華嚴經 義疏通講 · 冊2Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Exposition Throughout · Vol. 2

Why a Great Sūtra Sets a Chapter on Entering Concentration Before the Teaching Begins

The question that most easily arises on reaching this chapter is: the assembly had gathered and the Buddha had already sent forth light and displayed the signs — why not teach directly, and instead insert a stretch of ‘sitting down and entering concentration’? That question has in fact already touched the doctrine of this chapter. Look at the first sentence of the sūtra text and it is plain: “At that time Samantabhadra, the bodhisattva-mahāsattva, before the Tathāgata, seated upon the lion throne of the lotus-womb, received the Buddha’s spiritual power and entered samādhi.” — the host of the Dharma does not stand up and speak of himself; he first sits, first receives power, first enters concentration.

Chengguan states the reason for this chapter’s coming with the utmost directness: the assembly having already gathered and the Buddha’s light having already pointed out who the host of the Dharma is, now that the teaching is about to be given, the host of the Dharma’s entering concentration and receiving sustaining power is the “near skillful means” of teaching, and so this chapter is placed here. Fazang, over on the side of the sixty-fascicle text, gives a reason that presses in closer: why enter concentration? Because “without realization there is no speaking” — where there is no personally realized realm, there is no dharma that can be spoken; and further, in order to receive the Buddha’s sustaining power, and further, in order to remove the doubts of the assembly. Li Tongxuan speaks from yet another angle: Samantabhadra is of himself “constantly without either concentration or distraction,” and it is not that he needs to rely on entering concentration in order to be settled, but that he does it in order to set up a rule for those who come after.

A common misreading to clear away: do not take entering concentration as a ceremony before the teaching. The sūtra sets it apart as a chapter of its own because it is drawing a line about the source of the teaching — the dharma that is spoken comes forth from the concentration that has been realized, not from the thinking of the mind. Brought home to oneself it is the same: for a person who has nowhere within that he has truly settled, what he says, however neatly ordered, is only a parallel arrangement of phrases; it is not the teaching of Dharma.

The Name of the Samādhi Is Itself the Doctrine of the Samādhi

The concentration Samantabhadra entered is given a name by the sūtra itself: “this samādhi is named: the Tathāgata-womb body of Vairocana of all buddhas.” This name is abnormally long — most names of concentrations run to two or three characters, while here it is a sentence of twelve. Why? Because the way of setting up a name here in the Avataṃsaka is to set up the name from the meaning; the moment the name is uttered, the meaning of the whole chapter is already within it.

Chengguan explains it on two levels. On the first level he explains “the Tathāgata-womb body,” saying that there is an older explanation which sets up this name from three senses — vast, great, and giving birth and resting — and that “body” is precisely the substance, precisely that upon which things depend. These three senses further run through two kinds of womb: the womb that is cultivated to completion belongs to the buddhas alone — compassion is boundless, and so it is called vast; wisdom is unsurpassed, and so it is called great; the characteristic of birth is already exhausted, and so it is called giving birth and resting. The womb that is the original nature, on the other hand, is possessed by ordinary beings and noble ones alike — the store consciousness contains the seeds and establishes the destinies of birth, and so it is called vast; original awakening in direct perception is equal to that of a buddha, and so it is called great; it gives birth anew from moment to moment, and so it is called giving birth; and defilement and purity, suffering and pleasure cannot shake it, and so it is called resting. On the second level he explains “Vairocana”: if one takes it in the sense of light shining everywhere, then Vairocana is the great wisdom that contemplates and the Tathāgata-womb body is the profound principle contemplated; and although that principle is originally present in the very body of an ordinary person, it takes a buddha’s wisdom to see it.

Fazang, over on the side of the sixty-fascicle text, faced a different name — in that text this concentration is called “the samādhi of the pure womb of all tathāgatas, rightly received” — and so what he explains is “pure womb”: “pure” has four senses, purity of self-nature, purity that cures the afflictions, purity of roots of goodness, and purity of benefit and function; “womb” has four senses, containing and gathering, accumulating, giving birth, and being inexhaustible; and samādhi, called in this land “even holding,” is “even” because concentration and wisdom are in balance, and “holding” because the mind is not scattered and abides upon a single object, while to take dharmas into the mind is called “rightly received.” Li Tongxuan is a third track again: he does not explain what is contained within this name of the concentration, but glosses only the three words of the chapter’s title — that principle and wisdom are boundless is called “universal,” and that wisdom benefits beings according to their faculties is called “worthy.”

The ancients had these three tracks; they are recorded here without judging one above another. What is to be learned is one way of reading that the three have in common: a name is not a label; a name is a sentence with the doctrine compressed into it.

The Substance and the Characteristic of the Concentration: Entering the Nature of Equality, Displaying Reflected Images, Vast as Space

Below the name, the sūtra goes on to lay out the virtue and function of this concentration. Chengguan judges this passage to be thirteen clauses, gathers them into ten gates, and takes them in as six pairs — it is the densest passage of outlining in the whole chapter. Read it pair by pair and the layers of the doctrine come out.

The first pair is substance and function: “it enters universally into the nature of the equality of all buddhas” is the substance, and “it can display every kind of reflected image within the Dharma realm” is the function. First, a question: in entering concentration, what is it that is entered? The answer: what is entered is the nature of the equality of all buddhas. That is to say, what Samantabhadra enters is not some private mental state of his own but that equal nature which the buddhas hold in common. Chengguan lays down an important judgment here — the equal nature of the buddhas is precisely the Tathāgata-womb, and therefore merely to enter the Tathāgata-womb body is already to have entered the equal nature of the buddhas. A misreading to clear away: do not take “equality” to mean the wiping out of differences. Equality says that the wisdom that realizes is without discrimination; it does not say that the characteristics displayed are without difference. Precisely because the substance is equal, the function can display every kind of reflected image within the Dharma realm without confusion.

The second pair is depth and breadth. “Vast and unobstructed, the same as space” — Chengguan explains it word by word: vast is boundless, because it does not fall within inner or outer; great is unsurpassed, because it reaches ultimately to the true limit; unobstructed is that there is nothing that can hinder it, and so space is taken as the comparison. The three senses together make up one gate. Then “the whirling of the ocean of the Dharma realm, into which it enters along with everything” is another gate — Chengguan says “whirling means deep”: the Dharma realm is like the whirling current of a great ocean, deep past all seeing, and this concentration enters along with all of it. Vastness speaks of the horizontal limit, whirling of the vertical depth; a single concentration must have both these sides at once, or it is a lopsided and withered concentration. Brought to bear on how one reads: broad without depth is scattered, deep without breadth is confined, and the sūtra sets the two clauses side by side precisely so that no one may take only one side.

Giving Birth and Taking In: All Samādhis Are Born from This, and the Dharma Realm of the Ten Directions Is Taken In by This

The third pair Chengguan judges to be giving forth and taking in. “It gives birth to the dharmas of all samādhis” is the giving forth — every samādhi, whether of its own characteristic or of a shared characteristic, is born from this concentration, because this is the root of all concentrations; “it can universally contain and take in the Dharma realm of the ten directions” is the taking in — all things come home to this in the end, because the very nature of the Dharma realm is here.

Of this pair one misunderstanding must be guarded against: giving birth does not mean that this concentration exists first and the other concentrations after, in the temporal sequence of a mother bearing a child. What it speaks of is root and branch — the other concentrations are each a single gate, while this concentration is the place through which all those gates pass; and this is why the part on rising from samādhi later says that “to rise from one is to rise from all.” In the same way, taking in is not the packing of the Dharma realm into a container. Fazang, annotating this concentration in the sixty-fascicle text, puts it more penetratingly: from this he draws out the sense that “one collection is all collections” — whatever this sūtra says in any one place comes together to form a single collection, and one collection is all collections; and this is why at the end of each section the sūtra always makes a concluding link, hooking the matter of this quarter into the matter of all quarters, so as to show that it is without end.

Here is where it lands: readers of the Avataṃsaka constantly meet “all” and “the ten directions” and feel them to be an extravagant spread, when in fact that is not rhetorical exaggeration but the necessary consequence of this sense of giving forth and taking in. Since this concentration is the root of all concentrations and the taking in of the Dharma realm, then every dharma spoken out of it must carry, in every sentence, the weight of all.

Object and Wisdom: The Ocean of the Light of Wisdom Is Born from This, and the Oceans of Establishments Appear from This

The fourth pair Chengguan judges to be object and wisdom. “The ocean of the light of the wisdom of the buddhas of the three times is all born from this” is the side of wisdom — Chengguan says this is the gate that can accomplish a buddha’s wisdom, and the reason is of the simplest: not to embody this principle is not to be a buddha’s wisdom. The ocean of the light of the wisdom of the buddhas of the three times comes from nowhere else; it is born precisely from this concentration of the Tathāgata-womb body. This clause raises the standing of the concentration to the utmost: it is not merely one attainment of a bodhisattva’s practice, it is the very root by which a buddha’s wisdom is a buddha’s wisdom.

“All the oceans of establishments in the ten directions it can display” is the side of the object. What is meant by establishing? Chengguan divides it into three: the first is worlds, where what is established is the recompense that is one’s environment; the second is the noble teaching, where what is established is the wondrous meaning; the third is contemplative wisdom, where what is established is the characteristics of the truths. All three kinds of establishment are displayed and made present out of the womb of the Dharma realm. This division is worth much — if one takes the oceans of establishments only as world upon world, one has overlooked two of the three. The setting up of the teaching, and the truths illumined by contemplative wisdom, are establishments just as much; and just as much are they displayed within this concentration.

A misreading to clear away: do not read “display” as conjuring an illusion. Display means that what was already within the womb appears according to conditions; what appears is not something newly made, it is what the womb contains. This is also the groundwork for the sense of containment in the next pair.

Containment Within and Without: Holding All Wisdoms Within, Making a Dust-Mote Hold the Dharma Realm Without

The fifth pair Chengguan judges to be containment within and without. “It holds within itself the powers and liberation of all buddhas and the wisdom of the bodhisattvas” is the containment within — the buddhas’ ten powers, their liberation, and the wisdom of the bodhisattvas are all held within this concentration. This says that the wisdoms of both cause and fruit are within the womb: the powers and liberation of the fruit-stage and the bodhisattva wisdom of the causal stage are together in one womb.

“It can make every dust-mote of every land universally receive the boundless Dharma realm” is the containment without — a single dust-mote can receive the boundless Dharma realm. This is the most famous sentence in the Avataṃsaka and the one most easily read as a myth. The reason Chengguan gives is not mysterious: the dust-mote appears wholly in dependence upon the womb of the Dharma realm, and it is of one substance with the true nature, and therefore it can hold. To put it another way, what does the holding is not the bulk of that small thing, the dust-mote; it is the womb upon which the dust-mote depends. Since the mote appears wholly in dependence upon the womb, whatever is in the womb is there in the mote as well.

Brought to bear on how one reads: when the Avataṃsaka speaks of vastness it is not speaking of size, and when it speaks of the minute it is not speaking of size either. Every statement about size has beneath it to be converted into ‘in dependence upon what does this appear.’ Once that conversion is made, ‘a dust-mote holds the Dharma realm’ is no longer a strange tale but a necessary conclusion of the mutual blending of the direct and the dependent recompense — and it is precisely under this name that Chengguan cites Xianshou’s explanation, setting up the four clauses that the body pervades the ocean of lands, that the lands are within the body, that the body pervades the lands within the body, and that the lands enter the body that pervades the lands, saying that this is at once inner and outer, the direct and the dependent recompense blended together without obstruction and without hindrance; this is what this samādhi does, and hence it is taken as its name.

Perfecting Virtue and Upholding the Dharma: Accomplishing the Ocean of Merit and Vows, Guarding the Wheel of Dharma so That It Is Not Cut Off

The sixth pair consists of three clauses, which Chengguan judges to be the gate of accomplishing and taking in, matched to a pair of person and dharma. “It accomplishes the ocean of the merits of all buddhas and displays the ocean of the Tathāgata’s great vows” is the accomplishing of the person — what is accomplished is the person of the fruit-stage; merit is the virtue accomplished, and the great vows are the cause upon which it depends. That merit and the great vows are raised together says that the virtue of the fruit does not come out of nowhere; it is what the ocean of vows bears as its fruit.

“All the wheels of Dharma of all buddhas are circulated and guarded, so that they are never cut off” is the upholding of the dharma. Chengguan makes one point here: it is because of this profound principle that the eye of the Dharma can be constantly whole. Take note of the weight of those words, “circulated and guarded” — the reason the wheel of Dharma is never cut off is here assigned by the sūtra to this concentration, and not to the efforts of any one person in any one age. This is one of the heavy doctrines of this chapter: the root of the teaching’s not being cut off lies in there being someone who truly enters this concentration; if the concentration were cut off, the source of the teaching would be cut off with it.

With this the thirteen clauses are complete. Chengguan then gathers them in under four sections: the first four clauses make clear that there is no hidden depth it does not enter, explaining the sense of the all-illumining of “Vairocana” above; the next four make clear that there is no virtue it does not give birth to, explaining the sense of “all buddhas” above; the next two are containment within and without, explaining the sense of “womb”; and the last three are the perfecting of virtue and the upholding of the Dharma, explaining the sense of “body.” The thirteen clauses turn out to be, from first to last, an explanation of those twelve characters of the concentration’s name. Finally it comes home to three senses: entering the nature of equality is the substance of the concentration, vast and the same as space is the characteristic of the concentration, and all the rest is the function of the concentration; and these three being perfectly interfused, they are together the unobstructed samādhi of Samantabhadra.

Pervasion: Entering Concentration Here Is Entering Concentration Everywhere

The virtue and function having been set forth, the sūtra turns to pervasion. First it speaks of this world: “just as in this world Samantabhadra entered this samādhi before the World-Honored One”; then it speaks of the extension to all its likenesses: to the very end of the Dharma realm and the realm of space, throughout the ten directions and the three times, in all the lands that the Buddha’s eye sees, that the Buddha’s power reaches, and that the Buddha’s body manifests, Samantabhadra enters this concentration in the same way. Chengguan counts eleven clauses in this passage: the first one clause states in general the exhausting of the Dharma realm, and the latter ten point out particulars so as to make the exhaustiveness plain — to the end of the realm of space, the places of the ten directions, the times of the three periods, the places of subtle things, places of unobstructed small crevices, places vast by the yojana, places lit by the light of men and gods and sun and moon, places seen by the Buddha’s eye, places reached by his spiritual power, and places where the Buddha’s body can appear.

First, a question: why not settle it with the one phrase “pervading all places,” instead of breaking it into ten places? The answer: because if “pervading” is not brought down to particular places it is only a hollow description. The sūtra sets side by side the hidden and minute (the tip of a hair, a small crevice) and the vast (a hundred thousand yojanas), what sentient beings inhabit (men and gods, sun and moon) and what only a buddha can reach (the Buddha’s eye, the Buddha’s power), so that one may know that in this pervasion there is not one place that has been forced.

Further down is the pervasion in layers. The sūtra says that within the dust-motes of each land there are buddha-lands as many as the dust-motes of an ocean of worlds, that within those lands there are that many buddhas, and that before each and every buddha there are that many Samantabhadras, all entering this concentration. Chengguan divides this into four layers: to the end of the dust-motes of the Dharma realm; many lands within a mote; many buddhas within a land; and many Samantabhadras before each and every buddha. He then lays down a judgment — since Samantabhadra’s body is thus universal and layered upon layer without dividing coarse from fine, then as it is with entering concentration here, so it is with entering concentration throughout the Dharma realm. If one speaks with respect to the principal concentration, there is only one Samantabhadra before the buddhas, because one is all; if one speaks with respect to the extension to likenesses, there are dust-mote numbers of Samantabhadras before each buddha, because all is one. A misreading to clear away: do not ask ‘just how many Samantabhadras are there.’ That question is asked at the wrong level — one and many here are not numbers, they are the two sides of one is all and all is one.

The Buddhas Appearing and Praising with One Voice: Where the Confirmation Comes From

The part on sustaining power opens: “At that time, before every single Samantabhadra bodhisattva, all the buddhas of the ten directions appeared.” Note the measure of this sentence — it is not that before one Samantabhadra there are the buddhas of the ten directions, but that this is so before every one of them. Chengguan says that this one sentence states in general all the layered times and places above, because after the sustaining by speech there is no further concluding link made, and so the measure is stated in full here first.

Fazang, over on the side of the sixty-fascicle text, explains this appearing of their bodies by tying it to dependent origination: the buddhas do not move from their own lands and yet appear here, which is precisely to show that “there” is “here” without “there” being destroyed, and that far is near without far being destroyed. This explanation is to be kept in mind — the appearing of the buddhas of the ten directions is not a moving across; it is that there is here.

Next comes the praise: “Excellent! Excellent! Good man! You have been able to enter this bodhisattva samādhi of the Tathāgata-womb body of Vairocana of all buddhas.” Chengguan says this praises his having gained the concentration, and he picks out one point: although this is a concentration of the fruit-stage, it is entered by the gate of a bodhisattva, and so the sūtra calls it a “bodhisattva samādhi.” This distinction is very fine — that a fruit-concentration should be called a bodhisattva samādhi says exactly that a person at the causal stage can enter a concentration of the fruit.

Brought to bear on how one reads: praise, in the sūtras, is a formal manner of confirmation, not a courtesy. That the buddhas of the ten directions praise with one voice amounts to a certification of this concentration — the force of everything said afterward rests upon that one sentence of confirmation.

The Three Grounds of Gaining the Concentration: The Buddhas’ Sustaining, the Original Vow, and One’s Own Practice and Vow

The praise done, the buddhas straightway state the reason: “Son of the Buddha! This is because all the buddhas of the ten directions together sustain you; it is because of the power of the original vow of Vairocana Tathāgata; and it is also because of the power of the practices and vows of all buddhas that you have cultivated.”

Chengguan divides these three clauses into three grounds: the first is the companion buddhas sustaining him together, because the way of buddha and buddha is the same; the second is the original vow of the principal buddha — the power of the original vow of Vairocana; and these two are both conditions. The third is the practice and vow he himself has cultivated, and this is the cause of entering concentration. He adds a further layer: of these three senses, each earlier one is by reason of the later — without one’s own practice and vow, the Buddha’s original vow and their sustaining together have nowhere to land upon you.

There are two misunderstandings to be cleared away here. The first: do not read “the Buddha’s sustaining” as an infusion of outside power that lets one off cultivating. The sūtra itself puts one’s own cultivated practice and vow last, as the cause, and the order already tells which is weightier. The second: neither read it as depending purely on one’s own power. If it were purely one’s own power, what need would there be for the buddhas of the ten directions to sustain together, what need for the original vow of the principal buddha? What the Avataṃsaka sets up here is a joint making by causes and conditions — Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle text, states it flatly: the power of the fruit and the power of the cause come together by dependent origination.

One more question is worth recording: since it is the virtue of the fruit that is being set forth, why does the Buddha not speak it himself, but have Samantabhadra speak it? Zhiyan sets up this question in its own right on the sixty-fascicle text, and the answer has several senses: it is in order to make manifest that the surpassing fruit-stage can be brought to completion within the cause at the stage below; and further, because Samantabhadra has gained this concentration, is the eldest son, is the head of the assembly, has exhausted the very bottom of Rocana Buddha’s vows, has the original vow, and has also the power of his own roots of goodness. This answer makes clear why Samantabhadra is the host of the Dharma for this sūtra.

What the Sustaining Is For (First Part): Turning the Wheel, Opening the Ocean of Wisdom, Illumining the Oceans of Establishments, Purifying Beings, Taking In the Lands

Of the eleven clauses that follow “that is to say,” Chengguan says there are two senses: one is to make clear what the sustaining is for, and the other is to bring out the characteristics of the practices and vows spoken of above. The first clause of the whole passage is the general one and the rest are particulars; and of the particulars, the first clause again takes in the ten wisdoms in general while the remaining nine are the ten oceans spoken of in the following chapter. This judgment must be held firmly — the content of what the sustaining is for is the content of what the next chapter is to say; this chapter is the cause of the next.

The first clause, “that he may be able to turn the wheel of Dharma of all buddhas,” is the general one. The sustaining has only one overall purpose: to enable him to turn the wheel of Dharma. This one sentence gathers spiritual power, the realm of concentration, and sustaining alike back into the teaching of Dharma — it is not for the sake of perfecting someone who can enter concentration, but for the sake of perfecting someone who can teach.

The second clause, “that the ocean of the wisdom of all tathāgatas may be opened and made manifest.” To open and make manifest is to open out and bring to view what was already there, not to make something new. What is opened is the ocean of the wisdom of the tathāgatas, and so teaching the Dharma is not lecturing on one’s own insights; it is opening and showing a buddha’s wisdom.

The third clause, “that all the oceans of establishments in the ten directions may be universally illumined, with nothing left out” — Chengguan matches it to the ocean of establishments. Note the three words “with nothing left out”: the illumining must illumine to the end, and where anything is omitted it is not called universal illumining.

The fourth clause, “that all sentient beings may be made to cleanse and cure defilement and gain purity” — Chengguan matches it to the ocean of sentient beings and the ocean of karma. This clause is the only one among the purposes of the sustaining that falls directly upon sentient beings: the first three are the virtues of the one who can teach, and this one is the benefit for whose sake it is done.

The fifth clause, “that all the great lands may be universally taken in, with nothing clung to” — Chengguan matches it to the ocean of worlds. Taking in while clinging to nothing is the key: universal taking-in is easily read as possessing, and the sūtra itself adds the three words “with nothing clung to” to block that road. Taking in is for the sake of benefit, not for the sake of holding.

What the Sustaining Is For (Second Part): Entering the Buddhas’ Realms, Displaying the Buddhas’ Merits, Entering the True Character, Observing the Gates of Dharma, Knowing Beings’ Faculties, Upholding the Ocean of Teaching-Texts

The sixth clause, “that he may enter deeply into the realms of all buddhas without obstruction” — Chengguan matches it to the ocean of buddhas. The realm of a buddha can be known only by a buddha and a buddha; that a bodhisattva here enters it deeply and without obstruction has its reason still in that concentration above — to enter the Tathāgata-womb body is to enter the equal nature of the buddhas.

The seventh clause, “that the merits of all buddhas may be universally displayed” — Chengguan matches it to the oceans of names, of lifespan, and of liberation, because the great functions of transformation all belong to merit. Displaying a buddha’s merits is one manner of teaching Dharma: to display the marks of virtue by which a buddha is a buddha can raise faith better than abstract exposition.

The eighth clause, “that he may be able to enter the true character of all dharmas and increase in wisdom” — Chengguan matches it to the ocean of the perfections, on the ground that it reaches the far shore of the true character. This clause forms a pair with the sixth: the sixth, entering the realms of buddhas, is stated with respect to buddhas; this one, entering the true character of dharmas, is stated with respect to dharmas; and wisdom increases thereby.

The ninth clause, “that he may observe all the gates of Dharma” — Chengguan matches it to the ocean of the turning of the wheel of Dharma. The gates of Dharma are the doors by which sentient beings enter the path, and to observe the gates of Dharma is to know how many roads there are to walk; not knowing the roads, one cannot set the wheel of Dharma turning.

The tenth clause, “that he may know the faculties of all sentient beings” — Chengguan matches it to the ocean of faculties. This clause forms a pair with the one above it: to know the gates of Dharma is to know how many medicines there are, and to know the faculties of sentient beings is to know how many illnesses. Only when both are complete does teaching not fall on empty ground.

The eleventh clause, “that he may be able to uphold the ocean of the teaching-texts of all buddhas and tathāgatas” — Chengguan matches it to the ocean of exposition. This clause is proper to the eighty-fascicle text alone; the sixty-fascicle text at this point goes only as far as “that he may know the ocean of the faculties of all sentient beings,” ten clauses by actual count, while the eighty-fascicle text by actual count has eleven. The two texts are both recorded, without judgment. Take note of the weight of this last clause: the first ten clauses speak of wisdom and virtue, and this one speaks of holding fast the ocean of the words and phrases of the teaching — if the teaching-texts cannot be held, there is no way for any of the foregoing to be handed on.

The Ten Wisdoms of the Sustaining by Mind: The Wisdom Given Is the Wisdom the Next Chapter Will Set Forth

After the sustaining by speech comes the sustaining by mind. The sūtra says that the buddhas of the ten directions “straightway gave to Samantabhadra, the bodhisattva-mahāsattva, the wisdom of the power that can enter into the very nature of omniscience,” and gave the rest one by one, ten wisdoms by actual count.

The first wisdom is the general one — Chengguan says this is the giving of the wisdom of the ocean of the fruit. And the word “give” must be explained clearly: it is not that the buddhas hand something over into Samantabhadra’s hands; it is that the Buddha’s power infuses him and makes it grow. The very nature of omniscience is precisely the ocean of the fruit; that nature of wisdom is the power, because it is without wavering and possesses the ten powers; and the word “wisdom” at the end is what does the entering. So the meaning of the first wisdom is: they gave him a power by which he could enter into the ocean of the fruit.

The remaining nine wisdoms are the particulars, and Chengguan says they are the ten wisdoms in the following chapter, “The Formation of the Worlds,” stating outright that “the text is fewer and out of order” — the number and the sequence differ somewhat from the following chapter. He nonetheless matches them one by one: the wisdom of entering the Dharma realm without bound or measure he matches to the wisdom of the ocean of the establishing of the Dharma realm; the wisdom of accomplishing the realms of all buddhas to the ocean of buddhas (the ocean of buddhas being solely the realm that is a buddha’s own portion); the wisdom of knowing the forming and decay of the oceans of worlds to the first; the wisdom of knowing that the realm of sentient beings is vast to the ocean of the karma of sentient beings (karmic causes being subtle, and so it is said to be vast); the wisdom of the various samādhis abiding in the profound liberation of the buddhas without differentiation, which holds two senses, to the ocean of the buddhas’ spiritual transformations; the wisdom of entering the ocean of the faculties of the bodhisattvas to the fifth; the wisdom of the eloquence of speech that knows the ocean of the languages of sentient beings and turns the wheel of Dharma to the ninth; the wisdom of the body that enters universally into every ocean of worlds in the Dharma realm to the seventh, the ocean of vows (since it is by the power of vows that one enters all the worlds within the Dharma realm); and the wisdom of obtaining the voice of every buddha to the tenth, the setting up of exposition.

A misreading to clear away: do not, because the matching is uneven, suspect that one side or the other is in error. Chengguan has himself marked it: “the text is fewer and out of order.” This is the practice of recording differences, not of covering them over. He further adds that a bodhisattva’s faculties have other senses besides — in cultivating the ten courses of good action there are the three roots of goodness; in cultivating the grounds and the perfections, vigor is the faculty; in taking in the right Dharma, faith and wisdom are the faculties; in gathering and nourishing sentient beings, kindness and compassion are the faculties; and in bringing the path of buddhahood to completion, compassion and wisdom are the faculties — and all such differences he can know well.

Why Is This So: Because to Realize That Dharma of Samādhi Is of Itself Just So

The sustaining by mind having been set forth, the sūtra poses a question and answer of its own: “Why is this so? Because to realize that dharma of samādhi is of itself just so.” Chengguan sharpens the question further: the buddhas have the power to give and the kindness to give universally — why then are the ten wisdoms given to Samantabhadra in particular? His answer is a single sentence: Samantabhadra has gained this samādhi, and by the very nature of things it should be given.

The words “by the very nature of things” are the eye of this section. They say: this is not the Buddha picking out one among the bodhisattvas of whom he is especially fond; it is that one who has realized this concentration ought by nature to gain these ten wisdoms — as water at a certain temperature boils, without waiting for anyone to decide it.

An important misunderstanding to clear away: sustaining power is not favor. If it were favor, then gaining it or not gaining it would rest with the Buddha; but since the sūtra says that by the very nature of things it should be given, then gaining it or not rests with realizing or not realizing. This sentence at the same time gathers the three grounds above — the sustaining together and the original vow — back into one’s own cultivated practice and vow: however complete the conditions may be, if the cause is not there, there is no response. Brought home to oneself: rather than seek sustaining power, ask oneself how far one has realized; and having realized that far, what should come will come of itself.

The Sustaining by Body, the Stroking of the Crown: The Images of the Three Times Displayed in the Marks of the Hand

The last of the three sustainings is the sustaining by body: “Then the buddhas of the ten directions each stretched out the right hand and stroked the crown of Samantabhadra bodhisattva.” Chengguan says that the first half makes clear that the buddhas stroke his crown with their hands, showing the embrace of sustaining power, and, following the Sanskrit text, he picks out one matter of fact: the bodies of the buddhas of the ten directions do not come here, nor need their arms be lengthened, and yet they stroke his crown at the same moment, each fully touching his crown without hindering one another — all of which is the unhindered working of a tathāgata. This distinction matters: it guards against imagining the stroking of the crown as a crowd of buddhas jostling in one place with their hands stretched out.

The second half is the function of the marks of the hand. The sūtra says that “those hands were all adorned with the marks and signs; a subtle net of light spread out from them, fragrance streamed forth and flames blazed,” and says further that from those hands came forth the subtle voices of the buddhas and the unhindered spiritual powers. Chengguan judges this passage to be ten clauses in all, so as to show that it is without end: the first five clauses are the fullness of the marks of virtue, and so it says adorned with the marks and signs, and the latter five make clear the unhindered wondrous function. He sums up in one sentence: this hand stretches across the ten directions and contains the three times, gathers in cause and fruit and runs through both person and dharma, deep and broad in substance and function, boundlessly free, beyond what words can tell.

Further down is what is displayed: “the oceans of the vows of Samantabhadra of all bodhisattvas past, present, and future, the pure wheels of Dharma of all tathāgatas, and all the images of the buddhas of the three times were displayed within them.” The oceans of Samantabhadra’s vows of the three times, the tathāgatas’ wheels of Dharma, and the images of the buddhas all appear within the hand — the hand that strokes the crown is not merely a gesture of sustaining; it is itself a gate that displays the Dharma realm.

At the end there is again the extension to likenesses: all the oceans of worlds, and all the Samantabhadras within their dust-motes, likewise have their crowns stroked by the buddhas of the ten directions. All three sustainings have this extension, in the same manner as the part on the samādhi — whatever is here is everywhere.

Rising from Samādhi: To Rise from One Is to Rise from All

The sustaining being finished, the sūtra says: “At that time Samantabhadra bodhisattva straightway rose from this samādhi. And when he rose from this samādhi, he rose from gates of the ocean of samādhis as many as the dust-motes of all the oceans of worlds.”

First, a question: what he entered was one concentration; why is it that he rises from dust-mote numbers of concentrations? Chengguan’s answer lies in the character of this concentration — he says this is “to rise from one is to rise from all,” because this wondrous concentration is itself the whole ocean of samādhis, and the other concentrations are gates, all of which are entered through it; those concentrations are wholly the same as this one, and so they too receive the name “ocean.”

This section makes good the “it gives birth to the dharmas of all samādhis” of the third pair above. Giving birth spoke of root and branch; to rise from one is to rise from all is the verification: if this concentration is truly the root of all concentrations, then when he rises from it he must rise from all concentrations at once. Turned about: if in rising from concentration he had only come out of some one concentration, then what he entered was only some one concentration, and not this concentration of the womb-body.

Brought to bear on how one reads: the Avataṃsaka constantly says that one is all, and this is most easily taken as a slogan. This sentence supplies a way of testing it — look at what comes out with it. What can bring all out with it was containing all to begin with.

Rising from Nine Samādhi Gates: The Nine Layers of What Is Known

The sūtra next lists the gates he rose from one by one, nine gates by actual count: the samādhi gate of the skillful wisdom that knows that in the three times there is no differentiation from thought to thought; the samādhi gate that knows all the dust-motes of every Dharma realm of the three times; the samādhi gate that displays all the buddha-lands of the three times; the samādhi gate that displays the dwelling places of all sentient beings; the samādhi gate that knows the ocean of the minds of all sentient beings; the samādhi gate that knows the particular names of each and every sentient being; the samādhi gate that knows how the places of the Dharma realm throughout the ten directions each differ; the samādhi gate that knows that within every dust-mote there are clouds of boundless and vast buddha-bodies; and the samādhi gate that expounds the ocean of the import of all dharmas.

Chengguan reads the first eight gates in matched pairs. The first and second are a pair of what knows and what is known: the first is the wisdom that knows — from thought to thought there is not a moment’s error, and so it says without differentiation from thought to thought, while this does not hinder knowing everywhere, and so it is called skillful wisdom; the second is the dust-object known. The third and fourth are a pair of the general and the particular in worlds: the third displays the vast lands, the fourth displays the dwellings of sentient beings; and here he cites the Lengqie jing’s saying that the Tathāgata-womb consciousness displays all bodies and vessels and enjoyments all at once, taking the vessels to be the vast lands and the enjoyments to be the dwelling places. The fifth and sixth are a pair of form and mind in sentient beings: the fifth knows the differences among their thoughts, the sixth knows their bodily marks and names. The seventh and eighth are a pair of the dependent and the direct: the seventh knows the vast places, the eighth knows the vast body. Under the eighth gate he adds a further sense: the Tathāgata-womb is the true buddha-body, whose substance is vast beyond anyone’s knowing, and yet it is constantly present within the minute dust-motes; each and every sentient being has a store consciousness, and so it is said that in each there are boundless great bodies.

The ninth gate is the general comprehending. The first eight gates all display gate by gate with respect to the characteristics of things, while the ninth, “expounding the ocean of the import of all dharmas,” comprehends all dharmas generally with respect to their import, and so it says “all.” Chengguan here cites several sūtras to make the import clear, and at the end comes home to this chapter: that true meaning is precisely this womb-body, and that inconceivability is precisely this samādhi.

