華嚴經 義疏通講 · 冊16Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Exposition Throughout · Vol. 16

First, Where This Stretch Stands

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gate 3. Speech — Ten Manners of Speaking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: how does a mind “pervade”?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gate 19. Cultivation — Ten Matters That Are Cultivated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: why is this gate especially long?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: why is the bodhisattva path measureless?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gate 32. Hands — Ten Hands That Draw People In

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: what Dharma can a belly speak of?

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

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

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

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

Question: what does ‘storehouse’ mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gate 39. Eyes — Ten Kinds of Seeing

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

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

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

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

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

Gate 40. Ears — Ten Practices Set Going upon Hearing

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

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

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

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

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

Question: what Dharma can a nose speak of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: what does walking speak of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gate 47. Sitting — Ten Seats upon Which He Sits

Question: what does sitting speak of?

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

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

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

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

Question: can lying down too be practice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lineage

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

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

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

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

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

Where This Stretch Stands

Universal Wisdom Bodhisattva asked two hundred questions in one breath, and Samantabhadra answered them one by one, each answer with ten phrases; Chengguan reckons this as “the two thousand surpassing practices of Samantabhadra.” This is the last of those rounds, the fifty-one gates. The five earlier rounds answered the ten faiths, the ten abodes, the ten practices, the ten dedications, and the ten grounds — but one thing must first be made clear: of these stage-names the scriptural text itself does not produce one single word. It was the ancient worthies of old who, on the basis of the six rounds of question and answer in the separately circulating Dushi jing, set up this outline, and Chengguan carried it on and used it to outline this scripture. Therefore “the practice of the perfected cause and the fulfilled fruit” is not what the scripture calls itself; it is a set of coordinates. In reading, one must be able at any moment to take the coordinates away and see what the scriptural text is saying of itself.

And what is the scriptural text saying of itself? It begins from “there are ten kinds of contemplation” and ends at “manifesting parinirvāṇa.” The earlier part is how a person who cultivates is to look, how to practice, how to keep clear of obstruction; the later part is the eight aspects of accomplishing the Way, together with three affairs of a buddha — turning the wheel of the Dharma, sowing the white and pure dharmas, and entering nirvāṇa. Here Chengguan lays down a decisive judgment: the fifty-one gates do not all of them speak of the fruit; only the four gates from “accomplishing the powers of a Tathāgata” onward truly make clear the fulfilled fruit, and all that precedes is the perfected cause. He knows himself that this judgment collides with the eight aspects — are the eight aspects not the fruit? His explanation is this: the first five of the eight aspects are still in the position of the cause, and it is only because the eight aspects are one whole set of manifestings that they are taken in together into the fruit. This is a layering of “speaking strictly in terms of the fact” over against “speaking in accordance with the marks,” and not a blurring. His Yanyi chao preserves besides a second way of reckoning: of the two hundred gates of the whole chapter the first one hundred and ninety-six belong to the cause; and a third as well: if the eight aspects are taken as the fruit, then the fruit has nineteen gates. Two reckonings of the same stretch of text stand together, and this is precisely the family manner of this chapter, which may be opened out or drawn together.

Gate 1. Contemplation: What Is Looked At, Not How Far One Can See

Ask one question first: when a person who cultivates “looks,” what is it that he looks at? The ten contemplations give a very concrete answer — deeds, destinies, faculties, dharmas, the Buddha-dharma, wisdom, the forbearance of non-arising, the ground of nonretrogression, the ground of consecration, the samādhi of the wisdom of good awakening. Chengguan divides them into three stretches: the first two contemplate what is to be transformed; the next four contemplate the dharmas that transform (he names them: principle, fruit, teaching, and practice); the last three contemplate the positions. There is a misreading to clear away here: looking at deeds and looking at destinies sound like spiritual penetration, but the scriptural text at once takes that apart — under “the contemplation that knows all destinies” what follows is “for the reason that he grasps at no real sentient being.” He can see the turning and flowing, and yet he does not thereby make solid a real person who turns and flows. So too with looking at faculties: “for the reason that he penetrates through to the faculties having of themselves no fixed nature.” These ten contemplations, then, are not an eye chart; they are a training in seeing without making solid. Brought home to oneself: when you judge a person’s faculties, are you looking, or have you already fixed his nature for him? To fix his nature is to “grasp.”

Gate 2. Universal Contemplation: From “Seeing” Turned into “Catching Hold”

The first gate is looking; why must the second gate look again? Chengguan says the first gate is “for the reason that he understands skillful means and penetrates through to what is open and what is blocked,” and the second is “for the reason that his deliberation is thorough and reaches everywhere” — the one is looking accurately, the other is looking completely. And the scriptural text itself gives a harder distinction: in every one of these ten phrases the second half is an action. Seeing one who begs, he satisfies his wish; seeing one who breaks the precepts, he settles him in the pure precepts; seeing one with a harming mind, he settles him in the power of patience. Chengguan points out that the first six phrases are precisely the six perfections used as antidotes to the six meannesses. So “universal contemplation” is not contemplating; it is seeing and at once catching hold. Clear away one misreading: this is not a demand that you be able to solve everything; it is a demand that “contemplating” not stop at contemplating. To see an indolent person and merely to sigh over it is still the affair of the first gate, not of the second.

Gate 3. Rousing Might: Where the Majesty Comes From

Of the ten kinds of rousing might the first five are all fierce beasts — the bull-king, the elephant-king, the nāga-king, the garuḍa-king, and the lion-king; from the sixth on it turns to bravery and strength, great wisdom, the dhāraṇī, and eloquence, and the last is the rousing might of a Tathāgata. Why first lodge the sense in a simile and then take it in terms of dharma? Chengguan’s explanation is very spare: rousing might is “the real virtue filling within and the majestic virtue brimming over without,” like the lion-king — majesty is not something put on for show; it is what brims over of itself when the inside is full. Fazang says almost the same thing, and also uses “filling within” and “brimming over without.” The misreading most to be guarded against here is taking rousing might for a commanding air or for the power to sway others. The scriptural text gives its own line of defense: the rousing might of the elephant-king is “the nature of his mind is well tamed and gentle,” not fierce might; the rousing might of the nāga-king comes to rest on raining down the sweet-dew rain. Brought home to oneself: to speak the Dharma and move one’s hearers may be eloquence, and need not be rousing might; the test of rousing might lies in those two words “filling within” — the very sentence you spoke, can you yourself stand and abide in it?

Gate 4. The Lion’s Roar: Nine Phrases of Vow and One Phrase of Making Good

What is a lion’s roar? Chengguan says: “Since he is brave and strong and without fear, he is therefore able to proclaim with decision.” Rousing might is the majesty; the lion’s roar is speaking it out. Of the ten phrases the first nine are all “I shall” — I shall accomplish perfect awakening, I shall cause sentient beings to be crossed over, I shall cause the three jewels not to be cut off. The tenth phrase suddenly is no longer a vow but turns into a piece of narrative: the bodhisattva of the final body shakes the buddha-lands, the gods come and entreat him, he contemplates the world with one phrase, “among all sentient beings there is none that is my equal,” and then is born in the royal palace, walks seven steps, and proclaims, “in the world I am the most excellent and the first.” The name the scriptural text gives this phrase is “the great lion’s roar of doing as one has said.” The nine phrases are the saying; the tenth phrase is the doing. A misreading must be cleared away here: that phrase “the most excellent and the first” is not boasting, for the scriptural text at once completes it in the second half — “I shall forever exhaust the far bound of birth-and-death.” The most excellent is said with regard to that one thing. Where it comes to ground: vowing is easy, and what lies between vow and practice is just this tenth phrase.

Gate 5. Pure Giving: Why All Ten Givings Are Called “Pure”

Why is every one of the perfections crowned with a “pure”? Chengguan answers straight out: “for the reason that they leave the meanness and obstruction behind, and are not like the giving and the precepts and the rest of the world.” Pure is not a describing word; it is a distinguishing word — it distinguishes away the giving of the world. And what are the meannesses? Look at the reason-phrases the scriptural text itself gives and you will know: even-minded giving is “he does not pick and choose among sentient beings,” giving that does not abide is “he seeks no reward,” giving that opens and lets go is “his mind is not fond and attached.” The purity of every phrase comes to rest upon one concrete not. The last phrase, the purity of the three spheres, is the deepest: the giver, the receiver, and the thing given, all three sides like empty space. There is a common misunderstanding here — the purity of the three spheres sounds as though one had to cultivate until one ‘cannot feel oneself giving.’ It is not a matter of feeling but a matter of contemplating; the words the scriptural text uses are “rightly and mindfully contemplates.” Where it comes to ground: that sentence in your heart after the giving is done, ‘he ought to remember it,’ is the fifth phrase, “he seeks no reward,” not yet standing firm.

Gate 6. Pure Precepts: The Ten Faces of the Precepts

Can the ten precepts be remembered simply as ‘do not do bad things’? They cannot. Chengguan cuts them by the threefold collection of precepts: the first three phrases are restraint, the seventh and the tenth are gathering sentient beings, and the rest are gathering the good. The most thought-provoking thing in the scriptural text is the seventh phrase, “the pure precept of guarding it in secret,” whose reason is “for the reason that he means skillfully to pull out and rescue sentient beings who break the precepts” — for the sake of saving one who breaks the precepts, his own keeping of the precepts must be secret and not paraded. This one phrase pushes the precepts from guarding oneself out to guarding others. Then look at the last two phrases: “the pure precept of leaving far behind all views that things exist, for the reason that toward the precepts themselves too he has no attachment” — even the attachment to the precepts must be left behind. Clear away one misreading: this does not say that the precepts may be loosened, for the sixth phrase has only just said “toward even the most subtle offense he gives rise to great dread.” Dreading even the subtlest offense, and at the same time not being attached to the precepts — the two phrases are one and the same person. Where it comes to ground: to keep the precepts and grow a sense of superiority is the ninth phrase not yet done.

Gate 7. Pure Patience: Patience Is Not Holding Down

Of the ten patiences the first three are being reviled, being struck, and giving rise to no anger and harm, which Chengguan judges to be the patience that endures the harm of enemies — bearing the vexing harm of others’ deeds of body, speech, and mind. But as the ten phrases run on, the nature of the patience changes: the sixth is “leaving far behind the conceit of self” and “he does not look down on those who have not yet learned”; the seventh is “not being angry though maimed and reviled” and “he contemplates all this as an illusion”; and the last phrase comes to rest directly upon “fully knows that all dharmas are without arising.” These ten phrases, then, are one single line: from being able to bear it, to being able to see through it, to there being fundamentally nothing to bear. The misreading to be cleared away is reading patience as repression. The scriptural text guards against this quite plainly — the reason given for the third phrase is “for the reason that his mind is unmoved,” not ‘for the reason that his mind forcibly bears it.’ Where it comes to ground: if you are very tired after being patient, you are for the most part still at the first phrase; tiredness is the price of holding down, and that “as an illusion” of the seventh phrase takes no strength at all.

Gate 8. Pure Vigor: Vigor Is Not the Same as Being Busy

How are the ten vigors divided? Chengguan says the second phrase and the tenth are benefiting sentient beings, the fifth is donning armor, and the rest are gathering the good. The frame the scriptural text itself gives is clearer still: the first three are the vigor of the three kinds of deed, of body, of speech, and of mind; the fourth and the fifth are the vigor of the ground of the mind (the upright mind and the ascendant mind); and from the sixth on it turns to antidote and completion. The thing most to be noticed is the ninth phrase, “the pure vigor of no coming and no going” — vigor at the last is “fully knowing that mark is non-mark, with nothing grasped at.” Clear away one misreading here: vigor is not filling up the calendar. The test the sixth phrase gives is “never stopping midway” — it is not being broken off, not never resting. Where it comes to ground: ask yourself of yesterday’s exertion, was it taking in (the sixth phrase), or was it only moving about.

Gate 9. Pure Meditation: The Precondition of Concentration Is Your Life

What the ten meditations speak of at the outset is not the posture of sitting but leaving home, a good friend, dwelling in an araṇya, leaving the clamor — Chengguan judges the first five to be skillful means. Only at the sixth phrase, “the mind and wisdom are at rest and extinguished,” is it concentration itself; the seventh and the eighth turn out into wisdom and the cutting off of confusion; the ninth and the tenth are the penetrations and clarities, and play. Why must concentration be spoken of beginning from these outward conditions? Because concentration is not an isolated affair: surroundings, companions, and the shape of one’s life are all its front portion. The eighth phrase in particular is to be looked at: “the pure meditation of leaving behind the relishing of its taste, for the reason that he does not forsake the realm of desire” — not being greedy for the taste of concentration, and therefore in no hurry to cast away the realm of desire. Clear away one misreading: to be absorbed in the taste of meditative concentration will be listed in gate 23 of this stretch as “the māra of samādhi,” from which one may see that greed for concentration is plainly guarded against. Where it comes to ground: the ten hours outside of sitting decide the quality of that one hour.

Gate 10. Pure Wisdom: Wisdom in Three Stretches

The ten wisdoms Chengguan divides most tidily: the first three understand dharmas and belong to the wisdom of applied practice; the next four gather beings and belong to the subsequently attained wisdom; the last three realize the principle and belong to the wisdom of the essential substance. The sequence of the scriptural text answers to it exactly — first knowing causes, knowing conditions, knowing neither cutting off nor permanence, which is understanding; then contemplating the movements of the minds of sentient beings, vast eloquence, what the māras and outsiders cannot know, which is use; and last seeing the dharma-body, seeing the original nature to be pure, the adamantine wisdom of a single thought-moment’s conjunction, which is realizing. The misreading to be cleared away here is taking wisdom for cleverness. The reason given for the fifth phrase is “he fully knows them to be like an illusion,” and the reason given for the ninth is “it makes people obtain all the most excellent wisdom” — the direction of wisdom is from first to last outward and toward people, not toward proving oneself. Where it comes to ground: to have read a stretch of Dharma through and be in a hurry to tell it to someone is the road of the subsequently attained wisdom; to have read it through and first turn it upon oneself once is to have some share in the wisdom of the essential substance.

Gate 11. Pure Loving-Kindness: The Three Layers of Loving-Kindness

The four measureless minds begin here. Chengguan says that the six perfections for the most part make clear benefiting oneself while the four evennesses are for the most part taken in terms of benefiting others, and he cuts these four gates with the three grounds. Of the ten phrases of loving-kindness he judges the first eight to have sentient beings as their ground, while the ninth and the tenth show their sense in the marks of the text themselves — “the pure loving-kindness that has dharmas as its ground, for the reason that he realizes the real dharma of suchness,” “the pure loving-kindness that has no ground, for the reason that he enters into the nature of a bodhisattva’s leaving arising behind.” What are the three grounds? Loving-kindness set going with sentient beings as its ground, loving-kindness set going with dharmas as its ground, and loving-kindness set going with no ground at all. The first is the most intimate, the last the most thoroughgoing. Clear away one misreading here: groundless loving-kindness is not coldness. The eighth phrase of the scriptural text has only just said, “the pure loving-kindness that fills empty space, for the reason that in rescuing and guarding sentient beings there is no place he does not reach,” and only then does the tenth phrase turn into the groundless — it is emptied after being filled, not left uncared for because emptied. Where it comes to ground: if loving-kindness will not arise toward some particular person, one must for the most part go back to the first phrase, “an even mind” — first look and see whether you have been picking and choosing.

Gate 12. Pure Compassion: The Two Knots Where Compassion Is Tied

Of the ten compassions Chengguan judges the first seven to have sentient beings as their ground, the eighth to have dharmas as its ground, and the last two to be groundless, and for those last two phrases he points out the reason why: the ninth is “he is grieved that what is true in them is hidden, and therefore reveals it,” and the tenth is “he thinks of their not knowing, and therefore makes them awaken.” Look at the scriptural text, and these two phrases are indeed written differently from the first eight — the first eight are all short phrases, while each of these two is a complete stretch of contemplation: knowing that all dharmas are in their original nature pure and that beings suffer only because of the adventitious, and therefore giving rise to compassion, named “the original nature is pure”; knowing that all dharmas are like the track of a bird in the sky and that sentient beings are veiled by the film of delusion and cannot see it, and therefore giving rise to compassion, named “the wisdom of what is real.” Compassion at this point is no longer the not bearing to see people suffer; it is not bearing to see people who are fundamentally without trouble take themselves to be in trouble. Clear away one misreading: the second phrase, “he undergoes suffering in place of all sentient beings and does not take it for toil,” does not say that one can really undergo it in their place; the reason-phrase given is “does not take it for toil,” and what is spoken of is the measure of the mind. Where it comes to ground: if your pity for a person carries a looking down from above, it has not yet reached the sixth phrase, “not attached to his own joy.”

