring, what you conceive is not the Buddha’s nirvāṇa.

The Verses in Repetition: The Four Similes Said Over Again, and Then the Similes Cut Off

Samantabhadra says it again in six verses. The first verse takes the sun’s reflection directly: “As the sun spreads its light and shines throughout the Dharma realm, and when the vessel is ruined and the water leaks away the reflection is extinguished with it; so is the most excellent sun of wisdom too: sentient beings who have no faith see him enter nirvāṇa.” The last line is a stroke that the prose does not have and the verse adds: it is because sentient beings have no faith that they see the Buddha enter nirvāṇa. The prose says “if the mind is muddied and the vessel broken, then he cannot be seen”, while the verse points straight at “having no faith” as the cause of seeing nirvāṇa; read the two against each other, and both the root of this sense’s malady and its medicine are complete.

The five verses that follow praise in order the simile of fire, the simile of the conjuror, the immovable samādhi, and the cloud of bodies. Chengguan assigns these six verses to the ten gates that came before, saying that the first verse praises the fourth gate, the next the sixth, the next the seventh, the next two the eighth, and the last the tenth — what the prose has already taught, the verse only matches, without teaching it again.

What truly deserves close looking is the last verse: “As with the nature that has no arising, so does the Buddha arise in the world; as with the nature that has no ceasing, so does the Buddha enter nirvāṇa; words and similes are all alike cut off, and every meaning is accomplished, beyond compare.” The first two lines gather both the arising in the world and the nirvāṇa into the natures of “no arising” and “no ceasing”, joining head to tail with the ten ‘just so’ clauses of the opening; and the third line cuts off, of itself, the three similes so carefully set up before — “words and similes are all alike cut off”. Chengguan explains these four lines by saying that the first line is the arising that is no arising, the second the ceasing that is no ceasing, the third the concluding return to nirvāṇa’s namelessness, and the last the concluding of its great function as inexhaustible. To set up a simile and then to wipe the simile away is the final device of this sense: the simile is the raft at the crossing place, and if the reader stops upon the simile he is bound by the very simile. Brought down to use: the sun’s reflection, the fire, and the conjuror are three similes you may all of them use to set your mind at rest — but do not take them to build up a set of assertions about where the Buddha is.

Lineage

This sense is where the backbone of the Huayan school’s doctrine of nature-arising lies. Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle text, labels the outline of this sense straightforwardly as “the nirvāṇa of nature-arising”, and explains the word “just as” of the ten ‘just so’ clauses with “showing the arising to be the same as no arising, it is made clear that this is nature-arising” — where later masters of the Xianshou house speak of ‘nature-arising’ rather than ‘conditioned arising’, their scriptural ground goes back for the most part to this passage. Chengguan, in his commentary on the eighty-fascicle text, divides the explanation of the text into ten gates, and Fazang divides it into eight; the two houses differ in the opening and closing of the number of gates and in the closeness with which the verses are assigned. There are divergent explanations of old; they are recorded, and no adjudication is made.

The commentary and the subcommentary cite widely upon this sense, and all of them are settled sayings of the ancient masters. Chengguan, under the gate that displays the function, cites the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, “to be able to establish the great matter is the gate of the appearance”, to make clear that the function of nirvāṇa is itself the gate of the appearance — and here lies the ground of why the single sense of nirvāṇa is attached within the Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata. Under the simile of the sun’s reflection he cites the verse on the moon in the broken vessel from the tenth fascicle of the She dasheng lun; under the simile of fire he cites the Lotus Sūtra, “the Buddha this night passes into extinction, as when the firewood is spent and the fire goes out”; and under the gate of the perfect completeness of virtue and function he cites the Laṅkāvatāra, “there is no nirvāṇa of the buddhas, and no buddha of nirvāṇa”. Fazang for his part cites the Sūtra of the Cutting Off of the Bonds in the Ten Abodes, “from the time the buddhas, the World-Honored Ones, of the three times have had names until now, I have not seen one that entered final quiescence”, and takes as evidence the passage further on in this scripture where Sudhana opens the sandalwood stūpa of the buddhas and sees the buddhas of the three times, none of whom has entered nirvāṇa — that the sense of a single passage should gather in the nirvāṇa-teachings of the Nirvāṇa, the Lotus, and the Laṅkāvatāra is the common track of the ancient masters in reading this sense.

Chengguan’s Yanyi chao further points out that the passage of the commentary which sets forth the general purport uses in great part the ten expositions and nine refutations of Sengzhao’s Treatise on Nirvāṇa Being Without a Name, and says that “the reason so much use is made of it now is that it also shows that Master Zhao relied upon this scripture” — that the language about nirvāṇa in the Jin and Song period is bound up with this chapter is a thing the ancient masters have themselves recorded. All of the foregoing is set down together, and no adjudication is made.

Why the Last of the Ten Senses Asks About the Roots of Goodness Planted by Seeing, Hearing, and Drawing Near

The nine senses before this one spoke of the Dharma of the Tathāgata’s appearance, his body, his speech, his mind, his realm, his practice, his accomplishing of right awakening, his turning of the Dharma wheel, and his nirvāṇa — from the beginning to the end, the whole span of one appearance was spoken out entire. This sense suddenly turns in another direction. It no longer speaks of how things stand on the Buddha’s side; it asks instead: that small root of goodness you planted when you saw him, heard him, drew near to him — how are you to know it?