There is one matter of number to be recorded here: at the head of the particular exposition Chengguan writes “in outline lists ten,” and yet after explaining the gates one by one he concludes “the foregoing nine clauses,” saying that of the nine clauses only the third and fourth take their names from displaying while the other seven take their names from what is known. The base text at this passage lists nine gates by actual count. This difference between the number stated and the number listed is what the ancients have handed down; it is recorded without judgment.

The Benefit to the Assembly: The Bodhisattvas Each Gain Nine Kinds of Oceanic Clouds

Samantabhadra rises from concentration, and it is the great assembly that gains the benefit. The sūtra says that the bodhisattvas “each gained oceanic clouds of samādhi as many as the dust-motes of an ocean of worlds,” and what follows are nine kinds of oceanic clouds by actual count: oceanic clouds of samādhi; oceanic clouds of dhāraṇī; oceanic clouds of the skillful means of all dharmas; oceanic clouds of the gates of eloquence; oceanic clouds of practice; oceanic clouds of the light of the wisdom of the treasury of the merits of all tathāgatas that universally illumines the Dharma realm; oceanic clouds of the skillful means in which the wisdom of all the powers of all tathāgatas has no differentiation; oceanic clouds in which within every pore of every tathāgata a multitude of lands appears; and oceanic clouds in which every bodhisattva displays passing away from the Tuṣita heaven palace, descending to be born, attaining buddhahood, turning the wheel of the right Dharma, and entering parinirvāṇa.

Chengguan says that here the sūtra “reduces the number and speaks of nine,” and he divides them into two sections: the first five are the gaining of a bodhisattva’s gates of Dharma, each clause being one sense, all because the concentration above contains these senses; and moreover these five clauses accomplish one another from the later to the earlier — only with samādhi is there total holding, only with total holding is there skillful means, only with skillful means is there eloquence, and only with eloquence is there the accomplishment of practice. The latter four are the gaining of the dharmas of a buddha’s fruit, that is, the three activities of a tathāgata: the first is gaining the real wisdom that illumines and sees the womb-body; the second is gaining the provisional wisdom of the powerful functioning of the womb-body; the third is the pores of the body displaying lands; and the fourth should be the letting down and showing of the eight aspects, whose sense also takes in what is turned by the activity of speech — and these too are because the womb-body contains these senses.

First, a question: Samantabhadra enters concentration and comes out of it — how is it that others gain the benefit? Chengguan answers with the meeting of stimulus and response along one way, and sets up a simile: it is as when in spring the shoots sprout — the warm breath has long been stored up, and at one stroke of the east wind the massed blossoms open all together. The assembly of bodhisattvas has amassed goodness deeply and long and shares one practice and vow, and so no sooner do they see the surpassing sight than their myriad virtues are all at once complete, aided both in the unseen and in the seen.

A misreading to clear away: do not read this as Samantabhadra dividing his merit out among others. The simile says it plainly — the flowers open of themselves, and the east wind only passes over them; without the long-stored warm breath, the wind could pass a hundred times and nothing would open. Brought home to oneself: the work of a good friend is that gust of wind, and long-amassed practice and vow are one’s own warm breath.

The Part of the Testifying Signs: Why the Worlds Quake Only “Slightly”

After Samantabhadra rises from concentration the sūtra writes the auspicious signs: “At that time all the oceans of worlds in the ten directions, by the awesome spiritual power of the buddhas and by the power of Samantabhadra’s samādhi, all quaked slightly.”

Chengguan picks out here a difference of formal manner: in all the other assemblies the auspicious signs appear only after the Dharma has been heard to the end and the benefit gained, and so the appearing of the signs is placed afterward; in this assembly, although the Dharma has not yet been heard, the benefit has already been gained beforehand, and so the signs appear first — because this assembly is one that sets forth the virtue of the fruit and makes its surpassing quality manifest. This distinction reminds the reader: the auspicious signs of this chapter are not the close of a teaching, they are the proof of one.

He divides this passage further into four matters: the first is the slight quaking of the worlds, which brings with it the cause of the signs in the two powers of the buddhas and of Samantabhadra, cause and fruit; the second is the adornment with a multitude of jewels; the third is the giving forth of sound expounding the Dharma; and the fourth is the raining of jewels upon the buddhas’ assembly. And on the two words “quaked slightly” he offers one explanation in particular: it says slightly because this is a preliminary sign — the great quaking comes later, and here is only the forerunner.

What deserves notice is the two powers behind the quaking: the first is the awesome spiritual power of the buddhas, the second the power of Samantabhadra’s samādhi. The auspicious signs are not assigned to one side alone, which answers exactly to the earlier “the power of the fruit and the power of the cause come together by dependent origination.” The sixty-fascicle text at this point has “quaked in six ways,” and the eighty-fascicle text has “quaked slightly”; the two texts are both recorded, without judgment.

The Ten Kinds of Great Maṇi-King Clouds: From Jewels of Outward Form to Jewels That Hand On the Dharma

The fourth matter is the raining of jewels. The sūtra says that “within all the oceans of the assembly places of the tathāgatas there rained down universally ten kinds of great maṇi-king clouds,” and asks of itself “which ten,” listing below ten names by actual count: the wondrous golden star banner; blazing light; hanging jeweled wheels; the forms of bodhisattvas appearing within a treasury of many jewels; proclaiming the names of buddhas; light blazing and universally illumining the assembly places of all buddha-lands; light shining upon the ten directions in every kind of transformation; praising the merits of all bodhisattvas; blazing like the light of the sun; and delightful music heard everywhere throughout the ten directions.

Chengguan does not read these ten names as a flat list: he says that ten kinds are given in outline so as to show that they are without end, and that the first three are jewels of outward form while the latter seven are jewels of the handing on of the Dharma and its transforming work, and that all of them are born of roots of goodness that transcend the world. This division reads a sequence out of a passage that looks like mere enumeration — the first three are still at the level of adornment (the golden star banner, the light, the jeweled wheel), and from the fourth on one enters the content of the Dharma: displaying the forms of bodhisattvas, proclaiming the names of buddhas, illumining the assembly places of buddha-lands, every kind of transformation, praising the merits of bodhisattvas, blazing like the sun, music heard everywhere. Form is for drawing in; the Dharma is what is handed on.

A misreading to clear away: do not read the raining of jewels as auspicious decoration. The sūtra itself writes the fifth kind as “proclaiming the names of buddhas” and the eighth as “praising the merits of all bodhisattvas” — these clouds can speak; what they are doing is the same thing that the light from the pores does afterward in speaking verses. Where this lands: when the Avataṃsaka writes a realm, the realm is itself the one that teaches.

The Pores’ Light Praising His Virtue: Ten Verses in Praise of Samantabhadra’s Pervasion

The fifth part is the pores’ light praising his virtue. The sūtra says that “from all the pores of all the tathāgatas light was given forth, and within that light these verses were spoken,” and below them are ten verses by actual count. Chengguan divides them into three sections: the first one verse states the foregoing concentration in general, the next eight display the characteristics of pervasion in particular, and the last one concludes by praising the ground of it all.

The first verse, “Samantabhadra dwells universally within all lands, seated upon a jeweled lotus, gazed upon by the multitude,” is the general statement — dwelling universally, sitting on the throne, displaying spiritual power, entering samādhi: it gathers the content of the earlier part on the samādhi into a single verse.

Within the eight verses of particular display, Chengguan divides again: the first two and a half verses state directly the pervasion above, and the latter five and a half bring up the cause so as to display the pervasion. Within the bringing up of the cause, the first verse is pervasion by function proceeding from substance — “Samantabhadra’s bodily form is like space; he dwells in reliance upon suchness and not upon any land.” This half-verse is the substance: bodily form like space is the dharma-nature body, and dwelling in reliance upon suchness is the dharma-nature land; the latter half-verse, “according to what the minds of sentient beings desire and delight in, he displays a universal body and treats all alike,” is the function, namely the enjoyment and transformation that respond universally according to capacity. Chengguan poses a question here: are the dharma-nature body and the dharma-nature land different or not different? If different, then it does not qualify as dharma-nature, since the nature is not two; if not different, then there is no supported and no support. His way of answering is not to take one side but to gather in the whole — the sūtras and treatises have many differing statements, and gathering them in, dharma-bodies are in outline of ten kinds and buddha-lands, appearing according to the body, are of five levels. The ninth of these is what the Avataṃsaka’s own school sets up: taking the three kinds of world in together as one great dharma-body, complete with the ten buddhas; and the land is likewise.

The second section, a verse and a half, is pervasion by the great vow, and shows besides the pervasion of the dependent recompense within the direct. Chengguan here answers a practical doubt: if it pervades layer upon layer, why do we not see it now? He answers: because our capacity does not correspond, we do not see; and precisely because it is a body like space, it also pervades the places where it is not seen. This answer matters greatly — not seeing does not mean not being there. The third section, a verse and a half, makes clear that what is displayed is surpassing; the fourth section, one verse, makes clear that the virtue of the fruit is already full and yet the gate of the cause is not abandoned, namely “by the gates of every kind of samādhi and skillful means he displays the practices toward awakening that he himself cultivated in ages past.”

The last verse concludes by praising the ground of it all: “Free and beyond conceiving in this fashion, he is displayed within the lands of the ten directions; and in order to make manifest his universal entry into every kind of samādhi, these merits are praised within the buddhas’ clouds of light.” Chengguan says: free and hard to conceive, appearing with nothing unpervaded, what is marked out is that he enters one concentration and in fact roams universally through all — and were it not for the Buddha’s clouds of light, whence could such praise be uttered? — the standing of the one who praises is itself part of the meaning of what is praised.

The Assembly’s Verses of Request: Eight Verses Praising the Host, One Raising the Dharma, One Praising the Assembly

The last part is the assembly’s verses of request. The sūtra says that “at that time the whole assembly of bodhisattvas turned toward Samantabhadra with palms joined and gazed upon him, and, receiving the Buddha’s spiritual power, with one voice they praised him,” and below are ten verses by actual count. Chengguan says: earlier the assembly asked the Buddha and the Buddha displayed the host of the Dharma; now the assembly sees Samantabhadra rise from concentration, and so they praise him and make their request. Earlier there were only the old members of the assembly, while here both old and new are present, and so it says “the whole”; and what is asked is the same as before, and so it is only raised in outline.

The ten verses he divides into three: the first eight praise the host of the Dharma and make request, setting forth that he is able to teach; the next one raises the dharma asked about and makes request, stating directly what is in doubt; and the last one praises the assembly and makes request, showing that there are vessels fit to hear.

Within the first eight verses there is a further division into two sections. The first five verses praise the depth and breadth of Samantabhadra’s virtue in cause and fruit, making clear that he has the cause of being able to teach. The first verse, “You are born from the dharma of the buddhas, and you arise also through the power of the Tathāgata’s vow; suchness is level and even, a treasury like space, and you have already adorned and purified this dharma-body” — Chengguan says this praises the dharma-body he has already purified, three lines making clear the cause and one line the fruit; and within the cause there are three senses: being born from the cultivation of dharma (running through both the conditioning cause and the revealing cause), arising by the great vow (which is the conditioning cause), and realizing the true equality in reliance upon the Tathāgata-womb (this being the proper cause). The second verse praises his dwelling universally in the buddha-lands, the third praises his drawing near to the buddhas, the fourth praises his constantly being in concentration (“dwelling within the true realm of samādhi”; Chengguan explains “the true realm” as not turning along with thought and imagination, and explains that the word “company” in “we of this company” means a group of one’s own kind), and the fifth praises his delivering beings exhaustively (dust-motes are spoken of because in even the most minute places there are also multitudes of sentient beings). The latter three verses state the fruit of teaching: one praises his constantly expounding the great Dharma, one praises that what he teaches has no equal, and one brings up the cause and concludes with the fruit — the cause being full through vast kalpas, he can therefore teach as clouds rain.

The next one verse is the request proper: “How is it that the lands come to be established? How is it that the buddhas make their appearance? And what of the ocean of all sentient beings? We pray that you will expound the meaning of these truly, according as it is.” Chengguan judges that these three lines each display one kind of world — the lands are the receptacle world, the buddhas’ appearing is the world of the wisdom of perfect awakening, and the ocean of sentient beings is the world of sentient beings; and although what was asked earlier had many gates, gathering them to their essentials they come to no more than these three. This verse is the pivot of the whole chapter: it draws together the questions of the earlier chapter and leads directly into the answer of the next chapter, “The Formation of the Worlds.”

The last verse praises the assembly: “The measureless ocean of the great assembly here all dwell reverently before the World-Honored One; that the pure and subtle wheel of Dharma may be turned, all the buddhas will rejoice in it.” Chengguan says that this is also called a statement about themselves, and that it has two senses: the first is that reverence and single-mindedness mean there are within them vessels fit to receive the Dharma; the second is that the buddhas’ rejoicing means there are surpassing conditions without — and therefore the Dharma should be taught. Teaching accords above with the Buddha’s mind and follows below the assembly’s wish. With this the whole chapter stops — the host of the Dharma has entered concentration, has received sustaining power, has risen from concentration; the assembly has praised and has requested; the conditions for teaching are complete, and the sūtra text passes on into the next chapter.

Lineage

The doctrine of this chapter was carried on by three tracks of later times; all are recorded, without judgment. The line of Chengguan: he consumes the sūtra clause by clause with an outline in six parts — the part of the samādhi, the part of the sustaining, the part of rising from samādhi, the part of the testifying signs, the part of the pores’ light praising his virtue, and the part of the assembly’s verses of request; he explains the virtue and function of the samādhi by thirteen clauses, ten gates, six pairs, four sections, and three senses; he explains the Tathāgata-womb body by the three senses of vast, great, and giving birth and resting and by the two wombs of cultivated completion and original nature; and he cites Xianshou’s four clauses (the body pervades the ocean of lands, the lands are within the body, the body pervades the lands within the body, the lands enter the body that pervades the lands) to display the mutual blending of the direct and the dependent recompense, judging this to be the ground on which the samādhi is named. He further sets forth “four sameries and six differences” to explain why this chapter is set apart as a chapter of its own: the four matters of entering, abiding, being sustained, and coming out are the same as in the other assemblies, while six matters — difference of number, of likeness, of benefit, of praise by light, of the assembly’s request, and of the testifying signs — are unlike the other assemblies.

The line of Fazang: on the sixty-fascicle text he does not set this apart as a chapter, but outlines it as “the third part, the host of the Dharma entering concentration” and “the fourth part, the buddhas’ sustaining”; he first sorts out four gates on the entering of concentration in the nine assemblies — whether it is present or absent, whether there is coming out or not, cause and fruit, and who it is that can enter — and only then explains the text at hand. As for the explanation of the name, he sets up, on the sixty-fascicle text’s “pure womb,” four senses of purity and four senses of womb, and runs them through with the three levels and two explanations of ‘the womb that is pure・the pure womb of the Tathāgata・the samādhi that is the pure womb’; and from the text of the concluding link he draws out the sense that “one collection is all collections,” and sets forth in ten levels the differing scope of this concentration — all concentrations unobstructed, all places unobstructed, all times unobstructed, the three levels blended and contained as one, and on up to exhausting within a single thought all the oceans of kalpas of the whole span before and after. On the part of the sustaining he sets up a judgment of his own in the four clauses of ‘sustaining and praising completing one another’: sustaining that is not praising (the sustaining by mind and by body), praising that is not sustaining (the bodhisattvas’ verses of praise), both sustaining and praising (the Buddha’s activity of speech), and neither sustaining nor praising (the rest of the text).

The line of Zhiyan: his outline of the same section is close in purport to that of the Tanxuan ji, but he has two matters of his own. The first is that he asks at the outset what the sustaining is for — sustaining is for gathering in the benefit of the fruit, so that those of lower position and lower wisdom may gain power, be fit to teach the higher Dharma, and advance in the raising of practice; and from this he goes on to distinguish why the second, seventh, and eighth assemblies have no sustaining. The second is that he sets up in its own right the question ‘since the virtue of the fruit is being set forth, why does the Buddha not speak it himself,’ answering with the senses that it makes manifest that the surpassing fruit can be brought to completion within the cause at the stage below, and further that Samantabhadra has gained the concentration, is the eldest son, is the head of the assembly, has exhausted the very bottom of Rocana Buddha’s vows, has the original vow, and has the power of his own roots of goodness. He also records that the sixty-fascicle text here ‘passes over the coming out of concentration, and only below makes the coming out clear,’ which is a difference of sequence between the recensions.

The line of Li Tongxuan: he does not explain what is contained in the name of the concentration, but glosses only the chapter’s title — that principle and wisdom are boundless is “universal,” and that wisdom benefits beings according to their faculties is “worthy”; and samādhi he glosses as right concentration, right receiving, and even holding. As for the ground of entering concentration, he does not hold to receiving sustaining power but to two matters: first, that it answers the questions asked before, among the thirty-seven questions, about the ocean of the bodhisattvas’ practices, the ocean of going forth, the ocean of spiritual powers, the ocean of the perfections, and the ocean of worlds; and second, “to show a rule” — Samantabhadra is of himself constantly without either concentration or distraction, and enters concentration in order to set up a rule for those who come after. He further sets the entering of concentration in the first assembly over against the seventh assembly’s chapter “The Ten Concentrations,” saying that in the first assembly entering concentration is a rule shown, while in the later assembly it makes clear that only when the path of the ten grounds is full and thoughts and notions arise is it true. This judgment differs from the reading that sets up the sense on receiving sustaining power; the ancients had this account, and it is recorded here.

As for the differences between the sixty- and the eighty-fascicle texts, what differs in this chapter is more than the wording of the translation: the name of the samādhi in the one is “the Tathāgata-womb body of Vairocana” and in the other “the pure womb of all tathāgatas”; the virtue and function in the one are thirteen clauses and in the other four; what the sustaining is for in the one is eleven clauses and in the other ten; the wisdoms given in the one are ten and in the other eleven; the eighty-fascicle text has the ten clauses on the marks of the hand and the nine items of samādhi gates, which the sixty lacks; the assembly’s verses in the sixty stand after the stroking of the crown while in the eighty they stand at the very end of the chapter; and the sixty has besides two places where Samantabhadra speaks for himself, addressing the assembly and repeating in verse, while in the eighty Samantabhadra says nothing in the whole chapter. All of these are recorded together, without judging which to adopt. The name of this chapter’s samādhi is nowhere to be found in the other chapters of this sūtra or in the works that set out the essentials of the Huayan school, and this absence is recorded as it stands — this name belongs to this one chapter alone, and yet its meaning is the gate of the whole sūtra.

Why the Buddha’s Dharma Spends a Whole Chapter on How the World Came to Be

A sūtra about becoming a buddha, having reached its fourth chapter, speaks instead of where the world comes from, upon what it abides, what it looks like, what it takes for its substance, how long it lasts, and how it changes. The doubt a reader most readily raises is this: is this not cosmology, and what has it to do with practice?

The doubt is in fact asking in the wrong place. Look at where the chapter stands and it becomes plain — the chapter before it is the Samādhi of Samantabhadra, where Samantabhadra enters concentration; at the opening of this chapter Samantabhadra rises from concentration and contemplates universally. Chengguan sets the two chapters side by side and speaks very directly: the entering of samādhi in the earlier chapter is “inwardly to be in accord with the source,” and the universal contemplating in this chapter is “outwardly to examine the aspects.” Concentration goes inward and deep; contemplation goes outward and wide. Without that depth in the earlier chapter, the wideness of this one would be no more than a breadth of things seen and heard.

Look next at what it answers. Chengguan judges that this chapter “sets forth in general the aspects of the fruit and answers in particular the question about the ocean of the establishing of the Dharma realm” — among the thirty clauses of questions about the fruit that the bodhisattvas raised in their minds in the chapter on the Manifestation of the Tathāgata in the second assembly, there is one clause that asks about “the ocean of the establishing of the Dharma realm,” and this chapter is the answer to that one clause. Li Tongxuan judges more broadly, saying that this chapter “answers the thirty-seven questions of the rulers of the worlds raised earlier,” answering them all at one stroke. The two masters attach it to different questions; both readings stand side by side without adjudication. But what they hold in common is this: this chapter is not cosmology, it is an answer. Someone asked; therefore someone speaks.

Brought down to the reader: what this world you see is like depends on what causes and conditions have put it together and on what your mind takes for its substance. This chapter spreads that matter out for you to look at — and Chengguan, in the gate of the tenet and aim, says the whole of this: “because lands differ according to mind, one should purify one’s own mind and the minds of others.”

Samantabhadra First Contemplates the Ten Oceans, and Only Then Speaks

The very first sentence of the sūtra text states the qualification for expounding: Samantabhadra, the bodhisattva-mahāsattva, “by the Buddha’s spiritual power,” contemplated universally ten oceans — all the oceans of worlds, all the oceans of sentient beings, all the oceans of the buddhas, all the oceans of the Dharma realm, all the oceans of the karma of sentient beings, all the oceans of the faculties and desires of sentient beings, all the oceans of the wheels of Dharma of the buddhas, all the oceans of the three times, all the oceans of the power of the vows of the tathāgatas, all the oceans of the spiritual transformations of the tathāgatas; and only when the contemplating was finished did he “address universally the bodhisattvas of all the oceanic assemblies of the place of enlightenment.”

Two things here are worth pausing over. First, before expounding there is contemplating — and the contemplating is not done by his own power of intellect, but is received from the Buddha’s spiritual power. Second, the ten oceans contemplated are not ten topics; they are one structure: worlds (the vessel), sentient beings (the sentient), the buddhas (those who can transform), the Dharma realm (the principle relied upon), karma (the cause of formation), faculties and desires (capacity), the wheel of Dharma (the teaching), the three times (time), the power of vows (the buddhas’ causes), spiritual transformation (the buddhas’ function). Vessel and sentient, cause and fruit, time and teaching — gathered in all at once; only then is there the standing to say how a world comes to be formed.

Set one misreading aside: do not read “contemplating universally” as browsing. Chengguan says that the entering of concentration in the earlier chapter is inwardly to accord with the source and that the universal contemplating here is outwardly to examine the aspects — source and aspect are two faces of one thing, and the contemplating of aspects is reliable precisely because the source has first been accorded with. Brought down to oneself: if a person has no capacity for stillness, the world he sees is only what karma has pushed him into seeing; it is not contemplation.

Twenty-Nine Clauses of the Inconceivable: What Is Praised Is Wisdom, What Is Spoken Of Is the Ocean

The first thing Samantabhadra says when he opens his mouth is not about worlds; he first praises the Buddha’s wisdom. Counting the sūtra text clause by clause, those that close with “inconceivable” come to twenty-nine, and they may be read as falling into three folds.

The first fold, ten clauses, speaks with respect to the Buddha’s wisdom — the wisdom that knows the forming, destroying, and purity of all the oceans of worlds; the wisdom that knows the oceans of the karma of all sentient beings; the wisdom that knows the ocean of the establishing of the Dharma realm; the wisdom that proclaims all the boundless oceans of buddhas; the wisdom that enters the oceans of the desires, understanding, and faculties; the wisdom that in a single thought knows universally all the three times; the wisdom that reveals the oceans of the measureless vows of all the tathāgatas; the wisdom that displays the ocean of the spiritual transformations of all the buddhas; the wisdom of turning the wheel of Dharma; and the establishing and expounding of the ocean. These ten clauses stand one to one over against the ten oceans contemplated earlier — what is contemplated is the ocean, and what is praised is the wisdom that can know that ocean.

The second fold, nine clauses, speaks with respect to the Buddha’s form-body and speech — the pure buddha-body; the universal illumination of the boundless ocean of forms and marks; that the marks together with the secondary signs are all pure; that the boundless ocean of wheels of light of forms and marks is complete in purity; the ocean of clouds of light of every kind of form and mark; the surpassing ocean of jeweled flames; the perfecting of the ocean of speech and sound; the displaying of the ocean of the three kinds of sovereign mastery whereby all sentient beings are subdued and matured; the valorous subduing of the oceans of sentient beings “with not one passed over in vain.” The first fold said the inconceivable with respect to wisdom; this fold says the inconceivable directly with respect to the body of the Dharma: the boundlessness of the bodily marks, the inexhaustibility of the light, the perfecting of speech and sound, and the subduing of sentient beings “with not one passed over in vain” — not once is it spent for nothing.

The third fold, ten clauses, speaks with respect to the completeness of virtue and function — abiding in the buddha-ground; entering the realm of the Tathāgata; upholding and protecting with majestic power; contemplating all that the wisdom of a buddha ranges over; the powers complete and none able to crush them; the merit of fearlessness that none can surpass; abiding in the samādhi without differentiation; the spiritual penetrations and transformations; the pure and sovereign wisdom; that none can destroy any of the dharmas of a buddha.

One question has to be put here: if the ocean of worlds is to be spoken of, why praise the Buddha’s wisdom first? Chengguan answers this beautifully. He says that the contemplating and the praising “complete each other in turn”: because the ocean is hard to fathom, the buddha-wisdom that can know it exhaustively is hard to fathom; and because the buddha-wisdom is hard to fathom, that ocean shows itself as deep and vast. He then asks himself: in that case why not simply speak of the wisdom? He answers, “apart from the objects of the ocean, how would one know its aspects?” — apart from the object known, wisdom has no way of showing itself. Therefore to speak of the ocean is to speak of the wisdom.

Set one misreading aside: these twenty-nine clauses are not phrases of laudatory rhetoric. They are first establishing the measure of what is to be known — if one does not first know how large the thing to be spoken of is, the ten things that follow will be read as ten items of information. Brought down to oneself: if in reading this chapter what one comes away with is ‘so the universe is this big,’ one has read only half; if one comes away with ‘the mind that can know all this is like this,’ only then has one read what Samantabhadra means.

I Shall Expound It in Full by the Buddha’s Spiritual Power

The praising done, Samantabhadra says: “All the various dharmas such as these I shall, by the Buddha’s spiritual power and by the majestic spiritual power of all the tathāgatas, expound in full.” This sentence is the granting of the exposition — a promise to speak, together with a statement of what that speaking rests upon.

Here the ancient worthies left a difficulty, which Chengguan himself raises: since he says “in full,” why does the text below speak only of the two matters of the establishing and the ocean of worlds? He gives two answers: first, “because the sūtra as transmitted is not complete” — the text that reached the Han lands is not the whole of it; second, that although only the two oceans of worlds are spoken of, the thirty clauses of questions have in fact all been covered, since where there is a realm there must be beings, and it abides upon something, and buddhas appear in it, and its establishing differs, and deeds and karma bring it about — the rest may be inferred in kind.

Set one misreading aside: “by the Buddha’s spiritual power” is not a modest formula. The universal contemplating earlier was by the Buddha’s spiritual power, and the expounding here is by the Buddha’s spiritual power — Samantabhadra’s position from beginning to end is to speak on the Buddha’s behalf, not to put forth a meaning of his own. This is exactly what is most distinctive about this sūtra: those who expound are mostly bodhisattvas, and what is expounded is throughout the realm of a buddha.

He Speaks for the Sake of Ten Things: The Ten Purposes of the Exposition

After granting the exposition, Samantabhadra sets out ten clauses of “for the sake of causing … .” These are the intent of the whole chapter, and they are also the ten measuring rods a reader should take up to check what he has gained by reading.

One, for the sake of causing sentient beings to enter the ocean of the Buddha’s wisdom — the final purpose of speaking of worlds is to enter wisdom, not to know worlds. Two, for the sake of causing all bodhisattvas to gain an abiding within the ocean of the merit of the buddhas — it is spoken to those who have already raised the mind, that they may be able to settle there. Three, for the sake of causing all the oceans of worlds to be adorned by the sovereign mastery of all the buddhas — showing that lands are not heaped up by chance but adorned by the buddhas’ mastery. Four, for the sake of causing the lineage of the Tathāgata never to be cut off throughout the oceans of kalpas — however long the time, the buddha-lineage is not cut off; this foretells the thing of kalpa-abiding. Five, for the sake of revealing within all the oceans of worlds the true nature of all dharmas — speaking of shape and substance is not to satisfy curiosity but to reveal the true nature. Six, for the sake of expounding in accord with the measureless oceans of understanding of all sentient beings — expounding according to the differences of resolute understanding. Seven, for the sake of according with the oceans of the faculties of all sentient beings and by skillful means causing the dharmas of the buddhas to arise — laying down expedients according to the differences of faculty. Eight, for the sake of according with the oceans of the delights and desires of all sentient beings and crushing all the mountains of obstruction — breaking obstructions according to the differences of delight and desire. Nine, for the sake of according with the oceans of the mental conduct of all sentient beings and causing them to purify and cultivate the essential road of deliverance — showing the road of deliverance according to the differences of mental conduct. Ten, for the sake of causing all bodhisattvas to abide within the ocean of Samantabhadra’s vows — at the last it comes home to Samantabhadra’s vow.

Chengguan gathers these ten clauses into five pairs: realizing wisdom and completing merit; adorning lands and continuing the lineage (which is also the pair of time and place); revealing the meaning and setting forth the teaching; producing good and extinguishing evil; purifying karma and the universal vow. And he says one thing that matters greatly: these ten clauses “are also in common the cause from which the teaching of the whole sūtra arises” — they are not the intent of this chapter only, but the occasion for the arising of the entire sūtra.

Brought down to oneself: clauses six through nine are four faces of a single model — understanding, faculty, desire, mental conduct. That the exposition must meet capacity is not a concession; it is because the shape of the obstruction differs from person to person.

Eleven Clauses of Joy: The Ground Laid Before the Verses

The prose section finished, the sūtra says that Samantabhadra “further wished to cause” this and that, eleven clauses in all, and only then spoke the verses. Chengguan judges these eleven clauses thus: the first one is the general heading, saying that hearing the Dharma will surely give rise to joy; the remaining ten set forth in particular the senses of that joy, and they too may be gathered into five pairs: delighting in the Dharma and giving rise to faith; realizing the nature and establishing the vow; understanding the real and entering the conventional; upholding the Dharma and showing the Buddha; opening the Dharma and increasing wisdom.

The ten clauses one by one are: causing them to increase love and delight in all dharmas; causing them to give rise to the ocean of vast and true resolute understanding; causing them to purify and cultivate the body that is the treasury of the Dharma realm of the universal gate; causing them to establish the ocean of Samantabhadra’s vows; causing them to purify and cultivate the eye of wisdom that enters the sameness of the three times; causing them to increase the ocean of great insight that illumines universally the treasury of all the worlds; causing them to give rise to the power of dhāraṇī and uphold all the wheels of Dharma; causing the realm of the Buddha to be entirely disclosed within all the places of enlightenment; causing all the Dharma-gates of the tathāgatas to be thrown open; causing them to increase the nature of omniscience, vast and most profound, that is the Dharma realm.

What has to be asked is: why, before expounding, must one first speak of ‘causing joy to arise’? Because the realm this chapter speaks of is so large that it can press down upon a person. A vast Dharma is a burden to a mind not yet ripened, and only to a ripened mind is it joy. So Samantabhadra first lays down eleven clauses of joy, and then speaks the ten verses. Brought down to oneself: if in reading the Avataṃsaka one comes away feeling pressed rather than joyful, it is most often because “measureless and boundless” has been read as a quantity rather than as the breadth of the Buddha’s compassionate vow.

Ten Verses of Praise and Exhortation: Who Can Hear This Dharma

The ten verses that follow Chengguan judges as “the first eight praising, the last two exhorting”; and among the eight of praise, the first two set forth the intent of the Buddha’s appearing, and the latter six distinguish the vessel of the Dharma — of which the first one distinguishes what is not a vessel, the next four show what is a vessel, and the last one brings it home to the Buddha’s power.

The Buddha’s wisdom is most profound — the first verse says “wisdom most profound, an ocean of merit, appearing universally throughout the measureless lands of the ten directions”; the second says that the oceans of lands of the ten directions are inconceivable and that the Buddha has adorned and purified them for measureless kalpas, arising and appearing in the lands only to teach sentient beings and bring them to maturity. These two verses give at the outset the conclusion of the ten things that follow: the reason the oceans of lands are adorned and pure is the Buddha’s work of transforming.

The realm of the Buddha hard to fathom, and the distinguishing of what is not a vessel — the third verse says that the Buddha’s realm is most profound and that he discloses it universally to sentient beings so that they may enter, and yet “those whose minds delight in the lesser and cling to the forms of existence cannot penetrate what the Buddha has awakened to” — this distinguishes what is not a vessel, and what is not a vessel lies not in intellect but in delighting in the lesser and clinging to existence.

Four verses showing what is a vessel — only one who has a firm mind of pure faith, who constantly draws near to good friends, and to whom the buddhas lend their power can enter the Tathāgata’s wisdom; one who is far from flattery and deceit, whose mind is pure, who constantly delights in kindness and compassion, whose aspiration is vast and whose faith is deep, gives rise to gladness on hearing this Dharma; one who abides in the ground of Samantabhadra’s vows, cultivates the pure path of a bodhisattva, and contemplates the Dharma realm as being like space can know where the Buddha ranges; these bodhisattvas gain a good benefit and see the power of the Buddha’s spiritual penetrations, while “those who cultivate other paths cannot know it; only those who practice the conduct of Samantabhadra come to comprehend it.”

Bringing it home to the Buddha’s power — “sentient beings are vast and without limit; the Tathāgata is mindful and protective of every one of them”; he turns the wheel of Dharma and there is nowhere it does not reach — this is the power of Vairocana’s realm.

The last two verses exhorting them to listen — “all the lands enter into my body, and so likewise do the buddhas who abide in them”; Samantabhadra asks the assembly to contemplate his pores and says that he now displays for them the realm of the Buddha; the last verse says that the conduct and vows of Samantabhadra are without limit and that he has cultivated them to fulfillment, and that the realm of the universal eye and the vast body are where the Buddha ranges and should be attentively heard.

Set one misreading aside: “all the lands enter into my body” is not a display of spiritual powers. It is the whole of the ten things of this chapter in miniature — if lands had substance of their own they could not enter a body; that they can enter is precisely because their substance and nature are empty and karma and vow are able to bring them about. Chengguan and Li Tongxuan both cite the four lines of the fifth verse as the very place where the intent of this chapter lies, which shows that what the ancient worthies read in this passage was who can receive this Dharma, not who has the powers.