Gate 13. Pure Joy: Where Joy Comes From

Joy is the gate among the ten most easily misread, because it looks like an emotion. Chengguan judges the first four to have sentient beings as their ground, the next three to have dharmas as their ground, and the last three to be groundless. Look at the scriptural text, and the first phrase at once settles the source of joy — “the pure joy of giving rise to the aspiration for awakening”; the first origin of joy is that one has oneself given rise to the mind. And onward: joy at giving away all that one has, joy at not disdaining sentient beings who break the precepts, joy at being able to bear with sentient beings who do evil, joy at giving away the body in seeking the Dharma without regret. The joy of every phrase hangs upon a deed that is not easy. Clear away one misreading: joy is not the product of favorable circumstances. The fourth phrase plainly says “being able to bear with sentient beings who do evil,” and that is adverse circumstance. Where it comes to ground: examine your last real gladness — was it because you got something, or because you gave something out, bore something down, gave rise to the mind?

Gate 14. Pure Equanimity: Two Kinds of Waiting

This gate has a peculiarity in the text, which Chengguan has already marked: the heading says ten kinds, but within the text eleven phrases are listed in fact, and it is the Jin recension, which draws the first two together into one, that makes ten. Such opening out and drawing together the ancient worthies long ago recorded, and it need not be taken for an error. In content, the deepest are the ninth and the tenth phrases — some sentient beings’ faculties are ripe and yet they still cannot know the highest dharma: wait; some sentient beings the bodhisattva has already taught in former ages and who can be tamed only at the ground of buddhahood: also wait. And then the eleventh phrase gathers it all up: toward these two kinds of persons, “without high and without low, without taking up and without setting down.” The utmost of equanimity is not giving up; it is being able to wait. Clear away one misreading: equanimity is not not caring. The fourth phrase has already said, “waiting for the time to teach and cross over those sentient beings who are fit vessels for the Dharma, and not giving rise to disdain toward those who are not fit for it either” — not teaching and crossing over, but not giving rise to disdain. Where it comes to ground: toward a person who cannot be urged, is your mind waiting, or has it already been cut off?

Gate 15. Meaning: The Meaning That Is Conveyed

From this gate on it turns into skillful means and cultivation; Chengguan judges the first five gates to make clear the practice of one’s own portion and the last three the practice of advancing beyond. Meaning and dharma are a pair; how are they divided? Chengguan says: “If one takes what conveys as dharma, then one takes what is conveyed as meaning.” But he says at once that in this stretch he does not take what conveys as dharma. The first phrase of the ten meanings shows the most care — the meaning of much hearing, whose reason is “for the reason that it lies in cultivating firmly,” and Chengguan points out: “the first takes cultivation as the meaning of much hearing, the intent lying in cultivating and not in hearing.” The meaning of much hearing turns out to be cultivation, not hearing. Clear away one misreading: this is not to belittle hearing. The second phrase, “the meaning of dharma, for the reason that it lies in deliberating and choosing skillfully,” is still within the range of deliberating and choosing. It says that the meaning of this matter of much hearing comes to rest upon cultivating, not upon the amount of hearing. Where it comes to ground: how much Dharma did you read this year — put the question another way: what did you change because you read it?

Gate 16. Dharma: The Dharma That Is Able to Hold

What is dharma? Chengguan gives two senses: “first, it holds its own nature; second, it is the rule by which understanding is produced in beings” — the one is that it can stand up of itself, the other is that it can let people produce understanding by relying upon it. And he matches them phrase by phrase: of this stretch, the first seven phrases run through both senses, the eighth and the ninth are only the holding of its own nature, and the last is only the rule that produces understanding. The last phrase is the weight of the whole gate — “forsaking all upadhi-nirvāṇa.” Upadhi Chengguan explains as “having suffering,” and takes it to be the nirvāṇa of the two vehicles; and he cites the Foxing lun to say that in the nirvāṇa without remainder of the two vehicles there are yet three kinds of remainder, and that therefore it is not truly without remainder. So this phrase would have a person forsake that seemingly ultimate resting place, and the reason-phrase is given in a wholly positive way: “it is able to set going all the practices of a bodhisattva, and to cultivate them without cease.” Clear away one misreading: this is not to belittle the two vehicles; it is to say that that is not the end of the road. Where it comes to ground: any feeling of ‘at last I am secure’ that arises in cultivation is worth shining this one phrase upon.

Gate 17. The Equipment of Merit That Aids the Path: Merit Is a Tool

What is equipment that aids the path? Chengguan says it plainly: “merit and wisdom are the path itself; the conditions that complete merit and wisdom are named equipment that aids the path.” Those conditions that bring merit and wisdom to completion are what is called equipment that aids the path. Of the ten phrases the ones most worth stopping at are the first and the tenth. The first: urging sentient beings to give rise to the aspiration for awakening is an equipment of merit that aids the path, the reason being “thereby the lineage of the three jewels is not cut off” — so it turns out that urging a person to give rise to the mind is itself the greatest merit. The tenth phrase is a whole stretch: roots of good amassed through asaṃkhyeya kalpas, the realization of awakening already as though in the palm of the hand, and yet all of it given away to sentient beings, with no sorrow and distress in the mind and no regret. Clear away one misreading: this does not say that merit can be transferred to somebody; the scriptural text comes to rest upon “that mind being vast and the same as the realm of empty space,” and what is meant is the measure of the mind. Where it comes to ground: if the good things you have done are still entered under your own name, the tenth phrase has not yet begun.

Gate 18. The Equipment of Wisdom That Aids the Path: A Ladder of Ten Rungs

This is one of the longer gates in the whole stretch, and each of the ten phrases is a whole paragraph. Chengguan names the first three for us: “first, drawing near to good conditions without; second, taming the vessel of the Dharma within; third, settling the place of mindfulness and wisdom.” One can see that these ten phrases are a ladder running from without inward: drawing near to good friends, doing away with arrogance, mindfulness and wisdom not scattered, delighting in the Dharma and its meaning, the six perfections and the four dwellings of Brahmā, ever delighting in coming forth and departing, contemplating the five aggregates as illusion, hearing of the two selflessnesses and deeply believing, calming and contemplating carried on together, and seeing dependent origination and thereby the fivefold purity. The string of similes in the seventh phrase is the most famous — like an illusion, like a heat-haze, like the moon in water, like a dream, like a shadow, like an echo, like an image, like a painting in the sky, like a whirling wheel of fire, like the colors of a rainbow, like the light of the sun and the moon. When Chengguan explains “the elements are like venomous snakes” he cites the old saying that takes the four great elements for venomous snakes, and explaining “the sense-fields are like an empty village” he says it is “for the reason that there is no person within.” Clear away one misreading: this string is not literary ornament, for the seventh phrase gives its own conclusion, “he knows that all dharmas are without arising and without ceasing.” Where it comes to ground: these ten phrases can serve as a self-examination in sequence, asking of each in turn, ‘which phrase am I at?’

The third phrase has one more cluster of terms, compressed, that is worth unfolding on its own. After the scriptural text says “mindfulness and wisdom following upon awareness, never yet scattered; with shame and with a pliant gentleness, the mind at rest and unmoving,” it stacks three “evers”: “ever calling to mind the six recollections, ever practicing the six reverences, ever following along and dwelling in the six dharmas of firmness.” Chengguan names a function for each of the three: “the six recollections are for upholding oneself; the six harmonies are the dharma of the community” — the six reverences being the six harmonies, the way of dwelling together among many. As for the six firmnesses, he says they are “the six firmnesses that follow upon the stages,” and cites the first fascicle of the Original Acts as matching them to the three worthies, the ten sages, and the two awakenings of equal and marvelous, making six, namely “firmness in faith, firmness in the Dharma, firmness in cultivation, firmness in virtue, firmness in the nape, firmness in awakening”; he adds that these six are also named the six forbearances, the six wisdoms, the six contemplations, and the six natures, and closes, “for the reason that there is no buddha at all who does not enter by these.” For the two sets, the six recollections and the six reverences, Chengguan notes “both are seen in the text above,” pointing back to what was explained earlier: the six recollections are recollection of the Buddha, of the Dharma, of the Saṃgha, of the precepts, of giving, and of the devas — under the seven recollections of an earlier gate the Shu says “adding recollection of sentient beings, for the sake of great compassion,” from which one knows that the six with recollection of beings added make the seven; the six reverences are the six harmonies, which the Shu explains as “harmony of body in dwelling together, harmony of speech in not quarrelling, harmony of mind in not going against, harmony of view in the same understanding, harmony of precepts in the same observance, harmony of gains in equal sharing,” the three deeds together with precepts, views, and gains all in harmony. What matters is why the three “evers” are stacked together: the six recollections are holding oneself up oneself; the six reverences are not grating against others amid the many; the six firmnesses are walking the whole way up without turning back — inward, toward others, and forward. Take away any one and the other two will not hold for long. Clear away one misreading: the six firmnesses are not six kinds of hardness of temper; what Chengguan matches them to is the stages, and firmness is ‘standing steady in that place.’ Where it comes to ground: this one phrase can be asked three times a day — has the thought today a place to rest, has there been contention with anyone, and has the road walked been walked backward.

Gate 19. Clarity and Footing: Wisdom Complete, and Still Advancing

What is clarity and footing? Chengguan takes the two words apart. Clarity is “the darkness of confusion has perished and the understanding of wisdom has appeared”; footing has two senses, “first, for the reason that wisdom is full and complete; second, for the reason that there is advancing,” and he says that this is the sense of “complete in clarity and conduct” among the ten titles: on the side of the fruit it is called fullness and completeness, and on the side of the cause it is called feet. So clarity and footing is at once fullness and still walking. Of the ten phrases the first seven are taken in terms of practice and the last three raise separately the three clarities — the divine eye, former abodes, and the exhaustion of the contaminants. Clear away one misreading: the three clarities are listed here not to make people seek spiritual penetrations. Look at the reason-phrases: the wisdom of the divine eye is “universally contemplating,” the recollection of former abodes is “the purity of knowing the earlier bound,” and the penetration of the exhaustion of the contaminants is “cutting off the contaminants of sentient beings” — all three are turned toward sentient beings. Where it comes to ground: with any ability whatever, the way to test it is to ask in which direction it is used.

Gate 20. Seeking the Dharma: Ten Kinds of Mind, and One Boundary Line

How is the Dharma to be sought? Every one of the ten phrases is a matched pair: seeking the Dharma with an upright mind is matched with “there is no flattery and deceiving”; seeking the Dharma with vigor is matched with “he leaves indolence and arrogance far behind”; seeking the Dharma with a single direction is matched with “he does not begrudge body and life.” Chengguan gives each phrase an extremely spare label — the mind at the beginning is only upright; in the middle and after there is no indolence; within, he pays no regard to the body; without, he forgets fame and gain; the two benefits are both fulfilled; he gets the intent and forgets the words; he does not seek the fruit close at hand; the cause requites what he has done; he universally resolves doubts; he fulfills the Buddha-vehicle alone. And then he lays down a judgment: “Apart from these ten kinds of seeking, all seeking is wrong seeking.” This sentence carries much weight. Clear away one misreading: wrong seeking does not mean seeking a wrong dharma; it means seeking the true Dharma from a motive other than these ten. The boundary given by the sixth phrase is the finest of all — “seeking the Dharma so as to enter wisdom, for the reason that he takes no delight in the letter.” Where it comes to ground: ask yourself, at the very moment of seeking the Dharma, whether there is not in your mind a calculation that ‘this will come in useful later on.’

Gate 21. Dharmas Clearly Understood: The Particular Stretch Belonging to Each of Ten Classes of Persons

This gate suddenly ranges in order the ordinary person, the one who practices in accordance with faith, the one who practices in accordance with the Dharma, the eighth person, the four fruits, the pratyekabuddha, and the bodhisattva — ten classes of persons. Chengguan says that this is “generally, with the surpassing wisdom of Samantabhadra, fully knowing the differences of the ordinary and the noble in the three vehicles.” He also glosses a difficult term for us: the eighth person is “the one directed toward the first fruit,” and he cites the commentary on the Jushe to say that among the eight forbearances it is counted from the last as the eighth. Where does the intent of this gate lie? It lies in a bodhisattva’s being able to recognize how far each class of person now clearly understands. Clear away one misreading: this is not a matching of oneself against the positions. What the scriptural text lists is ‘the dharma they clearly understand,’ which is what is to be known for transforming others, not a ladder of one’s own realization. Where it comes to ground: before talking of the Dharma with someone, first judge which phrase he stands upon — speaking too early is useless, and speaking too late is useless as well.

Gate 22. Dharmas of Cultivation: Turning What Was Understood Before into a Daily Task

The gate before was clear understanding; this gate is cultivation. Chengguan puts it very directly: “the third, the dharmas of cultivation, are so called for the reason that only by cultivating as it was spoken does one obtain the Buddha-dharma.” All ten phrases can be carried out: reverencing good friends, being ever awakened by the gods, ever harboring a sense of shame and blame in the presence of the buddhas, pitying sentient beings and not forsaking birth-and-death, surely carrying through whatever he does with a mind that does not shift. On the second phrase Chengguan also makes a correction in the reading — “as for ‘ever by the gods,’ the word wei takes the falling tone,” that is, for the sake of the gods one awakens them — the bodhisattva awakens the gods and does not let them cling to pleasure (so Fazang); and he cites the Jin recension, which reads “awakening the gods,” as his witness. The base text’s wording is “ever awakened by the gods,” and the Vernacular renders that wording as it stands; Chengguan’s reading is recorded here. Clear away one misreading: the fifth phrase, “surely carrying through whatever he does with a mind that does not change and shift,” is not stubbornness; the phrases before and after it speak of pitying sentient beings and of following and learning from the assemblies of bodhisattvas, so it is an unshiftingness within relationships. Where it comes to ground: these ten phrases are the most like a daily task, and one may really check them off one by one over a week.

Gate 23. Māra: Māra Lies in the Grasping, Not in the Thing

This gate is the most easily read astray. Among the ten māras are the māra of the roots of good, the māra of samādhi, the māra of the good friend, and the māra of the wisdom of the dharma of awakening — how can roots of good be a māra? Chengguan’s handling of this is the sharpest passage in the whole stretch. He first sets himself a question: as for the māra of the aggregates, the body is the vessel of the Way and its substance is the same as a buddha’s; how then is it a māra? The answer: “the name māra of the aggregates comes solely from grasping and attachment, and the nine below follow the same example.” The name māra does not fall upon that thing; it falls upon the grasping. He pushes it a step further: “Thus one knows that when the mind discriminates, the ten thousand dharmas are all māra; how should it be only these ten?” And he says besides that the four māras are made clear in terms of substance while the ten māras are for the most part taken in terms of grasping and attachment, which is why the numbers differ. And he lays down a turning word: all is buddha, so where is the sense in forsaking the realm of māra to seek the realm of buddha? Clear away one misreading: this does not say that roots of good and samādhi need not be cultivated, for the reason of every phrase of the scriptural text points at grasping and attachment — the māra of the roots of good is “toward the roots of good he grasps constantly,” the māra of samādhi is “he long relishes its taste.” Where it comes to ground: examine that one fruit of cultivation you prize most — are you using it, or guarding it?