Someone may feel that this is an appendix, and that the first nine senses are the text proper. Chengguan holds exactly the opposite. He judges this sense to be “the nine gates before it set forth the appearance, the whole span from beginning to end; now it is made clear that upon all of that the merit of seeing and hearing is deep and the benefit far-reaching, so as to encourage beings to advance in cultivation.” The first nine senses unfold the virtue of the fruit for you to look at; this sense joins that unfolded fruit-virtue back onto you — the merit of seeing and hearing is deep, therefore the benefit is far-reaching; the benefit is far-reaching, therefore beings can be encouraged to advance. Without this sense, the nine before it become a magnificence that has nothing to do with oneself.

Fazang binds it tighter still, attaching this sense directly after the previous one, nirvāṇa: “Since nirvāṇa has already been shown, now it is made clear that in making offerings to what remains behind, the benefit accomplished is not in vain; and so it is made clear next.” The Buddha has already shown his entering of nirvāṇa — then what are those born after, who cannot see him, to do? The answer is just this sense: the ground he walked on is still there, the stūpas are still there, the name is still there. Brought down to where the reader stands, this one question is really this: I was not born in the Buddha’s lifetime; does this one bow of mine, this one utterance of his name, count for anything at all?

The Eleven Clauses: Why the Roots of Goodness Planted Are All of Them Not in Vain

Samantabhadra first gives a general judgment — “all of them not in vain” — and then lays out eleven reasons, each ending in “because”: they give birth to unending wisdom of awakening; they leave behind every obstruction and hardship; they are certain to arrive at the ultimate; there is in them no falsity and no deceit; they fulfill all vows; they do not use up the conditioned practices; they accord with unconditioned wisdom; they give birth to the wisdom of the buddhas; they run on to the end of all future time; they bring to accomplishment every kind of surpassing practice; they reach the ground of the wisdom that needs no effort.

One must take care not to read these eleven clauses as a list of eleven advantages. Chengguan points out that they have a frame: “this shows the characteristic of their not being in vain; there are eleven clauses, and they do not go outside the virtues of wisdom, of cutting off, and of grace — think it over.” They do not go outside the three: the virtue of wisdom, the virtue of cutting off, and the virtue of grace. These are precisely the three that the three similes below are to be matched with one by one; so these eleven clauses are not an elaboration but a frame set up in advance for the three similes.

Fazang sets up his frame from the other end, the end of what is planted, opening “seeing, hearing, and drawing near” into four positions: “whether one sees the Buddha or his image, whether one hears his name or utters it, whether one is reverent in the three kinds of action, whether one makes the four kinds of offering — the roots of goodness planted in these four positions are vast and limitless and cannot be told.” To see an image of the Buddha counts as seeing; to utter his name once counts as hearing. That the threshold is set as low as this is the most important stroke in this whole sense.

Where it comes down to the ground is this: not in vain does not mean that you are bound to feel it some day; it means that it will not be annihilated because you have forgotten it, or fallen back, or even reviled it. The three similes that follow are all of them explanations of what it is that makes this “not in vain” hold.

The Simile of the Diamond: What Has Been Swallowed, the Body Cannot Keep

The first simile is extremely vivid: a man swallows a little diamond; in the end it is not digested, and it must pass through his body and out. Why? “Because the diamond will not abide together with the filth of a body of flesh and blood.”

First set aside a misunderstanding: this is not saying that a root of goodness injures a person. The whole point of the simile lies in one thing — the substance is of a different kind, and therefore the two cannot abide together. A body of flesh and blood can digest what is of its own kind; a diamond is not of a kind with filth, and so the body can do nothing to it, and it must pass out. Joined to the Dharma: the little root of goodness planted at the place of the Tathāgata must pass through the body of the afflictions, which is all the conditioned practices, and reach the unconditioned, ultimate place of wisdom, because “that little root of goodness will not abide together with the afflictions that are the conditioned practices.”

Chengguan judges this simile to be the virtue of wisdom: “first, the simile of swallowing a little diamond, which is a simile for the virtue of wisdom. Wisdom breaks confusion as a diamond does; and since one who has wisdom will have no afflictions, they do not abide together.” Fazang judges it instead to be “the fruit of virtue exhausting the future,” saying that it means “the nature of even a slight root of goodness cannot be used up.” One house speaks in terms of virtue, the other in terms of fruit.

The most concrete sentence for a reader is this: you need not fear that your root of goodness is too small and will be drowned by the afflictions. Small or not small is not the question; of a kind or not of a kind is the question. However many the afflictions, they cannot digest it, and sooner or later it must pass out.

The Simile of the Fire: It Is the Side With More That Can Be Burned Away

The second simile says the same thing over again with great and small reversed: dry grass is heaped up as big as Mount Sumeru, and a fire the size of a mustard seed is thrown in — the whole of it is certainly burned away. Why? “Because fire is able to burn.”

This simile is often read as an encouraging saying about ‘a small soldier winning a great merit’, and that is shallow. Its real sense is this: what can be burned away, however much of it there is, is only so much combustible stuff; what is able to burn, however little of it there is, is still what is able to burn. The much and the little are not on one scale. Joined to the Dharma: the little root of goodness “is certainly able to burn up all the afflictions, and ultimately to attain the nirvāṇa in which nothing is left over,” and the reason is — “because the very nature of that little root of goodness is ultimate.” The key lies in the words “the nature is ultimate,” not in the quantity.