The Ten Things of the Ocean of Worlds: A Single Table of Contents

The exposition proper begins. Samantabhadra addresses the great assembly: “The ocean of worlds has ten things, which the buddhas of the past, the present, and the future have already spoken of, are now speaking of, and will speak of.” The ten things are: the causes and conditions of being furnished, that upon which it abides, shape, substance, adornment, purity, the arising of buddhas, kalpa-abiding, the differences of kalpa-transformation, and the gate of freedom from differentiation. At the end he concludes with one sentence: stated summarily there are these ten things; were they stated at length they would equal the number of atoms in an ocean of worlds.

First a single word must be explained. Why is it called an “ocean”? Chengguan explains it with the utmost economy: “lands amassed make a seed, seeds amassed make an ocean; the ocean has no separate substance, it is simply the general name of worlds.” — land upon land amassed makes a world-seed, seed upon seed amassed makes an ocean of worlds; the ocean is not another thing, it is the general name for worlds. Fazang, over on the side of the sixty-fascicle text, explains the ten names by saying that they are “all numerous and profound, and so alike are named oceans,” and judges the name to be a compound of coincidence — the world simply is the ocean, and “ocean” is a name established from the simile.

Chengguan further gives, item by item, the sense proper to each of the ten things: the first is being established by the gathering of conditions; the second is abiding once formed; the third is the distinction of outward aspect; the fourth is the difference of inward substance; the fifth is the ornamenting with jewels and the like; the sixth is that defilement does not arise; the seventh is the differing of the buddhas’ appearing; the eighth is the length and shortness of kalpa-abiding; the ninth is changing in accordance with karma; the tenth is that the containing is of necessity even. These ten senses are the key to reading the ten sections below — the first eight speak of difference, the ninth of change, and the tenth of sameness.

Look once more at the clause ‘the buddhas of the three times have already spoken, now speak, and will speak.’ Chengguan says this “makes plain its importance and excellence,” and further shows that “the speaking is settled, with no alteration.” Brought down to oneself: if a thing is spoken by the buddhas of all three times, then it is not an expedient of one moment; it is the Dharma being of necessity thus.

Thing One, the Causes and Conditions of Being Furnished: The World Is Formed from Ten Conditions

The first thing asks: how is the ocean of worlds formed? The sūtra text heads it with “stated summarily, by reason of ten causes and conditions all the oceans of worlds have been formed, are being formed, and will be formed,” and then lists ten conditions.

One, by reason of the spiritual power of the Tathāgata — the first condition lies not with sentient beings but with the Buddha, which states things once in exactly the reverse of the common supposition that ‘the world is made by the karma of beings’; Zhiyan, on the sixty-fascicle side, judges this item to be “the Buddha’s spiritual power, that is, the power of advancing.” Two, by reason of the Dharma being of necessity thus — the Dharma is originally so, and no further reason need be sought; Zhiyan judges this to be “the principle of dependent origination being so.” Three, by reason of the deeds and karma of all sentient beings — this is what is usually called the impelling of karma, and it stands third, not first. Four, by reason of what all bodhisattvas gain in perfecting omniscience — the bodhisattvas press toward omniscience, and lands are formed along with it. Five, by reason of all sentient beings together with the bodhisattvas amassing roots of goodness in common — note that this item sets sentient beings and bodhisattvas side by side: a pure land is not the affair of the bodhisattva’s side alone, it is karma held in common. Six, by reason of the power of the vow of all bodhisattvas to adorn and purify the lands — the adorning and purifying of lands is a vow, not a by-product. Seven, by reason of all bodhisattvas perfecting non-retrogressive conduct and vows — the vow must be non-retrogressive if a land is to be formed at all. Eight, by reason of the pure resolute understanding and sovereign mastery of all bodhisattvas — resolute understanding being pure, mastery is gained, and the land appears according to that understanding. Nine, by reason of what flows forth from the roots of goodness of all the tathāgatas together with the sovereign force of all the buddhas at the time of their attaining the path — what flows forth from the tathāgatas’ roots of goodness, together with the sovereign force of that moment of attaining the path. Ten, by reason of the power of the sovereign vows of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva — the last item comes home to Samantabhadra, answering to the expounder of the whole chapter.

One misreading must be set aside: these ten conditions are not ten independent causes laid side by side; they are the interweaving of four kinds — the Buddha’s power, the nature of the Dharma, the karma of beings, and the vows of bodhisattvas. The world is neither made purely by karma (else the Buddha’s spiritual power would have nothing to do) nor made purely by the Buddha (else the item of the deeds and karma of beings would be set down for nothing). Chengguan says it plainly: this thing is “being established by the gathering of conditions” — gathering, that is, the drawing together of many conditions.

Brought down to oneself: if one asks ‘who made the situation I am in,’ the answer these ten conditions give is: your karma is in it, the karma of others is in it, the vow of those who vow is in it, and the Dharma being originally thus is in it as well. Seeing this clearly, one will neither hand it all over to fate nor take it all upon oneself.

Thing Two, That Upon Which It Abides: What the World Stands On

The second thing asks: once the world is formed, upon what does it abide? The sūtra text heads it with “each single ocean of worlds has as many supports upon which it depends and abides as there are atoms in an ocean of worlds” — note that here it does not say ten, it says the number of atoms; the ten items listed below are only instances.

The ten items are: some abide depending on all adornments; some abide depending on space; some abide depending on the light of all jewels; some abide depending on the light of all buddhas; some abide depending on the light of the colors of all jewels; some abide depending on the voices of all buddhas; some abide depending on a Vajra-Bearer in the form of a mighty asura born of illusion-like karma; some abide depending on the bodies of all the rulers of the worlds; some abide depending on the bodies of all bodhisattvas; some abide depending on the ocean of all the differentiated adornments born of the power of Samantabhadra’s vows.

Going through the items one by one, a gradation appears. The first five depend on things (adornments, space, the light of jewels, the light of buddhas, the light of the colors of jewels) — and of these the item of abiding in dependence on space most repays turning over, since space is not a thing, but the dependence that is a dependence on nothing. The middle item depends on sound (the voices of the buddhas): that a world should abide by sound is unintelligible to common sense, and yet it is precisely the constant meaning of this sūtra — name and speech are able to make a land appear. The last three depend on bodies (a Vajra-Bearer, the bodies of the rulers of the worlds, the bodies of bodhisattvas): the world abides upon the body of some guardian, some ruler of a world, some bodhisattva. And the final item depends on a vow (the ocean of differentiated adornments born of Samantabhadra’s vows).

Chengguan has one judgment here that matters: of this thing he says “the next seven things are in each case only one — that is, one that abides depending on space does not depend on light and the rest” — with respect to any one land, that upon which it abides is single; depending on space, it does not depend on light. Hence the ten items are not ten dependencies of a single land, but the several dependencies of different lands, each with its own.

Set one misreading aside: do not read “abiding in dependence on space” as suspension in the scientific sense, nor as depending on nothing at all. Space here has the sense of unobstructedness — because nothing obstructs it, it can contain everything. Brought down to oneself: upon whatever a person’s mind abides, upon that his world abides; depending on things, one shifts with things; depending on a vow, one stands by that vow. That the last item gathers the ten upon Samantabhadra’s vow means exactly this.

Thing Three, Shape: What the World Looks Like

The third thing asks: what are the shapes and forms of the ocean of worlds? The sūtra text heads it with “the ocean of worlds has shapes and forms of many kinds and differences” and lists ten items: some round, some square, some neither round nor square with measureless differences; some in the shape of a whirlpool of water, some in the shape of a mountain flame, some in the shape of a tree, some in the shape of a flower, some in the shape of a palace, some in the shape of a sentient being, some in the shape of a buddha. It closes with a mark of elision and concludes that there are as many as the atoms in an ocean of worlds.

The first three items are geometric shapes — round, square, neither round nor square; the latter seven are shapes taken from things — whirlpool (a vortex of water), mountain flame, tree, flower, palace, sentient being, buddha. The order is worth noting: from the most abstract round and square it walks all the way to the most concrete, the shape of a buddha. The shape of a world may be the shape of a buddha — a sentence rarely met with in other sūtras, and it is on exactly this that Fazang establishes the first class of the places of transformation on the One Vehicle: from the world-realms of Sumeru and the shapes of trees and the rest, on to the oceans of worlds in the shapes of all sentient beings.

Set one misreading aside: this does not say that some planet is shaped like a buddha. Chengguan judges this thing to be “the distinction of outward aspect,” which is spoken with respect to aspect; and the verses themselves give the reason why shapes differ by the thousand — “all of these are made to differ by karma.” Shape is the fruit; karma is the cause. Brought down to oneself: the look of one’s situation is settled by karma, and this item merely states at the scale of a world the same principle that holds for a person.

Thing Four, Substance: What the World Takes for Its Substance

The fourth thing asks: what does the ocean of worlds take for its substance? Of the ten things, this one lists the most items — counting the sūtra text item by item there are twenty substances — and at the end of its prose it does not, as the other things do, close with the sentence “as many as the atoms in an ocean of worlds.” It is recorded as it stands, without forcing an explanation.

The twenty substances are: the adornment of all jewels; the many kinds of adornment of a single jewel; the light of all jewels; light of many kinds of color; the light of all adornments; indestructible vajra; the sustaining by the Buddha’s power; the marks of marvelous jewels; the transformations of the Buddha; a sun-maṇi wheel; exceedingly subtle jewels; the flames of all jewels; fragrances of many kinds; the flowering crowns of all jewels; the reflected images of all jewels; what is displayed by all adornments; the realm universally displayed by a single thought of mind; jewels in the shape of a bodhisattva; the stamens of jeweled flowers; the speech and sound of the Buddha.

They may be read in four classes. The jewel class (the adornment of jewels, the many adornments of a single jewel, the marks of marvelous jewels, exceedingly subtle jewels, jeweled flame, jeweled flowering crowns, the stamens of jeweled flowers, jewels in the shape of a bodhisattva, the sun-maṇi wheel, indestructible vajra) — the largest, showing that lands taking firm and pure things for their substance are many. The light class (the light of jewels, light of many colors, the light of adornments, the reflected images of jewels) — taking light and shadow for substance, the substance is already close to being unreal. The buddha-power class (the sustaining by the Buddha’s power, the transformations of the Buddha, the speech and sound of the Buddha) — taking the Buddha’s sustaining, transforming, and speaking for substance. The mind class (the realm universally displayed by a single thought of mind, what is displayed by all adornments) — taking for substance the realm displayed by a single thought of mind, which is the most thoroughgoing item among the twenty. There is besides the single item of fragrances of many kinds, which takes vapor for substance.

From jewel to light, from light to buddha-power, from buddha-power to a single thought of mind — this gradation is the backbone of this thing. The verses say it still more plainly: “some are born from an ocean of mind, abiding according to what the mind understands, illusion-like and without location, all of it discrimination.”

Here the ancient worthies made a distinction of the first importance, and the attribution must be made plain. Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle text, establishes the substance according to the teachings under the gate of “name and substance”: the Lesser Vehicle takes the finest particles and the real form of the four great elements for substance; in the three vehicles, ordinary beings and those of the Lesser Vehicle and those before the grounds all take the ālaya consciousness for substance, while on the grounds, if it is what the two wisdoms display, then consciousness-only wisdom is taken for substance, and he cites the Shedacheng lun in evidence; the final teaching takes the suchness of the Tathāgata-womb for substance; and the One Vehicle takes “the inexhaustible Dharma realm pervading the three kinds of world, with person and dharma, principle and phenomenon, and all such aspects of practice mutually identical and mutually serving as one another’s substance.” Zhiyan too, over on the sixty-fascicle side, sets up sameness and difference by matching the ten names against the eighteen aspects of perfect purity in the Shedacheng lun. This is where the Huayan school and the consciousness-only school stand apart on the single question of the substance of a land: the One Vehicle does not take consciousness for substance, but takes mutual identity as mutually being substance. This adjudication was established by the ancient worthies; their own adjudications are recorded, without judging their relative merit.

Set one misreading aside: to say “taking the speech and sound of the Buddha for substance” is not a figure of speech. If substance can be a sound, and can be the realm displayed by a single thought of mind, then “substance” here is not a really existent material; it is the sense of that upon which a thing rests. Brought down to oneself: whatever you take for your own substance — body, name, wealth, or a single thought of mind — your world takes that for its substance.

Thing Five, Adornment: How the World Is Decked Out

The fifth thing asks: whence come the adornments of the ocean of worlds? The sūtra text lists ten items: some take for adornment the surpassingly marvelous clouds that come forth from among all the implements of adornment; some take for adornment the proclaiming of the merit of all bodhisattvas; some take for adornment the proclaiming of the karmic recompense of all sentient beings; some take for adornment the displaying of the ocean of the vows of all bodhisattvas; some take for adornment the setting forth of the reflected images of all the buddhas of the three times; some take for adornment the displaying in the space of a single thought of the realms of spiritual penetration through boundless kalpas; some take for adornment the appearing of the bodies of all buddhas; some take for adornment the appearing of all clouds of jeweled fragrance; some take for adornment the displaying of the shining light of all the precious and marvelous things within all the places of enlightenment; some take for adornment the displaying of all the conduct and vows of Samantabhadra.

Two of the ten items are the most remarkable: the second and the third — taking the proclaiming of the merit of bodhisattvas for adornment, and taking the proclaiming of the karmic recompense of sentient beings for adornment. What adorns a world turns out to be speech; and one of the things spoken is the karmic recompense of beings, which is not beautiful. This pulls the two words “adornment” back from decoration to their root sense: adornment is causing a thing to show — to bring out what ought to be brought out is adornment. The remaining eight items take, respectively, clouds, vows, the images of buddhas, the realms of kalpas, the bodies of buddhas, clouds of fragrance, the precious things of the places of enlightenment, and the conduct and vows of Samantabhadra for adornment; Chengguan judges this thing to be “the ornamenting with jewels and the like.”

Set one misreading aside: do not read adornment as splendor. Since the sūtra text takes the proclaiming of karmic recompense for adornment, it is plain that to bring out the truth of a thing is also adornment. Brought down to oneself: a person’s adornment does not lie in what he has added, but in what he has brought out.

Thing Six, Purity: How the World Becomes Clean

The sixth thing asks: how does the ocean of worlds attain purity? The sūtra text heads it with “the ocean of worlds has oceans of skillful means of purity as many as the atoms in an ocean of worlds” — the two words “skillful means” are specially added, from which it is plain that what is answered is a method, not a state. The ten items are all clauses ending in “by reason of”:

One, by reason of the bodhisattvas drawing near to all good friends and cultivating roots of goodness in common with them — the first item is the good friend, which is of a piece with the whole sūtra (the root of Sudhana’s successive visits lies here). Two, by reason of increasing the vast clouds of merit until they pervade the Dharma realm. Three, by reason of purifying and cultivating the many kinds of vast resolute understanding. Four, by reason of contemplating the realms of all bodhisattvas and abiding therein. Five, by reason of cultivating all the pāramitās until they are complete. Six, by reason of contemplating all the grounds of the bodhisattvas and entering and abiding therein. Seven, by reason of bringing forth all the oceans of pure vows. Eight, by reason of cultivating the conduct of all the essential roads of deliverance. Nine, by reason of entering into all the oceans of adornment. Ten, by reason of perfecting the power of pure skillful means.

Set out in a row, these ten items are a complete road: drawing near to a good friend (the beginning) → amassing merit and cultivating resolute understanding (the provisions) → contemplating the realms of bodhisattvas and abiding there, cultivating the pāramitās to completeness, contemplating the grounds and entering to abide in them (the practice proper) → bringing forth pure vows and cultivating the conduct of deliverance (vow and practice) → entering the ocean of adornment and perfecting the power of pure skillful means (the function of the fruit). Chengguan judges this thing to be “defilement not arising” — it is not that the dirty is washed away, but that it is caused not to arise.

One great misreading must be set aside: what this item speaks of is the purity of a world, and yet everything it lists is the conduct of a bodhisattva. How should a world become clean because someone cultivates the pāramitās? This is exactly what the chapter means to teach: a land is not an external thing but is formed by karma held in common and by vow and practice, and therefore the cause of a pure land lies on the ground where the practitioner stands. Chengguan says in the gate of the tenet and aim, “because lands differ according to mind, one should purify one’s own mind and the minds of others,” and this thing is the scriptural ground of that sentence. Brought down to oneself: to want the environment to improve while thinking only of remaking the environment — this item speaks of another road.

Thing Seven, the Arising of Buddhas: How a Buddha Appears Within the World

The seventh thing asks: when buddhas appear in the ocean of worlds, what differences are there? The sūtra text lists ten items, which fall exactly into five pairs: some manifest a small body, some a great body; some manifest a short life span, some a long life span; some adorn and purify a single buddha-land alone, some adorn and purify measureless buddha-lands; some reveal the wheel of Dharma of the One Vehicle alone, some reveal the inconceivable wheels of Dharma of the many vehicles; some manifest the subduing of a small portion of sentient beings, some display the subduing of boundless sentient beings.

The five pairs speak, respectively, with respect to the measure of the body, the measure of life, the measure of the land, the measure of the teaching, and the measure of capacity. Each pair sets one over against many: small and great, short and long, one land and measureless lands, one vehicle and many vehicles, a small portion and the boundless. Chengguan judges this thing to be “the differing of the buddhas’ appearing.”

One question must be put: why should a buddha manifest a small body, manifest a short life, purify only one land, expound only the One Vehicle, deliver only a small portion? The verses answer for themselves: “all of them accord with what is delighted in within the minds of sentient beings; this is the power of the Tathāgata’s skill in expedients.” Smallness is not an inability to be great; it is that the beings there can bear only the small.

Set one misreading aside: do not judge the height of a buddha by the size of what is manifested. The verse says, “the dharma-body of the buddhas is inconceivable, without color, without shape, and without reflected image” — the dharma-body is without aspect, and all that is manifested accords with capacity. Brought down to oneself: the size of a Dharma-gate or of a place of practice is no measuring rod for excellence; whether it can meet the minds of the beings there is.

Thing Eight, Kalpa-Abiding: How Long the World Lasts

The eighth thing asks: for how much time does the ocean of worlds abide? The sūtra text heads it with “the ocean of worlds has kalpa-abidings as many as the atoms in an ocean of worlds,” and lists nine items below: some abide for asaṃkhyeya kalpas, some for measureless kalpas, some for boundless kalpas, some for unequalled kalpas, some for uncountable kalpas, some for unnameable kalpas, some for unthinkable kalpas, some for immeasurable kalpas, some for unspeakable kalpas.

Here one thing must be recorded as it stands: the prose of this section counts out to nine items, unlike the ten items listed in the things before and after it — it is recorded as it stands, without forcing an explanation.

The nine items are all nine ways of saying ‘one cannot say how long’: asaṃkhyeya (innumerable), measureless, boundless, unequalled, uncountable, unnameable, unthinkable, immeasurable, unspeakable. The nine words are in fact doing one and the same thing — driving “long” out past the border of language. Chengguan judges this thing to be “the length and shortness of kalpa-abiding.”

Set one misreading aside: this is not hyperbole. The verses immediately give two key lines: “some enter measureless kalpas into a single kalpa, and some again a single kalpa into many kalpas,” and “beginning from a single thought and ending in the completing of a kalpa, all of them are born depending on the thinking of the minds of sentient beings.” Kalpas can interpenetrate precisely because a kalpa is not a really existent stretch of length; and kalpas are long or short because they are born depending on the thinking of the minds of beings. Brought down to oneself: the length and shortness of time is a station of the mind, and this item states that fact once at the scale of a world.

Thing Nine, Kalpa-Transformation: How the World Changes

The ninth thing asks: how is the ocean of worlds transformed? This is the one thing among the ten that speaks of change, and all ten of its items are of the form ‘by reason of such a condition, the ocean of worlds becomes such a kalpa-transformation’:

One, by reason of the Dharma being of necessity thus, the ocean of worlds has measureless kalpa-transformations of formation and destruction — the first item is again the Dharma being of necessity so; formation and destruction are the ordinary state. Two, by reason of defiled sentient beings abiding therein, it becomes a defiled kalpa-transformation. Three, by reason of sentient beings who cultivate vast merit abiding therein, it becomes a defiled-and-pure kalpa-transformation. Four, by reason of bodhisattvas of resolute understanding abiding therein, it becomes a defiled-and-pure kalpa-transformation. Five, by reason of measureless sentient beings giving rise to the mind of awakening, it becomes a wholly pure kalpa-transformation. Six, by reason of the bodhisattvas each roaming through the many worlds, it becomes a boundlessly adorned kalpa-transformation. Seven, by reason of the bodhisattvas of all the oceans of worlds of the ten directions gathering like clouds, it becomes a measurelessly and greatly adorned kalpa-transformation. Eight, by reason of the buddhas, the world-honored ones, entering nirvāṇa, it becomes a kalpa-transformation in which the adornments are extinguished. Nine, by reason of the buddhas appearing in the world, it becomes a broadly and vastly adorned and purified kalpa-transformation. Ten, by reason of the spiritual penetrations and transformations of the Tathāgata, it becomes a universally purified kalpa-transformation.

Set out in a row, these ten items make one clear line: as is the one who abides there, so does the world become. Where defiled beings abide it is defiled; where those who cultivate merit abide, defilement and purity are mixed; where bodhisattvas of resolute understanding abide it is still defiled-and-pure (not yet wholly pure); and only when beings give rise to the mind of awakening does it become wholly pure. Above that come the roaming of bodhisattvas and the gathering of bodhisattvas, and the adornment grows ever broader. The last three items are attached to buddhas: when a buddha enters nirvāṇa the adornments are extinguished; when a buddha appears in the world it is broadly and vastly adorned and purified; when a buddha manifests spiritual transformation it is universally pure. Chengguan judges this thing to be “changing in accordance with karma.”

The third and fourth items especially repay a pause: sentient beings who cultivate vast merit and bodhisattvas of the stage of resolute understanding are felt to bring about the very same “defiled-and-pure kalpa-transformation” — merit and resolute understanding are alike still not enough to make a land wholly pure; it must come to the giving rise of the mind of awakening before it is wholly pure. The verses say it directly: “measureless sentient beings all give rise to the mind of awakening; their minds cause the oceans of lands to abide through kalpas constantly pure.”

Set one misreading aside: the eighth item, “by reason of the buddhas, the world-honored ones, entering nirvāṇa, the ocean of worlds becomes a kalpa-transformation in which the adornments are extinguished,” does not say that a buddha’s nirvāṇa is a bad thing. The verses explain it themselves: “when the World-Honored One enters nirvāṇa, the adornments of that land are extinguished; sentient beings lack the measure of a vessel for the Dharma, and the world becomes defiled” — the extinguishing of the adornments has its cause in the fact that beings no longer have the vessel to receive, and so the Buddha displays his passing. Brought down to oneself: the good or ill of an environment is the developed image of the minds of those who live in it, and this thing is the passage in the whole chapter that comes down most closely to daily life.

Thing Ten, Freedom from Differentiation: The Sameness Above All Difference

The tenth thing asks: nine things of difference having been spoken, is there then anything that does not differ? The sūtra text heads it with “the ocean of worlds has freedoms from differentiation as many as the atoms in an ocean of worlds” and lists ten items, each beginning with “within each single ocean of worlds”:

One, there is no differentiation among worlds as many as the atoms in an ocean of worlds. Two, there is no differentiation in all the majestic power of the appearing of the buddhas. Three, there is no differentiation in all the places of enlightenment pervading the Dharma realm of the ten directions. Four, there is no differentiation in the oceanic assemblies at the places of enlightenment of all the tathāgatas. Five, there is no differentiation in the light of all the buddhas pervading the Dharma realm. Six, there is no differentiation in the names of the transformations of all the buddhas. Seven, there is no differentiation in the speech and sound of all the buddhas pervading the ocean of worlds and abiding through boundless kalpas. Eight, there is no differentiation in the skillful means of the wheel of Dharma. Nine, there is no differentiation in all the oceans of worlds entering universally into a single atom. Ten, there is no differentiation in the fact that within each single atom the vast realms of all the buddhas, the world-honored ones, of the three times all appear therein.

The ten items move from without to within: from the worlds themselves, to the majestic power of the buddhas, the places of enlightenment, the assemblies, the light, the names, the speech and sound, and the wheel of Dharma, and at the last the final two items come down upon “a single atom” — all the oceans of worlds entering into one atom, and within one atom the vast realms of the buddhas of the three times appearing. Chengguan judges this thing to be “the containing being of necessity even.”

This item is the most easily misread, and the ancient worthies long ago set up a distinction. Chengguan says that freedom from differentiation means “with respect to the sameness of substance and nature and the gathering-in by the Buddha’s power it is said to be without differentiation, and therefore the defiled and the pure are alike held complete”; and he refutes an older explanation — some said that “all worlds being alike when set beside one another” is what is called freedom from differentiation, and Chengguan judges this to run against the sūtra text, because the sūtra plainly says “each single ocean of worlds has, as many as the atoms in an ocean of worlds, freedoms from differentiation.” — the freedoms from differentiation are themselves countable things; and if one followed the reading of being alike when set side by side, then, as Chengguan concludes, “there would be no such thing as differentiation,” and this item would have nothing countable left in it.

This distinction is exceedingly important: freedom from differentiation does not say that the lands look alike. The first nine things have spoken out difference to the full; if the tenth thing said that difference disappears, the first nine would have been spoken for nothing. Freedom from differentiation says this: above all this difference, the substance and nature are the same and the Buddha’s power gathers all in, and therefore defiled land and pure land alike are held complete.

Set one misreading aside: do not read “all the oceans of worlds entering universally into a single atom” as a shrinking. The verses say, “within a single atom are many oceans of lands, their places each differing and all of them adorned and purified; measureless oceans of lands such as these enter into a single one, and each one is set apart with no confusion or overstepping” — entering into one atom while the places remain each its own and the distinctions are not thrown into confusion: this is the Huayan meaning. Brought down to oneself: sameness is not the flattening of difference; it is seeing sameness upon difference. This thing closes the whole chapter, and it also opens the Flower-Treasury world of the chapter that follows.

The Correspondence of the Eleven Sections of Repeated Verse

The form of this chapter is that each of the ten things has prose first and repeated verse after, and with the ten verses of the section praising the excellence in the root portion added, there are eleven sections of verse in all, counting out to one hundred and twenty verses. The general rule Chengguan lays down is that “where the ten things differ they make ten sections, and each one alike has prose and verse. Within the prose there are in each case three, namely the heading, the explanation, and the conclusion.”

The relation of verse to prose is correspondence without repeating the teaching: what the prose has already taught, the verse simply sets forth once more in another way, while supplying besides the similes the prose did not reach. Hence the similes of this chapter lie almost entirely within the verses — like a shadow, like an illusion, and like a mirage; like clouds spread out within space; like Indra’s net each differing; abiding like reflected images with neither grasping nor telling to be had; that Dharma pure as the turning of a wheel. Among the ten sections of prose, only the thing of shape describes its shapes with the seven similes of whirlpool, mountain flame, tree, flower, palace, sentient being, and buddha; the prose of the remaining nine things sets forth the items of the Dharma directly, and only the thing of that upon which they abide has the single word “illusion-like” (“some abide depending on a Vajra-Bearer in the form of a mighty asura born of illusion-like karma”), setting up no further simile.

The measures of the eleven sections of verse are not even: in order they are ten, nine, twenty-two, ten, ten, ten, nine, ten, ten, ten, and ten verses — the section on that upon which they abide alone reaches twenty-two verses and is the longest section of verse in the chapter. The prose on abiding lists only ten items, and yet the verse spreads out most widely of all, which shows what the ancient worthies called “making the summary plain by breadth.”

Lineage

The meaning of this chapter was carried on by four masters, and all is recorded without adjudication. The line of Chengguan: he sets up the four gates of the reason for its coming, the explanation of the name, the tenet and aim, and the explanation of the text; he judges this chapter to answer the one question about the ocean of the establishing of the Dharma realm among the thirty clauses of questions about the fruit in the chapter on the Manifestation of the Tathāgata, and takes it together with the chapter on the Flower-Treasury World as “the first two chapters setting forth the fruit”; he explains the name “ocean” by “lands amassed make a seed, seeds amassed make an ocean,” matches ten senses to the ten things, and under the clause concluding the summary and showing the breadth distinguishes how the ten things are of indeterminate number within any one land — the one of the conditions furnished may be one or many, the one of purity may be present or absent (since there are wholly defiled lands), and the remaining seven things are in each case only one. He further refutes as unfitting the earlier explanation of “as many as the atoms in an ocean of lands” by “one land, one condition,” and distinguishes the reading of freedom from differentiation as “being alike when set beside one another.” All these belong to the commentarial method of settling the meaning phrase by phrase.

The line of Fazang: he judges this section within the chapter on Vairocana of the sixty-fascicle text, where the ten names begin with “speaking of the ocean of worlds” and end with “the ocean of worlds of the means of destruction,” standing exactly in the relation of opening and combining with the eighty-fascicle text, which lacks “speaking” and has “the differences of kalpa-transformation” and “the gate of freedom from differentiation.” He explains the first item, “speaking of the ocean of worlds,” in four senses, of which one is “because a land appears through name and speech perfuming consciousness, it is called speaking.” He further sets up ten gates for a general explanation of the ocean of worlds — class, inhabitants, name and substance, defilement and purity, the tainted and the untainted, the shared and the unshared, the mundane and nirvāṇa, the supported and the supporting, person and dharma, and unobstructedness — and judges three classes of places of transformation on the One Vehicle: the oceans of worlds of Sumeru, tree shapes, and the shapes of sentient beings as the first class; the tenfold worlds beyond the three-thousandfold world as the second class; and the ocean of worlds of the adornments of the ten lotus treasuries, complete with host and companions like Indra’s net, as the third class. What is judged in the Huayan yicheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang is entirely the same as this, and is the doctrinal classification the Huayan school established by carrying on the single name “ocean of worlds” from this chapter. He also judges that the tenth item of the sixty-fascicle text, “the means of destruction,” is explained by the section on the Flower-Treasury, taking the sense that “forming is precisely destroying.”

The line of Zhiyan: he judges the sixty-fascicle text into three sections, and himself sets up a question and answer — why is it that the root portion contemplates the ocean and speaks of wisdom, while this expository portion sets wisdom aside and speaks only of the ocean of worlds? He answers: the one who set up the text was only completing the wisdom of faith and understanding and had not exhausted the source of the ocean; and moreover worlds are formed by wisdom, so that to speak of the ocean is precisely wisdom. He further takes the ten names of the sixty-fascicle text and sets up sameness and difference against the eighteen aspects of perfect purity of the Shedacheng lun, judges the first and last items to be “listed by name and not explained,” and judges the section on the causes and conditions of being furnished to have “eight within the particular” — which agrees with the eight conditions actually listed in the sixty-fascicle text.

The line of Li Tongxuan: he explains the name of the chapter from the two sources of karmic recompense and the power of vows — the ocean of worlds of sentient beings arises from the recompense of their own karma, and the ocean of worlds of buddhas and bodhisattvas arises from the power of great vows, the power of the pure Dharma-nature of their own substance, the ocean of the many practices of the pāramitās, and the power of great compassion and wisdom. He sets up five senses to make plain the reason for its coming, and their whole weight lies with the bodhisattva who has first raised the mind: were there no such chapter, the beginner would have no way of knowing the Tathāgata’s gate of practice for gathering beings in, nor the aspects of the breadth and narrowness of the worlds of the deeds and karma of beings, and so would have no way of raising the mind. He further distinguishes the view that the pure lands spoken of in the three vehicles lie in another quarter and that bodhisattvas vow to be born there, judging that reading to leave the mind “constantly defiled and pure, with limit and obstruction.” He and Chengguan alike cite the four lines of the fifth verse of this chapter, “far from every kind of flattery and deceit and the mind pure,” in evidence of their judgments.

The four masters proceed side by side; all are settled sayings of the ancient worthies, and they are recorded without judging their relative height. As for the differences between the sixty-fascicle and the eighty-fascicle texts — the opening and combining of the ten names, the difference in the number of items listed under the several things (twenty substances against five, ten adornments against three, ten supports against seven), and the differences of rendering (whirlpool against eddy, Vairocana against Rocana) — the two texts are recorded side by side, without judging their relative merit.

After this chapter comes the chapter on the Flower-Treasury World. Chengguan states the division of labor between the two chapters most clearly: this chapter “sets forth in general the oceans of lands possessed by all the buddhas and all sentient beings,” while the later chapter “sets forth in particular what our own Master has adorned and purified”; this chapter makes plain the conditions by which lands are formed, while the later chapter distinguishes separately the aspects of the fruit. So the reading of this chapter is not an ending — the ten things are one map of the general aspect, and the next chapter is to take that map and look with it at one particular world: the ocean of worlds of the adornments of the Flower-Treasury, which Vairocana adorned and purified when he was of old cultivating the conduct of a bodhisattva.

First, Get Clear What This Passage Is About

What the bodhisattva Samantabhadra does in this passage is very simple — he describes the Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea from beginning to end: by whom it was cultivated, what holds it up, what mountains, ground, seas, rivers, and groves stand upon it, and at the end he sums it up in one sentence: the adornments are inconceivable. Seven times over, the whole passage runs ‘the prose finishes speaking, and then the verse says it over again’; the speaker throughout is Samantabhadra alone; there are no questions and answers, and no debate.

Chengguan outlines this chapter in three sections — first, setting forth the cause and fruit of the Flower-Treasury itself; second, setting forth the arrayed adornments of the treasury sea; third, setting forth the differentiation of the net of lands upheld thereby — and the present passage is the first two of them. The first section speaks of the “cause” and the “substance”; from the second section on it speaks of “adornment”: the encircling mountains, the jeweled ground, the fragrant seas, the fragrant rivers, the groves, and the summation, which Chengguan adjudicates as six sub-sections. What must be noticed is that these “sections” and “sub-sections” are divisions made by the commentators so that the movement of the text can be seen clearly; the sūtra itself puts no section names on them.