Gate 24. Deeds of Māra: Ten Things That Will Spoil a Good Deed

Māra is the substance; the deeds of māra are the affairs. Chengguan says: “To do these ten things is in every case able to corrupt the good and also to draw the heavenly māra, and therefore they are its deeds.” All ten phrases are utterly concrete: cultivating roots of good while having forgotten and lost the mind of awakening; giving with an evil mind; keeping the precepts with an angry mind; being stingy toward the profound Dharma; not speaking for one who is fit to be taught; forcing oneself to speak for one who is no vessel because one has received offerings; slandering the true Dharma; studying the disputations of the world and covering over the profound Dharma; drawing near only to those already liberated. The first phrase is the general illness — the good work is still being done, and the resolve has dropped away. Having read this gate through it is best to stop a moment, and Chengguan himself stopped too, writing one sentence: “Yet looking at this text, it is hard to escape the deeds of māra; may those who come after examine this and look into themselves.” Clear away one misreading: this is not to make people afraid; it is to make them check. Where it comes to ground: take these ten phrases as an annual examination, and for the most part every one of them will be touched a little — only what is touched can be mended.

Gate 25. Forsaking the Deeds of Māra: Matched One by One Against Them

This gate stands directly against the one before. Chengguan says, “treating and mending against the obstruction, and therefore it says forsaking,” and points out: “Yet these ten phrases are matched directly against those before, only in brief and out of order.” He also marks the correspondences one by one — the first reverses the fifth, the second the second, the third the seventh, the fourth the first, the fifth the fourth, the sixth the eighth, the seventh the third, the eighth the ninth, the ninth the tenth, and the tenth the sixth. Why not in order? He gives two reasons: one is to show that any single good whatever reverses all ten of those before, and the other is that several goods may together reverse one fault, so as to keep people from making a fixed rule of it. Clear away one misreading: do not read it as a mechanical formula of ten against ten. Where it comes to ground: if one really means to use it, take the fourth phrase, “never having forgotten and lost the mind of all-knowing wisdom” — for the first phrase of the gate before is the general illness, and this phrase is the general medicine.

Gate 26. Seeing the Buddha: Ten Buddhas, Ten Seeings

The obstruction gone, the fruit appears. Chengguan judges these two gates to be “for the reason that the obstruction is gone, the fruit appears and practice is complete.” The form of this gate is very peculiar: all ten phrases run ‘such-and-such a buddha, such-and-such a seeing’ — the buddha of accomplishing perfect awakening, seen with non-attachment; the buddha of the vow, seen with bringing forth; the buddha of the recompense of deeds, seen with deep faith; the buddha who abides and sustains, seen with following along; the buddha of nirvāṇa, seen with entering deeply; the buddha of the Dharma realm, seen with reaching everywhere; the buddha of the mind, seen with abiding securely; the buddha of samādhi, seen with the measureless and the unsupported; the buddha of the original nature, seen with clear understanding; the buddha who accords with what is delighted in, seen with universally receiving. There are ten kinds of buddha and ten kinds of seeing as well, and they are matched one with one — but the manner of the matching must be seen clearly. Chengguan gives a warning of his own: “yet the seeing set forth here is in every case a seeing that answers to that buddha.” The names of the seeings are set up as answering to the buddha seen; they do not say that the bodhisattva has cultivated such a mode of seeing for himself. He takes the first phrase as his proof: “as when it says non-attachment, this belongs of itself to the perfect awakening, and does not mean that the bodhisattva is unattached toward him. If the bodhisattva were unattached here, how should he be attached in the nine below?” Non-attachment is the perfectly awakened buddha’s own non-attachment; were it read as the bodhisattva’s being unattached to the buddha, the nine phrases below would have to say that the bodhisattva is attached to those nine buddhas. The buddha of the vow is spoken of with a seeing of bringing forth for the reason that “riding upon this vow he can bring forth every virtue”; the buddha of the recompense of deeds is spoken of with a seeing of deep faith for the reason that “the recompense is the deed of the body adorned with the marks and signs” and that “deep faith stands foremost” — the names all come from the virtues of that buddha. The Yanyi chao blocks one further rescue: someone might say, half on the side of what sees (as with non-attachment) and half on the side of what is seen (as with bringing forth) — would that not also go through? Chengguan blocks it: one may not take half from what sees and half from what is seen, because it would lead people into confusion, leave no way to take the sense, and throw the ten senses of seeing into disorder — all ten phrases are named uniformly from the buddha that is seen.

Gate 27. The Deeds of a Buddha: The Ten Things a Buddha Is Doing

After seeing the buddha comes speaking of the deeds of a buddha. The ten phrases begin from the most ordinary — opening up and guiding at the right time, causing him to see it within a dream, expounding a scripture not yet heard, speaking the dharma of coming forth and departing for one bound by remorse — all the way to the last phrase, which is a whole stretch: the first pair, fathoming that from the first all is at rest and yet diligently cultivating, together with ten of “though … yet,” makes eleven pairs in all — though he knows that from the first all is at rest and extinguished, yet he diligently cultivates merit and wisdom; though he knows there is no making, yet he does not forsake the own-mark; though he has left greedy desire behind, yet he ever gazes upon the buddha’s body; though he knows the lands to be like empty space, yet he ever delights to adorn them; though he contemplates that there is no person and no self, yet he teaches and transforms without wearying; though he has already accomplished the wisdom of all-knowing wisdom, yet he cultivates without rest; though he manifests entering nirvāṇa, yet he takes on birth in every place. The scriptural text gives this phrase its own name: “a dharma in which the provisional and the real are carried on together.” Chengguan glosses this, saying, “there are ten kinds of deed of a buddha, that is, the completion of practice. The gate before saw the substance of a buddha; now the cause of a buddha is set forth. Moreover practice accords with the practice of a buddha, and therefore it is named the deeds of a buddha” — the gate before speaks of the substance of a buddha, this gate speaks of the cause of a buddha, and the reason it is named the deeds of a buddha is that the practice accords with the practice of a buddha. Clear away one misreading: these ten turns are not a rhetoric of contradiction; the first half of each is the real and the second half the provisional, and only when both stand at once is it called carrying on both. Where it comes to ground: every time in cultivation that one feels ‘since it is from the first thus, why still do anything,’ that is to have thrown away the provisional half.

The remaining four pairs each have their provisional and their real as well. The first is “though he knows that entering into the Dharma is not by another’s awakening him, yet by manifold skillful means he seeks the wisdom of all.” Not by another’s awakening: the Dharma is not had from another’s hand; and yet the latter half is precisely to seek the wisdom of all by manifold means. The two look to be at odds — if it is not had from another, why still seek everywhere? Chengguan judges the eleven phrases of this stretch thus: “the first one is with respect to suffering; the next one with respect to arising; the next eight with respect to the path; the last one with respect to cessation,” and this phrase falls among those with respect to the path — that it is not by another’s awakening speaks of the substance awakened to, which borrows nothing from without; that he seeks the wisdom of all speaks of the path by which one awakens, which does not come of itself while one sits. The second is “though from the first he is unmoving in the Dharma realm, yet by the wisdom-power of spiritual penetration he manifests the many transformations,” which Fazang, citing the text, marks as “fifth, under ‘the penetrations,’ possessing the fruit without forsaking the cause”: the unmoving is the substance on the side of the fruit, the transformations are the practice within the cause, and to have realized the substance is not to have laid down the practice. The third is “though he knows that the dharmas cannot be spoken, yet he turns the pure wheel of the Dharma and makes the minds of the many glad” — knowing it cannot be spoken is the very condition of being able to speak; only speaking without grasping at the words is a wheel that is “pure,” and the landing place is making the minds of the many glad, not speaking much. The fourth is “though he can display the spiritual power of the buddhas, yet he does not weary of and forsake the body of a bodhisattva,” which Fazang marks as “sixth, under ‘displays,’ showing the complete without forsaking the partial”: what is displayed is the power of completeness; what is not forsaken is that station still within the cause. This phrase and the last one — “seventh, under ‘manifests the great,’ manifesting what is at rest without obstruction to birth” — make a pair: the one not forsaking the bodhisattva’s body, the other entering nirvāṇa and yet taking on birth in every place. Clear away one misreading: these four are not four exceptions. The substance Chengguan assigns to the whole stretch is that “the first one sets forth in sum the four truths of non-action,” and all eleven stand upon the frame of the four truths; these simply fall upon the truth of the path. Where it comes to ground: each of the four puts a question — in seeking the Dharma, am I waiting for it to come of itself; having realized a portion, do I stop; in speaking the Dharma, is it for speaking it beautifully; and having gained a little power, am I unwilling to go on being a learner.

Gate 28. Deeds of Conceit: The Ten Faces of Conceit

Conceit is not one kind of emotion; it is ten kinds of behavior. The scriptural text lists them without the least mercy: not being reverent toward teachers, the assembly of monks, and father and mother; giving rise to haughtiness toward a master of the Dharma who has obtained the Dharma; being unwilling to praise a wondrous dharma one has heard; being fond of giving rise to the conceit of excess; being fond of giving rise to the conceit beyond excess; disliking the Dharma along with the person one dislikes; seeking a high seat for oneself and being unwilling to serve; knitting the brows at one who has virtue and spying out his faults; being unwilling to ask questions of one who is wise; being covered over by a conceited mind so that the good that is new does not arise and the good that is old is extinguished. The sixth phrase is the one most worth stopping at — knowing full well that “this is Dharma, is Vinaya, is what is real, is what the Buddha spoke,” and yet, because one dislikes that person, slandering the Dharma along with him. Chengguan, outlining where this gate belongs, says, “it makes clear the practice of leaving obstruction behind and of being sustained. Within it, two: the first two gates within it are the practice of leaving obstruction behind,” and he also points out that the common mark of the ten conceits lies in “for the reason that toward all honored objects they are unwilling to pay homage and reverence” — the ten phrases have each a face of their own, and the root of the illness is in one and the same place. Clear away one misreading: the core of conceit is not thinking highly of oneself; it is letting the high and low of the person stand in for the true and false of the Dharma. Where it comes to ground: has there lately been a stretch of speech that you did not take in because you did not like the one who spoke it?

Gate 29. Deeds of Wisdom: What Grows After Conceit Is Left Behind

The opening phrase of this gate is not “Sons of the Buddha” but carries on from the gate before: “If the bodhisattvas leave these deeds of conceit behind, then they obtain ten kinds of deed of wisdom.” Conceit and wisdom are the two sides of one thing — where conceit is, wisdom does not arise. Several of the ten deeds of wisdom are directly symmetrical with the gate before: there, being unwilling to draw near to one who is wise; here, “drawing near to good friends and reverencing and making offerings to them, that mind honoring them and from first to last never wearying”; there, giving rise to haughtiness toward a master of the Dharma; here, “toward the various bodhisattvas giving rise to the thought of a tathāgata,” “toward those who cultivate giving rise to the thought of them as buddhas.” The eighth phrase shows the most warmth — toward the various perfections giving rise to the thought of a loving mother, and toward skillfulness in means giving rise to the thought of a loving father. Chengguan glosses this, saying, “there are ten kinds of deed of wisdom, showing the practice that acts as antidote” — this gate does not raise up another set of merits; it is the antidote to the gate before. Clear away one misreading: this is not an intimacy of figure of speech; it is looking upon the Dharma as that which rears you, so that conceit has nowhere to alight. Where it comes to ground: is your attitude toward the Dharma more like one toward a tool, or like one toward one’s parents?

Gate 30. Being Held by Māra: The Ten Symptoms of Being Held Fast

Chengguan judges the ten gates of leaving obstruction behind to be, in their first five, making clear that practice is completed by leaving obstruction behind, and in the last five, making clear the sustaining that comes of leaving obstruction behind. From this gate on is the set that concerns sustaining. All ten phrases are states, not behaviors: indolence, aspiration and desire narrow and mean, contentment with a small portion of practice, accepting one and not the rest, not giving rise to the great vow, delighting to dwell in what is at rest and extinguished and cutting off the afflictions, forever cutting off birth-and-death, forsaking the practice of a bodhisattva, not transforming sentient beings, doubting and slandering the true Dharma. The most startling are the three in the middle — delighting to dwell in what is at rest and extinguished, forever cutting off birth-and-death: these sound exactly like right cultivation, and yet they are listed under being held by māra. Chengguan glosses this gate, saying, “here at the first, it is the sustaining of the obstruction that is enmity” — so what these ten phrases list is the look of being held fast by the obstruction of enmity, not a list of crimes. Why? To clear away this misreading one must look at the direction of the whole set: what this stretch speaks of is a bodhisattva, and if a bodhisattva stops at settling himself alone, then he is held fast. Where it comes to ground: the most dangerous moment for one who cultivates is often not indolence, but ‘I have had enough already.’

Gate 31. Being Held by the Buddhas: After the Casting Off

This gate, like the one before, carries on from what precedes: “If the bodhisattvas are able to cast off these ways of being held by māra, then they obtain ten kinds of being held by the buddhas.” The ten phrases turn each one of those over: first giving rise to the mind, upholding the mind in life after life without forgetting it, keeping watch on the affairs of the māras and leaving them far behind, hearing of the perfections and cultivating as they were spoken, knowing the suffering of birth-and-death and not loathing it, contemplating the profound Dharma and obtaining measureless fruit, speaking the dharma of the two vehicles for sentient beings without realizing and grasping it, delighting to contemplate the unconditioned without abiding within it, reaching the place of non-arising and yet manifesting the taking on of birth, and though realizing all-knowing wisdom yet setting going the practice of a bodhisattva and not cutting off the lineage of bodhisattvas. One can see that every phrase has the same structure: able to go in, and not stopping inside. Chengguan glosses this, saying, “it makes clear the practice that is able to treat. Because he leaves the wrong behind, he naturally accords with the right” — it is not that one first takes hold of the buddhas’ holding; it is that once the wrong departs, the right accords of itself. Clear away one misreading: “not realizing and grasping” is not being unable to realize; it is not grasping. Where it comes to ground: that one set of things you know — can you speak it to a person who needs only that set, without falling back into it yourself?

Gate 32. Being Held by the Dharma: The Ten Places Where the Dharma Holds Fast

The two gates before spoke of being held by māra and being held by the buddhas; this gate speaks of being held by the Dharma. The ten phrases are an utterly orthodox list of dharmas: the three seals of the Dharma (all conditioned activities impermanent, suffering, without self), the nirvāṇa at rest and extinguished, dependent origination, the arising and ceasing of the twelve links in forward and reverse order, the three gates of liberation bringing forth the vehicle of the śrāvakas, the dharma of no contention bringing forth the vehicle of the pratyekabuddhas, the six perfections and four means of gathering bringing forth the Great Vehicle, all ages being the realm of the wisdom of a buddha, and cutting off thought, casting away grasping, leaving the earlier and later bounds behind, and following along with nirvāṇa. This is a rare place in the whole stretch where why the three vehicles are the three vehicles is spoken through at one go. Chengguan divides the sequence of these ten phrases very finely: “the first four are the four seals of the Dharma; the next two are dependent arising in general and in particular; the next two are the great and the small; the last two are wisdom and cutting off.” Clear away one misreading: to set the three vehicles side by side is not to weigh them as equal, for the ninth phrase, “all lands, all dharmas, all sentient beings, and all ages are the realm of the wisdom of a buddha,” has already opened the measure between them. Where it comes to ground: only by knowing how the road another walks is established is it possible neither to hold it cheap nor to stray into it.

Gate 33. The Deeds Done While Dwelling in the Tuṣita Heaven: The First of the Eight Aspects

From this gate on we enter the eight aspects. Chengguan’s judgment: these nineteen gates make clear the practice of the fulfilled fruit made manifest, belonging to the position of wondrous awakening; but if one speaks strictly in terms of the fact, the first five of the eight aspects still belong to the position of the cause, and it is only because the eight aspects are all of them manifestings that they run through into the fruit. The first aspect is in the Tuṣita heaven, and all ten matters are speaking the Dharma and manifesting: speaking of weariness and leaving behind for the gods of the realm of desire; speaking of meditation and the wisdom of things as they truly are for the gods of the realm of form; entering the samādhi of the Adornment of Light and sending forth light and speaking the Dharma; seeing and being seen by the Tuṣita bodhisattvas of the ten directions and discoursing on the Dharma; speaking gates of Dharma according to their ground for the bodhisattvas who have gathered; with the two kinds of speech, gentle and rough, giving the māra Pāpīyān no opening; sending forth a great sound to gather the assembly of the gods and manifesting rare things; not forsaking his own place and yet going everywhere to the presence of the buddhas of the ten directions to receive consecration; raising up articles of offering and making offerings to the buddhas throughout the Dharma realm; bringing forth gates of Dharma like an illusion and like a shadow and making them glad according to their minds. Chengguan glosses this, saying, “the nineteen gates below make clear the practice of the fulfilled use of the fruit.” Clear away one misreading: the Tuṣita heaven is not a rest stop. Where it comes to ground: not one of these ten matters is for himself; that stretch before the accomplishing of the Way is already wholly for the benefit of others.