Chengguan judges this simile to be the virtue of cutting off, and reads “the nature is ultimate” to its very depth: “second, the simile of a little fire burning much, which is a simile for the virtue of cutting off. That the nature is ultimate means that confusion is understood to be originally quiescent.” The afflictions are quiescent to begin with, and so a single spark of illumination can burn them all away; it is not that the little overcomes the much, it is that there was never any need to compare much with little at all. Fazang matches it instead with “the fruit of cutting off and extinguishing the obstruction of confusion,” and adds a separate explanation: “another explanation: the former extinguishes the obstruction to what is knowable, the latter extinguishes the obstruction of the afflictions.”

Read together with the simile before it: that one says the afflictions cannot digest away the root of goodness; this one says the root of goodness can burn the afflictions away. One holds and one strikes, and both sides of the doubt ‘this little root of goodness of mine is of no use’ are stopped up.

The Simile of the King of Medicine Trees: Even the Earth of the Place It Stood On Can Cure Sickness

The third simile has another air about it. In the Snow Mountains there is a king of medicine trees named Well-Seen — whoever sees it, his eye is purified; whoever hears it, his ear; whoever smells it, his nose; whoever tastes it, his tongue; whoever touches it, his body; and even one who takes the earth from under that tree can have sickness removed by it.

The first two similes spoke of the nature of the root of goodness itself; this one speaks of the capacity on the Buddha’s side. Chengguan judges it to be the virtue of grace: “third, the simile of the king of medicines benefiting everywhere, which is a simile for the virtue of grace, since it benefits beings in every sort of way.” Fazang matches it with “the fruit of accomplishing great awakening.” With this, the three similes have made complete the three virtues — wisdom, cutting off, and grace — answering exactly to the frame set up by the eleven clauses above.

Take note of the name “Well-Seen.” What makes the tree able to benefit all six faculties is not something it does, but that it is the sort of tree it is. Joined to the Buddha it is the same: it is not that the Tathāgata did something particular for you and so benefited you; it is that every faculty that comes into contact with him is of itself made pure.

The Joining of the Six Faculties: Seeing the Form-Body, Hearing the Name, Smelling the Fragrance of Discipline, Tasting the Dharma-Flavor, Touching the Light, Giving Rise to Recollection

The joining runs through phrase by phrase: seeing the Tathāgata’s form-body, the eye is purified; hearing his name, the ear; smelling the fragrance of his discipline, the nose; tasting his Dharma-flavor, the tongue, and moreover one “comes to possess the broad and long tongue and understands the ways of all speech”; touching the Tathāgata’s light, the body, and moreover one “ultimately obtains the unsurpassed dharma-body”; and giving rise to recollection of the Tathāgata, one “attains the purity of the samādhi of the recollection of the Buddha.”

Here there is a question that touches the reader most nearly: the Buddha has already passed into extinction — do these six still count? Chengguan answers directly: “the six faculties all run through both his lifetime and after his extinction; after his extinction there is still the seeing of him, how much more the recollecting of him and the rest.” In his lifetime he could be seen; after his extinction he can be seen too — to see an image is to see; and recollection, for that matter, is not bounded by time or aeon at all. He cites the Baoxing lun in support, saying that this treatise “likewise makes clear that the Tathāgata is an object of the six faculties for bodhisattvas, which is much the same as what is here.” Fazang cites it more fully, that passage in verse which runs “the bodies of the buddhas, the tathāgatas, are like space and without characteristic; for those of surpassing wisdom they act as objects of the six faculties.”

One misunderstanding must be set aside: this is not saying that a single look at an image of the Buddha makes the eyes clean. The purity of the six faculties means that at the moment a faculty meets the Buddha’s realm, that meeting has already planted in you something that cannot be digested away — as the first two similes said, it does not abide together with the afflictions, and its nature is ultimate. Purity is the name of that seed, not the name of a present sensation.

The Benefit of What Remains Behind: The Ground and the Stūpas

After the joining, one more sentence is added: those who make offerings to the ground the Tathāgata walked upon and to his stūpas and shrines “too come to possess roots of goodness, extinguish all the troubles of the afflictions, and attain the joy of the noble ones” — answering exactly to the clause about “taking the earth from beneath that tree” in the simile.

Chengguan draws the distinction finely here: “the ground he walked upon still runs through both his presence and his extinction; the stūpas and shrines are only after his extinction.” The ground the Buddha walked upon could be offered to while he was alive and can be offered to after his extinction, and so it runs through both times; stūpas and shrines are a matter that arises only after his extinction. He also brings forward the Lotus line that “even to raise a single hand” is already to have accomplished the Buddha path, as being of the same kind.

This sentence is, of the whole passage, the one that comes closest to the disciples of later ages. You and I cannot see the Buddha’s form-body and cannot hear the sound of his voice; but this sentence opens the door on the far side of his extinction — a patch of ground the Buddha walked over, a stūpa, a single act of homage, all fall within the compass of “seeing, hearing, and drawing near.” The benefit of the three similes above was not given to the people of the Buddha’s lifetime alone.

Even Without Faith the Root Is Planted: Even One Who Cannot Bring Forth Faith Has Not Fallen Empty

Here the scripture says the most startling sentence in the whole passage: “suppose there were sentient beings who saw the Buddha and heard the Buddha, and yet, bound and covered over by karmic obstruction, could not bring forth a mind of faith and delight — they too have planted roots of goodness, with nothing passing away in vain, and they will even, in the end, enter nirvāṇa.”