Set up one guard against misreading first, and afterward you will not read it crooked. This passage narrates, tier by tier, the wind-wheels, the fragrant seas, the lotus, the encircling mountains, the jeweled ground, the fragrant rivers, the groves; it reads very much like the drawing of a diagram of the structure of the cosmos, and it is easy to take it for a gazetteer of geography. Chengguan blocks that misreading at the very opening of the first section: as to the measure of the land relied upon, the teachings speak differently — the Lesser Vehicle speaks of one Sahā world only; the three vehicles distinguish great and small transformations, taking either the Highest Pure Form heaven as real or holding that there is a separate pure land in another quarter; whereas what is spoken of now is the realm of the ten buddhas of the One Vehicle, where great and small are unobstructed and pure and defiled interfuse, and it is “provisionally, in terms of a single aspect, spoken of as having bounds and limits.” That phrase, “provisionally, in terms of a single aspect,” is the key: to narrate the configurations tier by tier is a provisional teaching, so that a person may have somewhere to enter; it is not to say that this land really has a boundary that could be measured. In truth a single tier searched crosswise is already boundless, how much more so when, over and over, a mote of dust contains the Dharma realm.

One line to bring it down to earth: in reading this passage, do not ask ‘where are the wind-wheels’; ask ‘what doctrine is this tier upon tier of holding up saying’. The answer lies in every section that follows, where Chengguan gives the doctrinal correlation almost section by section — the wind-wheels correlate with vow, the encircling mountains with the precepts, the jeweled ground with concentration, the fragrant rivers with the merits that answer to mind.

The Depth and Breadth of the Cause: By Whom Was This Land Cultivated?

The very first sentence the sūtra opens with assigns the land to a person: this Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea is what the Tathāgata Vairocana adorned and purified in ages past, when he cultivated the practices of a bodhisattva. Chengguan outlines this sentence as “raising the fruit and assigning it to a person, to show the depth and breadth of the cause” — first the land of recompense is assigned to the person who cultivated the cause, and then it is shown how deep and broad that cause is.

Where does the depth and breadth lie? Chengguan sets out three layers. The first layer is length of time: what was cultivated was kalpas as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, not merely the three great incalculable eons that are usually spoken of. The second layer is the multitude of conditions met with: in every kalpa he drew near to buddhas as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea, not merely to Vipaśyin, Śākyamuni, and a few others. The third layer is the multitude of vows made: in the presence of every buddha he purely cultivated great vows as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea, not merely purifying a single land or making a single vow of non-arising. Only when the three layers are laid one upon another is it called deep and broad.

A question first: but the sūtras and treatises plainly say three great incalculable eons, and here it says kalpas as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands — is that not a contradiction? Chengguan answers plainly: the Yuqie, the Qixin, and the like speak with respect to the teaching of the three vehicles, where teaching in one quarter suits one kind of world only, and so they settle upon the three incalculable eons; here it is spoken with respect to the One Vehicle, running through the ten directions and every kind of world such as those shaped like trees, and so it says as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands. He also adduces the Baoyun jing as witness: the Buddha himself said that it was for beings of shallow understanding that he spoke of cultivating for three incalculable eons, whereas in truth he had passed through measureless asaṃkhyeya eons. Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle witness, adduces the same passage of that sūtra and adjudicates it as an account of “gathering the three vehicles home to the one.”

A guard against misreading: do not read ‘more kalpas’ as ‘harder and further off’. Chengguan at once dismantles that reading — time has no substance of its own; it is established in dependence upon dharmas, and since dharmas are endless, time too is without limit. How much more so when the moment and the kalpa are of themselves perfectly interfused, so that one ought not to grasp a number rigidly. The three layers of depth and breadth, then, are not a competition over who cultivated longer; they say that cause and fruit alike do not fall within a frame that can be measured.

Bringing it down to earth: this sentence is the foundation of the whole passage. Every adornment that follows — every tier of wind-wheel, every fragrant river — is not a landscape that grew of itself, but a fruit summoned by vow and practice. Reading of any adornment whatever, one may turn back and ask: whose vow, and which one, laid this out?

The Ten Tiers of Wind-Wheels: What Is It That Holds Up a Land?

The sūtra says that this world-sea is upheld by wind-wheels as many as the motes of dust of Mount Sumeru. Chengguan divides the prose of this section into three: first stating the number in general, then listing ten names summarily, and last singling out the topmost tier. Zhiyan too, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle witness, says “within the particular there are ten tiers of wind” — the two makers see the same structure.

What matters is the sentence Chengguan sets down at the opening: the cause of the wind-wheels is the great vows and the rest. The wind is not the wind of the natural world; it is the power of vows. Li Tongxuan puts it still more directly: because there is a wind-wheel of great vows, the myriad practices can be upheld, and by practice the recompense of the fruit is summoned, and so it is said that the cause can uphold the fruit; it is precisely because the power of vows firmly upholds that wind-wheels are obtained as recompense to uphold the land. He pushes it further, to the matter of faith: if, apart from the Buddha, one has a set of dharmas of one’s own, then faith is not accomplished, surpassing understanding is not accomplished, cultivation is not accomplished. What the two makers take as their emphasis differs — Chengguan gives weight to narrating the configuration of what is relied upon and correlating it with vow, Tongxuan to the continuity of vow, practice, and faith — and both are settled accounts of the ancient worthies, recorded in full without adjudication.

A question first: why say ten tiers — would one not do? The answer: ten in Huayan is not a fixed number but a token of endlessness; and the configuration of tier upholding tier shows precisely that vow and practice are held up one level by another, so that if what is below is not accomplished what is above cannot stand. In this section the name of every tier and the thing it upholds are different; reading down tier by tier, one sees ten modes of the power of vows.

Tier One · Equal Abiding: Upholding All the Adornments of Blazing Jewel-Flame

The lowest tier is called “Equal Abiding.” A question first: being the lowest tier, why is it named equal? Chengguan gives two reasons: first, that it upholds all the positions everywhere — this bottom tier must hold up every level above it, and cannot favor one position over another, and so it is called equal; second, that it accords with the real nature — it abides upon what is really so, and is not an abiding that leans to one side. So “equal” does not mean sitting in a row at the same height; it means bearing weight without picking and choosing, without leaning. What it upholds is “all the adornments of blazing jewel-flame”: from the very first there are blazing flames of light as adornment. A guard against misreading: do not read the lowest tier as the coarsest and shallowest; in a structure of upholding, the lowest tier is the one that bears the most weight. Bringing it down to earth: if a person’s vow is discounted for certain people and certain matters, that is not “equal abiding,” and however many adornments are heaped above, they will not stand.

Tier Two · Bringing Forth Every Kind of Jeweled Adornment: Upholding the Maṇi-King Banner That Shines with Pure Light

The second tier is named “Bringing Forth Every Kind of Jeweled Adornment.” A question first: why is it “bringing forth” in the name, and not “possessing”? The answer: the mark of this tier is generation — not guarding the jewels already had, but being able to bring forth every kind of jeweled adornment without cease. What it upholds is “the maṇi-king banner that shines with pure light”: a banner is the configuration of what is set up as a standard, the maṇi-king is the king among jewels, and with the shining of pure light added, it is the setting up of what has been generated into a visible token. A guard against misreading: do not take “every kind of jewel” for a simile of craving splendor; in this passage jewels are without exception a substitute word for the configurations of merit, and every kind of jewel is every kind of merit. Bringing it down to earth: if the power of vows is really turning, it will keep bringing forth new merits, rather than taking stock over and over of the few one already has.

Tier Three · Jewel Majesty: Upholding All the Jeweled Bells

The third tier is named “Jewel Majesty.” A question first: how does majesty differ from the adornment spoken of before? The answer: adornment is the beauty that is manifest, majesty is the power that gathers in — there is majesty that inspires awe and virtue that draws people, and so beings can be brought to submit. What it upholds is “all the jeweled bells.” A bell is a thing that gives sound, and in this passage bells, clappers, and sounds mostly lead to the one sense of “proclaiming the Dharma” — the section on the fragrant rivers below says outright that maṇi serves as the net and gold as the clappers, covering the fragrant rivers everywhere and putting forth the Buddha’s voice; and there are also places not attached to proclaiming the Dharma, as in the fragrant-sea section, “every kind of music sounds, always vying to be played — it is the Buddha’s power of spiritual penetration that makes it so,” which sets forth the Buddha’s spiritual power only. A guard against misreading: do not read majesty as intimidation; when Chengguan speaks of the mountain peaks of the encircling mountains he says “standing out alone and aloof, subduing all evils by their majesty” — what majesty subdues is evil, not people. Bringing it down to earth: when the power of vows reaches a certain measure, there is naturally a power that gathers people in, and that power, sent forth, is the sound of the Dharma being spoken.

Tier Four · Equal Flame: Upholding the Maṇi-King Wheel with the Aspect of Sunlight

The fourth tier is named “Equal Flame.” A question first: the first tier has already spoken of the equal; why the equal again here? The answer: the former was “abiding,” and spoke of the configuration of abiding; here it is “flame,” and speaks of the function of shining. Abiding must be equal, and shining must be equal too — light cannot shine on one side only. What it upholds is “the maṇi-king wheel with the aspect of sunlight”: the aspect of sunlight together with the maṇi-king, forming a wheel. In this passage the wheel is the configuration of pervading and of turning. A guard against misreading: do not read “equal flame” as light of one and the same intensity; the equality lies in shining without picking and choosing, not in the uniformity of the effect shone forth. Bringing it down to earth: if compassionate care selects its objects, that is flame but not equal; equal without flame is a cold fairness — the sūtra sets the two words side by side, and neither can be missing.

Tier Five · Every Kind of Universal Adornment: Upholding the Flowers of the Wheel of Light

The fifth tier is named “Every Kind of Universal Adornment.” A question first: the second tier already had “every kind of jeweled adornment”; here one word, “universal,” is added — where lies the division between them? The answer: the former gives weight to “bringing forth,” which is from nothing to something; here the weight is on “universal,” which is from one place to all places. Whether the same adornment is spread wide or not is another matter. What it upholds is “the flowers of the wheel of light” — light forming a wheel, and the wheel appearing again as flowers, the configuration of adornment both pervasive and beautiful. A guard against misreading: do not read “universal” as quantity; universal is leaving nothing out, not piling things up. Bringing it down to earth: if merit works only within one’s own familiar circle, it is still at “every kind” and has not reached “universal.”

Tier Six · Universal Purity: Upholding All the Lion-Thrones of Flower-Flame

The sixth tier is named “Universal Purity.” A question first: the tiers before all speak of adornment and of flames of light, and here purity is suddenly spoken of — has the direction changed? The answer: it is not a change of direction, it is the drawing out of the floor. The more flourishing the adornment, the more a word “pure” is needed to guarantee that it is not an accumulation of defilement; and it is “universal” purity — not that one place is clean, but that no place is stained. What it upholds is “all the lion-thrones of flower-flame.” The lion-throne is the seat upon which one who preaches the Dharma sits; its appearing here means that purity has reached the measure at which the Dharma may be preached. A guard against misreading: purity is not the same as empty vacancy; what this tier upholds is precisely thrones of flower-flame, and here purity and adornment do not obstruct each other. Bringing it down to earth: to sit upon the lion-throne and preach, what one relies on is not fine speech but this tier of universal purity holding one up from below.

Tier Seven · Sound Pervading the Ten Directions: Upholding All the Pearl-King Banners

The seventh tier is named “Sound Pervading the Ten Directions.” A question first: how do wind-wheels have sound? The answer: in this passage sound is the configuration of preaching the Dharma. By this tier the majesty and the purity of the tiers before have been stored up to the full, and what is sent forth is a sound pervading the ten directions. What it upholds is “all the pearl-king banners” — the banner of pearl-kings is the token of the teaching that is set up. The pervading sound is below, the banner is set up above: first there is a sound that carries everywhere, and only then can a banner be raised to which one may turn for refuge. A guard against misreading: do not read “sound pervading the ten directions” as volume; pervading is that there is not one quarter that cannot hear, not that it is shouted loud. Bringing it down to earth: a teaching that can be heard only close by has not yet reached this tier.

Tier Eight · The Light of All Jewels: Upholding the Flowers of All Maṇi-King Trees

The eighth tier is named “The Light of All Jewels.” A question first: light has already appeared several times; why is “all jewels” marked here? The answer: the light before was mostly spoken of with respect to one configuration — pure light, the aspect of sunlight, the flowers of the wheel of light; here all jewels each send forth their own light, which is a general gathering. What it upholds is “the flowers of all maṇi-king trees,” and the tree will be discoursed on at length in the last part of this passage — the tree can put forth clouds, put forth sound, put forth jewels, and proclaim the vows of the buddhas. So what this tier upholds is not one flower only, but the flowers of a tree able to generate endlessly. A guard against misreading: do not read “the light of all jewels” as the greatest total quantity of light; that all jewels each send forth their own light without robbing one another is the point, and the simile of Indra’s net that follows carries on from just here. Bringing it down to earth: only when merit has ripened so that each thing can send forth its own light can one uphold a tree that will bear fruit.

Tier Nine · Swift Universal Upholding: Upholding All the Clouds of Fragrant Maṇi Sumerus

The ninth tier is named “Swift Universal Upholding.” A question first: all the tiers before speak of upholding; why is “swift” singled out here? The answer: if the power of upholding were slow, the adornment above would have moments of being momentarily unheld; swiftness says that this upholding has no interruption and no lag. What it upholds is “all the clouds of fragrant maṇi Sumerus” — the measure of Sumeru and yet as light as cloud. A guard against misreading: do not read swiftness as haste; swiftness here says that it continues of itself without a break. Bringing it down to earth: what the power of vows has most to fear is not being too small, but being broken off and resumed; what this tier speaks of is precisely the unbroken.

Tier Ten · Every Kind of Palace Roaming: Upholding All the Clouds of Fragrant Terraces of Jewel-Color

The tenth tier is named “Every Kind of Palace Roaming.” A question first: a palace is a place of abiding and roaming is the configuration of moving — are the two not in contradiction? The answer: that is precisely the sense this tier is to show — the place where one dwells does not obstruct roaming, and in roaming one does not lose where one dwells. By the topmost row of the wind-wheels, the configuration of upholding is no longer a rigid propping up, but movement that is constantly at rest. What it upholds is “all the clouds of fragrant terraces of jewel-color”: a terrace is a place that may be dwelt in, and its substance is like cloud. A guard against misreading: do not read the palace as a place of enjoyment; the palace here is the utmost expression of the configuration of abiding, while roaming blocks any grasping at that configuration of abiding. Bringing it down to earth: when cultivation comes to the later stages, abiding and roaming forth to transform beings are not two things, and this tier is the image of just that measure.

The Topmost Tier, the Fragrant Sea, and the Lotus: Where the Whole Land Comes to Rest

The topmost tier of wind-wheels is named “Supreme Majestic Radiance Treasury.” Chengguan gives the reason for its name very directly: because by its surpassing power it can uphold the fragrant sea, this name is established. What it upholds is “the sea of fragrant water adorned with universally shining maṇi,” and within the sea of fragrant water there is a great lotus flower named “Banner of Fragrance and Every Kind of Radiant Stamen,” and the Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea dwells within that flower — even on all four sides, pure and firm, with the vajra encircling mountains ringing it round about, and the earth, the seas, and the multitudes of trees each having their divided place.

A question first: why make so long a circuit before setting the world-sea down at the end? The answer: because what this section is to show is that “one cause accomplishes one fruit.” Chengguan says it plainly: the causes of a land have a general and a particular aspect, and the general has already been spoken of; here, in order to show the particular sense, one cause is provisionally set forth as accomplishing one fruit, and so the wind-wheels uphold the fragrant sea, the fragrant sea puts forth the lotus, the lotus upholds the sea of lands, coming down tier by tier. He therefore divides this section into four sub-sections: the wind-wheels that uphold, the fragrant sea that is upheld, the sea putting forth the lotus, the lotus upholding the sea of lands.

For the names of the fragrant sea and the lotus, Chengguan gives two layers of explanation each. The explanation of the fragrant water sea in terms of configuration is: because the maṇi sends forth light that shines everywhere upon the floor and shores of the sea and upon the jewel-colored fragrant water, it is so named. Then he sets out the simile for the Dharma — the store consciousness is named sea, because it is furnished with virtues, deep and broad; flowing and pouring is named water, because it does not stay for an instant; and again, buddha-nature is named water and distant perfuming is named fragrance, because it is smelled but not yet realized, and the Nirvāṇa too says “there are people who smell the fragrance.” The explanation of the great lotus is likewise twofold: the stamens of the flower emit an extraordinary light, and it gives off a surpassing fragrance, standing high and subduing, and so it is named “Banner of Fragrance and Every Kind of Radiant Stamen”; and spoken of with respect to the Dharma, the myriad practices put forth are each of them the nature of awakening, and so it is called radiance, while the myriad practices all can perfume universally, which is the sense of fragrance.

A guard against misreading: do not read ‘smelling the fragrance without yet realizing’ as a kind of deficiency. This sentence is in fact the one closest to the reader — the relation of the great majority of people to buddha-nature is precisely this, that they have smelled the fragrance and not yet reached the substance, and it is for that reason that there is a whole road to walk. Bringing it down to earth: to read this long section from the lowest Equal Abiding up to the topmost Supreme Majestic Radiance Treasury is to read how the power of vows lifts up a land tier by tier; and when one comes back to oneself after reading, the question is, to which tier has my own vow been laid?

The Verses of the Wind-Wheel Section: Ten Verses Saying the Above Over Again

The prose finished, Samantabhadra receives the Buddha’s spiritual power, surveys the ten directions, and states it over again in ten verses. Chengguan first sets up a general rule: the matching of prose and verse has “ten cases and five pairs” — presence and absence, expansion and compression, separation and combination, earlier and later, and even skipping over, and versifying again what has been versified — and so the explanation of verse cannot follow one case throughout. As regards this section he sets out four cases: the causes of former lives and the present conditions, which the prose separates and the verse combines; the characteristics of the fruit accomplished, where the prose is compressed and the verse expanded; the wind-wheels among the present conditions, where the prose is expanded and the verse compressed; mountain, ground, sea, and trees, which the prose has and the verse does not.

How are the ten verses divided? Chengguan says that the first two verses versify the characteristics of the cause above, that is, they set out how the cause summons the fruit; the remaining eight versify the characteristics of the fruit, and are divided again into four parts: one and a half verses versify the wind-wheels, one verse the fragrant sea, three and a half verses the lotus, and two verses set forth the sovereign freedom of the lands.

A question first: the prose speaks of the wind-wheels in such detail — how does the verse dispose of them in a verse and a half? This is precisely what Chengguan calls the case of “the sūtra expanded and the verse compressed.” Where the verse versifies the wind-wheels, the upper line speaks of what is upheld and the lower of what upholds; the first half-verse is fruit upholding fruit, and the latter half sets forth in addition the cause that accomplishes it — the first half speaks of leaving obstruction behind, which is vow making it pure, and the latter half speaks of unobstructedness, which is vow letting it rest upon space. So the verse does not repeat the list of names of the prose; it brings forward only the doctrine of this matter of “upholding.”

In the three and a half verses that versify the lotus, Chengguan correlates them phrase by phrase with the three words of the flower’s name: the first verse and a half explain “every kind of radiant stamen,” showing that this flower has jewels for its substance; the next verse explains the sense of “fragrance,” saying with respect to the Dharma that buddhas come forth within the jewels and world-lords come forth from the buddhas, as fragrance issues from a substance and perfumes afar; the last verse explains the sense of “banner,” where proclaiming the names of the buddhas is the sense of standing high, and taming beings by every kind of skillful means is the sense of subduing. This is to take a name apart and find, word by word, where each word comes to rest in the verses.

A guard against misreading: do not read the restating verses as repetition for the sake of memorizing. Bringing it down to earth: the last two verses are the most famous two of this section — “Of all the motes of dust within the Flower-Treasury World, within each single mote the Dharma realm is seen; the buddhas manifest within the jewel-light gather like clouds — this is the sovereign freedom of the Tathāgata’s land,” together with the verse that refers all back to Samantabhadra’s cause. Beneath the former verse Chengguan plainly attaches a gate of the ten mysteries: the first verse speaks of sovereign freedom, because each single one accords with the nature, and that is the gate of simultaneous complete correspondence; while “the jewel-light manifesting buddhas” is the mutual interfusion of what supports and what is supported. The last verse refers all back to the universal cause, and therefore can embrace the whole. It is precisely these four lines that Fazang later cites word for word in his contemplation treatise, to establish the sense that a mote of dust contains the Dharma realm.

The Great Encircling Mountains: The Ring That Rings the Outermost Rim

From the second section on, the arrayed adornments of the treasury sea are spoken of. Chengguan divides them into six sub-sections: the encircling mountains on the four sides, the jeweled ground, the fragrant seas, the fragrant rivers, the groves, and the summation, each section having its verses. First come the encircling mountains.

Chengguan gives the doctrinal correlation as soon as he opens his mouth: the encircling mountains are the pure virtue of the precepts, accomplished by gathering in what is within and warding off what is without. This one sentence settles the reading of the whole section — that the mountains ring the outermost rim is just as the precepts are the outer ring of cultivation.

The prose divides in three: first raising in general what is relied upon, next displaying separately its substance and configuration, and last concluding that its virtue is endless. The place relied upon is the four sides of the ground, and the mountains dwell upon “the lotus flower of the sun-pearl king.” Here there is an old divergent account: some hold that above the great flower there is another lotus flower serving as what the mountains rest upon, and Chengguan says “the sense seems not to follow.” His own explanation is this — the great flower before was named “every kind of radiant stamen,” and the verses say that the flames of light form a wheel and that a pure light is sent forth from within all jewels, from which it may be seen that this flower has jewels for its substance; therefore the pearl-king that is like a sun-disc refers to this lotus flower, and is the general name of that great flower, and it is not that there is another flower. The sixty-fascicle witness has “the encircling mountains dwell relying on the ground of the lotus and the sun-jewel king,” which is precisely the “old sūtra” that Chengguan adduces.

As to the substance and configuration separately displayed, Chengguan says that earlier only the sense of firmness and sharpness was taken and vajra was spoken of, whereas here it is furnished with virtues and there are in summary ten characteristics: the first four are the perfection of its own substance, the latter six the adornment of its outer aspect. The first four he speaks of one by one: first, the body of the mountain, which serves as the general form — the maṇi round and bright, the sandalwood richly fragrant, all of them virtues of the precepts; second, the mountain peaks, standing out alone and aloof and subduing all evils by their majesty; third, the mountain wheel, of which there are two old senses — either the place where the mountain curves, or the mountain’s flank jutting out like a lion’s throne — and Chengguan, going by the verse below, takes “the wheel lies beneath the mountain and is what the mountain rests upon”; fourth, the condition that forms the mountain: the three items before each have their own substance, and here it is shown that vajra, containing flames of light within, forms their substance throughout, just as in the world earth and stone are mixed and form a mountain, and because vajra pervades it, it obtains the name of a golden wheel. The latter six are plain from the text itself.

A guard against misreading: do not read ‘the mountain peaks subduing all evils by their majesty’ as though the precepts were meant to frighten people. What is subdued is evil, not people; and standing aloof means that it makes no compromise with evil, not that it is aloof from others. Bringing it down to earth: in reading this section, one may take the ten characteristics as a physical examination chart for the virtue of the precepts — the body, the peaks, the wheel, and the condition that forms the mountain are the four inward items, and the remaining six are the adornment that shows outwardly; if the inward four are not established, the outward six are mere decoration.

The Verses of the Encircling Mountains: From the Substance of the Mountains to Their Wondrous Function

The verses of the encircling-mountain section are likewise ten. Chengguan divides them in two: the first six verses set forth the substance, configuration, and adornment of the mountains, versifying the separate display above; the latter four set out the wondrous function and sovereign freedom of the mountains, showing also that what supports and what is supported are unobstructed, and versify the concluding text above.

Within the first six there are five parts again. The first verse versifies the encircling mountains in general — the opening line speaks of what is encircled, the next two lines of what encircles, and the last line sets out the cause. And it is just here that Chengguan sets down his most important passage upon the opening line, “the great sea of worlds is without bound.” He says that “without bound” has two senses: first, that it merely shows the many in general terms and so says “without bound,” while in fact there are bounds and limits; second, that to say what lies outside the encircling mountains is the “boundless that has bounds,” which does not obstruct principle and yet is phenomenal. And what he himself takes is a third sense — that what is now called boundless is the “bounds that are boundless,” which does not ruin the characteristic and yet is principle.

A question first: where do these three accounts differ? The answer: in the relation between “characteristic” and “principle.” The first takes boundlessness as a descriptive term, and that is a provisional teaching; the second admits bounds and speaks of boundlessness outside the bounds, principle not obstructing phenomena; the third is that this very characteristic of having bounds is, in its own substance, principle — the characteristic need not be ruined and principle is already manifest. The division proper to Huayan is the third — not that one must demolish the characteristic of having bounds in order to see the boundless, but that upon the very characteristic of this ring of mountains the boundless is seen.

The remaining four parts: the second verse versifies the mountain wheel, the third the substance of the mountains, the fourth the condition that forms the mountains, and the fifth and sixth versify the fragrant waters and the other adornments above with robes and the rest added. As for the wondrous function and sovereign freedom of the latter four verses, Chengguan says the text is plain and may be known.

A guard against misreading: do not read ‘the latter four verses are wondrous function’ as though the first six were static and the latter four dynamic. What wondrous function and sovereign freedom show is that what supports and what is supported are unobstructed — the configuration of the land and the bodies of buddhas and bodhisattvas do not obstruct one another, and this is a side that necessarily opens once substance and configuration are established. Bringing it down to earth: the verse line “the pure body of the Buddha Vairocana enters wholly within them and is universally seen” is where this unobstructedness of support and supported comes to rest in this section — the adornment of the mountains is not something outside the Buddha’s body.

The Jeweled Ground: The Expanse of Ground the Mountains Enclose

The second sub-section is the jeweled ground. Chengguan’s doctrinal correlation is: the jeweled ground on the face of the terrace is the realization of the nature of mind, and is accomplished by concentration. The section before correlated the encircling mountains with the precepts; this section correlates the jeweled ground with concentration — the order is well arranged.

The prose divides in three: first marking where it lies, next displaying separately its substance, configuration, and adornment, and last the summation. Within the separate display there are ten clauses, which Chengguan correlates one by one: the first clause is the substance of the ground, marked as vajra and explained as firm and unruinable — and here he points out in passing a great matter: the ground of the whole Flower-Treasury is vajra, and therefore the ground of the place of awakening above penetrates through to the Flower-Treasury. The second clause is the ground’s characteristic of levelness and purity. The remaining eight are all adornment: third, ornamented with jewel-wheels; fourth, stored with jewel-treasuries; fifth, interspersed with different jewels; sixth, strewn with jewel-dust; seventh, spread with lotus flowers; eighth, set severally with fragrant maṇi; ninth, filled with the implements of adornment; tenth, covered with a jewel-net.

Of the ninth clause, where the sūtra says “all the adornments in all the buddha-lands of the three times are taken as its ornamental trim,” Chengguan says that this is to show that the implements of adornment are endless — if one says only “the various adornments,” adornment may be much or little; but to take the adornments of the buddha-lands of the three times as adornment is to have no limit at all. The tenth clause he treats by a question and an answer: what use has the net? To manifest everywhere the reflected images of the buddhas. What is the character of this net? It is spread out like the net of the lord of the gods. Then he pushes the matter one layer further — the net of the lord of the gods manifests over and over without end, and this accomplishes what was said above, “manifesting everywhere all the realms of the Tathāgata,” while each single one of those realms above is likewise endless.

A question first: why should what concentration accomplishes be signified by “ground”? The answer: the mark of ground is that it can bear and does not shake. The sūtra says it is pure and level, without high or low, incapable of being ruined — read these words over onto concentration, and they are not sinking, not agitated, not rising and falling with objects. A guard against misreading: do not read “without high or low” as a dead flatness; in the same section there are wheels, treasuries, flowers, and nets upon the ground, and every kind of difference stands plain — what is level is the power of bearing, not the configurations. Bringing it down to earth: the precepts are the ring of mountains at the outer rim, concentration is the expanse of ground underfoot — one may not enter the mountains, but the ground is used simply by standing.

The Verses of the Jeweled Ground: From the Separate Display to the Summation

The verses of the jeweled-ground section are likewise ten. Chengguan divides them in two: the first seven versify the separate display above, the latter three the summation.

Within the first seven there are three parts again. The first four verses versify the eight passages of adornment above, but the order is somewhat uneven — and Chengguan explains this particularly: the order is uneven in order to show that there is no superiority or inferiority among those eight passages; that some are stated again and some at length is to show that the doctrine has no fixed quarter. He also says a very candid thing: fearing prolixity, he will not match them one by one, and the reader may get it by intent. The next two verses versify the implements of adornment as clouds. The last verse versifies “like the net of the lord of the gods” — and here Chengguan pushes the sense of Indra’s net to the end: since one jewel gathers in all, the motes of dust of that land in turn each embrace all, and this is the “over and over.”

As for the latter three verses versifying the summation, Chengguan says they conclude by assigning it: the first verse assigns it to the place of awakening, the second to the Buddha’s power, the third sets out the person who is able to know. This third verse is “Only those of great wisdom, who cultivate the great vows of Samantabhadra and enter the realm of the buddhas, are able to know, within this sea of buddha-fields, all such spiritual transformations as these.”

A question first: why single out “the person who is able to know” at the end? The answer: a great sweep of adornment has been spoken of, and without this verse the reader would take it for a landscape objectively existing; to single out the person who is able to know is to draw the whole passage back to cultivation — the spiritual transformations of this sea of lands are not seen by everyone, but are known by the person of great wisdom who cultivates the vows of Samantabhadra and enters the realm of the buddhas. A guard against misreading: this is not to say that the realm has a threshold that keeps people out; quite the contrary, it points out where the door is — the door is the vows of Samantabhadra. Bringing it down to earth: if one cannot read this passage, one need not blame one’s own want of imagination; Chengguan has said it already — the crux lies in vow, not in understanding.

The Seas of Fragrant Water Within the Ground: Seas That Open Again Upon the Ground

The third sub-section is the fragrant seas. The fragrant seas here differ from the one upheld by the topmost wind-wheel in the first section — that one was the general sea, and these are the many within the great earth. Chengguan here makes the relation of the two clear: since the great sea above is the store consciousness, what is now spoken of is that within the flower of the mind the seeds are gathered, and no single seed is apart from the sea of the store consciousness, and therefore there are many fragrant seas; and since each single one is furnished with the virtues of the nature, all of them have adornment.

A question first: does explaining lands by the store consciousness and seeds in this way turn Huayan into consciousness-only? The answer: one must see clearly that this is Chengguan’s explanation and not an adjudication by the sūtra — the sūtra says only that within the ground there are seas of fragrant water as many as the motes of dust of unspeakably many buddha-fields, and there is not a single term of consciousness-only in it. Chengguan borrows the simile of seeds and the store consciousness to make plain why ‘the one general sea’ and ‘the many particular ones’ are not apart from one another. His weight falls on ‘not one of them apart’ and ‘each one furnished with virtue’, not on setting up a theory of consciousness.

This section has one famous collation remark. The sūtra reads “there are seas of fragrant water as many as the motes of dust of unspeakably many buddha-fields,” and Chengguan says: going by the place below where the world-species are stated and by the Sanskrit witness, both have “ten unspeakables”; here the graph “ten” is missing, either an omission by the translator or a fault of transmission, and the same holds below where the species are stated. He supplies another place where the text passes something over: going by the summation that follows, it ought here to say “each single fragrant sea has such and such adornments,” and the text now passes it over; and if one takes the sense according to the text, the word “all” means all the seas, which in general take wondrous jewels for their floor, and so on.

For the separate display of the prose, Chengguan says there are twenty clauses. The first ten set forth the substance and configuration of the seas: first the floor, second the shores, third the net, fourth the water, fifth the flowers, sixth the settled silt, seventh the sound, eighth the light, ninth the retinue of persons manifesting spiritual penetrations, tenth the broad conclusion that it is endless. The ten clauses from “the ten jewels” onward gather in the other adornments; and he points out with care that only the white lotus belongs within the water, while the rest are all upon the shores. As for the name “the ten jewels,” he cites one old listing — gold, silver, beryl, giant clam, carnelian, coral, amber, true pearl, rose-stone, and the rest — and says that the first seven are just what are usually called the seven jewels. The puṇḍarīka is the white lotus, and moreover at the very time of its blooming. As for the name of the śīla banner, he says it should be śailā, translated as fine jade; and if one says śīla, that is translated as purity — both senses pass alike.

A guard against misreading: do not take these twenty clauses for an inventory of products. The first ten are the sea in itself, the latter ten the various establishments upon the sea and its shores — the one is substance, the other function; if this layer is not distinguished, one will feel that the sūtra is merely piling up nouns. Bringing it down to earth: what most repays reflection in this section is that one missing graph “ten.” Chengguan did not supply the graph for the sūtra; he merely set the two possible causes side by side and went on explaining the text as it stood — this is the measure of the ancient worthies in handling a doubtful point in a text.

The Verses of the Seas of Fragrant Water: Ten Verses Against Twenty Clauses

The verses of the fragrant-sea section are likewise ten, while the prose has twenty clauses, so verse and prose cannot be matched one for one. Chengguan here points out two discrepancies as well: there is one place that the prose has and the verse has not, while “the sun-flame wheel of light” is what the sūtra has not and the verse has.