Gate 34. Ten Things Manifested in Descending to Birth: Ten Lights, Ten Things

The form of this gate is as orderly as a ritual manual: in eight of the ten things a light is sent forth from some place on the body (the seventh from the hall of the jewel-treasury, the eighth from the palaces and pavilions); the light has a name; it shines upon some class of sentient beings; and it accomplishes one particular thing. From the soles of the feet the light Adornment of Ease and Joy shines upon the evil destinies; from the white hair-tuft between the brows the light Awakening shines upon the bodhisattvas who practiced with him; from the right palm the light Pure Objective Realm moves and sets down the pratyekabuddhas and the māras and outsiders; from the two knees the light Pure Adornment shines everywhere upon the palaces of the gods; from the heart-treasury the light Banner That None Can Overcome summons the vajra-bearing strongmen; from the pores the light Discerning Sentient Beings; from the jewel-treasury hall the light Contemplating What Abides Well shines upon the royal palace where he is to be born; from the palaces and tiered pavilions the light Pure Adornment of All the Palaces shines upon the mother’s womb; from beneath the two feet the light Abiding Well prolongs the life-spans of the gods; and from among the secondary marks the light Adornment of the Eye manifests the eight aspects of one lifetime. Chengguan, outlining this stretch, says, “at length it is divided into ten: the first one gate is dwelling in the heaven; the next one gate is manifesting the passing away; the third, one gate, is entering the womb; the fourth, one gate, is dwelling in the womb; the fifth, three gates, is the first birth” — and this gate falls exactly within the section of “manifesting the passing away.” Clear away one misreading: the lights are not a background effect; every one of them has a definite work to do. Where it comes to ground: the tenth light is the most worth turning over — it lets people see at one and the same time the dwelling in the womb, the first birth, the leaving of home, the accomplishing of the Way, the subduing of māra, the turning of the wheel of the Dharma, and the entering of nirvāṇa: the sequence of a whole lifetime appearing together within a single light.

Gate 35. Ten Matters of Dwelling in the Womb: Why a Buddha Must Dwell in the Womb

This gate is one of the few in the whole stretch that answer ‘why’ directly. The very first reason is quite direct: in order to bring to accomplishment sentient beings of small mind and mean understanding, and not to let them suppose that this bodhisattva is born of transformation of himself and that his wisdom and roots of good did not come from cultivation. So dwelling in the womb is a piece of evidence — this road is one that is walked. The other nine matters: ripening the roots of good of his parents and kin; entering and dwelling in the womb rightly mindful and without disorder; constantly expounding the Dharma within the womb; gathering a great assembly within the womb; manifesting the most excellent taking on of birth among human beings; the sentient beings of the three-thousandfold world seeing him as one sees a face in a bright mirror; the bodhisattvas of the final birth from other quarters coming to meet and the Treasury of Vast Wisdom being expounded; entering the samādhi Treasury Free of Defilement and manifesting a great palace within the womb; raising up articles of offering and making offerings to the buddhas of the ten directions. Reading to this point Chengguan too first puts the question out plainly: “Suppose someone asks: among the four kinds of birth, birth by transformation is the highest, and a buddha is the most excellent; why then birth from a womb?” Clear away one misreading: the womb is not a limitation. The scriptural text says that within the womb there is a vast tiered pavilion adorned with great maṇi jewels, and that bodhisattvas of the ten directions come and meet there. Where it comes to ground: a circumstance that limits you need not shrink what you do.

Gate 36. The Exceedingly Subtle Resorts: Everything Is Inside the Womb

The gate before said that things can be done within the womb; this gate pushes it to the limit: within the mother’s womb manifesting the first giving rise to the mind of awakening on to the ground of consecration, manifesting dwelling in the Tuṣita heaven, manifesting the first birth, the stage of a youth, dwelling in the royal palace, leaving home, austerities and the accomplishing of perfect awakening, the turning of the wheel of the Dharma, parinirvāṇa; and the last phrase is “manifesting the greatly subtle” — all the practices of a bodhisattva and the measureless and diverse gates of the masterful spiritual power of all the tathāgatas. The sequence of a whole lifetime, all of it manifested at once within the womb. It is precisely on this ground that Li Tongxuan reads the eight aspects as “all in one time”; he says that the Tathāgata’s appearing in the world, from beginning to end, never departs from the very brink of an instant, and that dwelling in the womb, dwelling in the Tuṣita heaven, the first birth, leaving home, accomplishing the Way, turning the wheel of the Dharma, and entering nirvāṇa are all in one time. Chengguan says “all alike manifested together at one time within a single mark,” and Fazang “all alike manifested together at one time within the womb” — the three houses say the same: the outlines have a sequence, what is manifested is simultaneous. Chengguan glosses this, saying, “this makes clear the ten matters of dwelling in the womb. The first one manifests the positions in general; the next eight make clear the manifesting of the seven aspects,” and explaining the name of the gate he says, “deep, secret, and hard to know, and therefore named subtle.” Clear away one misreading: do not read it as a display of spiritual penetration; the name the scriptural text gives is “resort,” a place of resorting into.

Gate 37. Ten Kinds of Birth: The Ten Things at the Time of Birth

Of the ten kinds of birth the first nine phrases are all “born …”: born leaving delusion far behind and rightly mindful and rightly knowing; born sending forth a net of light that shines everywhere; born abiding in the final existence and taking on a later body no more; born neither arising nor being set going; born knowing the three realms to be like an illusion; born manifesting his body everywhere in the ten directions; born with a body that realizes the wisdom of all-knowing wisdom; born with a body that sends forth the light of the buddhas and universally awakens beings; born with a body that enters the samādhi of contemplating with great wisdom. The fourth phrase is the crucial one — “born neither arising nor being set going.” Born and yet not born: this one phrase gathers up all eight before and after it. The tenth phrase turns into narrative: when the bodhisattva is born he shakes all the buddha-lands, liberates all sentient beings, extinguishes all the evil destinies, outshines and eclipses all the māras, and measureless bodhisattvas all come and gather. Chengguan glosses this, saying, “it makes clear the mark of the first birth. Here at the first it is set forth properly, that is, the time of the birth from the right side” — what this gate speaks of is the mark at the time of birth. Clear away one misreading: this gate is not a description of auspicious portents at a nativity, for the closing sentence of the scriptural text gives the purpose — “manifested in this way for the sake of taming sentient beings.” Where it comes to ground: every visible mark is set up for the sake of the one who looks.

Gate 38. Smiling and Inwardly Vowing: The Ten Thoughts Before the Smile

This gate is very peculiar: it takes one facial expression apart into ten thoughts. After every thought comes the same sentence: “with glad delight he smiles and inwardly vows.” The ten thoughts are: the world is sunk in the mire of desire and apart from me alone none is able to save them; the world is blinded by the afflictions and I alone am complete in wisdom; with this body of borrowed name I shall obtain the dharma-body of a Tathāgata; contemplating everywhere the Brahmā gods on to the gods of Great Mastery, who all take themselves to have great powers of wisdom; sentient beings have long planted roots of good and today have all fallen away from them; though the seeds sown are few the fruit obtained is very much; sentient beings who receive the Buddha’s teaching will surely obtain benefit; the bodhisattvas who practiced with him in the past are stained and attached to other affairs and do not obtain the merits of the Buddha-dharma; the gods and humans who gathered with him in the past are to this day still in the stage of the ordinary person and yet do not weary of it; and being touched by the light of all the tathāgatas and glad and comforted twice over. Chengguan settles the time and place of this gate for us: “second, manifesting the smile, for the reason that it is at the time of walking the seven steps” — the smile is nowhere else but exactly at the seven steps. Clear away one misreading: the first two thoughts sound like self-conceit, but look at the eighth and the ninth — those who practiced with him have fallen behind, those who gathered with him are still where they were: there is sorrow within this smile. Where it comes to ground: compassion without a little gladness cannot be sustained; gladness without a little sorrow turns into pride.

Gate 39. Walking Seven Steps: The Ten Layers of Meaning in the Seven Steps

Why seven steps? The scriptural text gives ten reasons: to manifest the power of a bodhisattva; to manifest the giving of the seven riches; to fulfill the vow of the earth spirits; to manifest the mark of passing beyond the three realms; to manifest that the most excellent practice surpasses the practice of the elephant-king, the bull-king, and the lion-king; to manifest the mark of the adamantine ground; to manifest that he means to give sentient beings the power of bravery; to manifest the cultivating of the jewels of the seven limbs of awakening; to manifest that the dharma he has obtained is not taught to him by another; to manifest that in the world he is the most excellent and beyond compare. Two of them fasten directly upon the “seven” — the seven noble riches and the seven limbs of awakening. Chengguan glosses this, saying, “that is, at the first birth, upon the ground, in each of the ten directions he walks seven steps, for the reason that it shows his mastery and rarity.” Clear away one misreading: this gate is not explaining a detail of history. The closing sentence of the scriptural text is still “manifested in this way for the sake of taming sentient beings” — the seven steps are one sentence of Dharma shown for people to see. Where it comes to ground: of these ten phrases, the one that comes home to oneself most is the ninth, “the dharma he has obtained is not taught to him by another” — that portion of view you rely on, was it heard from someone, or walked out?

Gate 40. Dwelling in the Stage of a Youth: Why There Must Be a Childhood

Of the ten matters the first three are all the arts of the world: letters, reckoning, drawings and books, and seals and signets; elephants and horses, carriages, bows and arrows, and swords and halberds; writing and discoursing, board games and amusements. Why must a bodhisattva have penetrating mastery of these? The words the scriptural text uses are “in order to make manifest his penetrating mastery” — it is to show that he has mastered them, not that he needs to learn them. The fourth matter turns to “leaving far behind the faults of all sorts in the deeds of body, speech, and mind”; the fifth is entering concentration, abiding in the gate of nirvāṇa, and pervading the ten directions; and after that come power and form surpassing those of the gods, making those absorbed in the joys of desire glad and delighted in the Dharma, honoring the true Dharma and diligently making offerings to the buddhas, and obtaining the aid of the buddhas and receiving the light of the Dharma. Chengguan glosses this, saying, “the youth is already within the royal palace, but this gate makes clear the virtue and the arts he harbors in his youth, showing that he is utterly beyond compare” — the stage of a youth and the following gate are both within the royal palace, and the difference is that this gate speaks of the virtue and arts harbored in his early years. Clear away one misreading: the arts of the world are listed here not as an ornament, for the eighth phrase gives their use — “in order to make sentient beings who are absorbed in the joys of desire glad and delighted in the Dharma.” Where it comes to ground: whether those worldly skills of yours are an obstruction or a doorway of drawing in depends on what you do with them.

Gate 41. Manifesting Dwelling in the Royal Palace: Living in the Place That Looks Least Like Cultivation

Among the ten reasons one is the plainest of all: “for the reason that he follows along with the minds of the sentient beings of the age of the five turbidities.” And one is the deepest: “for the reason that he means to manifest that the power of a bodhisattva’s great majestic virtue is able to enter samādhi within the deep palace.” The royal palace is where the joys of desire are at their height, and it is precisely for that reason that being able to enter samādhi within it shows the power. The other eight phrases: ripening the roots of good of sentient beings who practiced with him in former ages; showing the power of a bodhisattva’s roots of good; manifesting the implements of joy of a bodhisattva’s great majestic virtue; fulfilling the intent of sentient beings who vowed with him in former ages; fulfilling the wishes of his father and mother, his kin, and his retinue; making offerings to the tathāgatas with music that sends forth the sound of the wondrous Dharma; abiding within the palace in a subtle and wondrous samādhi and manifesting everything from the accomplishing of buddhahood to nirvāṇa; and following along with and guarding the dharma of the buddhas. Chengguan, outlining these two gates, says, “they make clear the practice of being at home and the same as the common, and both are the mark of dwelling in the royal palace” — dwelling in the stage of a youth and dwelling in the royal palace are alike the practice of being at home and the same as the common. Clear away one misreading: dwelling in the royal palace is not a stage of compromise. Where it comes to ground: whether one can cultivate has less to do with whether the surroundings are pure than one imagines; the scriptural text’s evidence is this — he entered samādhi there.

Gate 42. Manifesting the Leaving of Home: The Ten Reasons for Leaving Home

The gate before dwelt in the palace, this gate leaves home, and the scriptural text makes the joint itself: after the bodhisattva of the final body has in this way manifested dwelling in the royal palace, only then does he leave home. The ten reasons: weariness of dwelling at home; making sentient beings attached to home forsake it; following along with faith and delight in the road of the noble ones; proclaiming and praising the merit of leaving home; manifesting the forever leaving behind of the view of the two extremes; making sentient beings leave behind the joys of desire and of self; first manifesting the mark of coming forth from the three realms; manifesting that he is master of himself and does not belong to another; showing that he is about to obtain a Tathāgata’s ten powers and fearlessnesses; and that for the bodhisattva of the final body the dharma ought by rights to be thus. The tenth phrase is the most interesting — because the dharma is from the first thus. Chengguan, outlining these two gates, says, “they make clear the practice of forsaking home in expectation of the Way. The first makes clear the leaving of home; the latter shows the cultivating” — leaving home and austerities are one set, the first making clear the forsaking and the second the cultivating. Clear away one misreading: among these ten phrases there is not one that says ‘because one cannot cultivate at home.’ The real weight lies in the fifth phrase, “manifesting the forever leaving behind of the view of the two extremes,” and the eighth, “manifesting that he is master of himself and does not belong to another.” Where it comes to ground: whether one leaves home is one matter; leaving the view of the two extremes behind and not belonging to another is the matter that everyone has to do.

Gate 43. Manifesting the Practice of Austerities: Whom Are the Austerities Shown To?

Of the ten reasons for austerities not one is ‘because austerities work.’ They are: bringing to accomplishment sentient beings of mean understanding; pulling out the wrong views of sentient beings; making those who do not believe in the recompense of deeds see the recompense of deeds; following along with the dharma of a defiled world, as it ought by rights to be; manifesting that he can endure toil and hardship and diligently cultivates the Way; making sentient beings delight in seeking the Dharma; for the sake of sentient beings attached to the joys of desire and of self; manifesting that the bodhisattva’s setting going of practice is most excellent and that even to the final birth he does not forsake vigor; making sentient beings delight in the dharma of stillness and grow their roots of good; and awaiting the ripening of the faculties of the gods and the people of the world. Chengguan gives each phrase a still shorter label — spurring on the indolent; making them know that for the Dharma one forgets hunger; showing that attachment to joy is not the Way; diligence from beginning to end; and of the last phrase he says, “as for austerities that await the occasion, they show that his compassion is deep.” He also collates one variant: at this place the Jin recension reads “in order to make sentient beings of the time to come give rise to vigor,” and he says that in the present recension the words about vigor are joined into the phrase before and that one phrase is missing. Clear away one misreading: austerities here are a means of teaching, not the Way itself. Where it comes to ground: those habits of hard practice upon you — for whose sake are they?

Gate 44. Going to the Place of the Way: Walking Toward That Tree

Chengguan says that the five gates from going to the place of the Way onward are “the practice of accomplishing the Way and entering realization,” and for this gate he points out three reasons why: it shows the forsaking of the wrong and the turning to the right; it shows that the cause is perfected and turns toward the fruit; and it shows that this practice is the last of the practices. All ten matters happen “when going to the place of the Way”: shining upon all the worlds; shaking all the worlds; manifesting his body everywhere in all the worlds; awakening all the bodhisattvas and the sentient beings who practiced with him in former ages; manifesting all the adornments of the place of the Way; manifesting a body with bearing and the adornments of the tree of awakening according to what the minds of sentient beings desire; seeing present before him all the tathāgatas of the ten directions; at every raising and setting down of the foot constantly entering samādhi and in thought after thought accomplishing buddhahood with no gap between; the kings of the eight classes of beings not knowing of one another and yet each raising up all sorts of offerings; and with unobstructed wisdom universally contemplating all the tathāgatas cultivating the practice of a bodhisattva and accomplishing perfect awakening. Clear away one misreading: the phrase most to be looked at is the eighth — accomplishing buddhahood in thought after thought, not accomplishing it only upon arrival. Where it comes to ground: road and fruit are not two stretches; every step of the walking is itself the accomplishing.