First the question: is this not to say that believing and not believing come to the same thing? It is not. Chengguan judges this to be “making clear the benefit for those without faith; this shows that the benefit is deep” — it is not that faith does not matter, it is that the benefit of this Dharma gate is so deep that not even a lack of faith can cover it over. He cites the Rulai mimi zang jing: “revile the medicine, and taking it you still get its power; revile the aloeswood, and burnt it still gives back its fragrance; revile the Buddha, and it is still better than revering the outsiders.” And at once he asks and answers himself, stopping up the place most liable to be misread: “if that is so, is there then no fault in reviling? The fault of reviling is not absent; what is spoken of here is the far-off benefit.” The fault of reviling remains a fault; what the scripture speaks of is the benefit far off, not an excuse for reviling.

He cites further the Lotus — Bhadrapāla and the rest reviled Never Disparaging, suffered a thousand aeons of great pain in the Avīci hell, and after that fault was worked off still met with Never Disparaging’s teaching — and the Nirvāṇa simile of the drum smeared with poison, which none who wish to hear it or not hear it fail to die of. Then he presses all the way up: “if even slander brings benefit far off, how much more deep faith! how much more understanding and practice! how much more realization and awakening! Let those who spread and uphold this take pains to think over this passage.” Fazang’s citation is the passage from the Dabei jing in five fascicles about the one who merely wears the monastic robe upon his body, of whom the Buddha records that he will not pass beyond this worthy aeon without entering final nirvāṇa — the same making clear of the inconceivability of the Tathāgata’s Dharma.

Where it comes down to the ground is in that last line, “let those who spread and uphold this take pains to think over this passage”: these words are not a consolation for the one who does not believe; they are a stiffening of the spine for the one who spreads the Dharma — what you plant will not pass away in vain, even if the one before you does not believe it on the spot.

Setting the Similes Apart from the Dharma: Three Similes Spoken, and Then the Text Itself Says the Similes Do Not Suffice

The three similes done, the scripture itself topples the similes: “the Tathāgata uses every simile to speak of every sort of matter, and yet there is no simile that can speak this Dharma. Why is this? Because the road of mind and of knowing is cut off, and it is beyond conceiving.” And it adds a word about why the similes were skillful means at all: “the buddhas and bodhisattvas merely follow along with the minds of sentient beings, so as to make them glad, and for their sake speak similes; the simile is not the ultimate.”

Two opposite misunderstandings must be set aside. The first is to suppose that, since similes were set up, the Buddha-Dharma is more or less like that — which takes the diamond and the grass-fire for measurements. The second is to suppose that, since the similes do not reach it, the three similes were spoken to no purpose — that is wrong too; if you have not first walked once with the diamond, once with the fire, once with the medicine tree, you cannot know how high the platform is that is being toppled.

Chengguan states the purpose of this toppling through and through: “above, the request in the sense of nature-arising was for causes and similes; Samantabhadra, following the request, made clear the ten senses of the appearance, all of them borrowing images and taking similes, meaning to show that the Buddha’s import is deep and dark. If the deep and dark import cannot even be known by knowing, how could words and images reach it? Therefore let words and images be lost without, and thinking and seeking be cut off within, and one may come near to the import of the appearance.” Let words and images go on the outside, let thought and seeking be cut off on the inside, and only then does one barely come up against the import of the appearance. Fazang likewise says: “because it is not the sort of thing worldly similes can be classed with, it is said to be beyond conceiving.”

The Ten Names: What This Gate of Dharma Is Called

The similes toppled, the scripture turns to the revealing of the names, and gives ten of them one after another: the Secret Place of the Tathāgata; That Which No World Can Know; Entering the Seal of the Tathāgata; Opening the Gate of Great Wisdom; Revealing the Lineage-Nature of the Tathāgata; Bringing All Bodhisattvas to Accomplishment; That Which No World Can Destroy; Wholly According with the Realm of the Tathāgata; Able to Purify the Realms of All Sentient Beings; the Setting Forth of the Inconceivable, Ultimate Dharma That Is the Root Real Nature of the Tathāgata.

The ten names are not ten sayings of one thing. Chengguan pairs them two by two and opens them into five pairs: “first, the pair of the depth within and the cutting off without, that is, within it is the secret store of the three virtues that he realizes, and without, ordinary beings and those of the lesser vehicle cannot fathom it. Second, the pair of realizing quiescence and opening wisdom. Third, the pair of manifesting the fruit and accomplishing the cause, that is, the myriad virtues of the pure nature are the very seed of buddhahood, and the appearance in ten gates is the sense of manifesting. Fourth, the pair of surpassing the world and according with the Buddha — if the world does not even know it, how could it destroy it? These ten are all alike the realm proper to a buddha. Fifth, the pair of purifying capacities and setting forth the real, for to know that beings and buddha are of one source is to be able to purify.” Within and without, quiescence and wisdom, fruit and cause, surpassing the world and according with the Buddha, purifying capacities and setting forth the real — each pair is one opening and one closing. And he points out the standing of the last name: “the nine before are separate senses, the last one gathers them all.” The nine each state one sense, and the last name takes them all in.