He divides the ten verses in two. The first three versify the ten clauses above: the first verse versifies the floor; the second the shores and the net — he notes in passing that “tassel” is of the kind of net; the third versifies the remaining seven clauses, which may be seen by savoring it closely. The latter seven versify the ten clauses below, and their order too is somewhat uneven: the first versifies the stairways and the balustrades, the second the groves, the third the blooming of the flowers, the fourth the configuration of the banners, the fifth the cities and the pearls, the sixth the walls and the towers — and here he glosses one graph in passing, that “winding” means coiling about — the seventh concludes by referring the adornment home to the Buddha, wherein the first is the cause in ages past and the second the power present now.

A question first: verse and prose do not match — is that a problem of the translated witness? The answer: Chengguan already set up the general rule in the first section — the matching of prose and verse has ten cases and five pairs, and it cannot be argued by one case throughout. Presence and absence, expansion and compression, separation and combination, earlier and later, are all the normal state. A guard against misreading: so in reading the verses one need not hunt through the prose for a correspondence to every line, and failing to find one does not mean something is missing. Bringing it down to earth: the last verse of this section refers the adornment of the whole sea of fragrant water home to Vairocana’s adorning and purifying in ages past and to the Tathāgata’s sovereign power — answering, head to tail, to the first sentence of the whole passage, ‘this is what the Tathāgata Vairocana cultivated in ages past when he practiced as a bodhisattva’.

The Fragrant Rivers: The Rivers That Circle the Fragrant Seas to the Right

The fourth sub-section is the fragrant rivers between the seas. Chengguan’s doctrinal correlation is: the fragrant rivers are the merits that answer to each single mind at the same moment, flowing and pouring. Before, the encircling mountains were correlated with the precepts and the jeweled ground with concentration; here the fragrant rivers are correlated with the answering of merit to mind — not the setting up of another kind of practice, but a statement of how merit moves along with mind.

The prose likewise divides in three: first raising the number, next setting out the adornment, last the broad conclusion. In the setting out of the adornment Chengguan points to a phrase: the sūtra says “all of them take vajra for their banks,” and this “all of them take” says that the matters of adornment of every river are without difference; he describes that scene thus — they all use the substance of jewels and the adornment of jewels, holy spirits gathering and roaming there, clouds of light reflecting one another, the myriad images floating in brightness. The content of the ten clauses, he says, may be known, and he does not match them one by one.

At the broad conclusion he has a piece of reasoning: since the little rivers that circle the little seas already have adornments as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, all the more are the various numbers stated earlier made manifest. And then comes a judgment in the next sentence — this concluding text is not merely with respect to phenomena; all of it is the unobstructedness of one and many.

A question first: why must the rivers “turn to the right”? The sūtra says only that they turn to the right and encircle, and gives no explanation. Here a measure is kept: where the sūtra says nothing, the commentary sets up no particular sense either, and we do not add one for it. A guard against misreading: do not read the rivers as subordinate and secondary just because they circle at the edge of the seas. Chengguan draws his greatest conclusion precisely from the smallest river — the little river already has adornments as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, how much more the rest. Bringing it down to earth: the way to read this section is ‘seeing the endless by way of the small’. What it answers to in cultivation is this: the merit of a single moment of mind that answers here and now is not the less for being small.

The Verses of the Fragrant Rivers: Ten Verses Following Configuration by Configuration

The verses of the fragrant-river section are likewise ten. Chengguan correlates them verse by verse: the versifying of the banks whose substance is vajra, then a verse and a half versifying maṇi adorning the banks, the third verse versifying the clouds of light and the voices, the next three all versifying the swirling eddies putting forth reflected images, the seventh versifying the net and clappers draped over them together with the general manifesting of all the adornments — and here he points out an advance in level: what was manifested before was adornment in the realm of phenomena, and what is spoken of here is the practice of the path; the eighth verse versifies the manifesting of the buddhas’ support and supported, the ninth the waves putting forth wondrous sound, the tenth the water putting forth clouds of light. At the end he adds one remark: there are places abbreviated by implication as well, which may be got by intent.

A question first: what are “the swirling eddies putting forth reflected images”? The sūtra says that from the places in the rivers where the current swirls and eddies, every kind of form of the causal practices cultivated by all the buddhas comes forth. The verses then say that at those swirling places bodhisattvas constantly leap forth like clouds, going into the vast lands until the whole Dharma realm is filled. So the swirling eddy is not a phenomenon upon the surface of the water; it is the place where the configurations of causal practice and the bodies of bodhisattvas come forth. A guard against misreading: do not read it as a passive mirroring, like a reflection in water; the words the sūtra uses are “come forth” and “leap forth,” which is generation from within. Bringing it down to earth: the place where merit flows and pours is precisely the place where the causal practices of the buddhas are manifested — cultivation is not waiting to see a buddha, but seeing within the flowing and pouring.

The Ground Between and the Groves: Between River and River

The fifth sub-section is the groves. Chengguan first points out that the tenor of the text in this section differs from the sections before: those all listed ten items to show endlessness, whereas this section does not list ten items but raises two things only — the white lotus and the jewel trees — and unfolds them to show the many; the two things separately displayed are flowers and trees, one of the water and one of the land, while in truth the items contained are very many.

Upon a single tree Chengguan counts five functions: first, putting forth clouds of adornment; second, the jewel-kings shining; third, flower-fragrance filling all; fourth, putting forth sound and proclaiming the Dharma; fifth, raining jewels over the whole ground. The fourth in particular is to be noticed — those trees send forth subtle and wondrous sound, proclaiming the great vows cultivated by all the tathāgatas throughout all kalpas. So much adornment has been spoken of in the whole passage, and only here does the mouth of the tree say ‘whose vow, and which one, those adornments are’, answering to the opening, “in the presence of each single buddha purely cultivating great vows as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea.”

As for the fifth, “raining jewels over the whole ground,” it is the eight maṇi jewel-kings that follow. And here Chengguan sets down the weightiest adjudication of the section: these eight items run through the three worlds — the first six manifest the receptacle world, the next one manifests the world of right awakening, and the last one manifests the world of sentient beings.

A question first: what are the three worlds? The answer: the receptacle world is the land relied upon, the world of sentient beings is the beings that dwell in it, and the world of the wisdom of right awakening is the buddhas. Huayan speaks of one being all; one of the most concrete places where this comes to rest is ‘the three worlds manifest together within a single item’. A guard against misreading: do not take the eight jewel-kings for the names of eight pieces of treasure; the names themselves are an array of doctrine — the first six speak of the configuration of lands, the seventh of the spiritual transformations of the buddhas, the eighth of the karmic recompense of sentient beings, and one set of eight gathers the three worlds complete.

In speaking of the world of sentient beings Chengguan gives several concrete instances: the forests of sword-leaves and the like manifest the recompense of evil karma, the trees of heavenly wish and the like are the recompense of good karma, and in the forests of men and women, born at dawn and falling at dusk — all of these are a sea of karmic recompense. Bringing it down to earth: when one reads the eighth, “the maṇi jewel-king that manifests the sea of the karmic recompense of all sentient beings,” the splendor of this whole long passage really does come back to the human person — what that jewel-king manifests is nothing else than our own karma.

First · The Lotus-Wheel Maṇi Jewel-King

The first of the eight jewel-kings is “the lotus-wheel maṇi jewel-king.” A question first: why begin from the lotus? The answer: the lotus is the principal configuration of this whole chapter — within the fragrant sea upheld by the topmost wind-wheel a great lotus comes forth, and within the flower dwells the Flower-Treasury World-Sea; what the encircling mountains rest upon is likewise the lotus flower of the sun-pearl king. Coming to the jewel-kings upon the ground, the first is still named with the lotus, which is to carry that first configuration down to the last and smallest detail. The added word “wheel” is the sense of pervading and of turning. A guard against misreading: do not read it as a gemstone in the shape of a flower. Bringing it down to earth: when the beginning and the end of a stretch of adornment use one and the same configuration, the reader knows that nothing laid out in between has departed from that one flower.

Second · The Fragrant-Flame Light-Cloud Maṇi Jewel-King

The second is “the fragrant-flame light-cloud maṇi jewel-king.” Fragrance, flame, light, and cloud are used in a row of four words. A question first: what order is there in these four words? The answer: fragrance is distant perfuming — Chengguan said in speaking of the sea of fragrant water that buddha-nature is named water and distant perfuming named fragrance, which is smelled but not yet realized; flame is the configuration of blazing; light is shining; cloud is covering everywhere and being able to rain. From perfuming to blazing, to shining, to covering everywhere, is one road of the opening out of merit from within to without. A guard against misreading: do not read the four words as a heap of synonyms. Bringing it down to earth: this one jewel-king places “perfuming” at the very front, which agrees exactly with the real state of cultivation — all shining and all covering begin from that first faint smelling of the fragrance.

Third · The Maṇi Jewel-King of Every Kind of Adornment

The third is “the maṇi jewel-king of every kind of adornment.” A question first: the two before each have a concrete configuration, and this one says only “every kind of adornment” — is it not too general? The answer: it is not generality, it is a general gathering. One general configuration is set among the eight jewel-kings, and the other seven are all its particular configurations. This is the same as what Chengguan does in speaking of the jeweled ground — there he points out that if the sūtra said only “the implements of adornment,” adornment might be much or little, and so the adornments of the buddha-lands of the three times must be taken as adornment before endlessness is shown. A guard against misreading: do not skip the one that is the general configuration and remember only the concrete few. Bringing it down to earth: it is so in cultivation as well — if the portion that holds all together is lost, the several particular merits become a scattered collection.

Fourth · The Maṇi Jewel-King That Manifests Inconceivable Adorning Colors

The fourth is “the maṇi jewel-king that manifests inconceivable adorning colors.” A question first: every kind of adornment has already been spoken of; why speak again of adorning colors here? The answer: the division lies in “manifests” and in “inconceivable.” The former spoke of the adornment it possesses in itself; this one speaks of the colors and forms it manifests, and moreover manifests inconceivably — inconceivable meaning beyond thought and beyond speech, and not a hyperbole for ‘very many’. A guard against misreading: do not read the inconceivable as ‘not clearly stated, therefore not worth stating’; when Chengguan speaks of the adornment of the fruit in the summation section, he lists “according with the nature, without arising and without characteristic” as one of the five characteristics, from which it is plain that the inconceivable has its precise reference. Bringing it down to earth: when one meets an adornment beyond one’s own understanding, the right response is neither doubt nor astonishment, but to know that it manifests in accordance with the nature.

Fifth · The Maṇi Jewel-King of the Sunlight Robe-Treasury

The fifth is “the maṇi jewel-king of the sunlight robe-treasury.” Sunlight is shining, the robe is covering, the treasury is containing. A question first: how do shining and covering stand together in one jewel? The answer: in this passage “robe” and “cover” appear again and again — the jeweled-ground verses say “wondrous robes billow and cover it wholly throughout,” the fragrant-sea verses say “wondrous robes hang down as adornment,” and the fragrant-river verses say that pure pearl-kings spread out like clouds and “cover over all the fragrant rivers entirely.” The image of covering in this chapter is consistently that of protecting and pervading, not of shutting out. So that it shines and yet can cover is precisely light that does not sting but can shelter. A guard against misreading: do not read “robe-treasury” as a storehouse for keeping clothes; treasury here is the sense of containing. Bringing it down to earth: true shining comes with protective mindfulness, and this one jewel-king joins the two within a single name.

Sixth · The Maṇi Jewel-King That Pervades the Ten Directions and Universally Lets Down Clouds of Nets of Light

The sixth is “the maṇi jewel-king that pervades the ten directions and universally lets down clouds of nets of light” — the longest name of the eight. Pervading the ten directions is the utmost of the horizontal, universally letting down is the spreading out from above downward, the net of light is the configuration of a net, and cloud is what can cover and can rain. A question first: why use a “net”? The answer: the places in this chapter that speak of nets are very many — for the jeweled ground, wondrous maṇi jewels serve as a net spread out like the net of the lord of the gods; for the fragrant seas, the maṇi jewel-king of Vairocana serves as a net; for the fragrant rivers, maṇi serves as the net and gold as the clappers. The mark of a net is that its knots are linked and its eyes reflect one another, which is precisely the configuration of “over and over” that Chengguan speaks of: “since one jewel gathers in all, the motes of dust of that land in turn embrace all.” A guard against misreading: do not read the net of light as a cover clapped down over things; a net is see-through, reflecting over and over without obstructing. Bringing it down to earth: this one jewel-king is the last of the six that belong to the receptacle world, and it is also the one that gathers the first five into the configuration of endlessness upon endlessness.

Seventh · The Maṇi Jewel-King That Manifests the Spiritual Transformations of All the Buddhas

The seventh is “the maṇi jewel-king that manifests the spiritual transformations of all the buddhas.” Chengguan adjudicates this one as manifesting the world of the wisdom of right awakening — among the eight items this alone manifests the Buddha. A question first: why “spiritual transformations” and not the Buddha’s body? The answer: the verses of the last part of this passage give the answer themselves — all the conjured buddhas are like conjurings, and seeking whence they come, it cannot be found; all the transformations of the ten directions are all of them like reflected images in a mirror. To manifest the Buddha by spiritual transformation blocks from the very start any reading of the Buddha’s body as really existent. A guard against misreading: do not read spiritual transformation as a display of powers; here spiritual transformation is the configuration the Buddha manifests in answer to capacity, and its substance cannot be got. Bringing it down to earth: to see the Buddha’s spiritual transformations within a jewel upon the ground is exactly the manner of Huayan — no need to seek upward toward another quarter; it manifests within the adornment underfoot.

Eighth · The Maṇi Jewel-King That Manifests the Sea of the Karmic Recompense of All Sentient Beings

The eighth is “the maṇi jewel-king that manifests the sea of the karmic recompense of all sentient beings,” which Chengguan adjudicates as manifesting the world of sentient beings. A question first: how should a ground of the Flower-Treasury, utterly pure, manifest a sea of the karmic recompense of beings? The answer: precisely in order to show the three worlds manifesting together. Chengguan gives instances here — the forests of sword-leaves and the like are the recompense of evil karma, the trees of heavenly wish and the like are the recompense of good karma, and in the forests of men and women, born at dawn and falling at dusk, all are a sea of karmic recompense. That such configurations manifest upon a pure ground all the same does not defile that ground; rather, the adornment of that ground includes from the first this portion, ‘showing forth the karma of sentient beings’. A guard against misreading: do not suppose that manifesting karmic recompense is manifesting defilement; what is manifested is the real state of things, and what can manifest the real state is a pure jewel. Bringing it down to earth: this is the last and the most intimate jewel of this whole long passage — the adornment of the Flower-Treasury World must in the end be able to show forth the karma of each one of us, or else it is only a beautiful view with no bearing on people.

The General Configuration of the Ground Between

Besides the eight jewel-kings, the prose of this section also gives the general configuration of the ground between: each piece of that ground is as many as the motes of dust of the four continents; the puṇḍarīka flowers adorned with the multitude of jewels fill it round about, and are likewise as many as the motes of dust of the four continents; the groves of jeweled trees are ranged in rows in due order. Chengguan says something very interesting at the conclusion — from “of such kinds as these” onward, merely concluding the one item of a single tree raining jewels already gives as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands; and matching this against the other four functions above, such as putting forth clouds, each single one is likewise so, and then within a single tree there are already the adornments of many seas of lands. Then, matching this again against the puṇḍarīka flowers, they are the same as the trees: flowers and trees each have the motes of dust of the four continents, and each single one is thus. Things of the sort of flowers and trees ought further to be as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, and so they become an endless adornment.

A question first: what is this layered multiplying meant to explain? The answer: that “endless” is not a descriptive term but a conclusion forced out by unfolding and multiplying. A guard against misreading: do not read it as a game with numbers; Chengguan wants a person to multiply it through personally and then to run up, in his own mind, against the fact that ‘it cannot be counted to the end’. Bringing it down to earth: where it cannot be counted to the end is exactly where the words “inconceivable” stand.

The Verses of the Groves: The Fivefold Import

The verses of the grove section are likewise ten. Chengguan’s way of matching them: the first six versify the jewel trees, the next one versifies the white lotus, and the last three conclude with the ground of the adornment — by the power of the Buddha and the rest, showing that substance and function are unobstructed, manifesting and yet ever thus.

What is really admirable is the fivefold import that he sets out in a row beneath the last three verses. The first: the first verse is the receptacle world, the next is the wisdom of right awakening, the last is sentient beings — the intent being to show that within each single item the adornment of the three worlds is manifest, and that the text merely abbreviates them by implication. The second: the first sets forth that a single fruit can manifest, the next takes all adornments as instances, the last sets forth that every mote of dust is thus — from the compressed to the expanded, from the coarse to the fine. The third: the first sets forth the power of the Buddha, the next displays the power of vows, the last accords with the power of delight. The fourth: the first is the fruit and the last the cause, while vow runs through both cause and fruit. The fifth: the first is self and the last other, while vow runs through both self and other. At the end he gathers it up in one sentence: only thus is it shown that the adornment of the Flower-Treasury is in every case beyond words and beyond thought, and not to be sought by the feelings.

He sets out one further reading with respect to nature and characteristic: the first verse sets forth that being the nature it is without nature and its substance is originally unarisen; the next that being characteristic it is without characteristic and manifests without coming or going; the last that without ruining the characteristic each sees differently. This answers exactly to three lines in the verses — “their nature is originally unborn and cannot be grasped,” “he neither comes nor goes,” and “each of them sees the land to come for which he has received the prediction, and according to their delight all are pure.”

A question first: how can a single verse have five or six readings — is that not to fall into vagueness? The answer: Chengguan himself gives the criterion — “only thus is it shown that the adornment of the Flower-Treasury is in every case beyond words and beyond thought.” The many readings are not an indeterminacy of explanation; they are to let the reader notice, among the many, that no one of them is the final settled understanding. A guard against misreading: do not pick the one reading that pleases one’s own eye and call the rest forced. Bringing it down to earth: the last verse, “Within each single mote of dust of this ground, all the sons of the Buddha cultivate the practice of the path, and each of them sees the land to come for which he has received the prediction, and according to their delight all are pure” — this is the sentence in which the whole passage of adornment comes to rest upon the person who cultivates: within every mote of dust of that ground there are people cultivating the practice of the path, and each of them sees his own land to come.

The Summation: The Adornments Are Inconceivable

The sixth sub-section is the summation. Chengguan says: although all the sections above have been speaking of adornment, they have not been able to speak it to the end, and so now every single realm is shown in general — spoken of or not spoken of, all are furnished with merit and adornment as many as the motes of dust of a sea of lands, and therefore the sūtra says “all the realms.”

The prose divides in two: first marking that the adornment is hard to fathom, then asking “why is this?” and explaining the reason. The reason is “every single one is adorned by pure merits as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea.” Chengguan says that these words “pure merits” contain two senses: first, that the many adornments of the fruit are themselves pure merits; second, that each single adornment of the fruit is born from the cause of many pure merits. Regarding the fruit from the standpoint of the cause, four propositions may be formed — many causes and one fruit, one cause and many fruits, and so forth. Therefore whatever single item is raised is called hard to conceive. He also cites the verse line “it is only from what the Tathāgata did in ages past that they are born, by spiritual penetration and the power of vows” and says: this is the cause.

As for the adornment of the fruit, Chengguan sets out five characteristics: first, making it many, supplying all everywhere; second, making it constant, never wanting or cut off; third, making it wondrous, delighting the minds of the multitude; fourth, according with the nature, without arising and without characteristic; fifth, sovereign freedom, fused and unobstructed. The verses are furnished with all five of these senses, and therefore it is called hard to conceive, how much more so when cause and fruit are mutually identical.

A question first: why set up these five characteristics at the very end? The answer: because the six sections before all spoke of ‘what there is’, while these five characteristics speak of the nature that makes those adornments adornment — many, constant, wondrous, according with the nature, sovereign. The first three characteristics are spoken with respect to phenomena, the fourth with respect to principle, and the fifth speaks of principle and phenomena unobstructed. A guard against misreading: do not read “hard to conceive” as “no need to conceive.” Chengguan first lays out the four propositions of cause and fruit and the five characteristics of the adornment of the fruit, and only then says that it is hard to conceive — hard to conceive is the conclusion of thinking to the very end, not an excuse for not thinking. Bringing it down to earth: having read the whole passage, one may take these five characteristics and go back over it — which section shows the many, which the constant, which the wondrous, which the according with the nature, which the sovereign.

The Verses of the Summation: From the Function of the Adornment of the Fruit to Setting Out the Fruit Against the Cause

The verses of the concluding section are ten. Chengguan divides them broadly in two: the first six set forth the surpassing function of the adornment of the fruit, the latter four set out the fruit over against the cause.

Within the first six there are three parts again: the first four verses set forth the functions of the adornment separately, the next one refers them home to the present condition, and the last one concludes the many kinds in general. For the latter four, setting out the fruit against the cause, he matches cause and fruit verse by verse: the first is that since practice, vow, and spiritual penetration are the cause, one obtains the fruit of transformations like mirror images; the second, that since the universal practice and surpassing wisdom are the cause, one obtains the fruit of purifying multitudes of lands within a single mote of dust; the third, that since drawing near to good friends over a long time is the cause, one obtains the fruit of manifesting all at once in an instant; the fourth displays the intent of purifying lands, so that people may take it as a model and practice accordingly.

Of the last verse, “The lands of the buddhas are like space, without equal, without arising, without any mark; for the benefit of sentient beings they are adorned and purified everywhere, and by the power of original vows they dwell therein,” Chengguan takes it apart into two halves for reading: the first half is the adornment of the realm of wisdom, which is precisely no adornment — the land of self-enjoyment is all-pervading and without equal, the land of the nature of dharmas is in substance unarisen, and both are without characteristic; the latter half is the adornment that is no adornment, answering out of compassion — adorning throughout the Dharma realm, the abiding that is no abiding, ever abiding within the land. Having finished explaining this verse he says, “the explanation of the adornments is concluded,” and the whole passage ends here.

A question first: after two sections of adornment so densely wrought, the last verse says that the lands are like space and without characteristic — is that not to throw away all that went before? The answer: quite the contrary; this verse is the insurance of all the adornment before it. Without this verse, the wind-wheels, fragrant seas, encircling mountains, and jeweled ground before would become a really existent structure that could be grasped; with this verse, those adornments are “the adornment that is no adornment” — not that there is first a vacancy and then adornment added, but that the very substance of the adorning is no adornment, and being no adornment it adorns throughout the Dharma realm. A guard against misreading: neither should one turn back and deny the characteristics before because the last verse says without characteristic; what Chengguan says is “the abiding that is no abiding, ever abiding within the land,” and abiding and not abiding do not obstruct one another. Bringing it down to earth: the senses of the two sections of the whole passage meet in this one verse — the depth and breadth of the cause (“by the power of original vows”) and the absence of characteristic in the substance of the fruit (“without equal, without arising, without any mark”) are gathered complete within a single sentence.

Lineage

The outline of this passage has three lines from of old. Chengguan, on the eighty-fascicle witness, divides the first section into four sub-sections (the wind-wheels that uphold, the fragrant sea that is upheld, the sea putting forth the lotus, the lotus upholding the sea of lands), and the second section into six (the encircling mountains on the four sides, the jeweled ground, the fragrant seas, the fragrant rivers, the groves, the summation). Zhiyan, on the sixty-fascicle witness, makes seven sub-sections — the wind and the ground, the jewel-king ground, the cakra (that is, the encircling mountains), upon the great earth, the fragrant rivers, the jeweled trees within the rivers, the short prose; his seven sub-sections embrace the range of both of Chengguan’s sections, and he further divides the one sub-section on the wind-wheels into five of his own: wind, water, flower, world-vajra, vajra mountains. Fazang, on the sixty-fascicle witness, sets up another line: he first discourses on the causes of a land as two kinds — the cause that is the support being suchness, the pure consciousness, and mirror wisdom; the cause that generates being the various wondrous practices and vows — and with respect to the cause that generates he briefly sets out three kinds: vast merit, great vows, wondrous practice. The divisions of the three makers differ; all are settled accounts of the ancient worthies, recorded in full without adjudication.

The reckoning of the number of verses differs as well. Zhiyan, on the sixty-fascicle witness, says of the first section “the verses are twenty in number,” while Chengguan, on the eighty-fascicle witness, says “the ten verses divide in two” — the witnesses they follow are different.

The ten items and the four sub-sections do not tally. In the first section Chengguan first lists the ten items that ought to belong to the measure of the land relied upon: the wind-wheels relied upon, the wind upholding the fragrant sea, the sea putting forth the lotus, the lotus upholding the sea of lands, the encircling mountains that ring the terrace, the jeweled ground on the face of the terrace, the fragrant seas within the ground, the fragrant rivers between the seas, the trees and the rest between the rivers, the summation of the many adornments; whereupon he judges, “in the present text only one river is missing,” and so divides it into four sub-sections only. Later he says once again, “only one river is missing, because below there is a separate display of it” — meaning that although the first section lacks it, the second section displays it separately, and so it is not truly missing. This is one of the eyes of the outline of this passage, and it is recorded.

The two makers on the sense of the wind-wheels. Chengguan says that the cause of the wind-wheels is the great vows and the rest, while the proper intent of his commentarial text lies in narrating the configuration of what is relied upon; Li Tongxuan, for his part, takes as his account that the wind-wheel of great vows can uphold the myriad practices and that by practice the fruit is summoned, and pushes it up to the level of faith — the nature of dharmas, compassion and wisdom, subtle understanding and the myriad practices all rest upon the Buddha in order to be cultivated, and if, apart from the Buddha, one has a separate dharma of one’s own, then faith is not accomplished, the ten kinds of surpassing understanding are not accomplished, cultivation is not accomplished. What the two makers give weight to is different; recorded without adjudication.

The divergent accounts of the lotus flower of the sun-pearl king and of the mountain wheel. As to the “lotus flower of the sun-pearl king” upon which the encircling mountains rest, there were two old accounts: first, that it is the general name of the great flower before; second, that above the great flower there is another lotus serving as what the mountains rest upon. Beneath the latter account Chengguan sets down the four words “the sense seems not to follow,” and himself takes the former, his reason being that the verses say the flames of light form a wheel and that a pure light is sent forth from within all jewels, from which it may be known that that flower has jewels for its substance. As to the character of the mountain wheel, there were likewise two old senses — one pointing to the place where the mountain curves, the other to the mountain’s flank jutting out like a lion’s throne — and Chengguan, going by the verse below, takes “the wheel lies beneath the mountain and is what the mountain rests upon.” Both sets of divergent accounts are recorded in full.

The variant text of the sixty-fascicle witness. The 60 has “the Lotus-Treasury World-Sea” where the 80 has “the Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea”; the buddha’s name is “the Buddha Rocana” where the 80 has “the Tathāgata Vairocana”; the number of kalpas is “kalpas as many as the motes of dust of asaṃkhyeya worlds” where the 80 has “kalpas as many as the motes of dust of a world-sea”; what is cultivated is “vows and practices” where the 80 has “great vows.” The names of the ten tiers of wind-wheels correspond broadly in the two witnesses, while what is upheld differs in kind — in the 80 what is upheld is in every case an implement of adornment (jewel-flame, jewel-banner, jewel-bells, jewel-wheel, wheel-flowers, lion-throne, pearl-king banner, tree-flowers, Sumeru clouds, fragrant-terrace clouds), whereas in the 60 eight of the ten upheld are “ground,” and the remaining two are not “ground” — the eighth has “it upholds all times: a day, a half-month, a month, a year,” of which the 80 has no account of divisions of time, and the tenth has “it is able to uphold all existence.” The topmost wind-wheel is named “Supreme Majestic Radiance Treasury” in the 80 and “Supreme Treasury” in the 60; the great lotus is named “Banner of Fragrance and Every Kind of Radiant Stamen” in the 80 and “Adorned with the Radiance of the Banner of Fragrance” in the 60. As to what the encircling mountains rest upon, the 60 has “the encircling mountains dwell relying on the ground of the lotus and the sun-jewel king,” which is the “old sūtra” that Chengguan adduces. In the sentence on the fragrant rivers the 80 has the two words “turn to the right” and the 60 does not. All of the above is recorded in full without adjudication. The verbatim collation of the remaining sections of the sixty-fascicle witness has not been provided within the range recorded, and is marked lacking as it stands in fact, not filled out with conjectured text.

The three kinds of Flower-Treasury in the One Vehicle. Fazang, in his commentary on the sixty-fascicle witness, sets up three kinds of Flower-Treasury: first, that the world of the lotus-terrace treasury, though it pervades the Dharma realm, manifests as increasing and decreasing according to the capacity of bodhisattvas upon the grounds, and, lodged in the Highest Pure Form heaven, only one realm is spoken of; second, that of this very Flower-Treasury pervading the Dharma realm ten are spoken of to show endlessness — that is, endlessly many Flower-Treasuries, each one of them pervading the Dharma realm; third, that the various kinds of world such as those shaped like trees each have a Lotus-Treasury, all of them like that realm and all pervading. This is an adjudication by a commentator on the sixty-fascicle witness, and it is recorded.

Where it is carried on. The collation remark set up at the end of this passage, “here the graph ‘ten’ is missing,” Chengguan expressly says “the same holds below where the species are stated,” pointing precisely to the world-species section that follows — the two sections are to be read together. What follows this passage is the third section, “The Differentiation of the Net of Lands Upheld”, whose opening sentence is “Sons of the Buddha! What worlds dwell herein? I shall now tell of them,” which Chengguan outlines in three parts: telling the assembly and consenting to speak, stating the two topics in pairs, and explaining the two topics at large. Reading straight on, the substance of the one Flower-Treasury narrated in this passage is precisely the place in which the twenty tiers of world-species that follow dwell.

Fazang later, in his work on the contemplation gate, cites verbatim the last four lines of the wind-wheel verses of this passage — “Of all the motes of dust within the Flower-Treasury World, within each single mote the Dharma realm is seen; the buddhas manifest within the jewel-light gather like clouds — this is the sovereign freedom of the Tathāgata’s land” — to establish the sense that a mote of dust contains the Dharma realm. The sūtra text enters the contemplation gate untouched, and the attribution is clear.

As for the Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang raising “the Flower-Treasury World” as an instance of the characteristics of the teaching of the One Vehicle, the “world-seas of the ten buddhas” named in the Huayan yisheng shixuan men, and the “adornment of the marks and signs of the Lotus-Treasury” among the ten bodies spoken of in the Huayan fajie xuanjing — the first is an instance in the classification of the teachings, while of the latter two one is a general expression and one a sense of the buddha-body, differing in kind from the sense of the array of the receptacle world in this passage; they are recorded but not made attachments of this passage. The treatises of the consciousness-only line have not been examined for this passage; this is marked lacking as it stands in fact, and no attachment is forced.

First Be Clear What This Section Is Answering

The two preceding sections spoke of the sea of Flower-Treasury worlds itself — its cause, its substance, the arrangement and adornment of it above and below. Here Samantabhadra turns in another direction: he no longer says what this sea is, but says what is held inside this sea. Chengguan outlines the whole chapter in three sections, and the third is called ‘the differentiated net of lands it sustains’; the present section is its head.

The section opens with a question and a promise: ‘What sort of worlds dwell herein? I shall now speak of them.’ This is the first part in Chengguan’s outline, the address to the assembly and the promise to speak. Two sentences then lay down the framework of the whole section — within inexpressibly many fragrant-water seas there are inexpressibly many world-seeds, and within each single world-seed there are again inexpressibly many worlds. Chengguan outlines these two sentences as the paired setting-up of the two topics, and the two topics thus set up are the seed and the land. He states the breadth and narrowness of all three in a single sentence: the world-seeds rest upon the sea of lands, and the several lands rest upon the world-seeds. The sea is widest, the seed comes next, the land is finest. Every name that follows falls within these three levels.

Correcting a misreading: do not read ‘world-seed’ as a seed-grain. Chengguan’s explanation of the name says it plainly — it is many worlds heaped together in one place, gathering in all their kinds, and so it is called a seed; and of such kinds there are again so many, so deep and so broad, that it is called a sea. He also offers a very homely simile: many fish gather to make one kind, and fish, dragons, tortoises, turtles, mountains, springs and islands each make their own kind, yet all alike are held within one great sea. And how is ‘the worlds are boundless’ to be understood? He says: beyond a sea there is a sea, sea upon sea without end. Bringing it home: in reading this section there is no need to draw a star-map. Fix in mind first the three levels — sea, seed, land — and the twenty tiers that follow will not read as a tangle.

Does the Seed Have a Substance of Its Own?

First the question: if a world-seed is only a general name for ‘many worlds gathered together’, then it has no substance of its own; yet the text below says that it does have shape and substance. Is this not a self-contradiction?

This objection is one Chengguan raises himself, and he resolves it himself: although the name ‘seed’ is set up in dependence upon kinds, there is nothing to prevent this seed from having a substance of its own besides. He changes the simile — many bee-holes together make one nest; does that keep the nest from having a substance of its own? And he takes care to add one line: in citing fish and dragons above, it was only a partial simile and cannot be pressed all the way.

He then brings out a second sense: taking this sense, it may also be called ‘the seed-nature’ — resting upon this seed, worlds can be produced, as one stalk of grain bears many kernels. This sentence also carries a piece of translation history with it: the old edition rendered it ‘nature’, taking precisely this productive sense; later, for fear of confusion with ‘substance-nature’, the rendering was changed to ‘seed’. Bringing it home: beneath one term two senses are often folded together — one is ‘gathering’, one is ‘producing’. The eighty-fascicle took the former for its name, the sixty-fascicle took the latter; the two witnesses are not at odds.

The General Statement of the Ten Senses: Ten Is Not a Fixed Number

The sūtra lists ten aspects in which world-seeds each differ: resting, shape, substance, quarter and place, entry, adornment, extent, ranked array, non-difference, and sustaining power.