Gate 45. Sitting at the Place of the Way: After the Sitting Down

Chengguan divides this gate: the first four are the adorning of the place, the next three are the manifesting of the marks of the three kinds of deed, and the last three are the completing of virtue — “first, fulfilling what he himself can realize, wisdom appearing and confusion perished; second, receiving the place where the buddhas dwell, being about to accord with and be one with the Dharma realm; third, great compassion of one substance, and therefore able to aid everywhere.” The ten matters: shaking all the worlds in all sorts of ways; shining evenly upon all the worlds; extinguishing the sufferings of the evil destinies; causing all the worlds to be made of adamant; universally contemplating the lion-seats of all the tathāgatas; a mind like empty space with nothing discriminated; manifesting a body with bearing according to what is fitting; abiding securely in accordance with the adamantine samādhi; receiving the pure and wondrous place held by the spiritual power of all the tathāgatas; and with the power of his own roots of good being able to aid all sentient beings. On the fifth phrase Chengguan has a note of collation: the Jin recension reads “contemplating the roar of the lion of all the buddhas,” a difference of one word between seat and roar. Clear away one misreading: the sixth phrase, “his mind is like empty space, with nothing discriminated,” does not collide with the shaking and shining of the first four — the outward marks move while the mind does not discriminate, and this is precisely the bone of this gate.

Gate 46. The Unprecedented Matters of Sitting at the Place of the Way: Ten Rare Things Felt from Without

Chengguan says that this gate is “making clear the rarity felt from without, the foretoken of the great fruit” — the first four are the answer of the outer realm to him, while the last six are the bodhisattva’s own doing: entering samādhi, obtaining the dhāraṇī, raising offerings, abiding in wisdom. The ten matters: the tathāgatas of the ten directions appearing before him, raising their right hands and praising the unsurpassed guide; all the tathāgatas guarding him in thought and giving him majestic power; the bodhisattvas who practiced with him in former ages gathering round and making offerings; the grasses, trees, thickets, and forests and other things without feeling bending their bodies and lowering their shadows toward the place of the Way; entering the samādhi of Contemplating the Dharma Realm, which makes all his practices complete; obtaining the dhāraṇī Highest Treasury of the Ocean of Subtle Light Free of Defilement; raising up surpassing and wondrous offerings and making offerings to the buddhas everywhere; abiding in the most excellent wisdom and fully knowing the faculties and intentions of all sentient beings; entering the samādhi Good Awakening, which makes his body fill the three times and the realm of empty space; and obtaining the unobstructed great wisdom of the light free of defilement, which makes his deeds of body universally enter the three times. On the first phrase the layer of the speaker is to be noticed — that praise is Samantabhadra relating the words of the buddhas of the ten directions, and not a tathāgata of the present assembly speaking. Clear away one misreading: the things without feeling bending their bodies and lowering their shadows is not a mythological ornament; it runs on the same road as the doctrine of the grasses and trees earlier being of one Dharma realm.

Gate 47. Manifesting the Subduing of Māra: Why “Manifesting”

Every phrase of this gate uses the two words “manifesting,” and Chengguan explains particularly why: because they were long ago subdued; because the māra-kings are for the most part great bodhisattvas; and because there is no evil māra able to distress a buddha. And he draws a comparison as well: it is like a jackal — how should it be able to shake out its might before a lion? So the subduing of māra is played for people to see. The ten reasons: the sentient beings of a turbid age delighting in battle, and therefore showing his majestic virtue; cutting off the doubts of the gods and the people of the world; teaching, transforming, and taming the armies of the māras; making those who delight in battle-arrays gather to look on and be tamed in mind; showing that none in the world can match his majestic power; setting going the power of bravery of sentient beings; pitying the sentient beings of the last age; showing that even up to the place of the Way there are still armies of māra, and only after this is the realm of māra passed beyond; showing that the working of the afflictions is weak and feeble while the power of the roots of good of great loving-kindness is strong; and following along with the dharma practiced in a turbid and evil world. Clear away one misreading: the eighth phrase is the crucial one — right up to the place of the Way there are still māras coming; this is not failure, this is a message for those who come after. Where it comes to ground: that there is still interference when one has cultivated to the very end is the normal state, not a going backward.

Gate 48. Accomplishing the Powers of a Tathāgata: The Threshold Is at This Phrase

This is the turning point of the whole stretch. Here Chengguan judges: only from this gate on is it truly the fulfilled fruit, and all that precedes is the perfected cause. He says that this gate is “that is, perfect awakening appearing before him,” and he uses the three paths to range what is before and after: the two gates before (the unprecedented matters and the subduing of māra) serve as the uninterrupted path, this gate as the path of liberation, and the two gates further back (going to the place of the Way and sitting at the place of the Way) as the path of skillful means. He outlines the ten phrases too: the first, no obstruction not stilled; the next two, no cause not perfected; the next two, no fruit not fulfilled; the next three, no virtue not universal; the last two, no buddha not the same — and therefore the name Tathāgata is concluded. The closing sentence of the scriptural text answers to it exactly: “If the bodhisattvas are complete in these ten powers, then they are named the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One.” Clear away one misreading: this “is named” is a conclusion drawn by Samantabhadra, not a Tathāgata calling himself so. Where it comes to ground: between cause and fruit there is no leap, for every one of the ten phrases hangs upon a “for the reason that” — every one of them has its whence.

Gate 49. Turning the Great Wheel of the Dharma: The Wheel and the Turning

Chengguan first explains the name: “flowing forth in perfect penetration is what is meant by wheel; from me to another is what is named turning.” The wheel is the perfect penetration and flowing forth of the Dharma; the turning is from me to another. Then he sets up a measure: the Lesser Vehicle, fastens the four practices of eye, wisdom, clarity, and awakening to the four truths; this scripture shows the ten practices that are inexhaustible, and they should be fastened to ten truths and so make a hundred practices. This is the Huayan way of reckoning brought to bear upon the turning of the wheel of the Dharma. The ten matters the scriptural text lists with ordinal numbers: the wisdom of the four fearlessnesses; the four eloquences and sounds that accord; being well able to open up the marks of the four truths of what is real; following along with the unobstructed liberation of the buddhas; making the minds of sentient beings all give rise to pure faith; that his words are not spent in vain and are able to pull out the poisoned arrows of suffering; being sustained by the power of the vow of great compassion; that his sound pervades the ten directions; that through asaṃkhyeya kalpas he speaks the Dharma without cease; and that whatever dharma he speaks is able to set going the faculties, the powers, the way of awakening, meditative concentration, liberation, and samādhi. Chengguan outlines them thus: the first two, that what turns is fully perfect; the next two, that what is turned is deep and wondrous; the next two, that faith is produced and suffering pulled out; the next two, that the cause is deep and the measure vast; the last two, that the time is far and the benefit high. Clear away one misreading: the subject of this gate is already the Tathāgata, but it is still Samantabhadra who is relating it.

Gate 50. Sowing the White and Pure Dharmas: Why Not One Phrase Is Spent in Vain

The four words “sowing the white and pure dharmas” must be taken apart. Chengguan says that the white and pure dharmas are the very substance of the wheel that is turned, and that the sense of “sowing” is this: the buddha’s uncontaminated pure Dharma realm turns into the minds of sentient beings and becomes the seed of the perfuming of hearing, and therefore it is called sowing. And he fastens it to the sense of the perfuming of much hearing in the treatises of the lineage. So the reason that the speaking of the Dharma is not spent in vain is that the phrase that has been heard leaves a seed within the mind. The ten reasons: the power of his vow in the past; being sustained by great compassion; not forsaking sentient beings; wisdom masterful, speaking in accordance with what they delight in; surely meeting their occasion and never missing it; according with what is fitting and having no false speech; the wisdom that knows the three times understanding well; his body most excellent with none his equal; his speech masterful with none able to fathom it; and wisdom masterful, so that whatever words he sends forth are able to make people awaken. Chengguan says that the first is the cause in a former age and the rest are all present causes, and that the first six are the completeness of virtue while the last three are the surpassingness of use. Clear away one misreading: not being spent in vain does not say that the hearer understands on the spot; it says that the seed is already sown. Where it comes to ground: the one who speaks is responsible for meeting the time and the occasion; the season of the sprouting is not the speaker’s to govern.

Gate 51. Manifesting Parinirvāṇa: The Last Phrase Is Still Manifesting

Chengguan explains the gate of nirvāṇa in one sentence: “what is to be exhausted returns to the source.” The ten senses he judges phrase by phrase: the first two make clear the faults and troubles of birth-and-death (the first impermanence, the second no joy, and therefore it says not secure); the third makes clear that nirvāṇa is joy; the fourth overturns the impermanence of the form-body and takes the dharma-body as permanent — and on this phrase he has a note of collation, that the Jin recension reads “in order to make them seek the permanently abiding pure dharma-body,” and that the present recension lacks one word, permanent. The next three phrases make clear that birth-and-death is without self and not master of itself; the eighth makes clear that nirvāṇa is firm, that is, the masterful self, and carries the sense of permanence along with it; the ninth overturns the conditioned so as to make clear the virtue of purity; and of the last phrase, “the tenth makes clear that the dharma is just so.” And the closing sentence of the scriptural text is precisely this: when the buddhas have finished doing the work of a buddha, have fulfilled what they vowed, have turned the wheel of the Dharma, have taught and crossed over all who ought to be taught and crossed over, and when those bodhisattvas who ought to receive an honored title have been accomplished in receiving their predictions, then by the dharma it ought by rights to be thus that they enter the unchanging great parinirvāṇa. Clear away one misreading: in all ten senses not one says that the Buddha really was extinguished; every one of them is “manifesting.” Where it comes to ground: nirvāṇa in this gate is a lesson — the content of the lesson is impermanence, and the manner of the teaching is to manifest impermanence in himself.

Lineage

Whence the outline of the six positions came. The stage-names of the six sections into which the part of the speaking of this chapter is divided are, as Chengguan plainly says, an outline the ancient worthies of old made on the basis of the text of the separately circulating Dushi jing in order to outline this scripture, and he carried it on and explained by it. Therefore “the practice of the perfected cause and the fulfilled fruit” is a set of coordinates given by the commentators, and not what the scripture calls itself. The three houses reckon these fifty-one gates differently as well: Chengguan counts fifty-one by gates, Fazang counts five hundred and ten by phrases, and the Yanyi chao preserves besides two other reckonings, that of the whole chapter the first one hundred and ninety-six gates belong to the cause, or that if the eight aspects are taken as the fruit then the fruit has nineteen gates. The places of division are in truth two (the last four gates, and from dwelling in Tuṣita onward), and the manner of counting differs as gates or phrases; the ancient worthies each had their warrant, and they are recorded together without judgment.

The boundary between cause and fruit. Chengguan judges that only the four gates from “accomplishing the powers of a Tathāgata” onward make clear the fulfilled fruit, while Fazang takes everything from “the ten kinds of dwelling in the Tuṣita heaven” onward as the practice of the fulfilled fruit made manifest. The boundaries of the two houses are not in the same place, but they are two standards: Chengguan, speaking strictly, has only the last four gates as fruit; Fazang, speaking by manifestation, draws the whole set of the eight aspects into the fruit — and Chengguan’s own Yanyi chao keeps both standards side by side (the first hundred and ninety-six gates belong to the cause; if the eight aspects are the fruit, the fruit has nineteen gates). Recorded without judgment.

The time of the eight aspects. All three houses say they are simultaneous: Chengguan says “all alike manifested together at one time within a single mark,” Fazang “all alike manifested together at one time within the womb,” and Li Tongxuan reads it as “all in one time,” saying that the Tathāgata’s appearing in the world, from beginning to end, never departs from the very brink of an instant, and that dwelling in the womb, dwelling in the Tuṣita heaven, the first birth, leaving home, accomplishing the Way, turning the wheel of the Dharma, and entering nirvāṇa are all in one time. The outlines have a sequence, what is manifested is simultaneous; the three houses are recorded together.

A few variant readings. In the gate of pure equanimity, the present recension lists eleven phrases in the text while the Jin recension draws the first two into one and makes ten; in the second phrase of the dharmas of cultivation, the Jin recension reads “awakening the gods”; in the ninth phrase of the austerities, the Jin recension reads “in order to make sentient beings of the time to come give rise to vigor,” and Chengguan says that the present recension lacks this one phrase; in the fifth phrase of sitting at the place of the Way, the Jin recension reads contemplating the roar of the lion of all the buddhas and not the lion-seat; in the fourth sense of manifesting parinirvāṇa, the Jin recension reads “in order to make them seek the permanently abiding pure dharma-body,” and Chengguan says that the present recension lacks one word, permanent. All the above are divergences the ancient worthies have already recorded, and they are recorded without judgment.

The correspondence with the separately circulating recension. The questions of the last round of the separately circulating Dushipin jing are exactly fifty-one, and they correspond one by one with the fifty-one gates of this stretch, the sequence of the gates being wholly the same while the translated wording is wholly different: contemplation is made beholding; universal contemplation is made looking round; rousing might is made stretching and yawning; deeds of conceit are made self-exaltation; deeds of wisdom are made deeds of the noble; manifesting parinirvāṇa is made taking the great extinction and crossing over. This is the hardest single set of outward evidence for the number and the sequence of the gates of this stretch, and it is precisely the recension upon which the ancient worthies relied in setting up the outline of the six sections.

Cross-reading with other chapters. The outline of the ten perfections in this stretch (the threefold collection of precepts, the three kinds of patience, and the three grounds of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity) Chengguan repeatedly says has already been seen in the Chapter on the Ten Grounds and the Chapter on the Ten Practices; this stretch is an outline already set up walked through once more at the position of equal awakening, and not newly set up. The deeds of a buddha spoken of in the four gates of the fulfilled fruit and the ten senses of nature-origination spoken of in the Chapter on the Appearance of the Tathāgata are two ways of putting the question about one and the same set of materials: the one asks how one ought to see the body of a buddha, the other asks what the accomplishing of the way of a buddha, the turning of the wheel of the Dharma, and the taking of extinction are — the one asks about seeing, the other about doing.

The adducing of this chapter in the treatises of the Huayan school. When the later treatises of the Huayan school adduce this chapter, they for the most part adduce the name of the chapter in general without citing the scripture phrase by phrase: some adduce it to witness the sense of the inexhaustibility of the ten minds, some to witness the sense of the ten buddhas, and some to witness the sense of the ten ages. Among these the sense of the ten buddhas is the nearest to the two gates of this stretch, seeing the buddha and accomplishing the powers of a Tathāgata; yet the places adduced do not fix the location phrase by phrase, and this is recorded.

Why There Must Be a ‘Conclusion’ at All

The six segments before this have been answered through to the end — Chengguan says these six segments are “one question answered with ten, so as to display inexhaustibility,” and so they are reckoned the two thousand surpassing practices of Samantabhadra, what later readers call ‘the two thousand practices’ — everything has been said; why then add one more segment?

Because expounding the Dharma has a difficulty in it: the wider it is spoken, the less the hearer can take hold of. And so Samantabhadra does one thing first here: he gives this whole great mass of practice a name. “Son of the Buddha! This Dharma gate is named: the vast and pure practice of a bodhisattva.” Once the name is set up, the answering text scattered through the six segments before — what Chengguan calls ‘the two thousand practices’ — has a handle by which it can be remembered, named, and handed on.

After the naming the sense is at once raised: this Dharma gate is what “measureless buddhas expound in common,” and its working is that it “is able to make those who have wisdom understand measureless meanings and all give rise to gladness, and make the great vows and great practices of all bodhisattvas continue on unbroken.” These three clauses are to be read apart. Expounded in common says that it is not the view of one person at one time; giving rise to gladness says that to one who already has wisdom it can be understood and received; the great vows and great practices continuing unbroken is its true working — not that a hearer should be moved for a while, but that the vow and the practice already set going should not be cut off.