As for why the words “inconceivable” and “ultimate” fall upon the last name, Chengguan says: “the nature that accords with conditions and yet does not change is the root of the buddhas; and that nature and characteristic are unobstructed and cause and fruit perfectly fused is the inconceivable, beyond which there is nothing further, and so it is the ultimate Dharma.”

Fazang’s Judgment: The Chapter Title ‘Nature-Arising’ Was Established from the Fifth Name

Among the ten names, Fazang leaves under the fifth a sentence of the greatest importance for the Huayan house: “fifth, the scripture that makes clear the opening up and revealing of the lineage-nature of the Tathāgata — from this the name of the Chapter on Nature-Arising was established. Another explanation: to make the function of the buddha lineage-nature arise and appear before one is what is called opening and revealing.”

What this sentence sets out is a piece of history. In the sixty-fascicle Avataṃsaka this chapter is titled the Chapter on the Nature-Arising of the Jewel-King Tathāgata; in the eighty-fascicle it is retitled the Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata. Fazang says that the title “nature-arising” in the sixty-fascicle text was established precisely from the fifth of the ten names here, “the opening up and revealing of the lineage-nature of the Tathāgata.” And at the head of the section on revealing the names he explains why the naming had to fall here: “why is the name and the upholding discerned at this point? Because it shows the sense to be real; because nature-arising is the substance of the Dharma; because it is essential and subtle.” Nature-arising is the substance of the Dharma of this chapter, and so the establishing of the name must fall here.

This is the place in this sense where attribution must be kept clearest: the name and the substance of nature-arising both come out of Fazang’s judging, not out of the scripture speaking for itself; the eighty-fascicle text gives ten names only, and does not say which of them the chapter title came out of. The difference of the titles in the two witnesses, and the judging of the gate of nature-arising — these are recorded, and no adjudication is made.

Determining Who Is a Vessel: Not a Withholding, but an Inability to Receive

After the revealing of the names the scripture brings out a sentence that sounds severe: “this gate of Dharma the Tathāgata does not speak for the remaining sentient beings; he speaks it only for bodhisattvas who are headed toward the Great Vehicle, only for bodhisattvas who ride the inconceivable vehicle. This gate of Dharma does not fall into the hands of any of the remaining sentient beings.”

First the question: does this mean there are ranks in the Dharma, and that the Buddha is partial? Chengguan’s explanation shifts the “does not speak for” from the Buddha’s side over to the side of capacity: “what is not a vessel he does not speak for, namely the provisional and lesser vehicles, the conceivable vehicle, since they cultivate through successive stages, and they are named the remaining sentient beings; what is a vessel he does speak for, namely the perfect capacity, without picking between ordinary and holy.” Note those words “without picking between ordinary and holy” — the line between vessel and non-vessel does not fall between the ordinary and the holy, but between the perfect and the not-perfect. And he explains “the inconceivable vehicle”: “one carrying is the carrying of all, and the mind that fills out the ten faiths already gathers in all the stages; being perfectly fused and unobstructed, it is named the inconceivable vehicle.” When one motion is all motion, that is what is called inconceivable.

As for “does not fall into the hands,” Chengguan reads it as receiving and not receiving: “one who has the hand of perfect faith can receive the many practices, and so it is spoken for him; those of the provisional and lesser vehicles cannot fully receive it here, and so it is not spoken for them.” The hand is the hand of faith and understanding. He cites the Faji jing: “though this scripture circulates in Jambudvīpa, it ever moves in the hand of the mind of such beings as can have faith in the deep Dharma.” The scripture circulates in the world; into whose hands it falls depends on who has that hand.

The Simile of the Seven Treasures: Without a Crown Prince, the Treasures Scatter of Themselves

The sense of the vessel being established, the scripture sets up a simile: the seven treasures of a wheel-turning sage king — it is by the treasures that the wheel-turning king is shown; and these treasures do not fall into the hands of the remaining beings, save only the crown prince born of the first consort, who has come to possess in full the marks of a sage king. If there is no such prince, then after the king’s life has ended these treasures are scattered and destroyed within seven days.

The weight of the simile lies in that last sentence. The treasures are not carried off by anyone; they scatter of themselves — with no one able to bear them, they cannot stay. Joined to the Dharma: “so it is too with the treasure of this scripture … save only the true sons of the Tathāgata, the Dharma-king, those born into the family of the Tathāgata and who have planted the various roots of goodness that are the marks of the Tathāgata. Sons of the Buddha! If there were none of these true sons of the Buddha, such a gate of Dharma would before long be scattered and destroyed.”

Chengguan matches it point by point: “joining the scripture to the seven treasures: without this Dharma one is not a true buddha. Being born into the family of the Tathāgata is joined to the crown prince born of the first consort. The marks of the Tathāgata are the initial mind at once practicing the practice of a buddha.” And he opens “scattered and destroyed” into two senses: “first, if it cannot be received in faith the teaching does not go forward; second, if it cannot be cultivated the practice does not go forward.” Teaching not going forward, practice not going forward — and the scripture has scattered.

This simile is a heavy word for the reader: whether a gate of Dharma survives does not hang on whether the scrolls are still there, but on whether there is anyone who can bear it. And the scripture gives only one condition for being able to bear it — to be born into the family of the Tathāgata.