First the question: why exactly ten? Chengguan answers without hesitation: that both display ten is because both symbolize the inexhaustible. Ten is not the length of a list; it is the symbolic device for ‘more than can be told’. He also does something very fine-grained: he takes these ten senses and collates them item by item against the ten items of the earlier 〈Chapter of the Accomplishment of the Worlds〉, and the result is that each has what the other lacks — the conditions of arising and equipping, purity, the appearing of buddhas, abiding through kalpas and turning and changing are on that side and not on this; quarter and place, extent, ranked array, entry and sustaining power, five items, are on that side lacking and on this side present; resting, shape and substance, and adornment are named the same on both sides. Appearing now here, now there, they come in all to fifteen.

Correcting a misreading: since together they come to fifteen, ‘ten’ is all the less a fixed number. Chengguan accounts for this too — that both say ten is in order to display the inexhaustible; that they differ in some items is in order to set forth the many sides of the meaning; that a few items are left the same is for fear one should take the two places as wholly unrelated.

Bringing it home: hereafter, whenever ‘ten kinds’ is met with in this sūtra, first ask whether the ten is a fixed number. Most of the time it is not.

Five of the Ten Senses, and How the Commentator Explains Them

The sūtra only lists the ten senses by name and does not explain them. Chengguan says that five of them were explained in the preceding section, and here he separately explains the other five: quarter and place, entry, extent, ranked array, and sustaining power.

Quarter and place has two readings. If it is the perfect quarter and place, it fills the whole Dharma realm, there being no place where it is not, neither identical with the three realms nor apart from them; if it is the quarter and place suited to circumstance, then within the ten directions each faces one way and turns from another. Entry is entry through a gate; taken as a Dharma-gate, it means the three gates of liberation, and it also carries the sense of manifesting and entering one another with no coming or going. Extent likewise has two readings: taken as a matter of fact, it is suited to circumstance and so differs in breadth and narrowness; taken with respect to the Buddha, the ten directions are without limit. Ranked array means precisely the roads; taken as a matter of fact it can be understood directly, and taken as Dharma it means that great mindfulness, wisdom and practice serve as the road one travels. Sustaining power likewise has two readings: taken with respect to food, it is what enables a world to abide; taken as Dharma, it is what the joy and delight of the vast savour of Dharma upholds.

Correcting a misreading: do not read these five senses as five physical properties. Chengguan gives every one of them two faces, ‘taken as fact’ and ‘taken as Dharma’ — on the side of fact they are an arrangement, on the side of Dharma they are gates of practice. Bringing it home: to read the dependent recompense and see only an arrangement is to have read only half.

Ten Instances of Resting: What the World-Seeds Stand Upon

The sūtra gives ten instances: a sea of great lotuses, a sea of boundlessly coloured jewelled flowers, a sea of jewelled necklaces from the treasury of all pearls, a sea of fragrant waters, a sea of all flowers, a sea of maṇi-jewel nets, a sea of whirling and streaming radiance, a sea of jewelled crowns adorning bodhisattvas, a sea of the bodies of manifold beings, a sea of maṇi-kings of the voices of all buddhas. When the list is done it closes with one line: kinds such as these, spoken of at length, are as many as the dust-motes of a sea of worlds.

First the question: why is what they rest upon in every case a ‘sea’? Chengguan brings out the key point in the later section — although only the two topics of seed and land were set up above, every sentence explaining resting speaks of resting upon a sea, and this is why the text below must separately list the number of the seas. Among the ten instances, the first seven are seas of things and of light and colour, the eighth is a sea of bodhisattvas’ jewelled crowns, the ninth a sea of the bodies of beings, and the tenth a sea of the voices of buddhas — from thing to person, from person to buddha, the graded order shows itself.

Correcting a misreading: ‘resting upon a sea of the bodies of beings’ does not mean that a world is pressing down on somebody. It is paired with ‘resting upon a sea of maṇi-kings of the voices of all buddhas’ — what the dependent recompense rests upon may be form, may be body, and may also be sound. This is precisely the forerunner of ‘having sound for their substance’ in the twenty instances of substance in the next passage. Bringing it home: the ten instances are ten gates, not ten foundations.

Twenty Instances of Shape: What the World-Seeds Look Like

The twenty shapes are, in order: Mount Sumeru, a river, a turning round, a whirling stream, a wheel-rim, an altar-mound and cleared ground, a grove of trees, a storeyed pavilion, a mountain banner, the generally square, a womb-treasury, a lotus, a qulejia, the body of a being, a cloud, the marks and signs of the buddhas, perfect radiance, manifold pearl-nets, all manner of gates and gate-towers, all manner of ornaments.

First the question: how many in this long string are unreadable to a reader today? Chengguan picks out just three to explain. The turning-round shape is a shape that folds back and forth like the pleats of a robe. As for the altar-mound and cleared ground, to heap up earth is called an altar-mound and to clear away the ground is called a cleared ground — one raised, one levelled, two different things. Qulejia is the sound of a Sanskrit word; in this land it is called a bamboo bin, that is, the round bamboo container in which grain is stored. As for the generally square, he has another explanation further on, where he treats the twenty tiers: seen as a whole it is square, yet within a single side there are many corners.

Correcting a misreading: the twenty shapes are not a classification of twenty geometrical figures. Notice their sequence — from mountains, rivers and made things, through groves and pavilions, to womb-treasuries and lotuses, then on to the bodies of beings, the marks and signs of the buddhas, and perfect radiance, closing with gates and ornaments. From coarse to fine, from thing to buddha, from closed to open. Bringing it home: as to why the shapes have to be ‘set out’ at all, Li Tongxuan says it most plainly — it is for the converting of beings, to make beings stretch open a narrow and inferior mind.

Twenty Instances of Substance: The First Ten Are Form, the Latter Ten Are Sound

The twenty substances are, in order: maṇi-clouds of the ten directions, flames of many colours, radiances of every kind, flames of jewelled fragrance, tāla flowers adorned with all jewels, the reflected images of bodhisattvas, the radiance of the buddhas, the form and marks of a buddha, the light of a single jewel, the light of many jewels; and from here it turns to sound — the sound of the sea of merit of all beings, the sound of the sea of the deeds of all beings, the pure sound of the realm of all buddhas, the sound of the sea of the great vows of all bodhisattvas, the sound of the skilful means of all buddhas, the sound of the forming and breaking up of the ornaments of all lands, the voices of boundless buddhas, the sound of the transformations of all buddhas, the wholesome sound of all beings, the pure sound of the sea of merit of all buddhas.

First the question: is there an inner dividing line among the twenty substances? There is, and it is drawn with perfect neatness. Chengguan settles it in one line: the first ten are forms and colours, the latter ten are sounds. The first ten are all visible form, the latter ten are all audible sound.

Correcting a misreading: ‘having sound for their substance’ does not mean that worlds are built out of sound-waves. Look closely at the latter ten: the sound of the sea of beings’ merit, the sound of the sea of beings’ deeds, and the wholesome sound of beings — three belong to beings; the pure sound of the buddhas’ realm, the sound of the buddhas’ skilful means, the voices of boundless buddhas, the sound of the buddhas’ transformations, and the pure sound of the sea of the buddhas’ merit — five belong to the buddhas; the sound of the sea of bodhisattvas’ great vows — one belongs to bodhisattvas; the sound of the forming and breaking up of the ornaments of lands — one belongs to the vessel-world. In other words, what these ten are speaking of is what deeds, vows and the voice of Dharma have made. Bringing it home: this is exactly where this sūtra’s dependent recompense is not to be read as matter. What is a world made of? It is made of the deeds of beings and the vows of the buddhas.

The Ten Repeating Verses: How the Commentator Divides Them

The prose done, Samantabhadra receives the Buddha’s supernatural power, surveys the ten directions, and utters ten verses. Chengguan divides these ten into six sections: the first verse hymns resting; the second hymns shape together with the array and abiding; the third, fourth and fifth hymn substance; the sixth, seventh and eighth hymn the five items — within which the first two lines of the sixth verse hymn the gate of entry, the third line the quarter and place, and the fourth line adornment, while the last two verses give the root characteristic of the vast lands, which is to say extent, breadth and narrowness, and the mutual entering of this and that; the ninth hymns non-difference, that is, that a single dust-mote can hold a sea of buddhas without any inequality; the tenth hymns sustaining power, for both host and companions are upheld by supernatural power, while the phrase ‘universally converts’ further includes the savour of Dharma.

The seventh and eighth verses are the most important. The sūtra says that all the vast lands of the ten directions come and enter this one world-seed, and then says ‘in truth there is no coming and nothing entered’; and it says that one enters all and all enter one with nothing left over, substance and characteristic being, as they originally are, without difference. Chengguan explains this and says: both verses hymn entry, the former taking the many entering into one and the latter the mutual entering of one and many; and what is called entering is an entering that is a non-entering — for if something really moved in, dependent origination would be destroyed, and if it were said not to enter at all, the functioning of the nature would be destroyed. So he lays down the next line as a verdict: it is precisely by not entering that entering becomes possible. And why can they enter one another? Taken as substance they are originally empty, so there is no coming and no entering; taken as characteristic the characteristic is not destroyed, so the ten directions stand plain as ever; and as they are originally without difference, the nature fuses the characteristics, and so they gain mutual entry.

Correcting a misreading: do not read ‘the ten directions enter this’ as a stuffing of one space into another. Bringing it home: these ten verses are the one place in the whole section that speaks directly of the sense of the Dharma realm; the ten senses, twenty shapes and twenty substances that went before only come to rest here — difference is inexhaustible, and mutual entry is unobstructed. The ninth verse, ‘Within every dust-mote of every land the Tathāgata is universally seen dwelling there’, and the tenth, ‘The Buddha’s body pervades all lands’, set this principle down upon the Buddha’s own body: the reason for speaking of so many worlds is to say one thing — the Buddha is in every single place.

Spread Like Indra’s Net: The Arrangement of the One Central Sea and the Ten Seas That Turn to the Right

The prose begins a second round, and first gives one sentence of general arrangement: the inexpressibly many fragrant-water seas are all within the sea of Flower-Treasury adorned worlds, spread out and abiding like the net of Indra, lord of the gods.

First the question: what does Indra’s net look like? Chengguan explains it and says: the general spread of it is like a cartwheel; but looked at closely it differs — the net in Śakra’s palace is strung of heavenly pearls, with one great pearl at the centre, and then pearls of the next size strung and encircling it, so turning and encircling in succession through a hundred thousand rounds, and looked at from above and below, from the four sides and the four corners, the ranks all correspond. He takes care to add two points: first, that these fragrant seas, though they lie on the ground-surface, are spread out in a like manner; second, that there is also the sense of interpenetrating layer upon layer, and hence the word ‘like’.

Correcting a misreading: Indra’s net is put to two uses here and they are not to be confused. What is used here is the spread — one pearl at the centre and the rest encircling it, which is exactly the pattern of the one central sea and the ten seas that turn to the right in the text below; the sense of layer-upon-layer interpenetration is its second level. And among the twenty tiers there is another world whose ‘shape is like Indra’s net’ — that speaks of the shape of one particular land, which is again a different matter from the spread of the fragrant seas here. Bringing it home: fix ‘one pearl at the centre’ in mind first, for what this section speaks of is precisely that one central pearl.

The Central Sea Boundless Wondrous Flower Radiance: Three Names — Sea, Flower, Seed

The sūtra gives four things about the one central sea: the sea is named Boundless Wondrous Flower Radiance, and has for its floor a maṇi-king banner that manifests the forms of all bodhisattvas; within the sea a great lotus comes forth, named the Adornment of the Maṇi-King of All Fragrances; upon the flower there is a world-seed named the Blazing Jewel Radiance Universally Illumining the Ten Directions, which has all manner of ornaments for its substance, and within which worlds numbering the dust-motes of inexpressibly many buddha-lands are spread out.

First the question: do these three names carry a meaning, or are they merely labels? Chengguan gives each of the three names both a reading ‘taken as fact’ and a reading ‘taken as Dharma’. The name of the sea: taken as fact, it is because many flowers put forth radiance; taken as Dharma, it is because the flower of bodhisattva practice is its cause. The name of the flower: because this flower is adorned with fragrant maṇi, and because it is born from the maṇi floor; taken as Dharma, it is what the perfect brightness of the myriad practices accomplishes. He also resolves a small doubt in passing — the sea can produce the flower, and so receives the flower’s name; the flower rests upon the sea, and so takes the name of the sea-floor. The name of the seed: taken as fact, it is that the jewel-radiance illumines afar; taken as Dharma, this world-seed is precisely the seeds it contains, each and every one of which has the sense of a great wisdom-radiance universally illumining the Dharma realm, and again because the qualities of the nature adorn one another.

Correcting a misreading: do not read ‘having all manner of ornaments for its substance’ as a list of building materials. Set it beside the twenty instances of substance in the preceding passage and it becomes clear that ‘substance’ in this chapter is always spoken of with respect to Dharma. Bringing it home: every single name in the Flower-Treasury world can be read back into a gate of practice — this is where this chapter marks itself off from the study of geography.

The Common Rule of the Twenty Tiers: Seven Items, Eight Items, Nine Items

From ‘at its lowest point there is a world’ the sūtra speaks tier by tier upward, until ‘worlds numbering the dust-motes of twenty buddha-lands encircle it all around’.

First the question: how many items are told of one tier? Chengguan counts them out clearly. The lowest tier has seven items: first the giving of the name; second the distinguishing of the bounding limit (that is, the limit upon which the world is based, like the vajra-limit); third resting; fourth shape; fifth what covers it above; sixth the retinue; seventh the buddha-title. From the second tier up there are sometimes eight items, the added one being the distance from here, that is, the line ‘above this, past worlds numbering the dust-motes of a buddha-land’. Sometimes there are nine, adding further the words ‘purely and solely pure’; and he at once supplies a standard — where these words are absent, the land is common to the defiled and the pure.

A further question: if twenty tiers are spoken of, why do the retinue-numbers in the sūtra appear to be only nineteen? Chengguan answers it head-on: in the separate distinguishing only nineteen buddha-land dust-numbers are listed, and yet they make twenty tiers. The reason is that the first tier says only ‘worlds numbering the dust-motes of a buddha-land encircle it all around’ without attaching a number, and it is from the second tier that ‘two buddha-lands’ begins and increases in order up to ‘twenty buddha-lands’. Hence the encircling lands come in all to two hundred and ten buddha-land dust-numbers — the sum of one through twenty.

Correcting a misreading: do not take ‘twenty tiers’ for a phrase of the sūtra itself. From first to last the sūtra has no word for ‘tier’; this is Chengguan’s outline: twenty layers, that is, divided into twenty sections. Bringing it home: in reading the twenty tiers below, only seven things need watching — name, limit, resting, shape, covering, retinue, buddha-title; the two that may be added are distance and pure-and-solely-pure.

Tiers One to Five of the Twenty

The first tier is named Supreme Radiance Pervadingly Illumining; its bounding limit is a shining wheel of vajra adornment, it rests upon maṇi flowers of many jewels, its shape is like a maṇi jewel, and its buddha is titled Pure Eye, Lamp Apart from Defilement. Chengguan has two remarks here. The first concerns the shape — a maṇi’s form has eight facets, seeming square yet not square, seeming round yet not round, and so it differs from the ‘eight corners’ below. The second concerns the buddha-title — he opens ‘Pure Eye, Lamp Apart from Defilement’ into a sentence: apart from the defilement of the two obstructions, with the eye of wisdom pure, illumining the world like a lamp; and he at once adds ‘yet the qualities of a buddha are boundless, and each name follows but one sense’, reminding the reader that a buddha-title is set up by taking up one sense only. As to what the first tier rests upon, he preserves the old explanation while setting out his own view: the old explanation said that upon the flower put forth by the boundless fragrant sea there is a further flower which sustains this one world, and this was said so as to match the tiers above, each of which has its own resting place; Chengguan for his part says that there is nothing to prevent the lowest from resting upon the general flower.

The second tier is named the Wondrous Adornment of Manifold Fragrant Lotuses, its shape is like a lion’s seat, and its buddha is titled Lion Radiance of Supreme Illumination — shape and title answering one another. The third tier is named the Radiance of Universal Illumination Adorned with All Jewels, its shape has eight corners, and its buddha is titled Pure Radiance, Banner of Supreme Wisdom. The fourth tier is named the Adornment of Manifold Radiant Flowers, its shape is like a maṇi lotus, it is purely and solely pure, and its buddha is titled Vajra Radiance, Measureless Power of Vigour, Well Appearing. The fifth tier is named Universally Emitting Wondrous Flower Radiance, its shape is generally square with many corners, and its buddha is titled Sea of Fragrant Radiance, Joy, and Power.

First the question: must these names be memorized one by one? They need not. What is to be watched is the answering of three things to one another: the name of the world, the shape of the world, and the title of the buddha often echo one another. Bringing it home: the fourth tier is where ‘purely and solely pure’ first appears, and this is exactly the item Chengguan called ‘sometimes there are nine’ — from here on, a tier that carries those four words is a purely pure land, and one that lacks them is common to the defiled and the pure. Whether Sahā is among them will be seen in the next passage.

Tiers Six to Ten of the Twenty

The sixth tier is named Pure and Wondrous Radiance, rests upon a sea of vajra palaces, its shape is four-square, and its buddha is titled Universal Radiance, Banner of Sovereign Freedom. The seventh is named the Adornment of the Flame of Many Flowers, its shape is like a storeyed pavilion, it is purely and solely pure, and its buddha is titled Sea of Joy, Radiance of Sovereign Freedom in Merit and Renown. The eighth is named the Ground That Gives Birth to Majestic Power, its shape is like Indra’s net, and its buddha is titled Vast Renown, Banner of the Sea of Wisdom. The ninth is named Putting Forth Wondrous Sounds, rests upon a sea of maṇi-kings that constantly give forth clouds adorned with all wondrous sounds, its shape is like the body of Brahmā, and its buddha is titled Pure Moon Radiance, Mark Invincible. The tenth is named Vajra Banner, its shape is round, it is purely and solely pure, and its buddha is titled Supreme King of the Sea of All Dharmas.

First the question: is there a thread by which these five tiers may be read together? There is. The shape of the eighth tier is Indra’s net — the same vehicle as the simile used above for the spread of the fragrant seas, but put to a different use; from which it may be seen that the image of Indra’s net serves in this chapter both for the general arrangement and for the shape of one single land. The ninth tier runs along ‘sound’ the whole way, from name to resting to shape: the world is named Putting Forth Wondrous Sounds, the sea it rests upon constantly gives forth wondrous sound, and its shape is like the body of Brahmā — and Brahmā is precisely the emblem of pure sound. This is one thread with the latter ten of the twenty instances of substance in the preceding passage, which have sound for their substance.

Correcting a misreading: the four words ‘its shape is round’ at the tenth tier are very short and are not to be read past. Round, together with the eight corners of the third tier and the four-square of the sixth, makes one set of contrasts: the point of shape is to display difference, not to fix superiority and inferiority. Bringing it home: of these five tiers two carry ‘purely and solely pure’ (the seventh and the tenth) and three do not — and it is in that presence and absence that Chengguan’s dividing line of ‘common to the defiled and the pure’ lies.

Tiers Eleven to Fifteen of the Twenty: Sahā Is the Thirteenth Tier

The eleventh tier is named the Radiance of the Sapphire Jewel Constantly Appearing, its shape is like a half-moon, and its buddha is titled Dharma of Measureless Merit. The twelfth is named Radiance Shining Forth, rests upon a fragrant-water sea of whirling flowers, its shape is like the whirling of a flower, and its buddha is titled Surpassing Śakra and Brahmā. The thirteenth tier is Sahā itself, resting upon a net of lotuses upheld by wind-wheels of every colour, its shape like empty space, and its buddha is precisely Vairocana Tathāgata, the World-Honoured One. The fourteenth is named the Radiance of Stillness Apart from Dust, its shape is like a vajra-holder, and its buddha is titled Supreme Sound Pervading the Dharma Realm. The fifteenth is named the Lamp of Many Wondrous Radiances, its shape is like the svastika graph, it is purely and solely pure, and its buddha is titled Invincible Power, Banner of Universal Illumination.

First the question: how does this tier differ from the others? In two ways, and neither is a small matter. First, of the twenty tiers nineteen say ‘the buddha there is titled such-and-such’, and this one alone says outright ‘its buddha is precisely Vairocana Tathāgata, the World-Honoured One’ — no title is given, the root teacher is pointed to directly. Chengguan fixes it with a single line: the thirteenth principal land is precisely this Sahā. Second, this tier does not carry the four words ‘purely and solely pure’; by the standard he set up, where those words are absent the land is common to the defiled and the pure — the world we live in is precisely a land in which defilement and purity are mixed, and yet it is within the Flower-Treasury just the same, and the root teacher is here just the same.

Correcting a misreading: do not read ‘Sahā is the thirteenth tier’ as a coincidence of position. Bringing it home: this section has spoken of so many inexpressible worlds, and only here does it come down to the reader’s own feet — you are living on one of these tiers. This is where all the adornment of this section touches ground, and it is also the foreshadowing of the next chapter, which will set forth the root cause of Vairocana.

Sahā ‘Shaped Like Empty Space’ and the Svastika of the Fifteenth Tier

In both of these places there has been dispute of old, and in both Chengguan first sets out another’s account and then his own resolution.

First: how can empty space have a shape? Chengguan cites the account of Jingfa: the sūtras of both the great and the small vehicles say that the substance of empty space has no form or matter and that its characteristic cannot be seen; to say now that it has a shape is an error of the one who turned the text about, and by the word-order of the Sanskrit one ought to place ‘shape’ before ‘round’ and ‘empty space’ above ‘the heavenly palaces’, and then join them thus: ‘its shape is round, and it is covered above by the adornments of the palaces of the gods who dwell in space’. Chengguan grants this, saying that the account is deep and well-founded, and at once sets out another resolution: although space has no shape, it may be spoken of according to worldly convention — the worldly books point to space as heaven and say that heaven is a round vault, its shape like a covering vessel, whence the saying ‘heaven’s contour encircles the level plain’; just as the Lotus says that Brahmā is the father of beings, which is likewise spoken according to worldly convention.

Second: is the svastika a graph or a mark? Chengguan again cites Jingfa: śrīvatsa is in origin not a graph at all but the mark of one who has virtue, and is properly rendered ‘auspicious sea-cloud’ — his many virtues deep and vast as a sea, his benefiting of beings like a cloud; of old the tripiṭaka masters mistakenly rendered the one Sanskrit word by the other, and so took a mark for a graph. Chengguan resolves it, saying: the sense now resolves this mark as what the myriad auspicious virtues assemble to form, and hence it is styled ‘myriad’, the intent being that the word is terse while the sense is inclusive; taken together it should be called ‘the mark of the myriad’.

Correcting a misreading: in neither place is Chengguan adjudicating who is right and who is wrong. His procedure is to grant — he allows that the other account has its reason, and then says that on the sūtra’s own text it also goes through. The two accounts stand together. Bringing it home: in reading the commentaries of the ancient worthies, what matters most is to tell which sentence is the refutation and which is the resolution; setting refutation and resolution side by side without adjudicating is exactly the manner of recording adopted in the present series.

Tiers Sixteen to Twenty of the Twenty

The sixteenth tier is named Pure Radiance Pervadingly Illumining, its shape is like a tortoise-shell, and its buddha is titled Pure Sun, Eye of Merit. The seventeenth is named the Treasury of Jewelled Adornment, its shape has eight corners, and its buddha is titled Unobstructed Wisdom-Radiance Pervadingly Illumining the Ten Directions. The eighteenth is named Apart from Dust, its shape is like a string of pearls, it is purely and solely pure, and its buddha is titled Measureless Skilful Means, Supreme Banner. The nineteenth is named Pure Radiance Universally Illumining, its shape is like the whirling spread of jewelled flowers, and its buddha is titled Radiance Universally Illumining the Dharma Realm and Space. The twentieth is named Wondrous Jewel Flame, its shape is like a jewelled ornament, worlds numbering the dust-motes of twenty buddha-lands encircle it all around, it is purely and solely pure, and its buddha is titled Radiance of the Marks of Merit.

First the question: on reaching the topmost tier, what has changed in the numbers? The retinue-number has risen from the two buddha-land dust-numbers of the second tier all the way to the twenty buddha-land dust-numbers here — the higher one goes, the more encircle. It is by this very rule that Li Tongxuan reckons the total: doubling and increasing from below upward, counting through above and below, two hundred and ten buddha-land dust-numbers of vast lands are needed to make one world-seed.

Correcting a misreading: do not read ‘the higher the more’ as ‘the higher the nobler’. The twenty tiers are the inner structure of one world-seed, not a ladder of fruition-stages; Sahā at the thirteenth tier is neither lowest nor highest, and the root teacher is right there in it. Bringing it home: having walked through the twenty tiers, look back at the first and the twentieth — one has ‘dust-motes of a buddha-land’ with no number attached, the other has ‘dust-motes of twenty buddha-lands’, and the eighteen tiers in between increase by one at a time. The purpose of counting all the way up, Li Tongxuan states most plainly: to cause small, narrow and inferior beings to know the range of the Buddha’s gathering and converting, and to raise the mind of awakening.

The Concluding Portion: The Ten Senses Restated and the Eighteen Classes of Shape

The sūtra at the last turns back and says the ten senses once more — that within this world-seed there are vast worlds numbering the dust-motes of inexpressibly many buddha-lands, each with its own place of resting, each with its own shape, each with its own substance, each with its own direction, each with its own entry, each with its own adornment, each with its own extent, each with its own ranked array, each with its own non-difference, each with its own sustaining power, encircling it all around. Chengguan outlines this passage as ‘the concluding of the remainder by category’, saying that it is not merely the numbers that are concluded but that it also displays in general what was said above about what they rest upon and the rest; and he divides it into four parts: first the general conclusion of the total number, second the conclusion of the classes of shape, third the conclusion of the retinue, fourth the showing forth of where they are.

The conclusion of the classes of shape lists worlds of eighteen classes of shape: turning round, river, whirling stream, wheel-rim, altar-mound and cleared ground, grove of trees, storeyed tower, śīla banner, the generally square, womb-treasury, lotus, qulejia, manifold beings, buddha-mark, round halo, cloud, net, gate and gate-tower. On these eighteen items Chengguan makes a very fine comparison: setting them against the twenty shapes of the world-seeds above, it lacks the shape of Mount Sumeru and the shape of ornaments, and the rest are wholly the same, save that there they were taken with respect to seeds and here with respect to lands.

A further question: since straight upward there are only nineteen tiers of lands, how can the general conclusion say there are inexpressibly many? Chengguan resolves it: because it argues collaterally. Were it not so — could a single land-seed have but one principal land at its lowest point? Hence the principal lands taken together crosswise and lengthwise are inexpressibly many. At the conclusion of the retinue he further points out that there are two levels of host and companions: in the earlier text the principal lands rise straight up and the encircling numbers increase by degrees, while here it is stated in general terms and so it says that each one has ten land-dust-numbers; and in the line ‘each one again has dust-motes of worlds as stated above’, the words ‘as above’ contain two senses — first, they point in general to the earlier numbers of encircler and encircled; second, ten buddha-lands are again used as the encirclers. He also appraises this in passing: on the latter reading it looks as though the translator made the text long and the principle obscure, for why did he not say outright that each one again has dust-numbers of ten buddha-lands; but on the former reading it is the translator’s finesse. The showing forth of where they are is the very last line: all the worlds are within the fragrant-water sea Boundless Wondrous Flower Radiance and within the fragrant-water rivers that encircle this sea — and Chengguan says that since it speaks of ‘and in the fragrant rivers’, one knows that they lie off to the side and not straight up.

Correcting a misreading: do not read the concluding portion as mere repetition. At the general statement the ten senses read ‘each with its own resting … each with its own quarter and place’, and at the concluding portion ‘each with its own place of resting … each with its own direction’, the wording slightly changed; and the shapes number twenty at the general statement and only eighteen at the concluding portion. Bringing it home: the ten senses spoken once at the head and once at the tail, with the concreteness of the twenty tiers between them — this is exactly this sūtra’s manner of exposition, from the general to the particular and from the particular back to the general.

Lineage

For the outline-name of this section two systems have stood together since ancient times. As to the numerical structure of the world-seeds, Li Tongxuan sets up a concrete arrangement: within the great lotus there are in all world-seeds numbering the dust-motes of ten inexpressible buddha-lands, and because the text of the teaching is limited he provisionally sets up one hundred and twenty-one world-seeds — eleven at the centre, each with twenty tiers above and below; outside these eleven, one hundred single-tiered world-seeds encircling them; and outside these again, near the vajra mountains, ten four-tiered world-seeds. Chengguan for his part does not set up such a number, but following the sūtra says that the ten seas each govern seas numbering the dust-motes of inexpressibly many buddha-lands, so that displayed in full there are ten inexpressible, while those set forth in order are only one hundred and eleven seas, the rest being merely indicated. The one gives one hundred and twenty-one world-seeds, the other one hundred and eleven seas; what is counted and the text relied on differ in each case. Both accounts are recorded without adjudication.

Whether ‘ten inexpressible’ is present is likewise a matter of two systems. The base text in this section reads only ‘fragrant-water seas numbering the dust-motes of inexpressibly many buddha-lands’, with no ‘ten’; Chengguan, going by the fact that the fragrant seas and the seeds in the text below both have ‘ten inexpressible’, judges that the Sanskrit originally had it and that a ‘ten’ has here dropped out, mostly an omission of the copyists. The text on which Li Tongxuan relied has ‘ten inexpressible’ of itself. Both accounts are recorded without adjudication.

As to systems of scale, the ancient worthies have two others besides. Li Tongxuan cites the account of the three vehicles: counting lands of a triple-thousand great-thousand up to one Ganges’ sands makes one world-nature; counting nature-worlds up to a Ganges’ sands makes one sea of worlds; counting sea-worlds up to a Ganges’ sands makes one world-seed. In this sūtra, by contrast, the count is by the dust-motes of one buddha-land, of two, of three, doubling and increasing thus, and the number is not bounded by Ganges’ sands. He says that the three vehicles mostly take Ganges’ sands for their measure, while this sūtra regularly takes the dust-motes of one buddha-land or of ten, in order to display the inexhaustible. Fazang, in the Tanxuan ji, separately sets up ten worlds beyond the triple-thousand — the world-nature, the sea of worlds, the world-wheel, the world-fullness, the world-distinction, the world-whorl, the world-turning, the world-lotus, the world-Sumeru, the world-mark — of which the ‘world-nature’ is the first of the ten classes. This system of Fazang’s shares the name ‘world-seed’ with the Flower-Treasury sea of lands of the present section but the context is different. Recorded without adjudication.

Neither Fazang’s Tanxuan ji nor Zhiyan’s Souxuan ji offers any phrase-by-phrase explanation of this section that can be cited; what has been found is only the listing of chapter titles in the tables of contents and the passage of general terms in fascicle two. Recorded as absent, as found, and the text of another place is not used to fill it. Chengguan’s Yanyi chao likewise shows no independent development of the explanation of the names and phrases of this section, and is likewise recorded as absent, as found.

As to the reading across the parallel translations, the eighty-fascicle and the sixty-fascicle differ greatly in fullness in this section. In the sixty-fascicle the central sea is named ‘Radiance of Delight’ and not ‘Boundless Wondrous Flower Radiance’, the world of the lowest tier is named ‘Pure Jewel-Net Radiance’ and not ‘Supreme Radiance Pervadingly Illumining’, and the buddha-title is ‘Apart from Defilement, Pure Eye, Vast Entry’ and not ‘Pure Eye, Lamp Apart from Defilement’; and more importantly the format differs — in this passage the sixty-fascicle has only the three items of the name of the sea it rests upon, the name of the land, and the buddha-title, while the eighty-fascicle has seven, the sixty-fascicle lacking shape, resting place, what covers it above, and retinue. As to the divergence in rendering between ‘world-seed’ and ‘world-nature’, Chengguan has already stated the reason himself, as given in the passage on the explanation of the name above. Recorded in full without adjudication.

Read on, and what follows this section is at once the list of the ten seas that turn to the right — Samantabhadra begins from the east of the fragrant-water sea Boundless Wondrous Flower Radiance and speaks of the seas one by one to the tenth. There Chengguan lays down a single line: below, it clarifies the lands sustained by the seed, which are of twenty tiers, and the nine seas below follow the same pattern. The format having been established in full at the one central sea of this section, the remaining nine seas are simply read by that same pattern — and this is why this section is called the first of the ten seas. Further on comes the closing passage of repeating verses of this chapter, one hundred and one verses in all, which gathers up both the own-substance of the Flower-Treasury and the net of lands it sustains.

Who Is Speaking in This Passage, and to Whom

There is only one speaker in the whole passage: Samantabhadra Bodhisattva. The opening sentence of the text, “At that time Samantabhadra Bodhisattva once again addressed the great assembly, saying”, governs everything down to the end of this fascicle — the ten fragrant-water oceans below, one ocean after another, with no second “at that time” begun anywhere in between, no second person breaking in, no question and answer, no verses. So keep this in mind as you read: these are not ten passages but one stretch of speech spoken in a single breath.

Those who listen are the “Sons of the Buddha”, that is, the oceanic assembly seated at the Dharma gathering in the place of enlightenment. The text names no individual hearer.

Ask one question first: why does Samantabhadra speak in this way? The answer lies in the passage before. That passage has already set up the framework — the wind-wheel bears up the fragrant-water oceans, from the fragrant-water oceans great lotuses well up, and upon the great lotuses the world-seeds rest. The framework being set up, this passage points out one by one the things upon it. The manner of the pointing is exceedingly regular — so regular that at first glance the reader takes it for a list. It is indeed a list; but the very format of the list is itself the teaching, and this is the place in the passage most easily read past.

Clear away one mistake: this passage is not ‘an introduction to ten place-names’. It is a demonstration, one hundred and ninety-four times over, of ‘which few items one is to use in knowing a world’.