One misreading is to be set aside first. Hearing the five graphs ‘vast and pure practice’, one easily takes it for some especially high grade of practice-gate, as though one must finish all the stages before to have any share in it. The scripture’s own way of speaking is not that: this name is given, looking back, to the whole of the six segments before, and is not one more kind of practice added on. Chengguan distinguishes clearly here: the earlier general name, the pure practice, is spoken in terms of the substance of the practice expressed; the first of the ten names, the place of meritorious practice, is what “the first is in terms of what expresses” refers to; and the remaining nine names are set up in terms of the functions expressed.

Coming down to the reader: when one has finished reading a long scripture, the first thing most needing to be done is to give what one has read a name one can remember. A Dharma whose name is not remembered leaves, after a few days, nothing but a trace of feeling.

Hearing, Believing and Understanding, Practising — No Step Between Them May Be Skipped

The second passage begins the exhortation to faith: “Son of the Buddha! If there are beings who get to hear this Dharma, and having heard it believe and understand, and having understood it practise, they will assuredly accomplish very quickly anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.”

Ask first: why are ‘hearing, believing and understanding, practising’ split into three steps? Would it not be quicker to say them together as ‘believe in the Buddha and become a buddha’?

Because each of the three steps has its own place of falling away. To hear and not believe and understand is merely to have heard; to believe and understand and not practise is merely to have grasped the principle. The text strings them into a chain that cannot be skipped by the two graphs “having heard” and “having understood” — the former step completed, the latter has somewhere to land. And for the assurance given at the end, the scripture states its own reason: “And why? Because it is by practising as it is spoken.” Not because this Dharma is special, but because the person actually did as it says.

The misreading to be set aside here is to read “very quickly” as a shortcut. The cause of the “quickly” lies in the latter half of the clause, not the former; without the cause that is “practising as it is spoken,” the hearing and the understanding before it produce no “quickly” at all.

The use of it on the ground is simple: having read a passage of Dharma, ask yourself which step you have walked to. Most people are stuck between the second step and the third, and that step is the only one they can take themselves.

Said Once More the Other Way About: The One Who Does Not Do as It Says

The scripture goes on to say the same thing once more the other way about: “Son of the Buddha! If there are bodhisattvas who do not practise as it is spoken, one should know that such a person is forever cut off from the awakening of the Buddha; therefore a bodhisattva should practise as it is spoken.”

Ask first: is this not too heavy? It is merely a failing to do it — how is one at once “forever parted”?

Look at the subject. The subject of this clause is “bodhisattvas,” not one who has just heard the Dharma; to have received the Dharma and not practise, and not to have heard it yet and not practise, are two different matters. Then look at what the two graphs “forever parted” are set against — “the awakening of the Buddha.” It does not say that this person falls; it says that by an understanding that does not practise, that road toward the awakening of the Buddha cannot be walked to its end, and cannot be however long one waits — and therefore it says forever.

Setting the positive and the negative telling side by side is the manner of this segment: on the positive side, practising as it is spoken and quickly accomplishing; on the negative side, not practising as it is spoken and being forever parted. The same principle is said twice, and the purpose is to block off that third road which seems to lie between — understanding only, without practice, and yet arriving. The scripture’s position is: there is no such road.

The coming down to the ground lies in a everyday judgement: when you read a passage of Dharma and there rises in you the satisfaction of ‘I have grasped this principle’, that is exactly the place this clause of scripture warns against.

Ten Names: Why a Scripture Should Take So Many Names

The fourth passage sets out ten names: “this place of the practice of the merit of all bodhisattvas, the flower of settled meaning, the universal entering into all dharmas, the universal bringing forth of all-knowing wisdom, the transcending of the worlds, the leaving behind of the path of the two vehicles, what is not shared in common with any of the beings, what is able to illumine and understand all Dharma gates entire, the increasing of the roots of goodness of beings that go beyond the world, the chapter of the Dharma gate of detachment from the world.”

Ask first: the name ‘the vast and pure practice of a bodhisattva’ has already been given above — why then ten more?

Because one name can illumine one face only. Chengguan glosses this thus: the first name is set up in terms of what expresses — “because practice is born in dependence upon this, it is named a place”; while the other nine are set up in terms of the function of what is expressed. Following his reading straight through: the second name says that this practice assuredly can bring about the fruit; the third and the fourth speak of what is realized and of what realizes; the fifth says that having wisdom it is surpassing; the sixth that compassion raises the myriad practices; the seventh that each and every one is perfectly fused; the eighth that the rule and standard are complete; the ninth that principle itself extends into fact; the tenth that fact itself is the real. Ten names are not ten things; they are ten faces of one Dharma gate.

One misreading is to be set aside here: do not read “the leaving behind of the path of the two vehicles” and “what is not shared in common with any of the beings” as a disparaging of others. These two names, standing in the list of ten, speak of the measure of this Dharma gate — the practice it sets up is not shared with the two vehicles, nor is it something the common dharmas of the world can gather in. It is said of the scale of the Dharma, not of the high and low standing of persons.

Coming down to the ground: hereafter, when you meet a scripture bearing many alternate names, do not hurry to remember the number; ask first which face each name illumines.

The Six ‘Should’ Clauses: The Sequence of the Exhortation to Learn

After the ten names the scripture gives six actions: “it should be honored, it should be listened to and received, it should be recited and upheld, it should be pondered, it should be gladly wished for, it should be practised,” and closes with one clause: “and if one is able to do so, one should know that such a person will very quickly gain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.”

Ask first: are these six set out at random?

Look at their order and you will know they are not. Honoring stands foremost — without a reverent mind, the five that follow cannot be got into at all; listening and receiving is entering by the ear, reciting and upholding entering by the mouth, pondering entering by the mind, gladly wishing for it is that the mind has raised the desire to have it, and only practising is the body beginning to move. The six actions make just such a road, from outside inward and then from inside outward again. The first three are the work of receiving and upholding, the fourth and fifth the work of digesting, the sixth the making good.

The misreading to be set aside is to take reciting and upholding for the end of the road. To recite it very fluently and not ponder it is to leave the Dharma on the lips; to ponder and not gladly wish for it is to leave the Dharma in the head as knowledge. Gladly wishing for it is the link most easily skipped, and it is exactly the pivot between pondering and practising.

Coming down to the ground: take these six as a checklist for yourself, and having read a scripture through, go down them one by one, and you will know where you have stopped.

Why the Great Earth Must Quake

The prose having been spoken to its end, the compilers of the scripture set down one event: “When this chapter was spoken, because of the spiritual power of the Buddha, and also because the very nature of this Dharma gate is just so, the measureless, boundless asaṃkhyeya worlds of the ten directions all quaked greatly, and a great light shone everywhere.”

Ask first: for whom are the quaking and the light made to appear?

The text gives two reasons, and gives them side by side. The former is “because of the spiritual power of the Buddha,” the latter “because the very nature of this Dharma gate is just so” — the Dharma is of itself thus, and therefore it moves, therefore it shines. The second reason is the vital one: the auspicious sign is not an ornament added on, nor a spiritual transformation specially arranged so as to win men’s trust; it is the natural response of the Dharma realm at the moment this Dharma gate is spoken.

One misreading is to be set aside here: do not read the appearing of the auspicious signs as a reward or a seal, as though it were well spoken and therefore a mark was given. The scripture’s own way of speaking is “because it is a dharma that is just so” — the Dharma being thus, what appears is thus, and there is no step of appraisal in between. Chengguan writes under this portion only the two graphs “it may be known,” and sets up no finer outline, precisely because the sense of this passage is plain of itself.

Coming down to the ground: when you meet a passage of auspicious signs in reading a scripture, look first for the clause of reason the text itself gives. If the reason lies in the Dharma, there is no need to read it as a marvel.

The Buddhas of the Ten Directions Praise the Dharma First and the Person After

The portion of the confirming has two sections, and their order may not be reversed. In the former section the buddhas of the ten directions “all appeared in bodily form before the bodhisattva Samantabhadra” and praised him, saying: “It is good, it is good! Son of the Buddha! You have actually been able to expound this place of the practice of the merit of the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas, the flower of settled meaning, the universal entering into all the Buddha’s dharmas, the chapter of the Dharma gate that goes beyond the world.”

Ask first: who is it that the buddhas praise?

Read the object of the words of praise and you will know — what is praised is “this … chapter of the Dharma gate,” the Dharma, and not the person. Chengguan judges this to be “the confirming that praises the Dharma.” The order is worth noticing: first it is proved that the Dharma spoken is true, and only then does it come round to the one who spoke it. Were it the other way about, praising the person first and coming to the Dharma after, then the Dharma’s trustworthiness would hang upon the person; as it is, the Dharma being praised first, the praise of the person has something to rest on.

The misreading to be set aside here is to read “it is good, it is good” as a courtesy. In this place it is a proof — the buddhas of the ten directions appear in bodily form at one and the same time to bear witness, and what they bear witness to is that this Dharma gate is indeed as it was spoken.

Coming down to the ground: to judge whether a passage of Dharma may be trusted, look first at whether it stands on its own, and after that at who spoke it. Reverse the order and it becomes taking the Dharma by the measure of the person.

Praising the Person and Vowing Together to Guard and Uphold

The latter section turns to the person: “Son of the Buddha! You have already learned this Dharma well, and expounded this Dharma well. You guard and uphold this Dharma by the power of your majesty, and we buddhas all rejoice with you entirely,” and it presses the rejoicing outward — “and just as we buddhas rejoice with you, so all the buddhas are likewise entirely.” Chengguan judges this to be “the confirming that praises the person.”

Ask first: what in Samantabhadra is being praised?

Three things: learning well, expounding well, and guarding and upholding by the power of his majesty. The sequence is still learning first, expounding after, and guarding and upholding last of all. This too is a reminder — one who is able to guard and uphold a Dharma is one who has first learned it and can state it clearly, not merely one who is zealous.

The last clause weighs most: “Son of the Buddha! We buddhas all with one and the same mind guard and uphold this scripture, so that among the multitudes of bodhisattvas present now and to come, those who have never yet heard it may all get to hear it.” This is the close of the whole prose portion, and what it settles is how this Dharma gate is to be handed on hereafter. The four graphs “all with one and the same mind” say that the guardians are not one buddha; the four graphs “now and to come” say that what is guarded is not bounded by the present sitting; “those who have never yet heard it may all get to hear it” says that the aim of the guarding is not the keeping of a text but the reaching of those who have not yet heard.

Coming down to the ground: the most substantial way to guard and uphold a Dharma is to let those who have not heard it hear it — this is the definition the scripture gives of itself.

The First Eight Verses: Stating Plainly First ‘What I Shall Speak Of, and How Much’

The prose being finished, Samantabhadra, “receiving the spiritual power of the Buddha, contemplated all the great assemblies of the ten directions and on to the whole Dharma realm, and spoke these verses.” Chengguan judges the verses to have two hundred and fifteen and a half in all, divided into three segments: first eight verses in seven graphs praising the depth and breadth of the virtue, next a hundred and thirty-one and a half generally setting out the virtue of practice, and last seventy-six versifying the prose before — the sections below follow this threefold division in speaking, and this dividing is fastened to Chengguan alone.

The work of the first segment of eight verses is to state plainly first ‘what is to be spoken of’. The opening four verses are all of one pattern: first is said who it is that is praised, and only the last clause says that I shall speak of him. “Through measureless kalpas he cultivates austerities, and out of the right Dharma of measureless buddhas he is born; he causes measureless beings to abide in awakening — that practice beyond compare, hear me speak of it” — three clauses write the cause and one clause makes the promise to speak. In the second verse, “he makes offerings to measureless buddhas and casts off attachment, delivers beings widely and raises no thought” — making offerings to the buddhas without clinging, delivering beings without a notion of beings — this is to take the practice answered in the six segments before, what Chengguan calls ‘the two thousand practices’, and speak it once over with the bones drawn out.

Then two verses turn to the enjoining to listen: “giving, keeping the precepts, patience, exertion, concentration, wisdom, skillful means and loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity and the rest; through a hundred thousand myriad kalpas he practises them constantly — the merit of that person, sirs, you should listen to it.” The six perfections and the four immeasurables stand side by side, the time is set at a hundred thousand myriad kalpas, and only then is “you should listen” said. The enjoining to listen is no courtesy; it is the settling of the hearer’s mind beforehand upon a scale long enough.

The last verse states the measure: “to take measureless koṭis of kalpas to set forth his virtue would still be like one drop of the ocean — and that is not to be reckoned little; his merit is beyond compare and beyond likening, and now by the majestic spiritual power of the Buddha I speak in brief.” To speak of it with measureless koṭis of kalpas is still but one drop of the great ocean — but that one drop is not to be reckoned little. The misreading to be set aside in this clause is to read “in brief” as a perfunctory telling: the brevity is brief in relation to the inexhaustible, not a speaking at random.

How the Fifty Similes Are to Be Read

The second great segment does not enter upon similes at once; two verses set out the general mark first. “His mind is neither high nor low, and he seeks the Way without weariness; he causes all beings universally to abide in the good and to increase pure dharmas” — first the mind that does the practising: neither high nor low, which is to make no picking and choosing among those to be taught; without weariness, which is not to fall back over a long time. Only then does the simile come: “his wisdom benefits universally, like a tree, like a river or a spring, and like the great earth as well, the place upon which all things depend” — the tree taken for its shade, the river and spring for their not running dry, the great earth for its being depended upon. Chengguan judges these two verses to be “a summary setting out of Dharma and simile,” the Dharma in the former verse and the simile in the latter. Ask first: why should the clause “the place upon which all things depend” be set out at the head? Because whatever thing the fifty similes that follow may take hold of, the point at which each lands is this one matter of benefiting beings; with this clause set up first, what follows does not scatter. The misreading to be set aside is to pass over these two verses as mere words of opening — they are the general cap upon the whole section of similes, not a preface. Coming down to the ground: keep these two verses in mind before reading the similes, and the fifty have a single thread running through them.

The second great segment is the longest, and within it the section called “entrusting to things so as to make the Dharma manifest” uses fifty similes. Chengguan says of this passage, “there are fifty similes in all, hard to divide; now, letting like follow like, I divide them provisionally into ten” — he himself allows that they are hard to divide, and takes like with like in a provisional tenfold division. So the reader need not take the ten classes for a fixed frame; what matters is to see how the similes themselves work.

Look first at the two similes at the head. The lotus simile takes a flower apart and matches its pieces: “loving-kindness is its root, peace and ease its stalk, wisdom the many stamens, the code of the precepts its fragrance and cleanness” — root, stalk, stamens, and fragrance each have their match, and at the end one clause is added, “it is not stained by the water of the conditioned,” and this is where the force of the lotus simile truly lies. The Dharma-tree simile takes things apart in the same way: “it grows upon the ground of an upright mind, faith is the seed, loving-kindness and compassion the roots, wisdom its trunk, skillful means the branches, the five perfections its thick foliage, concentration the leaves, the spiritual penetrations the blossom, and all-knowing wisdom its fruit” — matched all the way from the ground to the fruit, and the half-verse at the end, “the most surpassing power is the vine that twines upon it, and the shade hanging down covers the three realms,” closes it upon the casting of shade.

This manner of writing has a rule common to it all: every part of the simile must have its match, and the whole simile closes upon a single working. If in reading one remembers only “the bodhisattva is like a lotus” and lets slip “not stained by the water of the conditioned,” it is to have taken a comparison and dropped the thing it was to say.

The misreading to be set aside is to take the similes for literary ornament. These fifty similes are no spreading out of rhetoric; they hang the invisible marks of practice upon visible things — Chengguan names this section “entrusting to things so as to make the Dharma manifest”: what is entrusted is the thing, and what is made manifest is the Dharma.