The Showing by Contrast: Six Perfections Cultivated for Measureless Aeons, and Still Perhaps Not a True Bodhisattva

The passage that follows is far from polite: suppose a bodhisattva through measureless hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of aeons practices the six perfections and cultivates all sorts of factors of awakening; if he has not heard this gate of Dharma, or having heard it does not believe, does not understand, does not accord, does not enter, he “cannot be called a true bodhisattva, because he is not able to be born into the family of the Tathāgata.”

First the question: after cultivating that long it still does not count — is this to make light of the gate of practice? It is not. Chengguan’s explanation comes down on whether or not one relies on this teaching: “if one does not rely on this teaching, then though one cultivate for many aeons it is still not the real, much less able swiftly to attain awakening.” It is not that practice does not count; it is that practice needs an ultimate place to come home to.

He also asks on the reader’s behalf two very natural doubts. The first: are the words “suppose there were” merely a hypothesis? He answers: “the words ‘suppose there were’ here seem to be a hypothesis … but this is bringing up the provisional to show the real, and is not a hypothesis.” And he sets beside it Maitreya’s praise of Sudhana for purifying a buddha-land in one lifetime, where other bodhisattvas must have hundreds of thousands of myriads of koṭis of nayutas of aeons to fill out their vows and practices — bringing up the provisional to show the real, no more. The second: if there really are such people without faith, at what stage do they stand? His answer is very honest: “the text gives no fixed judgment; by the sense it should be the three worthy stages, since one who enters the realization of sagehood must be perfect in faith.” And at the end he adds the sentence that comes nearest to ordinary people: “that an ordinary person can all at once have faith is because a cause in the past, perfumed by hearing, has made a seed apart; if now he still does not believe, how shall he hear in time to come?”

The Showing by Accord: Having Heard, He Believes and Understands — and at That Moment He Is Born into the Family of the Tathāgata

The negative side stated, the positive follows: if one gets to hear this gate of Dharma, “having heard it receives it in faith and understands it, according with it and awakening into it, one should know that this person is born into the family of the Tathāgata” — and nine clauses unfold below: he accords with the realm of every Tathāgata; possesses in full all the dharmas of a bodhisattva; abides in the realm of the knowledge of all modes; leaves behind all worldly dharmas; gives birth to all that the Tathāgata practices; penetrates the dharma-nature of all bodhisattvas; has in his mind no doubt about the Buddha’s sovereign mastery; dwells in the Dharma attained without a teacher; enters deeply into the unobstructed realm of the Tathāgata.

Chengguan takes “born into the family of the Tathāgata” as the general and “the remaining clauses as the particular,” and matches out nine kinds of “family” clause by clause: taking the realm of suchness as family; taking the dharmas of practice as family; taking the conventional realm as family; the family of leaving behind what is not family; taking the practice of a buddha as family; the dharma-nature of a bodhisattva as family; purifying the family of buddhahood to come; dwelling in the family of the root buddha; the family in which cause and fruit, phenomena and principle, are unobstructed; the first six being the family of one’s own portion, the last three the family of advancing further. He cites in support Asvabhāva’s treatise, “to be born into the family of the Tathāgata means the buddha Dharma realm, in which one realizes and meets, and so it is called being born into the family”; Vasubandhu’s commentary, “because by this the lineage-nature of the buddhas is made not to be cut off”; and the first fascicle of the Shizhu piposha, “this bodhisattva now practices the way of the Tathāgata, continuing on unbroken.”

The most important thing is the general judgment he makes at the end: “earlier, at the first abiding one sees the nature of mind, and so it is called being born into the family; at the fourth ground one is lodged in what transcends the world, and so one is born into the family of the factors of the path; at the eighth ground one is without effort, and so one is born into the family of the forbearance of the non-arising of dharmas. Here all three run through, and it further shows that even an ordinary person’s understanding mind is called being born into the family, since cause and fruit are unobstructed.” The first abiding, the fourth ground, and the eighth ground each have their sense of being born into the family, and here all three run through — and he says outright that a single thought of understanding in an ordinary person is also called being born into the family. This sentence puts the threshold of the whole passage at its very lowest: you need not wait until you have entered the grounds; the moment you understand and can believe, you are already inside the house.

The Ten Clauses of Unobstructedness and “Entering Without Entering”

After hearing and believing comes practice. The scripture lays out ten clauses each beginning “he is then able”: with impartial knowing to know measureless dharmas; with an upright mind to leave behind every discrimination; with surpassing zeal and delight to see the buddhas present before him; by the power of the turning of attention to enter the impartial realm of space; with sovereign mindfulness to move through the boundless Dharma realm; by the power of wisdom to possess in full all merits; with spontaneous knowing to leave behind all the defilements of the world; with the mind of awakening to enter the net of all the ten directions; with vast contemplation to know that the buddhas of the three times are of one nature; with the knowing that dedicates and directs his roots of goodness universally to enter such a Dharma as this.

Chengguan pairs these ten clauses two by two and opens them into five pairs of unobstructedness: “first, contemplation does not obstruct stopping; second, seeing the buddhas does not obstruct entering the Dharma; third, that knowing courses through the Dharma realm does not obstruct the raising of merit; fourth, that knowing is undefiled by the world does not obstruct compassion’s entering it; fifth, that in substance it cuts off the three times does not obstruct the function of dedicating and directing.” Each pair is one motion and one stillness that do not hinder each other.