The House-Number of a Single Layered World: Seven Items

When Chengguan outlines this passage, he sets out the complete format of a single layered world. He says: among the twenty layers of this first ocean, each layer has seven items — first, the distance apart; second, the name of the land; third, its shape; fourth, what it rests upon; fifth, what covers it above; sixth, its retinue; seventh, the name of its buddha; and some also state the substance, or state the purity, which makes eight items or nine.

Taken item by item, the seven are these:

• The distance apart — the sūtra reads “above this, past worlds as many as the dust-motes of a buddha-land”. How far the layer before stands from this one.
• The name of the land — ‘there is a world, named such-and-such’. What this world is called.
• The shape — “its shape is four-square”, “looking like a lotus”, and the like. What this world looks like.
• What it rests upon — ‘it rests upon such-and-such an ocean’. What this world is set upon.
• What covers it above — ‘clouds of such-and-such everywhere cover it above’. What is spread over this world’s head.
• The retinue — ‘worlds so many times the dust-motes of a buddha-land encircle it’. How many worlds surround it.
• The name of its buddha — ‘the buddha is named such-and-such’. What the buddha within this world is called.

Question first, then answer: why open out these seven? Because these seven give a full account of a world’s ‘above and below, left and right, inside and out’. The distance apart is the vertical, the retinue the horizontal, what it rests upon and what covers it above are the below and the above, the shape is its own aspect, and the name of the land and the name of the buddha are its identity and its master. Lack one, and the world cannot be fully known.

Clear away one mistake: these seven are not seven kinds of merit, nor seven stages of practice. They are the seven columns by which a world is known, like the district, the street and the number on a house-plate. Read them as merit and you will start asking ‘which of them is highest’ — and the sūtra means nothing of the kind.

Where it touches the ground: if reading the Avataṃsaka leaves you dizzy, it is mostly because all you see is a heap of names rolling past. Take hold of these seven columns and the one hundred and ninety-four layers turn from a cloud of mist into a table you can fill in cell by cell.

Why the First Item Is Absent from the First Layer

The first layer of every ocean has no column for “the distance apart”. There the sūtra says only “at the very lowest place” — the layer lowest of all.

Chengguan puts it very plainly: this first layer has no “distance apart”, but only the words “at the very lowest place”; the sense of the text is clear as it stands, and where there is a difficulty it will be explained.

Question first, then answer: why is there none? Because “the distance apart” is there to say ‘how far it stands from the layer below’; and beneath the first layer there is nothing, so there is no distance to speak of. This is not a dropped passage; it is the format itself losing one column automatically in the first cell.

Clear away one mistake: do not infer from the missing column that the first layer is treated more briefly. Quite the contrary — in the second through the tenth oceans, the first layer and the very last layer are the only two that state shape, resting-place, covering and retinue in full (the first ocean is the exception; there all twenty layers state them in full). And so Chengguan says: among the twenty layers, the text of the first world has seven items; the text of the last has eight, purity being added; the middle ones have only three — the distance apart, the number, and the name of the land with the name of the buddha; and the remaining eight oceans follow this same pattern.

Where it touches the ground: when you come to those short middle sentences that carry only a name and a buddha’s name, there is no need to suspect that the text has dropped something. That is the format.

The Three Graphs “Twenty Layers” Do Not Occur Even Once in the Sūtra

This point must be made plain, or everything after it goes crooked.

“Twenty layers” is the language of the commentators and the treatise-masters. Outlining this passage, Chengguan says “there are twenty layers, and the nine oceans below follow the same pattern”; and Li Tongxuan, summing up the present fascicle in his Xin Huayan jing lun, says that this one fascicle has ten world-seeds of twenty layers in all, which, encircling the central world-seed, come to eleven world-seeds of twenty layers together. Both of these are ancient worthies counting; neither is the sūtra speaking.

And how does the sūtra itself put it? It ranges the layers upward one by one, and when it has finished it changes to the next ocean; from beginning to end it never marks a total. Chengguan himself points this out, saying: in this text no great total is set down or concluded; it can be known by following the pattern.

Question first, then answer: does “twenty layers” then count for anything? It does — it is a format the ancient worthies read out of the text, and for the first ocean it fits exactly. But keep the distinction clear: this is a name for a format arrived at by the commentators, not a name the sūtra gives itself.

Clear away one mistake: do not turn “twenty layers” round and demand that the sūtra fill out twenty for every ocean. The next section will show that the sūtra is not tidy in this respect.

The Layers Actually Counted: One Hundred and Ninety-Four, with Four Oceans Falling Short of Twenty

Count the ten oceans layer by layer and the numbers are these — the first ocean twenty, the second nineteen, the third twenty, the fourth twenty, the fifth eighteen, the sixth twenty, the seventh eighteen, the eighth twenty, the ninth twenty, the tenth nineteen: one hundred and ninety-four layers in all.

The second, the fifth, the seventh and the tenth — these four oceans fall short of twenty.

Question first, then answer: is this a copyist’s omission? The text of the sūtra is simply so, and on this point one can only record what is there. When Chengguan’s outline reaches this place he says only ‘the remaining eight oceans follow this same pattern’, and does not separately record which ocean lacks how many layers. He did indeed say ‘in all the Sanskrit texts this lack is the same’, and did say ‘for the most part it is an omission in the Sanskrit text, and later hands annotating it miswrote from palm leaves that resembled one another’ — but those two remarks are about the next fascicle: the nine oceans governed by the fifth ocean list only nine and then close, and there is the matter of a stretch of text at the ocean nearest the encircling ring of mountains. That is a lack in another passage, not the number of layers in these ten oceans.

So the handling here is this: the two matters are recorded apart, not combined into one, and no adjudication upon this passage is made on Chengguan’s behalf. The sūtra counts as it counts, the ancient worthies passed no judgement, and both are recorded without adjudication.

Clear away one mistake: do not, for the sake of a tidy number, say ‘it ought to be twenty layers, the sūtra has merely abbreviated’. The sūtra does not say it abbreviated, and neither did Chengguan. Writing what is there matters more than filling out.

Where it touches the ground: when a number does not tally in your reading of a sūtra, the first step is to go back and count; the second is to look whether the ancient worthies said anything; and the third — if they did not — is to record it as it stands. That is more dependable than any way of smoothing it over.

How the Ten Oceans Are Ranged: East, South, and Thereafter the Rightward Whirl All the Way

The directional terms, counted one by one: the first ocean says “east”, the second says “south”, and the third through the tenth uniformly say “the rightward whirl”.

Chengguan explains the unevenness: from the third ocean on it says only the rightward whirl and no longer says south, because the ten oceans are like a ring turning about the ocean at the centre, and so none of them can be said to be due south. He also draws a comparison — it is like setting ten dishes in a ring about one platter: the quarters can be seen at once.

He points out one further matter of grammar as well: the text of these nine oceans below has two members apiece; it first cites the ocean before as the point of reference, and only then says ‘there is a fragrant-water ocean’ and so on. The sūtra never cites the central ocean as the thing being encircled, and that is why it says “south”.

Question first, then answer: if it is an encircling, why do the first ocean still say “east” and the second still say “south”? Because the first two oceans still stand in positions that a directional term can account for; once one has turned round past them, due south and due north are no longer accurate, and nothing remains but to change to “the rightward whirl”. The wording of the sūtra changes as the position changes, and that in itself is honesty.

Clear away one mistake: the ten oceans are not ranged in a straight line running off to the south-east. They are a ring. Read them as a line and the eight later occurrences of “the rightward whirl” will turn into eight unaccountable swerves.

Where it touches the ground: in reading how the worlds are laid out in the Avataṃsaka, the directional terms are to be read as “relations”, not as ‘coordinates’.

The Substance of a Land Is Not Earth but Sound

For the world-seed of every ocean the sūtra marks a “substance”. The ten substances of the ten oceans are these — the roaring sound of bodhisattva practice; the sound and voice of the ocean of the merit of all buddhas; the sound and voice that proclaims the names of all tathāgatas; the boundless sound and voice of the buddhas; the sound and voice born of Samantabhadra’s wisdom; the sound and voice of the light of the wisdom of all buddhas; the sound and voice of the Dharma-wheel of all buddhas; the voice of the spiritual transformations of the buddha-lands within all motes of dust; the sound and voice of the dharma of skillful means of all the bodhisattva grounds; and the sound of the Dharma-wheel that universally shows the equality of all.

Ten substances, counted one by one: seven read “sound and voice”, two read “sound”, one reads “voice”. Not one of them is earth, water, fire or wind.

Question first, then answer: how can the “substance” of a world be sound? “Substance” here does not mean material; it means that upon which this whole cluster of worlds depends for its standing. What the sūtra means is this: this entire cluster of worlds is held up by the sound and voice issuing from the practice of bodhisattvas, from the merit of the buddhas, from the names of the tathāgatas, from Samantabhadra’s wisdom. It is not that a piece of earth is there first and the Buddha-dharma then arises upon it; the sound of the Buddha-dharma comes first, and the world stands up in dependence upon it.

Clear away one mistake: do not read ‘having sound and voice as its substance’ as ‘there are often pleasant sounds in this world’. That would be describing the surroundings; what the sūtra speaks of is that upon which the world depends.

Look at one further piece of corroboration: the thirteenth layer of the first ocean, “clouds of jewel-king towers of the Buddha’s voice everywhere cover it above”, and the first layer of the fifth ocean, “clouds of Śakra’s net of maṇi kings of the Buddha’s realm cover it above” — even what is spread over the head of a world is the Buddha’s voice, the Buddha’s realm. And the last column of every layer is without fail the “name of the buddha”. The substance is the Buddha’s voice, the covering is the Buddha’s realm, the master is a buddha — the dependent recompense and the proper recompense are threaded back and forth within one and the same sentence, and this is the hardest piece of scriptural ground in the passage.

Where it touches the ground: this section is the eye of the whole passage. The seven columns before it are form; this column is bone. If the reader is to remember one thing only, let it be this: the worlds of the Flower-Treasury world are held up by sound.

The Column of Shape: Nineteen Shapes, Four Ways of Saying Them

Only the first ocean states a shape for every layer. In the second through the tenth oceans only the first layer and the very last state a shape; all the middle ones omit it.

All twenty layers of the first ocean state a shape, and the shapes that differ from one another are nineteen: four-square, round, vajra, maṇi-jewel wheel, lotus, triangular, half-moon, ranks of jewel lamps, svastika, Indra’s net, svastika, a vast city wall, flower-whirl, the four continents, the body of an asura, eight-cornered, a swirling current of fragrant water, a form that circles round, a lion seat, the Buddha’s palm. (Of these, the svastika occurs twice.)

There are four ways of saying it: ‘its shape is such-and-such’ and ‘shaped like such-and-such’ state the shape outright, and are used mostly of geometrical shapes; ‘looking like such-and-such’ and ‘its look is as though it were such-and-such’ take a likeness openly, and are used mostly of the images of things.

Question first, then answer: why should worlds have shapes at all, and such miscellaneous shapes? Because the Flower-Treasury world is not stamped out from a single mould. The sūtra uses nineteen shapes that have nothing to do with one another — some geometrical, some of flowers and trees, some of human bodies, some of implements — precisely to make the reader give up the preconception that ‘a world ought to look a certain standard way’.

Clear away one mistake: shape is not rank. Four-square is no higher than triangular, the Buddha’s palm no more wondrous than the lotus. They are nineteen kinds set side by side, not nineteen degrees.

Where it touches the ground: at the fourteenth layer, the phrase “looking like the four continents”, Chengguan stops especially to explain. He says: a place amid the waters where one may dwell is called a continent; according to the Kośa, the eastern continent is like a half-moon, the southern like a cart, the western like a full moon, and the northern is squarely four-sided; the shapes of the four continents are of themselves all different, and yet the sūtra says “like the four continents” — which is to say that this world taken as a whole looks just like this world of ours. This is the one place in the whole passage where an ancient worthy brings the shape of a far-off world back to the very ground beneath the reader’s own feet.

Śakra’s Net Occurs Eleven Times in This Passage

“Indra’s net” and “Śakra’s net” are one and the same thing — the pearl net of Śakra’s heavenly palace, with a pearl knotted at every mesh, each pearl mirroring every other. In this passage it occurs eleven times, and in a different capacity each time:

Sometimes it is the shape of a world (the tenth layer of the first ocean, “its look is as though it were Indra’s net”); sometimes it is what is spread over a world’s head (the first layer of the fourth ocean, “Indra’s net covers it above”); sometimes it is the name of a world-seed (the fifth ocean, “Indra’s Net Interspersed with Wondrous Jewels”); sometimes it is the name of a whole fragrant-water ocean (the sixth ocean, “Lotus Indra’s Net”); and four times besides it is the name of a world itself (Light of the Lion’s Śakra-Net, Śakra’s-Net Adornment, Śakra’s-Net Banner, Maṇi-Treasury Indra’s Net).

Question first, then answer: how can one and the same thing be now a shape, now a name, now a covering? Because what the simile of Śakra’s net says in itself is precisely ‘mirroring one another, each being the content of the other’. That it fits in whatever column it appears in is exactly what it is there to express.

Clear away one mistake: do not take these eleven occurrences for poverty of vocabulary in the sūtra. This is one simile demonstrating itself upon itself.

Where it touches the ground: when you come upon the words “Śakra’s net”, it is worth pausing to see which column it is sitting in this time — that is far more use than remembering its definition.

The Retinue and “Pure and Unmixed”: Two Columns with Different Rules

The column of the retinue increases layer by layer in the first ocean: the first layer has “worlds as many as the dust-motes of a buddha-land encircle it”, the second “twice the dust-motes of a buddha-land”, the third “three times the dust-motes of a buddha-land” … and so on up to the twentieth layer, “twenty times the dust-motes of a buddha-land”. In the second through the tenth oceans, only the first layer and the last have this column, and the last is uniformly “twenty times the dust-motes of a buddha-land”.

Question first, then answer: why should the retinue grow greater the higher one goes? The sūtra gives no reason. What can be seen is this: the higher one goes, the larger the scale of what is encircled — this column is itself a movement of unfolding upward.

The column “pure and unmixed” follows a different rule. Twenty-five occurrences in the whole passage: seven in the first ocean (layers one, four, seven, ten, thirteen, sixteen and twenty), and two each in the second through the tenth ocean (the first layer and the last). Chengguan says it plainly: this column is not a constant item among the seven, but the added clause of “some also state the substance, or state the purity”, which when stated makes eight items or nine.

Clear away one mistake: a world not marked “pure and unmixed” is not thereby an impure world. The sūtra has merely written nothing in that column. An empty column is not a negative content. This is a rule to be held to in reading every sūtra passage cast in the form of a list.

How to Read the Column of the Buddha’s Name

The last column of every layer is without fail the name of a buddha. One hundred and ninety-four layers means one hundred and ninety-four names of buddhas, and not one of them repeats.

Passing over the third through the tenth oceans, Chengguan says one thing: the text of those eight oceans can all be understood; but as for anyone who would explain the names of the buddhas within the lands, it is well worth turning the mind to. He did not explain them one by one himself, yet he said plainly that there is something here worth consulting.

Question first, then answer: how are these names of buddhas to be read? Look at how they are made and you will see: Universal Illumination by the Light Between the Brows, Insight of the Boundless Ocean of All Dharmas, Radiance of the Marks of Merit Everywhere Illumining, Inexhaustible Insight of Dharma-Joy … judged by their final graph, the commonest classes are brightness, sound, insight, illumination, banner and light. A buddha’s name here is not a personal name; it is that one portion of buddha-virtue which that world displays.

Clear away one mistake: there is no need to look up the provenance of these names one by one. Most of them occur only here. The sūtra lists them so that the reader may see that ‘there are buddhas everywhere, and everywhere the buddha-virtue differs’.

Where it touches the ground: perhaps the best way to read this passage is not to understand every name, but to let one hundred and ninety-four names of buddhas stream past the eye once, and then to notice — there is not one world without a buddha.

Ocean One The Fragrant-Water Ocean Treasury of Flames Free from Defilement: The Sample Ocean, with All Seven Items Complete

The first ocean is the first of the ten, and the only one of the ten that states shape, resting-place, covering and retinue in full for every layer. Its position is east of the central Fragrant-Water Ocean Boundless Wondrous Flower Light; the ocean is named Treasury of Flames Free from Defilement, and from the ocean a great lotus wells up, named Wondrously Adorned with All Fragrant Maṇi Kings — of the ten oceans this is the only one that states the great lotus expressly and gives it a name. The world-seed is named Universally Illumining Whirl of Lands, and has the roaring sound of bodhisattva practice as its substance.

Question first, then answer: why is only the first ocean set out so fully? Because it is the sample. It is from this very ocean that Chengguan draws out the format of the seven items, after which he says ‘the nine oceans below follow this same pattern’. The nine oceans that follow dare to abbreviate because the first ocean has already run the format through once.

Clear away one mistake: do not suppose the first ocean nobler than the others. Its fullness is a fullness of format, not a height of station.

Two layers in this ocean are especially worth pausing at: the tenth, Sounds and Voices Numerous as Motes of Dust, whose shape is “its look is as though it were Indra’s net” — the world itself looks like Śakra’s net; and the fourteenth, Jewel-Treasury Adornment, whose shape is “looking like the four continents” — where Chengguan cites the Kośa on the shapes of the four continents and says that this world “is wholly similar to this world of ours”, that is, like the one we live in now. The far and the near are both in this one ocean.

Ocean Two The Fragrant-Water Ocean Wheel of Inexhaustible Radiance: Abbreviated but Not Diminished: The Middle Seventeen Layers Keep Only Name and Name

The second ocean lies south of the first; the ocean is named Wheel of Inexhaustible Radiance, the world-seed is named Adorned with the Buddha-Banner, and it has the sound and voice of the ocean of the merit of all buddhas as its substance. Counted layer by layer, nineteen layers.

From this ocean the format tightens: only the first layer, Flower Beloved to Behold, and the very last, Banner Adorned with Inexhaustible Light, state shape, resting-place, covering and retinue; the middle seventeen keep, without exception, only the name of the land and the name of the buddha. What Chengguan calls “the middle ones have only three” becomes the norm from this ocean on.

Question first, then answer: with abbreviation running on like this, what does the reader still get? What one gets is density. The sūtra takes the description away, and what is left is one string after another of names of worlds and names of buddhas — like turning fast through a stack of house-plates. Abbreviation is not a saving of trouble; it is the making of quantity itself into content.

Clear away one mistake: this ocean has only nineteen layers; do not silently round it up to twenty in your mind. It has been said already: the sūtra is so, the ancient worthies passed no judgement, and it is recorded as it stands.

From this ocean on the manner of reading may change: there is no need to stop at every layer. Let the names roll on connected, and stop when you reach the last layer’s “worlds twenty times the dust-motes of a buddha-land encircle it” — that is the top of this cluster of worlds.

Ocean Three The Fragrant-Water Ocean Light of Vajra-Jewel Flames: The One Ocean Where Substance and Text Coincide

From the third ocean the directional term changes to “the rightward whirl”, and east and south are said no more. The ocean is named Light of Vajra-Jewel Flames, the world-seed is named Treasury Adorned with Buddha-Light, and it has the sound and voice that proclaims the names of all tathāgatas as its substance. Counted layer by layer, twenty layers.

Having as its substance “the proclaiming of the names of all tathāgatas” — this is the plainest of the ten substances: this cluster of worlds is held up by the very act of ‘uttering aloud the names of the buddhas’. And the twenty layers beneath this ocean are precisely twenty names of buddhas. In this ocean substance and text coincide.

Question first, then answer: is this a coincidence? The sūtra does not say. What can be seen is this: the substance of this ocean is exactly what the whole text of this ocean is doing.

The first layer, Jewel-Flame Lotus, has for its shape “its look is as though it were the tuft-mark between the brows in the colour of maṇi” — like that one point of light and colour at the Buddha’s brows. The last layer, Jewel-Adornment Treasury, is “shaped like the svastika”. From a single point of tuft-light it begins, and at a svastika it stops.

Where it touches the ground: when the names will not move for you, there is one thing you can do — read the twenty names of the buddhas through. The substance of this ocean was set up in just that way.

Ocean Four The Fragrant-Water Ocean Adorned with Sapphire Jewels: An Ocean Unlike the Rest in Two Places

The fourth ocean is named Adorned with Sapphire Jewels, and its world-seed is named Light Illumining the Ten Directions. This ocean is unlike the rest in two places.

The first: its world-seed expressly states what it rests upon — “it rests upon clouds of the fragrance of all wondrously adorned lotuses”. Of the ten oceans, only this one and the sixth state what the world-seed rests upon. Chengguan had already reckoned with this unevenness: from the second ocean on, he says, some have no lotus, because in the general explanation of the seeds above it was said that some rest upon a lotus and some rest upon an ocean — hence in some cases there is one and in some there is none.

The second: the opening phrase of this ocean’s first layer reads “at this, the very lowest place”, whereas the other nine oceans all read “within this, at the very lowest place”. In the whole passage of one hundred and ninety-four layers, only in this one place is “at this” used. The sūtra is so, and it is not altered.

The first layer, Wheel of the Inexhaustible Colour-Treasury of the Ten Directions, has for its shape “its look circles round and about, and it has measureless corners” — turning about in a round, with corners past counting; and what covers its head is Indra’s net itself. The last layer, Lotus Universally Illumining, is “its look is round”. From measureless corners to roundness: within one ocean, the beginning and the end answer to each other.

Clear away one mistake: “it has measureless corners” does not say that it is a polygon. The word the sūtra uses is “circles round and about” — it is a turning aspect whose corners cannot be told out, not a polygon that could be drawn.

Ocean Five The Fragrant-Water Ocean Vajra-Wheel-Adorned Base: Śakra’s Net Three Times, the Speaker’s Own Wisdom as Substance

The fifth ocean is named Vajra-Wheel-Adorned Base, its world-seed is named Indra’s Net Interspersed with Wondrous Jewels, and it has the sound and voice born of Samantabhadra’s wisdom as its substance. Counted layer by layer, eighteen layers — one of the two fewest among the ten oceans.

The name of this ocean is itself a net: the world-seed is called “Indra’s Net Interspersed with Wondrous Jewels”; what covers the head of the first layer, Lotus Net, is “clouds of Śakra’s net of maṇi kings of the Buddha’s realm”; and the world of the eighth layer is named “Light of the Lion’s Śakra-Net”. Within one ocean, Śakra’s net appears three times.

Question first, then answer: the world-seed has “the sound and voice born of Samantabhadra’s wisdom” as its substance — what does this mean? Samantabhadra is the sole speaker of this passage. The cluster of worlds he speaks of has for its very substance the sound and voice born of his wisdom — the speaker, what is spoken, and the substance of what is spoken of are, in this ocean, one and the same thing.

Clear away one mistake: this does not say that Samantabhadra created this ocean of worlds. What the sūtra states is a “substance”, that upon which they depend, not a making.

The first layer, Lotus Net, has for its shape “its look is as though it were the shape of Mount Sumeru”; the last layer, Universal Cloud Treasury, “its look is as though it were the shape of a tower”. A mountain and a tower — both shapes in which one may dwell.

Ocean Six The Fragrant-Water Ocean Lotus Indra’s Net: Reflections: The Ten Directions All Appear Here

The sixth ocean is named Lotus Indra’s Net, its world-seed is named Universally Manifesting the Reflections of the Ten Directions, and it has the sound and voice of the light of the wisdom of all buddhas as its substance. The world-seed “rests upon the lotuses adorned with all fragrant maṇi” — this is the second place among the ten oceans where what the world-seed rests upon is expressly stated.

The world-seed is named “Universally Manifesting the Reflections of the Ten Directions”, and those words are worth a pause. A reflection is cast; it does not stand of itself. The reflections of the ten directions all appear universally here — which is the same matter as the simile of Śakra’s net: pearl mirrors pearl, and within every single pearl are the reflections of all the rest. And the name of this ocean is, just so, Lotus Indra’s Net.

Question first, then answer: does “reflection” perhaps say that these worlds are unreal? The sūtra says no such thing. What it says is “universally manifesting” — the ten directions all appear here. The weight falls on the power to manifest, not on real or unreal.

The first layer, Jewel Radiance of the Ocean of Sentient Beings, has for its shape “its look is as though it were a treasury of pearls”; the last layer, Boundless Jewels Everywhere Illumining, is “its shape is four-square”, and what covers its head is “Śakra’s net of maṇi kings raining down boundless colours everywhere”. The first layer of the first ocean was likewise “its shape is four-square” — walking through the ten oceans this far, the shapes have come round to where they began.

Ocean Seven The Fragrant-Water Ocean Treasury of Amassed Jewel-Fragrance: What a World Rests Upon Need Not Be an Ocean

The seventh ocean is named Treasury of Amassed Jewel-Fragrance, its world-seed is named Adorned with All Majestic Virtue, and it has the sound and voice of the Dharma-wheel of all buddhas as its substance. Counted layer by layer, eighteen layers, the fewest along with the fifth ocean.

The first layer of this ocean, Every Kind of Production, rests upon “the vajra mountain-banners of every kind” — not upon an ocean but upon mountain-banners. In the whole passage there are thirty-eight places that have a column for “what it rests upon”, and of these only three do not close with the graph for ocean: the fourteenth layer of the first ocean, “it rests upon the Sumeru of jewelled necklaces”; the first layer of the sixth ocean, “it rests upon the swirl of the ocean of all maṇi necklaces”; and this one, “it rests upon the vajra mountain-banners of every kind”.

Question first, then answer: why should the column of what a world rests upon vary? Because the sūtra never laid it down that a world must rest upon an ocean. “What it rests upon” asks ‘what is it set upon’, and the answer may be an ocean, may be a mountain, may be a flower, may be a net. The column is fixed, the filling of it free — and this is the most important thing about the list-form of this passage.

The last layer, Śakra’s-Net Adornment, is “shaped like a railing” — like a balustrade. Its name is Śakra’s net and its shape is a railing: both of them are ‘lattices’.

Clear away one mistake: do not read “Treasury of Amassed Jewel-Fragrance” as a storehouse. What is amassed is fragrance, and in this passage fragrance is the mark of a world’s being pure — as was said above, the ancient worthies explain that a fragrant-water ocean is so called in order to distinguish it from the salt and bitter seas of the defiled lands.

Ocean Eight The Fragrant-Water Ocean Jewel Adornment: The Substance Pushed Down into the Motes of Dust

The eighth ocean is named Jewel Adornment, its world-seed is named Universally Undefiled, and it has the voice of the spiritual transformations of the buddha-lands within all motes of dust as its substance.

This one substance is the only one of the ten that reads “voice” rather than “sound and voice”, and it is also the most winding of the ten: not the sound and voice of a buddha, but ‘the voice of the spiritual transformations set going by the buddha-lands within all motes of dust’. Within a mote of dust there are buddha-lands; the buddha-lands set going spiritual transformations; the transformations have a voice; and that voice is the substance of a whole cluster of worlds.

Question first, then answer: how can there be buddha-lands within a mote of dust? This is what the Avataṃsaka says throughout, and this passage does not open it out again; here one need only see how deep the sūtra has pushed the “substance” — it is not a buddha speaking, it is lands within dust transforming, and the voice thrown off by that transformation holds up this cluster of worlds.

Clear away one mistake: do not read “Universally Undefiled” as ‘clean’. Undefiled is here the name of the world-seed; it is not the same column as the “pure and unmixed” of the several layers, and neither guarantees the other.

The first layer, Pure, Wondrous and Level, is “shaped like a jewelled body”; the last layer, Universally Firm Adornment Shining in the Ten Directions, is “its shape is eight-cornered”, and what it rests upon is “the ocean of mind-king maṇi wheels”. The words ‘mind-king’ occur only this once in the whole passage.

Ocean Nine The Fragrant-Water Ocean Mass of Vajra Jewels: The Substance Moves from the Buddha’s Side to the Bodhisattva’s

The ninth ocean is named Mass of Vajra Jewels, its world-seed is named Practice of the Dharma Realm, and it has the sound and voice of the dharma of skillful means of all the bodhisattva grounds as its substance.

“The sound and voice of the dharma of skillful means of all the bodhisattva grounds” — the bodhisattva grounds are the ten grounds; the substance of this cluster of worlds is the sound of the dharma of skillful means practised by the bodhisattvas of the ten grounds. Walking through the ten oceans to the ninth, the substance has moved from the buddha’s side to the bodhisattva’s.

Question first, then answer: why are the bodhisattva grounds spoken of only here? The sūtra gives no account of any sequence, and none should be arranged on its behalf. What can be seen is this: of the ten substances, the first ocean is “the roaring sound of bodhisattva practice”, the fifth is “the sound and voice born of Samantabhadra’s wisdom”, and the ninth is “the sound and voice of the dharma of skillful means of all the bodhisattva grounds” — three of them on the bodhisattva’s side, the remaining seven on the buddha’s. They stand side by side; they do not make a stair.

The first layer, Pure Light Shining, is “shaped like a string of beads” — like beads threaded on a cord. The last layer, Tuft-Mark Adornment, is “shaped like a half-moon”.

In the text of this ocean the pointing diverges in several places (in several layers a colon rather than a semicolon stands before the “name of the buddha”), though the graphs do not differ; those are traces of later punctuation, not variant readings of the sūtra.

Ocean Ten The Fragrant-Water Ocean Jewelled Battlements of the Heavenly City: The Last Ocean: Coming to Rest upon “Equality” and “Unobstructed”

The tenth ocean is named Jewelled Battlements of the Heavenly City, its world-seed is named Radiance of Lamp-Flames, and it has the sound of the Dharma-wheel that universally shows the equality of all as its substance. Counted layer by layer, nineteen layers. This is the last ocean of the fascicle, and the close of this passage.

“Jewelled Battlements of the Heavenly City” — battlements are the parapet upon a city wall. Walking through the ten oceans to the last, the image used is that of a city. And its substance is “the sound of the Dharma-wheel that universally shows the equality of all”: the word equality, set at the last of the ten substances, gathers level again the buddha’s side, the bodhisattva’s side and the dust’s side that the nine before had divided.

Question first, then answer: is this an ending the sūtra intended? The sūtra does not say so, and the ancient worthies passed no judgement here either. This place records only the aspect of the text: the last of the ten substances is “equality”, and the buddha-name of the last layer of the ten oceans is “Unobstructed Light Everywhere Illumining the Dharma Realm”.

The last layer, Delightful Brahmā Sound, is “shaped like the Buddha’s hand”; what it rests upon is the Ocean of Jewel-Light Nets; over its head are spread “clouds of all the adornments of the bodies of bodhisattvas”; worlds twenty times the dust-motes of a buddha-land encircle it; it is pure and unmixed; and the buddha is named Unobstructed Light Everywhere Illumining the Dharma Realm. — At one hundred and ninety-four layers it stops, and the speech of this fascicle is done.

Where it touches the ground: reading all the way through, one comes to rest at last upon the word “unobstructed”. All the dividing into cells, the numbering, the counting of layers, the recording of shapes, one hundred and ninety-four times over, comes to rest here in a single “unobstructed”. The cells are there to be known by, not to divide with.

Lineage

What the ancient worthies left upon this passage by way of adjudication. Chengguan is the one who comments upon this passage sentence by sentence; the sections above have made his attributions plain at each place, and here three of his adjudications are added, and one non-adjudication. What he adjudged as to format is the seven items, and the seven of the first, the eight of the last, and the three of the middle; what he adjudged as to direction is that the ten oceans encircle the central ocean as ten dishes about a platter; what he pointed out as to grammar is that ‘all nine oceans first cite the preceding ocean as that upon which they depend’. What he did not adjudge is the shortfall in the number of layers — a point already explained above, and not to be filled in on his behalf.

What this passage looks like in the sixty-fascicle Avataṃsaka. The chapter on Rocana Buddha in the Jin translation in sixty fascicles, under the same teaching that ‘the wind-wheel bears up the fragrant oceans, the fragrant oceans put forth lotuses, and the lotuses bear up the world-seeds’, gives only a single-layer arrangement: in such-and-such a fragrant-water ocean there is a world-nature named such-and-such, one after another; with no layer-by-layer unfolding of twenty layers, and no layer-by-layer names of worlds and of buddhas. So there is nothing in the sixty-fascicle text here that could be collated layer by layer against this passage. This is not a failure of the sixty-fascicle text to translate; it is a difference of where the two put their fullness: the eighty-fascicle text spends its labour on the enumeration of the layers and the names of the buddhas, and the sixty-fascicle text spends its labour on the verses — the sixty-fascicle text goes straight on after this passage into a long stretch of Samantabhadra’s verses, whereas the verses in repetition of the eighty-fascicle text do not appear until the next fascicle. Both are recorded without adjudication.

And so the commentators upon the sixty-fascicle text have no way to explain layer by layer either. Fazang’s Tanxuan ji and Zhiyan’s Souxuan ji are both commentaries upon the sixty-fascicle text, and what they outline at the answering place is the sense of ‘the layered formation of the world-natures’, not twenty layers. Fazang sets up a separate adjudication: the ocean of worlds adorned by the lotus treasury is of three kinds — first, that which, though it pervades the Dharma realm, appears with increase and decrease according to the capacities of bodhisattvas upon the grounds and, being lodged at the summit of the realm of form, is spoken of as one realm only; second, that in which, of this very Flower-Treasury pervading the Dharma realm, ten are spoken so as to show inexhaustibility, inexhaustibly many Flower-Treasuries each pervading the Dharma realm; and third, the worlds of the miscellaneous kinds, tree-shaped and the rest, each and every one of which has a lotus treasury. He adjudges the first with respect to the common teaching of the One Vehicle, and the latter two as shown with respect to the distinct teaching. This is Fazang’s adjudication by lineage, and it is recorded without appraisal.