The Ten Classes of Simile Each Say One Thing

Chengguan gives each of these ten classes a name, and all of them are ‘such-and-such a practice’ — the practice that gladdens beings and casts its shade, the practice that crushes the wrong and leads the lost, the practice high and deep and firm and close, the practice that observes capacities and illumines and benefits, the practice sovereign and governing, the practice that contains and is undefiled, the practice that pervades and brings benefit to completion, the practice that holds in check and cultivates the person, the practice that tames and carries, the practice of outward function and of roaming and dwelling. These names are all set up by Chengguan and are not in the text of the scripture; in reading, it is enough to use them as clues.

Follow a few groups through. The lion class speaks of crushing the wrong: “the four truths are his feet, right mindfulness his neck, loving-kindness his eye and wisdom his head,” and it ends “within the empty valley of the surpassing meaning he roars the Dharma and makes the māras afraid” — a lion’s roar needs an empty valley to carry far, and so what is matched to it is the emptiness of the surpassing meaning. The caravan-leader simile speaks of leading the way: beings are in “the wilderness of birth-and-death, the perilous and evil places of the afflictions,” and the caravan leader does one thing only — “he shows them the straight and upright road.”

The class that crushes the wrong and leads the lost has ten verses in all, and after the lion and the caravan leader three more layers follow, which must be read on. First the sickness and its medicine: “the bodhisattva sees beings sick with the afflictions of the three poisons, with sufferings and troubles of every kind, seared and pressed by them the long night through,” and therefore “he raises the mind of great compassion and expounds at large the gates that remedy them, eighty-four thousand kinds, to extinguish the multitude of sufferings and ills.” Ask first: why must the gates of remedy run to eighty-four thousand? Because the sicknesses to be treated are not of one sort; if there were but one medicine, leading the lost would become forcing others to fit oneself. Next the Dharma king: “the bodhisattva is a Dharma king who teaches beings by the right path, causing them to go far from evil and cultivate the good, and to seek the merit of buddhahood single-mindedly,” and then “in the presence of all buddhas he is anointed on the crown and given the honored prediction, and he bestows widely the wealth of the sages, the precious jewels that are the limbs of awakening” — the receiving of the prediction and the bestowing of wealth stand side by side, the one what he himself receives, the other what he shares out to others; and it is just here that the Dharma king is a king, not in the height of his station. Last the Dharma wheel: “the bodhisattva turns the Dharma wheel as the Buddha turns it,” and his wheel is made with “the precepts for its hub and samādhi for its rim, wisdom adorning it and discernment made a sword” — the precepts the hub, samādhi the rim, while discernment is taken under another figure, that of a sword; and what it crushes is that “he breaks the bandits of the afflictions and destroys the enmity of the māras too.” The misreading to be set aside is to read “crushing the wrong” as contending for the upper hand with people: what this class breaks is the bandits of the afflictions and the enmity of the māras, not those who hold different views. Coming down to the ground: when you meet someone you cannot move, ask first whether you have only the one medicine in hand.

The class that is high and deep and firm and close takes hold of scale: the ocean of wisdom is “deep and broad and without shore or limit,” Mount Sumeru “rises up beyond the world,” vajra is “firm and not to be moved,” the thick cloud “rains down water of the eight virtues,” the city of the right Dharma has “prajñā for its rampart, and shame and conscience for its deep moat.” The class that observes capacities and illumines and benefits takes hold of illumining and of seizing: garuḍa “seizes gods, men, and nāgas, and sets them upon the shore of nirvāṇa,” the sun of the right Dharma “extinguishes the darkness of the afflictions,” the moon of the light of wisdom “roams within ultimate emptiness.” The eight similes are to be read as two classes together: the ocean of wisdom, Mount Sumeru, vajra, the thick cloud, and the city of the right Dharma speak of the marks of the bodhisattva's own virtue — deep beyond fathoming, high above the world, firm beyond moving, moistening without running dry, guarding without loss; garuḍa, the sun of the right Dharma, and the moon of the light of wisdom speak of the bodhisattva's use toward beings — seizing and setting them on the shore of nirvāṇa, breaking the darkness of the afflictions, illumining everywhere without attaching to any one realm. The former class is scale, the latter is illumining and benefiting; scale without benefiting is mere self-release, and benefiting without scale cannot last.

The class Chengguan names “the practice sovereign and governing” has six verses, and it takes in succession three lords of the world for its similes. First the Dharma king: “the bodhisattva is a great Dharma king, his body adorned with merit, the marks and the excellences all complete in him, and gods and men all look up to him,” what he uses being “the pure eye of skillful means and the vajra club of wisdom,” and what he accomplishes being that “in the Dharma he gains mastery, and by the Way he teaches the multitude of beings.” Next the Brahmā king: “the bodhisattva is a great Brahmā king, sovereign and risen beyond the three kinds of existence, with karma and delusion all of them cut off, and loving-kindness and equanimity all of them complete,” his business being that “in place after place he displays a body, and awakens beings with the sound of the Dharma,” and what he pulls up being that “there within the three realms he pulls up the roots of wrong views.” Last the Sovereign God: “the bodhisattva is a Sovereign God, risen past the ground of birth-and-death, his objects constantly pure and his wisdom without turning back,” and thereafter “he cuts off that path of the lower vehicle and receives the dharmas of anointing.” Ask first: why should three of the most honored stations be matched in succession? Because what is matched is not the honor but the governing — the Dharma king governs in the Dharma, the Brahmā king in the three kinds of existence, the Sovereign God upon the ground of birth-and-death; each has his own domain of governing, and apart from a domain there is no such thing as mastery. The misreading to be set aside is to read the three similes as an admiring of station. The closing clause of each of the three lands upon something other than his own enjoyment: the Dharma king upon “by the Way he teaches the multitude of beings,” the Brahmā king upon the pulling up of the roots of wrong views, the Sovereign God upon “his name and repute are heard everywhere.” Coming down to the ground: examine whether your own mastery holds only when nothing is happening — the mastery the scripture takes hold of is a mastery still had within the domain one governs.

The classes that follow come closer and closer to the body, and must be looked at class by class.

First are the two verses of “the practice that contains and is undefiled”: “the bodhisattva’s mind of wisdom is as pure as empty space, without nature of its own, without a place to depend upon, and all of it not to be got at” — and yet it goes straight on, “it has the power of great mastery, and is able to accomplish the affairs of the world; he is himself furnished with pure practice, and causes beings to be likewise.” Ask first: if all of it is not to be got at, where does the power that accomplishes the affairs of the world come from? The answer lies in the three graphs “like empty space” — empty space can hold the myriad things precisely because it is itself without nature and without dependence. Nothing to be got at is not doing nothing; it is not being stuck to what is done. The misreading to be set aside is to read “all of it not to be got at” as a passivity. The scripture at once adds “able to accomplish the affairs of the world,” and the two clauses are to be read together. Coming down to the ground: when you are doing something and feel yourself entangled by it, you may come back to this verse — look first whether ‘I am doing it’ has been set too heavily.

Next are the four similes of earth, water, fire, and wind: “the bodhisattva is the earth of skillful means, benefiting beings; the bodhisattva is the water of loving-kindness and compassion, washing clean the afflictions; the bodhisattva is the fire of wisdom, burning that fuel which is delusion and habit-energy; the bodhisattva is the wind that abides nowhere, roaming within the void of the three kinds of existence.” Each of the four great elements is matched with one practice — earth with skillful means, for its bearing and its nourishing; water with loving-kindness and compassion, for its washing; fire with wisdom, for its burning; wind with abiding nowhere, for its moving and not staying. Ask first: why is compassion matched to water and not to fire? Because what is to be remedied differs. The afflictions are like grime, and grime is to be washed; “the fuel of delusion and habit-energy” is the firewood piled up in one’s views, and cannot be cut off but by burning. The misreading to be set aside is to read the four elements as four temperaments, as though some bodhisattvas belonged to water and some to fire. What the scripture speaks of is four workings, and all four are in one person at one time: skillful means does not hinder loving-kindness and compassion, and loving-kindness and compassion do not hinder wisdom. Chengguan sets these two verses apart as a class of their own and names it “the practice that pervades and brings benefit to completion.” Coming down to the ground: meeting a matter, one may ask oneself which working should be raised at this moment — to bear, to wash, to burn, or not to stay.

Below these comes the class Chengguan names “the practice that holds in check and cultivates the person,” six verses in all. The boundary of this class must first be seen clearly: the two verses of the jewel, vajra, the necklace, and the maṇi, the two verses of the flower of virtue, the garland of vow, the incense of the precepts, and the anointing incense of wisdom, and the two verses of the curtain of power, the banner of wisdom, the figured silk of subtle practice, and the clothing of shame and conscience — the three groups together are one section of Chengguan’s, not three sections. Ask first: why must these six verses be gathered into one class? Because everything matched here is a thing worn upon the body: the jewel that relieves poverty, the vajra that crushes the views upside down, the necklace that “adorns the body of the three kinds of existence,” the maṇi that “increases all practices,” the garland of vow bound upon the heads of beings, the incense of the precepts upheld without breach or lack, the curtain of power that “screens off the dust of the afflictions,” the clothing of shame that “covers all beings universally.” From wearing and anointing to covering, the whole way through it is speaking the four graphs “holding in check and cultivating the person” — practice cultivated upon oneself, not talked about for others. The misreading to be set aside is to read these as a show of finery. What the necklace adorns is “the body of the three kinds of existence,” and what the clothing covers is “all beings”; every ornament turns at the last toward others. Coming down to the ground: in reading this class one may go down them piece by piece — jewel, vajra, necklace, maṇi, flower, garland, incense, curtain, banner, clothing — and the piece one most lacks is the practice to be made up now.

The last class Chengguan names “the practice of outward function and of roaming and dwelling,” six verses beginning from the uḍumbara flower; and before it stand the two verses of “the practice that tames and carries,” which are the unobstructed vehicle, the elephant of great strength, the horse with the bases of spiritual power, and the Dharma-expounding nāga — these four are all things that carry and convey people, standing exactly opposite the former class cultivated upon the body. From “the bodhisattva is an uḍumbara flower, hard for the world to meet with” onward it turns to the courageous general, the wheel of the Dharma, the lamp, the river of merit, the bridge of exertion, the sturdy ship, the garden of play, and the flower of liberation. Ask first: why should this class begin from the uḍumbara flower? Because what the uḍumbara takes hold of is the being hard to meet. The difficulty of meeting is spoken first, and then the string of lamp, bridge, and ship that follows shows how precious they are. The misreading to be set aside is to read “hard to meet with” as meaning that bodhisattvas are rare, and so to fall back in one’s mind; what the scripture gives next is wholly things near at hand and fit for use — the lamp is for men to see the road by, “great wisdom and the vast vow together make a firm and sturdy ship, drawing beings across and setting them upon the further shore of awakening” is for men to cross by, and the garden is for men to roam and rest in. Coming down to the ground: “the bodhisattva is a bridge of exertion, delivering all beings widely” is the most substantial clause of all — the bridge does not itself cross the river; it only lets others get across.

Coming down to the ground: the fifty similes need not be memorized one by one; remember the way of reading common to them all — find first what each part is matched to, and then find upon which working the whole simile closes.

Making Practice Clear by the Dharma Itself: No Similes, Practice Spoken of Directly

The latter half of the second great segment changes to another manner of writing. Chengguan names it “making practice clear by the Dharma itself,” meaning that it no longer entrusts to things but speaks of practice by the Dharma directly. The very first clause fixes the height: “the bodhisattva is equal with the Buddha, awakening beings; what else could the mind of a buddha be — right awakening is the awakening of the world.”

Ask first: is this not said too high? How can a bodhisattva be equal with a buddha?

Look at the next clause and it is clear in what he is equal — “what else could the mind of a buddha be; right awakening is the awakening of the world.” What is equal is this one matter of awakening the world; it is not said that their stations are the same. Then three verses turn to the surpassing of the multitude of kinds below: “the bodhisattva has measureless power, which none in the world can destroy,” “though he has left behind name and form, he displays every kind of mark” — what is spoken of is a rising beyond what the world can fathom. Then four verses promise to speak and enjoin listening, closing upon “merits of this kind, you should listen to and receive.”

After this, sixty-four verses set out the depth and breadth in particular, which Chengguan gathers into ten practices, of which two pairs are most worth remembering. One pair is “compassion not losing wisdom” and “wisdom not losing compassion” — the former uses the five similes of the skilled conjuror, the shadow of sun and moon in water, the dream in sleep, the valley’s echo, and the shimmering mirage, saying that though the bodhisattva raises compassion and rescues, he does not lose the wisdom that sees the illusion; the latter uses the contemplation of the five aggregates, the six bases, and the eighteen elements, saying that though he knows all is still and void he does not forsake beings, and the most vital clause is “he understands through and through that all dharmas are empty, and yet constantly seeks the wondrous Dharma; he does not join with the afflictions, and yet does not exhaust the outflows either.” The three graphs of not exhausting the outflows are to be read slowly: it is not that he cannot cut them off, but that for the sake of delivering beings he does not take up the realization of exhausted outflows.

The first of the ten Chengguan names “the practice deep and broad in the three kinds of action,” six verses, speaking of depth and breadth in just those three places, body, speech, and mind. Body: “with a single body he can display measureless differing bodies; without a mind and without an object, he responds universally to all beings.” Speech: “within a single sound he expounds fully all the sounds of speech; the modes of language of beings, he can make them all according to their kind.” Mind: “his mind is constantly still and extinguished, pure as empty space.” Ask first: displaying measureless bodies with one body, expounding all sounds with one sound — upon what does this rest? The scripture gives its own answer — “without a mind and without an object.” It is not that a mind to display is raised first and then there is displaying; it is that mind and object being alike still, the responding comes of itself. The two verses between carry this meaning over into the taking of birth: “he has left the body of afflictions forever, and yet displays a sovereign body; he knows that the Dharma cannot be spoken, and yet makes every kind of speaking,” and “upon a body he has nothing he is stuck to, and yet he can display a body; within all the worlds he takes birth as is fitting in response.” The misreading to be set aside is to read “nothing he is stuck to” as a not taking birth. The text says the opposite: it is having nothing he is stuck to that makes him able to bear birth — “though he is born in every place, he does not abide in the birth he takes.” Coming down to the ground: the depth and breadth of the three kinds of action lie not in doing much, but in whether, while doing, there is in the mind an ‘I’ that must do it.

Within the fourteen verses of the class where wisdom does not lose compassion there is a passage that lists the dharmas learned item by item, and it must be gone down item by item. First three ‘threes’: “according with the three codes of discipline, he sets forth the three gates of liberation, establishes the path of the three vehicles, and accomplishes all-knowing wisdom” — the codes of discipline what he himself accords with, the gates of liberation what he sets forth, the path of the three vehicles what he establishes, the three passing from himself to others in a plain order. Then are listed the items of the Buddha’s powers: “he understands through and through what is the case and what is not, the karmas and the faculties, the elements and the inclinations and the concentrations, and the paths that lead to every destination,” “the recollection of former lives and the divine eye, and the extinguishing of every delusion” — and the scripture at once adds the clause, “he knows the ten kinds of power of a buddha, and yet has not been able to accomplish them.” Ask first: if he understands each one through and through, why is it said he has not been able to accomplish them? Because the ten powers are the virtue of the ground of buddhahood; standing in the bodhisattva’s station he knows them by name and mark and has not yet accomplished them. “He does not join with the afflictions, and yet does not exhaust the outflows either,” in the same passage, is not-joining and yet not-exhausting; each of the two clauses has its own qualification, and they are not to be run together into one sense. The misreading to be set aside is to read “has not been able to accomplish them” as a falling short. It is a word of measure, marking a station: the knowing is the bodhisattva's, the accomplishing belongs to the ground of buddhahood. It closes upon “the three heaps are all pure, and the three times are all clearly penetrated; with great loving-kindness he is mindful of beings, and in all of it there is no hindrance” — purity spoken first, penetration next, and the last clause returning to loving-kindness; when Chengguan judges of this class that “the last two clauses do not lose compassion,” it is just this place he points to. Coming down to the ground: in reading this passage mind those several ‘and yets’ — knowing and yet not accomplishing, not joining and yet not exhausting; every ‘and yet’ marks a line of measure.