At the end of the ten clauses there suddenly appear the words “entering without entering; he takes no single dharma as an object of clinging, but ever contemplates all dharmas by way of one dharma.” This sentence is the easiest of all to take for dark talk, and Chengguan explains it with great steadiness: “the substance of knowing is suchness itself; outside suchness there is no dharma that could be clung to, and so there is nothing to enter. The place where the mind’s activity is extinguished is still, without entering. Since illumination and function are not lost, one ever contemplates all dharmas by one suchness, and so it is called entering. These two being unobstructed, only then is it true entering.” The substance of knowing is suchness itself; outside suchness there is nothing else to be clung to, and so there is no place to enter; and yet illumination and function are not lost, and so it is also called entering. Having nothing to enter and yet entering do not hinder each other, and that is true entering. He adds: “moreover, the one is suchness itself, and so within the one all is already seen.”

The prose comes to rest here on one line: “a bodhisattva-mahāsattva who brings such merits as these to accomplishment need apply only a little effort, and he attains the spontaneous knowing that is had without a teacher.” After so much that is inconceivable, the place it comes down to is “only a little effort” — answering, head to tail, the “little root of goodness” of the three similes.

The Four Verses in Repetition, and One Doubt Chengguan Left Standing

The prose finished, Samantabhadra sets the meaning forth once more in four verses. Chengguan outlines them: “the four verses divide into two: the first one repeats the statement in prose, and the latter three repeat the three similes in order.” The first verse repeats that the merit of seeing, hearing, and making offerings cannot be measured and will never be used up within the conditioned; the latter three repeat in order the diamond, the fire, and the king of medicine trees. There is no new sense in the verses that the prose did not have; they only gather it up in metre.

What is worth recording is that Chengguan here left a doubt standing and did not alter the text: “the second, the verses, belongs to the tenth, the benefit of seeing and hearing. It does not repeat the revealing of the names and the upholding, for the revealing of the names and the upholding is repeated in verse later on. These verses ought to stand before the setting of the Dharma apart from the similes, since the prose above, linked as it is, makes the revealing of the names also a benefit of seeing and hearing. If these verses were turned round to after the manifesting of the portents, continuous with the verses that follow, text and sense would run very smoothly.” He holds that by text and sense these four verses ought to have stood before the setting of the Dharma apart from the similes, or to have been moved to after the manifesting of the portents so as to join the circulating verses that follow. But he only says that “text and sense would run very smoothly,” and altered nothing. That an ancient worthy had a doubt about the order of a scripture and yet did not presume to alter it — this is recorded, and no adjudication is made.

The Portents and the Two Attestations: Why Both Those of the Fruit and Those of the Cause Must Come to Bear Witness

The verses over, the great earth quakes in six ways and in eighteen aspects, and the heavens rain down every sort of cloud. Chengguan explains this whole display in a single line: “that the numbers of the lands quaking and the rest are all vast and many is because the Dharma is hard to conceive.” The breadth of the portents is to be worthy of the difficulty of conceiving the Dharma.

Then come two layers of witness. First the buddhas of the ten directions, all named Samantabhadra, appear and confirm it, saying “we buddhas of the ten directions, of one and the same name, all speak this Dharma,” and they confer predictions upon the bodhisattvas in the assembly and upon the beings who have raised the aspiration; then the bodhisattvas of the ten directions, all named Samantabhadra, gather and say “in all those places too this Dharma is spoken — with such phrasing as this, such meaning as this, such proclaiming as this, such determining as this, all the same as it is here, neither added to nor taken from.”

Why must both these attestations be had? Chengguan answers: “the reason both are had is that the Dharma is dark and subtle, that it is a Dharma in which cause and fruit interpenetrate, that it is a Dharma of the cause complete and the fruit full. In the assemblies before, only bodhisattvas attested, since those were the practice of the cause. In the chapter on raising the mind only the fruit attested, since that is the root of the fruit … the sense in each case being different, they lack the one or the other; this alone has both.” Other assemblies have either the cause or the fruit; this chapter alone has both attesting, because this Dharma is itself a Dharma in which cause and fruit interpenetrate.

He also explains two words that are easily slipped past. The first: the bodhisattvas come from the ten directions — is there really a coming and going? “Though they come from the ten directions, yet they pervade the Dharma realm; and so their coming is no coming at all.” The second: why are those who come, and the buddhas too, all named Samantabhadra, while the buddhas’ names differ? “That all are named Universal is because the universal Dharma is the same. That the buddhas of the realms have different names is so as not to lose host and guest. Universal Light means that the land of eternal quiescent light is nowhere unpervaded. That the buddha is named Universal Banner of Sovereign Mastery is because root knowing stands out high and there is nothing it does not crush, phenomena and principle being unobstructed.” Sameness of name shows the sameness of the universal Dharma; difference of name preserves the distinction of host and guest.

The Circulating at the Chapter’s End: The Whole Chapter Comes to Rest on “You Should Hold to It and Not Be Heedless”

At the last Samantabhadra, borne up by the Buddha’s spiritual power, surveys the great assembly, states his intent in ten clauses, and speaks four verses — and these four verses gather up not this sense alone but the whole Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata. Chengguan points out that in those ten clauses of intent “each clause is one gate,” answering exactly to the ten gates of the appearance above: “first, the accomplishing of right awakening; second, the Dharma wheel; third, the goodness born of seeing and hearing … ninth, the body, since the one is spoken of in terms of the root; tenth, the practice, since the cause is spoken of within the fruit.”