The other pair is time-and-place and knowing the faculties: “measureless kalpas are a single thought, and a single thought is measureless kalpas” speaks of time, and “within a single mote of dust he sees universally all the buddhas” speaks of place; while “he knows entirely that the faculties of beings differ as high, middling, and low, and knows too that the faculties shift” speaks of the work that comes before the expounding of the Dharma.

After the knowing of faculties, Chengguan sets up a further class and names it “the practice of stillness and function, swift and quick,” which speaks of moving and not moving at one and the same time. “The bodhisattva’s wisdom of spiritual penetration, its power and force already sovereign, can within a single thought go to lands without limit” — that is the moving. “Going thus swiftly, to the exhausting of numberless kalpas, there is no place he does not pervade, and yet he does not stir by the breadth of a hair’s tip” — that is the not moving. Ask first: if there is no place he does not pervade, how is it then said that not a hair’s tip stirs? Because the places gone to are not such as have a distance to be crossed; were there really a stretch of road to walk, then even at the utmost speed it would still be walking. What the scripture speaks of is that the pervading is so of itself, and only therefore does it say “he does not stir by the breadth of a hair’s tip.” To be read alongside this is the verse just before: “abiding in the inconceivability of a buddha, in the ultimate mind of wisdom, within a single thought he can know entirely the practices of all beings” — the knowing within a single thought and the going within a single thought; stillness and function are two faces of one matter. The misreading to be set aside is to read “swiftly” as fast. Fast is set up over against slow; what is spoken of here is what stands over against nothing. Coming down to the ground: when your own practice feels slow, this verse may serve as a calibration — the trouble is often not in the speed, but in having set the road too long.

Among these ten practices set out in particular, the second must be lifted out by itself. “The bodhisattva’s body is without limit, appearing universally in every place, constantly with reverence making offerings to the most surpassing Honored One of Two Legs” — the body being already limitless and appearing universally in every place, the first thing he does is not to expound the Dharma and deliver beings, but to make offerings to the buddhas. The two verses below say it more plainly: “incense, flowers, and every kind of music, banners, pennants, and jewelled canopies — constantly with a deep and pure mind he makes offerings to the buddhas,” and “he does not leave this one buddha’s assembly, and yet is universally in the presence of all the buddhas, and within those great assemblies he puts questions and listens to and receives the Dharma.” Ask first: a bodhisattva whose body is already limitless and who appears universally in every place — why should he still be putting questions and hearing the Dharma in a buddha’s assembly? It is exactly this misreading that must be set aside — the notion that once practice has come to a certain point one may leave the teacher and stand alone. The answer the scripture gives is “he does not leave this one buddha’s assembly, and yet is universally in the presence of all the buddhas”: not leaving this one assembly, and at the same time pervading the presence of all buddhas; the hearing of the Dharma is the one thing not laid down even after practice has come to the limitless. Coming down to the ground: however many scriptures you have read, do not give up your seat among the hearers.

After the practice where the two adornments are unobstructed come three verses that Chengguan names “the practice of contrary and accordant, brought to completion.” The first verse sets up the general mark: “he displays all manner of forms, and displays mind and speech as well; he enters the nets of beings' conceptions, and yet is ever without attachment” — what is displayed reaches body, speech, and mind, entering the nets of beings' conceptions and yet ever unattached, and this is the ground of everything displayed in the two verses that follow. The second verse raises the two ends: “he may display the first raising of the mind, benefiting the world; or he may display long cultivation, vast and without bound or limit” — the first raising of the mind and long cultivation are alike things displayed. The last verse lists the dharmas practised: “giving, the precepts, patience, exertion, concentration, and wisdom, the four brahmā abidings and the four means of gathering, all the most surpassing dharmas.” Ask first: having cultivated long, why should he still display the mark of one who has just raised the mind? Because what is displayed is displayed with regard to the capacity before him, not with regard to his own station; to display a beginner before a beginner is exactly where the drawing-in happens. Chengguan names this class with the two graphs “contrary and accordant”; what the scripture displays includes both the first raising of the mind and long cultivation, and does not run along one line from earlier to later — this section name is fastened to Chengguan alone. The misreading to be set aside is to read “he may display” as a disguising. Displaying comes in response to capacity; it is not a concealing of real virtue, and though the class that follows displays more widely still, the practice it rests upon is never two. Coming down to the ground: walking with another, there is no need to be quick to show how far you have got; only being able to stand where the other stands makes walking together possible at all.

From “he may display practice brought to fullness” Chengguan sets off a separate class and names it “the practice of displaying at the universal gate,” ten verses in all, and the passage in the whole set of verses that lists marks most densely. What is displayed runs through stations, the three vehicles, gods and men, householder and renunciant, young and old: “he may display practice brought to fullness, having gained the forbearance that does not discriminate; or he may display the state bound to one more birth, with the buddhas anointing him,” “he may display the mark of a hearer, or again display a solitary awakened one,” “he may display being Śakra, or display being a Brahmā king,” “he may display being a monk, stilling and taming his mind,” “he may display being a woman of skillful arts, or display cultivating austerities,” “he may display first coming to birth, or youth, or age and death,” on to “he may enter or abide in a womb, become a buddha and turn the Dharma wheel,” “he may sit beneath the tree of awakening and of itself accomplish right awakening.” Ask first: displaying as miscellaneously as this, does it still count as the bodhisattva’s practice? The scripture has set a limit within it. He displays hearer and solitary awakened one, and yet “in place after place he enters parinirvāṇa, and does not forsake the practice of awakening” — the mark of nirvāṇa may be displayed, the practice of awakening is not forsaken; he displays the receiving of the five desires, and the same verse sets over against it “or he may display entering the concentrations”; he displays becoming a buddha and turning the Dharma wheel, and still stands in the company of “or he cultivates the path of no turning back, gathering up the equipment of awakening.” What is displayed may be of the widest; what is not forsaken is one thing only. The misreading to be set aside is to read this passage as a catalogue of transformations. The scripture puts down its own judging clause: “should there be one who tries to reckon it, his mind will doubt and break out in madness” — this is not asking men to imagine, but to know that beyond what is displayed there is a practice that does not stir. Coming down to the ground: when the marks a person displays are hard to judge by, look at what he forsakes — a mark that has forsaken the practice of awakening, however adorned, is not the universal gate spoken of here.

At the end of the second great segment the scripture sets down a conclusion of its own: “because he has entered this Dharma gate he has been able to accomplish such practice; what I have told is but a small portion of it — the sense of the adornment of merit.” And a verse follows straight upon it: “though one told of it to the end of numberless kalpas, his practice could not be told to the end; I now tell but a small portion, like one dust-mote upon the great earth.” Set it beside “like one drop of the ocean” in the eight verses of the first segment — at the head and at the foot both say “a small portion,” and between them lie the hundred and thirty-one and a half verses. Ask first: so much having been said, why is it still called a small portion? Because the measure of telling and the measure of practice are not on one scale: telling has an end, practice has none; the drop and the dust-mote both take hold of this. The misreading to be set aside is to take “a small portion” for a modest word. It is a word of measure, marking where the boundary of this stretch of text lies — not that it is poorly told, but that it cannot be told to the end. Coming down to the ground: having read this great segment through, what should be remembered is not how much you have read, but that the scripture itself allows it has not finished speaking.

Coming down to the ground: this segment is the part of the whole body of verses most like a manual of practice. If only one clause is to be carried away, one may take the half-clause standing just before “in a single thought he gains awakening and accomplishes all-knowing wisdom” — namely, “defiled practice and pure practice, every kind of them he knows entire.” Knowing entirely comes first; only then is there any talk of turning.

The Third Segment of Verses: Turning Back to Versify the Prose Again

The seventy-six verses of the third great segment differ in kind from the two segments before. Chengguan points out that the first two “are both of them gāthā,” while the third “is at last geya” — gāthā is verse that stands up on its own, and geya is verse that repeats the prose. Which is to say that the two segments before spoke of what the prose did not set out in detail, while this segment versifies once more what was said before.

Of these, the first thirty-nine verses versify the portion of exposition before. Chengguan carries on the outline of the ancient worthies, taking the portion of exposition before as six stages and matching a count of verses to each. The names of these six stages are not set up by the text of the scripture; they are what the worthies of old outlined by following the text of the separately circulating version, and Chengguan carried it on — in reading the verses it is enough to know in one’s mind that this thread is there, without reading the names of the stages into the clauses of the scripture.

The opening verse is much like a general heading: “he abides in dependence upon the wisdom of the Buddha, gives rise to thoughts of the extraordinary, practises the most surpassing practice, and is furnished with great loving-kindness and compassion.” Four clauses, four matters — what he depends on, the thought he raises, the practice he cultivates, the mind he is furnished with. Thence it versifies straight on: “he gives rise to the mind of Samantabhadra, and cultivates his practices and vows” is the beginning of one section, and “like a jewel he abides in the Dharma, with a mind that puts on the armor of the vow” is the beginning of another, each section led off by a key term.

From “bodies of every kind and the karma of the body, speech and speech cultivated in purity” onward, what is versified are the gates of body, speech, and mind; and coming to “the lion seat at the place of awakening, lying as Brahmā lies and having emptiness for his abode,” the marks of sitting and lying are used to speak of abiding. The last section, beginning from “he contemplates universally the conduct of beings,” versifies the six perfections one by one — “free of greed he practises pure giving, casting off conceit he keeps the pure precepts, without anger he is constantly patient, without sloth he is constantly exerting” — the first four perfections each matched with one hindrance left behind (greed, conceit, anger, sloth), while the last two read “gains mastery” and “has nothing to practise” — and this way of matching is far more useful than naming the six perfections alone.

The Last Thirty-Seven Verses: Telling of the Merit as Something That Can Be Put to Use

The last thirty-seven verses of the third great segment versify the portion of the concluding exhortation before. They open with a word of modesty: “those practices of the bodhisattvas, cultivated through measureless kalpas, are vast and without limit, and I now tell but a small portion.” — Chengguan marks these thirty-seven verses as beginning under ‘though he causes’; yet reckoning by the counts of verses he himself sets out, they must begin from ‘those practices of the bodhisattvas’ if the thirty-seven are to be full. The two sayings are recorded side by side without adjudication. And a vital clause is added at once: “though he causes measureless beings to abide in the merit of a buddha, yet within beings and within dharmas he ultimately grasps and clings to nothing.” — so much done and yet nothing grasped: this is the fixed pole of the whole segment.

Then follows a string of marks of spiritual transformation: “upon a hair-tip he sets down many lands, and passes through a koṭi of thousands of kalpas,” “and with a single pore he takes in universally all the oceans, and the great oceans neither increase nor decrease, and beings are not disturbed or harmed.” One great misreading must be set aside here: do not read this as a display of magical arts. At the end of the passages on holding the lands and setting them back and on taking in the oceans there is a clause of restraint — beings do not know or feel it, the great ocean neither increases nor decreases, beings are not disturbed or harmed; the passage on setting the lands in a pore closes upon “truly causing all to see,” the passage on grinding to dust closes upon the dust being knowable while the bodhisattva's wisdom is hard to measure, and the two passages on sending forth light and uttering sounds close upon the benefit to those converted. That the spiritual transformation is a virtue of practice and not a show of powers lies exactly in this, that it does not startle or disturb the realm it transforms.

The section on the three times is the same: “all the kalpas that are past he sets into the future and the present; the kalpas of the future and the present he turns about and sets into the past age” — what is spoken of is that the kalpas of time may be set one within another. The last eight and a half verses change to entrusting to things: the seven jewels of a wheel-turning king are matched to the bodhisattva’s practice — “the pāramitās are the wheel-jewel, the penetrations the elephant-jewel, the bases of spiritual power the horse-jewel, wisdom the bright-pearl-jewel; subtle practice the palace-woman-jewel, the four means of gathering the treasurer-minister-jewel, skillful means the general-jewel” — and then city wall and palace, level ground and river water, clear pool and flower of awakening are matched down the whole way. Chengguan says of this section, “some are what was not there before, and some are the same thing with a different sense, and both may be got at by intention” — which is to say that these matchings both repeat what went before and bring in what is new, and evenness need not be insisted upon.

The two concluding verses use a set of extreme comparisons: the dust-motes of the lands may be numbered, empty space may be measured, the thoughts of beings’ minds may be reckoned, but “the merits of a son of the Buddha cannot, though one speaks, be spoken to the end.” The three things before are already impossible, and the impossible is used to set off what is more impossible still — a manner of speaking this scripture uses often.

The last two verses are the conclusion of the whole chapter, and are its very last words: “would one be furnished with merit of this kind, and with every kind of superior and wondrous dharma, would one cause beings to leave suffering behind and be constantly at ease, would one cause body, speech, and mind to be all of them equal with the buddhas, then he should give rise to the vajra mind, and learn this practice of merit.” Three clauses of ‘would one’ are set out, and one action only is given — to give rise to the vajra mind. What vajra takes hold of is that it cannot be broken: the two thousand practices Chengguan speaks of having been told to the end, what is handed over into the reader’s hands is not a list, but a giving rise of the mind that will not scatter along the way.

Lineage

• The three houses’ outlines standing together: Chengguan judges this chapter into ten portions, and this passage falls to the seventh, the portion of the concluding exhortation to practise; the eighth, the portion of the auspicious signs appearing; the ninth, the portion of the confirming; and the tenth, the portion of the verses. Fazang’s Tanxuan ji judges the whole assembly into eight portions, and makes of these the three portions of the concluding exhortation, the displaying and confirming, and the verses, gathering the auspicious signs into the displaying and confirming before it without setting them up apart. Li Tongxuan’s Xin Huayan jing lun has instead a general outline of five gates, and under “explaining the sense following the text” a long outline in ten sections, the last four of which — entrusting and circulating, the Dharma’s might shaking the earth, the verses on the vast and peerless, and the five-syllable verses of similes — fall exactly to this unit. The three houses’ systems of outlining differ each from each; recorded without adjudication.
• The explanation of the chapter’s name: Fazang sets up four senses in explaining “detachment from the world” — in terms of deluded clinging, of dependent arising, of practice, and of stage; of these, the sense in terms of practice says “one is constantly within the world and yet not gathered in by the world, and therefore it is called detachment,” while the sense in terms of stage runs all the way from humans and gods and the two vehicles to the fruit of buddhahood. Li Tongxuan explains it through by two senses: in terms of the host of the exposition it is the benefiting of the world, and in terms of the beings who hear the Dharma it is dwelling in the world undefiled. Neither house takes it as ‘leaving the world behind’. Recorded without adjudication.
• A variant reading within the verses: the Yanyi chao brings out only one item upon this passage, fastened to the fifth verse of the class of similes of garuḍa, pointing out that the eighty-fascicle text has “the bodhisattva is a moon of the light of wisdom,” while the treatise-scripture it cites has “the bodhisattva is a cool and clear moon … and the dharmas of mind are all made to appear.” The two texts differ; recorded side by side without adjudication.
• The added passage in the separately circulating version: the separately circulating Dushipin jing, after the verses, has a further passage in which the bodhisattva Universal Knowing asks ‘why is this scripture named the Chapter of Passing Beyond the World’ and the Buddha himself answers and explains the name, explaining “shut up within the world” by the covering over of the five aggregates and the six wearers-away, and explaining “passing beyond” by provisional wisdom abiding neither in birth-and-death nor in cessation. The eighty-fascicle and the sixty-fascicle texts both stop at the last clause of the verses and have no passage answering to it. Recorded side by side without adjudication.
• The citations in the treatises of the Huayan house: Fazang’s Huayan jing zhigui cites the verse of this passage beginning “all the kalpas that are past” in evidence of the Dharma gate of the ten times; the Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang raises this chapter together with the ninth ground in evidence of the inexhaustibility of the ten minds; the Huayan yisheng shixuan men takes this chapter in evidence of the sense of the ten buddhas. All three are citations of a schematic kind, and not explanations clause by clause.
• A check of the treatises that carry the lineage on: in the four treatises, the Cheng weishi lun, the She lun, the Yogācārabhūmi, and the Saṃdhinirmocana, a mechanical search for the terms of this passage gives only one literal hit, “profoundly going forth from the world” in the Yogācārabhūmi, which is not the chapter’s name, and none elsewhere; no hits do not amount to evidence that those treatises have nothing to do with it, and it is set down as vacant according to the fact.