As for the outline of the four verses, Chengguan divides them thus: “the first verse repeats the concluding response within the section of the exposition, since this takes in the sense of all ten sections; the latter three repeat the revealing of the names and the upholding, the first line revealing the name and the rest all exhorting to uphold. And these divide into three: the first verse praises its depth and the difficulty of hearing it; the next verse makes clear that the text comes of much goodness; the last verse brings up its excellence and exhorts to upholding.” The second verse, “a Dharma subtle and secret and profound as this is hard to hear even in hundreds of thousands of myriads of aeons,” praises its difficulty; the third, “if, hearing this Dharma, one gives rise to joy and gladness, that person has made offerings to measureless buddhas in the past,” turns back to point out that your being able to rejoice at hearing it today is itself the proof of goodness in the past — buckling head to tail with the opening of this sense, that the roots of goodness planted by seeing and hearing are not in vain; and the last verse, “this is the first wealth that surpasses the world … you should hold to it and not be heedless,” exhorts to upholding.

Chengguan has at the chapter’s end a general encomium that may be taken as the closing stroke for one’s reading of this whole chapter: “the text and import of this one chapter are grand and deep; it can be sudden and can be perfect; it plumbs the source of sentient beings and drains the ocean-depths of the buddhas … and it lies within the mind of the ordinary kind, where little effort can yet swiftly realize. How can one deceive oneself and not receive it, and be long sunk in birth and death? That today one can hear and understand and rejoice — for this above all one should congratulate oneself on the goodness of the past.” He lays the whole weight of the chapter on those last two lines: not to receive it is to deceive oneself; and if today you can rejoice, what you should be glad of is what you yourself planted in the past.

Lineage

This sense is where the Huayan house finds the scriptural ground for the name of its gate of nature-arising. Under the fifth of the ten names in the sixty-fascicle text, “the scripture that makes clear the opening up and revealing of the lineage-nature of the Tathāgata,” Fazang states outright that “from this the name of the Chapter on Nature-Arising was established,” and at the head of the section on revealing the names says that “nature-arising is the substance of the Dharma” — the name and the substance of nature-arising both have their scriptural ground in this section on the revealing of the names. The eighty-fascicle text retitles the chapter the Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata, and the order and wording of the ten names in its text also differ from those of the sixty-fascicle text (the eighty has “revealing the lineage-nature of the Tathāgata,” the sixty has “opening up and revealing the lineage-nature of the Tathāgata” and further a name “the great wisdom-light sealed by the Tathāgata”). The difference of the titles in the two witnesses, and the judging of the gate of nature-arising, are recorded, and no adjudication is made.

As for the matching of the three similes, Chengguan matches them with the virtue of wisdom, the virtue of cutting off, and the virtue of grace, while Fazang matches them with the fruit of virtue exhausting the future, the fruit of cutting off and extinguishing the obstruction of confusion, and the fruit of accomplishing great awakening — Chengguan speaking in terms of virtue and Fazang in terms of fruit, so that the order in which the first two similes are matched is accordingly reversed; and Fazang brings out under the simile of the fire a separate explanation, “the former extinguishes the obstruction to what is knowable, the latter the obstruction of the afflictions,” which Chengguan does not give. In gathering the ten names, Chengguan makes five pairs, while Fazang follows Guangtong and the rest and gives the reason for each name in turn. As to the placing of the verses, Chengguan brings out a separate opinion that they ought to stand before the setting of the Dharma apart from the similes, or would run smoothly if turned round to after the manifesting of the portents, and yet he does not alter the text of the scripture. There are divergent explanations of old; they are recorded, and no adjudication is made.

The differences of the parallel translation are likewise recorded in the apparatus: before the revealing of the names the sixty-fascicle text has two questions from the bodhisattvas (by what name shall this scripture be called; how is it to be upheld), while the eighty-fascicle text has no question and answers directly, and Chengguan has already stated outright that “according to the Jin scripture, before this there are two kinds of question raised by the bodhisattvas … here there is only the answer”; in the scattering of the seven treasures the eighty-fascicle text has the limit “within seven days” while the sixty has only “scatter of themselves”; in the simile of the diamond the eighty has “it must pass through his body and come out beyond it” while the sixty has “it reaches the diamond-wheel limit, and only then does it stay”; the name of the medicine tree is “Well-Seen” in the eighty and “Well-Appearing” in the sixty; and “entering without entering” belongs to the eighty-fascicle text alone. Further, in the section of the attestation by those of the fruit the sixty marks the realization of the assembly with “when this scripture was spoken,” while the eighty has “here in this assembly now,” marking those present — the weight of the narration differing; and the sixty attaches the passage on the original vows to the end of what the buddhas say, while in the eighty it is narration by the compilers of the scripture. These are recorded as they stand, and nothing is forced into an explanation.

As for the Dasheng qixin lun, the Wujiao zhang, the Shixuan men, the Huayan fajie xuanjing, and the Cheng weishi lun, the She dacheng lun, the Yuqie shidi lun, and the Jie shenmi jing — for all of these the hits upon a sentence taking up this sense in particular are zero. This sense has no direct textual warrant among the treatises of the lineage; the absence is recorded in accordance with fact, and nothing from elsewhere is used to fill it. Li Tongxuan’s Xin Huayan jing lun has no outline division proper to this sense; it has only one place where it cites outright the entrusting and circulating of this chapter, which is related in kind and no more, and this too is recorded as it stands.