How Li Tongxuan counts. Tongxuan does not explain layer by layer, but totals by the fascicle: this one fascicle has ten world-seeds of twenty layers, which with the central seed they encircle come to eleven world-seeds of twenty layers. What he counts is ‘seeds’, what Chengguan counts is “layers”; the two have their eyes on different things, and both are recorded.

The echo of this passage within this sūtra. In the chapter on Entry into the Dharma Realm, when the good friend Gopā, a daughter of the Śākya clan, tells Sudhana what she herself knows, she speaks of “the worlds gathered in by the measureless world-seeds of the ten directions within this ocean of the Flower-Treasury world”, and gathers them at once under nine headings — the breadth of worlds, the setting up of worlds, the wheel of worlds, the field of worlds, the differentiation of worlds, the turning of worlds, the lotus of worlds, the Sumeru of worlds, the names of worlds. There they are gathered under nine names; here they are listed out in one hundred and ninety-four layers: the one full, the other summary, and both saying the same thing.

One line of boundary in the treatises of the Huayan school. In the Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang, dividing the common teaching from the place where the three vehicles interpenetrate, Fazang says that some teachings ‘also speak of the Flower-Treasury world, yet do not speak of the ten’. The ten oceans and ten seeds of this passage are precisely the text that “speaks of the ten”. That one line, taken the other way about, marks out where this passage stands in the classification of the teachings — not in speaking of the Flower-Treasury, but in speaking of the ten.

Reading on. What follows this passage is the third section, the differentiated net of lands it sustains, part three, which is the verses in repetition of this chapter; Chengguan outlines it as “one hundred and one verses in all”. Further on, the tenth fascicle has still to speak of the oceans that each of these ten oceans governs. The format of the seven items set up in this passage still holds good then — Chengguan says so plainly: of the governed oceans, the lands sustained by the nearest of them “likewise all have twenty layers”. The format is set up in this fascicle and used in the fascicles that follow.

First, See Clearly What This Passage Is Bringing to a Close

The chapter “The Flower-Treasury World” reaches its last fascicle here. The two preceding passages have already named, sea by sea, the first ten of the ten-tiered fragrant-water seas; this passage first completes the remaining ten seas, then sums everything up in one stretch of prose, and finally restates the whole chapter in one hundred and one verses. The form is in three parts: the naming, the summing-up, and the verses.

Ask first the question most easily passed over: why name so many names? Thousands of characters of sea-names, world-seed names and buddha-names in a row read like a catalogue, not like Dharma. The answer lies in the summing-up: these names are not there for you to remember, they are there so that you may take your stand on two words — “each and every” and “each of its own.” By the time the sūtra has gone on listing for a while, you can no longer hold a single name in mind — and that is exactly the effect it wants. When the names and forms are too many to remember, what is left is just this one thing: “each and every one of them is free, and among them there is no confusion.”

Correcting a misreading: do not read this passage as a map of the cosmos that could be drawn. It does indeed have directions (east, outside), it has levels (the very bottom, level with Vajra Banner, level with the Sahā world, the very top), and it has distances (passing beyond as many worlds as the dust-motes of ten buddha-lands); but the unit of these measures is “grind one buddha's land into dust-motes and count each mote as one” — and once that unit is in play, no map can be drawn. The directions and levels are there so that the mind may walk through them once in order, not so that you may locate anything.

Bringing it home: the right posture for reading this passage is to let the names and forms flow past you, and to pause where “each of its own” occurs. Chengguan outlines the summing-up passage in five subdivisions, and the third is called “concluding the differing modes of the seeds” — difference is the bone of this whole passage.

The Ten Groups of Remaining Seas: One Sentence-Pattern, Laid Out Ten Times

Ask first: do the ten groups share a single sentence-pattern? They do, and an extremely regular one: state the direction (east of, or outside of, such-and-such a fragrant-water sea) → name them one by one, “next there comes a fragrant-water sea named such, its world-seed named such” → gather them up with “fragrant-water seas like these, as many as the dust-motes of an unspeakable number of buddha-lands” → name the sea nearest to the Encircling Mountains together with its world-seed, and say what sound that world-seed takes as its substance → and finally set out the four levels of worlds, from bottom to top, with their buddhas.

Now the ten groups, one by one. The first group lies east of the Stainless Flame Treasury fragrant-water sea, lists eight seas, from Transformed Subtle Body to Jeweled Flame Lamp; the sea nearest the Encircling Mountains is named Crystal Ground, its seed Ever Emitting Light, whose substance is the sound of the pure kalpa of the world-sea, and whose four levels of worlds run from Delightful Pure Light Banner to Supreme Body Fragrance. The second group lies outside the Endless Light Wheel sea, lists nine seas; the nearest sea is Wondrous Tree Blossom, its seed Producing Vast Lands in Every Quarter, whose substance is the sound of all buddhas crushing Māra. The third group lies outside the Vajra Flame Light sea, lists nine seas; the nearest sea is Boundless Wheel-Adorned Floor, its seed Measureless Differentiation of Quarters, whose substance is the sound of the manifold speech of all lands. The fourth group lies outside the Sapphire Jewel Adornment sea, lists nine seas; the nearest sea is Tree-Adorned Banner, its seed Abiding in Indra's Net, whose substance is the sound of the ground of the wisdom of all bodhisattvas. The sixth group lies outside the Lotus Indra's Net sea, lists nine seas; the nearest sea is Dense Flame Cloud Banner, its seed All-Light Adornment, whose substance is the sound of the assemblies at the seats of awakening of all tathāgatas. The seventh group lies outside the Accumulated Jewel Fragrance Treasury sea, lists nine seas; the nearest sea is Jambūnada Jewel Treasury Wheel, its seed Universal Sound Banner, whose substance is the sound of the gate that enters omniscience. The eighth group lies outside the Jewel Adornment sea, lists nine seas; the nearest sea is Issuing Sapphire Jewels, its seed Everywhere Without Difference, whose substance is the sound of the thunderous roar of all bodhisattvas. The ninth group lies outside the Vajra Jewel Mass sea, lists nine seas; the nearest sea is Indestructible Sea, its seed Lotus Court Inlaid with Wondrous Wheels, whose substance is the sound issuing from the power of all buddhas. The tenth group lies outside the Jeweled Battlements of the Celestial City sea, lists nine seas; the nearest sea is Accumulated Necklace Garments, its seed Manifested Wondrous Garments, whose substance is the sound of all buddhas of the three times.

The fifth group must be spoken of on its own. It lies outside the Vajra Wheel Adorned Floor sea; it lists the names of nine seas, and then it simply stops — there is no gathering sentence, “fragrant-water seas like these, as many as the dust-motes of an unspeakable number of buddha-lands”; there is no sea nearest the Encircling Mountains; and there are no four levels of worlds with their buddhas. It is the only one of the ten groups that is so. The sūtra reads thus: what is missing is missing, and one does not fill it in from the text of the other nine.

The first group has one more feature that sets it apart: its direction-word is “east,” whereas the other nine groups all use “outside”; and the two phrases “of a single unmixed purity” and “surrounded by as many worlds as the dust-motes of a buddha-land” occur, in the whole passage, only in the first group and the tenth, and never in the eight groups between. In the sixth group's four levels the phrase “the very top” does not occur; its last level says only “passing upward beyond as many worlds as the dust-motes of seven buddha-lands, there is a world named Pure Sea Adornment.”

Correcting a misreading: these unevennesses are not copyists' slips, nor need they be treated as gaps that must be filled out. The sūtra's own manner is to be full in the first group, abbreviated in the middle, and full again in the last — full at head and tail and sparing in between is the ordinary way of a long enumeration.

Bringing it home: in reading the ten groups, hold on to just two things in each group — what sound the world-seed nearest the Encircling Mountains takes as its substance, and the buddha-names of the four levels of worlds. The first says that the substance of a world is sound; the second says that every level has its buddha. Each of these two becomes a passage of its own later, in the verses.

The Summing-Up, First Subdivision: One Sea, One Seed, the Numbers Alike

Ask first: ten fragrant-water seas matched with ten unspeakable numbers of world-seeds — where does this number come from? Chengguan outlines this sentence as “concluding the total number,” and explains: one fragrant-water sea governs one unspeakable number, so ten seas have ten unspeakable numbers; and one sea is matched with one world-seed, so the number of the seas and the number of the world-seeds are alike.

The pivot here is “one sea, one seed.” Through the thousands of characters before, under every single fragrant-water sea there hung a single world-seed — not one too many, not one too few. So “ten unspeakable numbers of fragrant-water seas” and “ten unspeakable numbers of world-seeds” are not two reckonings; they are two faces of one reckoning.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “unspeakable” as “cannot be told.” It is the name of a number, the utmost term of counting, as when one goes from hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands and koṭis on up to the limit. When the sūtra says “as many as the dust-motes of an unspeakable number of buddha-lands,” it first grinds one buddha's land into dust-motes for its unit and then multiplies that by “unspeakable” — it is pushing the number out to where the capacity of the mind can no longer hold it, so that the mind lets go of its own accord.

Bringing it home: this subdivision teaches one thing — the moment you find yourself counting, you have already taken the wrong road.

The Summing-Up, Second Subdivision: All of Them Rest on That One Great Lotus

Ask first: these ten unspeakable numbers of world-seeds — what do they rest upon? They rest upon the lotus “Adorned with a Maṇi-King Banner Manifesting the Forms of All Bodhisattvas.” Chengguan outlines this sentence as “concluding what the seas and seeds rest upon,” and points out that this is the very great lotus, spoken of earlier, that sustains the seas of lands.

There is a knot in the naming here, and Chengguan points it out on the spot: the great lotus of the earlier passage was named “Manifold Radiance Stamen Fragrance Banner,” while here it is called “the lotus Adorned with a Maṇi-King Banner Manifesting the Forms of All Bodhisattvas” — two different names in two places. He gives two explanations and lets both stand: one, that it is a single lotus bearing different names according to its function; two, that this name is the same as the name of the bed of the sea at the very centre in the earlier passage, and may be a name the translator took by mistake. He does not decide which is right.

Correcting a misreading: do not suppose that the ancient worthies must always deliver a single answer. What Chengguan does here is to set out both possibilities without settling on one — this way of “letting both stand without adjudicating” is the ordinary practice of the commentators, not vagueness.

Bringing it home: all the world-seeds rest upon a single lotus. This sentence is one of the most important closings in the whole chapter: however many seas, however many seeds, however many levels have been laid out above, underneath there is only one flower.

The Summing-Up, Third Subdivision: The Ten “Each of Its Own” Phrases

Ask first: wherein lies the difference between one world-seed and another? The sūtra answers in a single breath with ten “each of its own” phrases: each has its adornments joined on without a break, each emits jewel-colored light, each has clouds of light spread over it, each has its adorning furnishings, each has its differences of kalpas, each has buddhas appearing in it, each expounds Dharma-teachings like a sea, each has beings filling it, each enters universally into the ten directions, each is sustained by the spiritual power of all buddhas. The word “all” in the preceding sentence, “all rest upon … the lotus,” states what they share; these ten “each of its own” phrases state how they differ — one sameness and one difference, forming an exact pair. Chengguan outlines this as “concluding the differing modes of the seeds,” and says that it is largely the same as the earlier section explaining the land-seeds, and as the ten aspects in the chapter “The Formation of the Worlds.”

These ten “each of its own” phrases are not a heaping-up of rhetoric; they are the table of contents for the verses. When Chengguan divides the verse sections, the wording of several of his outline-headings carries the very words of the summing-up: among the nine verses on the seeds that sustain, “next two on their quarters and their entering into them, the last one on the sustaining power of the buddhas” answers exactly to “each enters universally into the ten directions” and “each is sustained by the spiritual power of all buddhas”; and within the ninety-one verses on what is sustained, the fourth passage “sets out the adorning furnishings of the worlds, each of its own,” the fifth “sets out the reach of adornment, each of its own, without any break,” the seventh “sets out the differences of kalpas, each of its own,” and the eighth “sets out the appearance of buddhas, each of its own” — four headings using the words “each of its own” outright; and the particular explanation of the tenth passage says, “this is precisely to set forth ‘each expounds Dharma-teachings like a sea.’” For the remaining passages the commentary makes no such pairing — indeed for the third passage Chengguan says plainly that there is no corresponding sentence in the summing-up (see the third passage below). Reading the sūtra by itself, the presence and absence of light sung in the ninth passage may be set against “each emits jewel-colored light” and “each has clouds of light spread over it”; but this is a pairing made by reading the text, not an adjudication of the commentators.

Correcting a misreading: “each of its own” does not mean “having nothing to do with one another.” The very next subdivision is about to say that they are joined on one to the next into a net — “each of its own” is difference, and “forming a net” is non-obstruction; the two sentences must be read together.

Bringing it home: remember these ten phrases, and the verses will not read as one hundred and one scattered pieces.

The Summing-Up, Fourth Subdivision: Joined into a Single Net

Ask first: how are world and world set in place? The sūtra says: within each and every one of these world-seeds, all the worlds rest upon adornments of every kind, joined on one to the next, tied together into a net of worlds. Chengguan outlines this as “concluding the lands within the seeds,” and explains the three words “net of worlds” with a simile: each and every world is like a mesh of a net, joined on one to the next; as when a net holds something, its horizontal and vertical strands cross and bind and everywhere answer to one another, like the pearl-net of the heavens.

The simile of the mesh is exact: mesh and mesh are not confounded — that is “each of its own”; mesh and mesh are joined by one and the same cord — that is “forming a net”; and the mesh itself is empty — a net can hold what it holds precisely because its meshes are empty.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “net” in the sense of bondage. The net here is a net that sustains, not a net that entangles.

Bringing it home: this simile of the heavenly pearl-net reappears twice in the verses — once of the appearance of lands, “they are like the jeweled net of the lord of gods, its light ever ablaze,” and once of the shape of lands, “their shape like the jeweled net of Śakra.” One in respect of light, one in respect of shape.

The Summing-Up, Fifth Subdivision: Everything Referred Back to the Flower-Treasury

Ask first: where does all this finally come home? To the Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea. Chengguan outlines this as “concluding by referring all back to the Flower-Treasury,” and says that this is the place of establishing.

The four preceding subdivisions open outward all the way — opening out ten seas, opening out ten unspeakable numbers of world-seeds, opening out ten “each of its own” phrases, opening out a net of worlds; and at the fifth subdivision a single sentence draws it all back: all these differences of every kind are established everywhere within the Flower-Treasury Adorned World-Sea. It opens to the utmost without scattering, because there is a place of establishing.

Correcting a misreading: the weight of “established everywhere” falls on “everywhere,” not on “established.” It is not that someone built a thing in some place; it is that one and the same matter holds good in all places at once.

Bringing it home: with this the prose ends. Chengguan appends here the sentence “the prose of the twofold explanation of the two sections is herewith complete” — “the two sections” being the two topics set up in the earlier text; with this all the prose has been explained, and what follows is entirely verse.

The First Verse of the Restatement: The Flower-Treasury in Its Own Substance

Ask first: of the one hundred and one verses, why does the first verse stand as a passage by itself? Because what it sings is not the lands that are sustained, but the Flower-Treasury itself. Chengguan divides the whole restatement into two: the first verse sets out the Flower-Treasury in its own substance, and the remaining hundred verses sing the net of lands it sustains.

For the four lines of this verse Chengguan gives a heading to each: the first line, “the great sea of the Flower-Treasury world,” states the name; the second, “equal to the Dharma realm and without difference,” says that its measure is never broken and so is identical with true nature; the third, “its adornment is utterly pure,” says that it is complete in the adornments of merit; and the fourth, “it abides in empty space,” says that it abides without obstruction.

The heaviest of the four is the second. “Equal to the Dharma realm and without difference” — this sea, which is a dependent recompense, is equal to the Dharma realm and without difference from it. All the names and forms laid out in the thousands of characters before would be, without this line, no more than an exceedingly large picture; with this line, that picture is the Dharma realm itself.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “it abides in empty space” as “it hangs in mid-air.” It is to be read together with the second line: because it is equal to the Dharma realm and without difference, there is no other thing propping it up — having nothing to rest on is what is called abiding in empty space.

Bringing it home: the eye of the whole chapter is in this one line. Whatever the hundred verses that follow may speak of — coming to be and breaking down, suffering and pleasure, light and sound — none of it falls outside this line.

The Nine Verses on What Sustains: Seven Matters of the Land-Seeds Themselves

Ask first: what do the nine verses from the second to the tenth sing? They sing the land-seeds that sustain — that is, the world-seed itself, which can contain all worlds. Chengguan divides these nine verses into seven matters: the first verse speaks of their interpenetrating without confusion; the second of their arrangement in ranks; the third of the substance and adornment of the land-seeds; the next two distinguish their shapes; the next one their resting-place; the next two their quarters and their entering; and the last the sustaining power of the buddhas.

Now verse by verse. The second verse, “each and every one of them is free, and among them there is no confusion” — this is interpenetrating without confusion: they interpenetrate one another and yet are not confounded, answering exactly to the “each of its own” of the summing-up. The third verse, “the land-seeds are well arrayed, their shapes distinct and their adornments diverse” — this is arrangement in ranks: not a random heap, but ordered in their placing. The fourth verse, “the sounds that the buddhas send forth in transformation become, in all their kinds, their substance” — this is the substance of the land-seeds, answering to what was said of every one of the ten groups above, that such-and-such a sound is its substance; the substance of a world is a sound sent forth by the Buddha in transformation, and this line is to be kept in mind. The fifth and sixth verses speak of shape in two verses together: Sumeru, a city, a net, the round of water spun into a wheel, vast lotus flowers, a mountain banner, a tower, turning, vajra — nine shapes listed in one breath, and the last line gathers them itself: “inconceivable in this way, they are all of them vast land-seeds.” The seventh verse, “all rest upon lotus flowers” — this is the resting-place, answering to the one great lotus of the second subdivision of the summing-up. The eighth and ninth verses speak in two verses of quarters and entering: within the nets of light there appear multitudes of lands, “everywhere throughout the seas of the ten directions,” and all the adorning furnishings — “all lands are gathered into them”; the one is a pervading outward, the other an entering inward. The tenth verse, “all by the power of the Great Seer” — this is the sustaining power of the buddhas, “the Great Seer” being another name for the Buddha.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “interpenetrating without confusion” as “arranged tidily.” To interpenetrate is to cross and to enter into one another; not to be confused is not to be muddled by that crossing. Of things merely tidy there would be no need to say that they are unconfounded; it is precisely because they interpenetrate that “unconfounded” is worth saying at all.

Bringing it home: these nine verses are the outline of the ninety-one that follow. The fourth verse states substance, the fifth and sixth state shape, the seventh states resting-place — and substance, shape and resting-place are exactly what the third and sixth passages below will expound at length.

The First Passage, Its Statement of the Topic: Beginning from Half a Verse

Ask first: of the ninety-one verses on the lands that are sustained, the first passage alone takes twenty-eight verses — where does it begin? From half a verse. Chengguan puts it with great precision: these twenty-eight verses fall into two, the opening half-verse stating the topic and the rest expounding that topic at length.

The half-verse that states the topic is “within all the land-seeds the worlds are inconceivable.” Chengguan explains the words “inconceivable” thus: because they are of many kinds and many sorts, they are called hard to conceive. Hard to conceive does not mean mysterious and unsayable; it means that the threads are too many for a single mind to take in.

Correcting a misreading: do not treat “inconceivable” as a shield against explanation. The sūtra, having said that they are hard to conceive, immediately goes on for twenty-seven and a half verses to say why they are hard to conceive — after “hard to conceive” there still comes a full exposition: this is the manner of the Avataṃsaka.

Bringing it home: everything after this half-verse is an answer to “why are they hard to conceive?” And the answer is a single word: difference.

The First Passage, Simile (1): Through Defiled Causes, Lands Come to Be and Break Down

Ask first: why do worlds come to be and break down? Chengguan divides the nine and a half verses of simile into three parts, the first part of three and a half verses speaking of defiled causes.

The latter half of the eleventh verse, “some are coming to be, some are breaking down, and some have already been destroyed,” first sets out the fact: three states standing together at once. The twelfth verse then joins the simile of the leaves of a forest — among the leaves of a forest some are being put forth and some are falling; and within the land-seeds the worlds too come to be and break down in just this way. Chengguan takes this verse and a half together, and says that what it sets forth is that the seed is of long duration while the worlds within it come to be and break down. This is the placing side by side of two scales of time: the forest stands, the leaves are exchanged.

The thirteenth verse changes the simile: resting upon one and the same forest, the fruits borne differ in kind; resting upon one and the same land-seed, beings of every different kind dwell. Chengguan says that this verse sets forth that although the land-seed is one, the lands dwelling within it are various. The twelfth verse speaks of coming to be and breaking down in time; the thirteenth speaks of difference in space.

The fourteenth verse gathers them up: just as, when seeds differ, the fruits borne each differ, so, because karmic power has its differences, beings and their lands are unalike. Chengguan says that this verse “refers all back to the seed of karma” — the three and a half verses of defiled causes come home to that one seed, karma.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “defiled causes” as “the causes of breaking down.” What the defiled causes state is that both coming to be and breaking down arise from karma, not that only breaking down does.

Bringing it home: the three similes — forest leaves, tree fruits, seeds — advance in a single line: first you see exchange, then you see difference, and at last you see where the difference comes from.

The First Passage, Simile (2): Through Pure Causes, Three Causes

Ask first: since defiled causes have been spoken of, what are the pure causes? Chengguan says that the next three verses set forth the pure causes, and one cause to each verse: the first is the cause that is a purified mind, the second the condition that is the Buddha's vows, the third the cause that is pure karma.

The fifteenth verse is the simile of the mind-king jewel: that pearl which puts forth color according to the mind shows whatever color your mind is; when the minds of beings are purified, they see purified lands. This is the cause that is a purified mind — the purity of a land comes first in the mind.

The sixteenth verse is the simile of the great dragon king: the dragon king raises up clouds that fill all of space, and the power of the Buddha's vows brings forth lands of every kind. This is the condition that is the Buddha's vows — it does not come from one's own mind, it comes from the Buddha's side.

The seventeenth verse is the simile of the conjuror and his spells: a conjuror plying his spells can produce things of every kind, and the karmic power of beings likewise makes lands inconceivable. Chengguan assigns this verse to the cause that is pure karma.

Correcting a misreading: the three verses are three causes, not three ways of saying one cause. Mind, the Buddha's vows, karma — let any one of the three be lacking and this passage is not fully taught. The second above all: the Buddha's vows are an outward condition, not determined by the minds of beings; the Avataṃsaka's teaching on the pure land stands here alongside the teaching of mind-only without either dispossessing the other.

Bringing it home: when you examine yourself, ask all three: is my mind pure or not? have I received the Buddha's vows? and where is my karma being made?

The First Passage, Simile (3): Concluding Defiled and Pure Together

Ask first: the defiled causes have been spoken of and the pure causes have been spoken of — why then three more verses? Because the two sides must be spoken of together. Chengguan says that these three verses “conclude the defiled and pure causes together.”

The eighteenth verse is the simile of the painter: painted images of every kind are what a painter makes, and all lands are painted by that painter, “mind.” Chengguan assigns this to “the cause that is defilement and purity according to mind” — one mind that can paint the defiled and can paint the pure, and therefore a concluding of both together.

The nineteenth verse says that the bodily forms of beings each differ, arising according to the discriminations of mind, and that the lands of every kind are all of them from karma. Here Chengguan lays down something of the first importance: this verse takes the direct recompense as a simile for the dependent recompense, and it is likewise “taking the cause as a simile for the condition”; mind is the cause, which draws on a matured fruit, while the coarseness or the fineness of that fruit lies wholly in karma as the condition. To divide mind and karma into the two levels of cause and condition — this is the finest cut in the whole passage.

The twentieth verse is the simile of the guiding master: when one guiding master is seen, different people see different colors in him; and as the mental conduct of beings differs, the lands they see differ likewise. Chengguan says that this verse “sets forth mind and karma together,” since “conduct is karma”; and he adds a further sentence: this also serves as a simile for beings dwelling in one and the same place and yet seeing differently.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “mind the painter” as “everything is made by my mind alone, and therefore the world does not exist.” The nineteenth verse, immediately following, states the matter in full: mind is the cause, karma is the condition, and the coarseness or fineness of the fruit is settled by the condition. Mind-only does not abolish karma.

Bringing it home: the four words “one place, different seeing” are the most usable here. In one and the same place two people see two scenes — this is not a matter of who is right and who is wrong; their mental conduct differs.

The First Passage, Doctrinal Statement (1): Defiled and Pure

Ask first: the similes are finished — where does the doctrinal statement begin? Chengguan says the latter eighteen verses are the doctrinal statement, in three parts: first six verses setting forth the defiled and the pure, next four setting forth coming to be and breaking down, and last eight setting forth suffering and pleasure.

The six verses on the defiled and the pure divide again into two. The first two verses show that the marks of purity are each of their own kind: the twenty-first verse says that to the very bounds of all the lands a net of lotus flowers is spread, their appearances unlike and their adornments wholly pure; the twenty-second says that those lotus nets are where the nets of lands abide, with adornments of every kind and beings of every kind dwelling there.

The latter four verses distinguish them with respect to their causes. Of the twenty-third verse, “that is by reason of the afflictions of beings that it is seen so there,” Chengguan says that this verse speaks of the defiled alone, since it is by reason of afflictions. The twenty-fourth says that the defiled and pure, the measureless land-seeds, “arise according to the minds of beings and are sustained by the power of bodhisattvas,” and the twenty-fifth says that defilement and purity “arise from karmic power, and are what bodhisattvas manifest” — of these two verses Chengguan says that they run through both the defiled and the pure, since karma runs through both good and evil, and since they are moreover assigned to the two sides, bodhisattvas and beings. Of the twenty-sixth verse, “their wondrous adornments of every kind are what the buddhas have made pure,” Chengguan says that this verse speaks of the pure alone, since it belongs to the Buddha.

Correcting a misreading: the words “perilous and not level” in the twenty-third verse do not say that the land itself is perilous. The sūtra's construction is “that is by reason of the afflictions of beings that it is seen so there” — it is seen so there, not that it is so there in itself. The difference is one word.

Bringing it home: four verses, four levels — the defiled alone; both, by way of mind; both, by way of karma; the pure alone. From affliction all the way to the Buddha, and the two levels in the middle are where we actually stand.

The First Passage, Doctrinal Statement (2): Coming to Be and Breaking Down

Ask first: how are the four verses on coming to be and breaking down divided? Chengguan outlines them a verse and a sentence at a time.

Of the twenty-seventh verse, “the great fire at the kalpa's end burns inconceivably; and though what appears is a form ruined and foul, that place is nonetheless ever firm,” Chengguan says that this is “the coarse breaks down while the fine remains”: the breaking down is by evil karma, while the remaining has two causes, one on the side of the Buddha and one being good karma. Here he cites a sūtra in evidence, saying that the pure land is never destroyed and that gods and humans constantly fill it; and he adds three sentences: although their perishing is not simultaneous, their arising must be in the same place; and although they are said to be in the same place, their appearances are constantly unseen by one another, and this is why they are hard to conceive.

Of the twenty-eighth verse, “they rest upon the wheel of wind and abide as well upon the wheel of water,” Chengguan says that this is “while the karma remains, the place stands”: while the karma is still there, the place holds firm. Of the twenty-ninth verse, “yet in truth there is no coming to be, nor is there any breaking down,” Chengguan says that this is “the marks of the world differ, while the nature is without arising or ceasing.” Of the thirtieth verse, “within each and every thought of mind measureless lands are brought forth; by the awesome spiritual power of the Buddha they are all seen as pure and free of defilement,” Chengguan says that this refers all back to causes and conditions: within, through the transformations of mind, there are the myriad differences of the defiled and the pure; without, by borrowing the Buddha as condition, what could there be that is not pure?

Correcting a misreading: do not be in haste, at the twenty-ninth verse, to cancel the coming to be and breaking down just spoken of. Coming to be and breaking down are said of the marks; no arising and no ceasing are said of the nature; the two lines do not quarrel, they are two faces of one matter. If, because of “there is no coming to be,” one denied coming to be and breaking down, one would cancel the eight verses on suffering and pleasure that follow along with it.

Bringing it home: “within, through the transformations of mind; without, by borrowing the Buddha as condition,” in the thirtieth verse, is the summation of the whole part. The two conditions, inner and outer, answer exactly to mind and the Buddha's vows in the three verses on pure causes.

The First Passage, Doctrinal Statement (3): Suffering and Pleasure

Ask first: what do the last eight verses say? They say suffering and pleasure. Chengguan divides them into three layers: the first three verses discuss suffering and pleasure in general terms with respect to lands; the middle three speak of the three evil destinies within a single land; the last two speak of the pleasures of humans and gods.

The first three verses: the thirty-first says that a land made of clay, hard in substance, dark and without light, is where those who do evil karma dwell; the thirty-second says that a land made of vajra, defiled and full of great dread, with much suffering and little pleasure, is where those of scant merit are placed; the thirty-third says that lands made of iron and wrought of red copper, their stone mountains steep and fearsome, are filled with people of offense and evil. All three verses speak of suffering in terms of the material of the land — and the material is the very showing-forth of karma.

The middle three verses take the three evil destinies one by one: the thirty-fourth speaks of the hells, where beings suffer with none to rescue them, ever in darkness, burned by a sea of flames; the thirty-fifth speaks of animals, of shapes ugly in every kind, constantly undergoing suffering by reason of their own evil karma; the thirty-sixth speaks of the place of Yama, scorched by hunger and thirst, climbing the great mountain of fire and undergoing the gravest sufferings.

The last two verses turn: the thirty-seventh speaks of lands composed of the seven jewels and palaces of every kind, “gained by pure karma”; and the thirty-eighth speaks directly to the reader — you should contemplate the humans and gods of the world, and when the fruit of pure karma is accomplished, pleasure is enjoyed at every moment.

Correcting a misreading: do not read these eight verses as reward and punishment. The sūtra's constant construction is “by reason of their own evil karma,” “gained by pure karma” — what is spoken of is the naturalness of cause and effect, not someone handing out portions.

Bringing it home: the thirty-eighth verse uses an imperative, “you should contemplate the world.” The first passage of twenty-eight verses closes here, and it closes on an act: contemplating.

The Second Passage: The Fineness of the Lands

Ask first: what can two verses say? They say one thing that runs most sharply against common sense. Chengguan outlines these two verses as “showing the fineness of the lands,” and says that the former verse raises the fruit while the latter distinguishes with respect to the cause.

The thirty-ninth verse, “within each and every pore there are lands numbering in the koṭis, inconceivably; their appearances and adornments are of every kind, yet there has never been any crowding or constraint” — this raises the fruit. The weight is in the last line: there has never been any crowding. Hundreds of millions of lands enter a single pore, and if one still asks “how do they fit?”, that is to measure them with a measure of large and small. The sūtra blocks this question in advance: there has never been any crowding or constraint.

The fortieth verse, “the karma of beings each differs, and so the worlds are of measureless kinds; grasping and clinging arise therein, and the suffering and pleasure undergone are unalike” — this distinguishes with respect to the cause. Why can a single pore contain a koṭi lands and yet beings feel crowded? Because “grasping and clinging arise therein.” Once grasping arises, measure appears; and once measure appears, there is crowding.

Correcting a misreading: do not take a pore's containing lands as a display of spiritual power. The fortieth verse pulls the matter back at once: the reason suffering and pleasure are undergone differently is grasping, not space.

Bringing it home: these two verses are the shortest passage in the whole restatement, and the closest to the body. That you feel crowded today is not because the place is small.

The Third Passage: The Substance of the Worlds

Ask first: ten verses set forth substance — what does “substance” mean here? It means what a world takes for its material and its support. Chengguan says that for this passage there is no corresponding sentence in the summing-up, and that its meaning is to be seen in the sūtra text above — that is, in what each of the ten groups above said, that such-and-such a sound is its substance.

The ten verses one by one. The forty-first: made of many jewels, constantly giving off boundless light. The forty-second: light for its substance, abiding resting upon a wheel of light. The forty-third: made of the disc of the moon, fragrant garments spread all about, bodhisattvas filling a single lotus flower. The forty-fourth: made of many jewels with color and form free of stain, like the jeweled net of the lord of gods with its light ever ablaze. The forty-fifth: fragrance for its substance, or made of vajra flowers, the shapes of the shadows and light of maṇi. The forty-sixth: accomplished by the whirling of flowers, transformation-buddhas filling them. The forty-seventh: made of multitudes of flowering trees, wondrous branches spread over the seat of awakening, clouds of maṇi giving shade. The forty-eighth: illumined by pure light, made of vajra flowers, and some made of the Buddha's transformed voice, ranged boundlessly into a net. The forty-ninth: like bodhisattvas, like a wondrous jeweled crown of maṇi, like the shape of a throne brought forth from manifested light. The fiftieth: made of the powdered fragrance of sandalwood, or of the light between the Buddha's brows, or of the sound within the Buddha's light, and thus such lands are accomplished.

Among these ten verses — jewels, light, the moon's disc, fragrance, flowers, trees, sound — the material runs from coarse to fine all the way, and the last three verses fall wholly upon the Buddha: the Buddha's transformed voice, the light between the Buddha's brows, the sound within the Buddha's light. This is the direction of the passage: the substance of a world is, in the end, the Buddha.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “light for its substance” and “sound for its substance” as figures of speech. In the prose of the ten groups above, the substance of every world-seed was some particular sound; that is said outright, and is not rhetoric.

Bringing it home: ask what the world you dwell in takes for its substance. If you cannot answer, then first listen — the answer the sūtra gives is sound.

The Fourth Passage: The Adorning Furnishings, Each of Its Own Kind

Ask first: five verses set forth the adorning furnishings — where does the weight fall? On the increase of number.

The fifty-first verse says that some lands are adorned with a single light and some see adornments of many kinds, wondrous in every kind — one and many are set against each other first. The fifty-second says that some take the wondrous things of ten lands for their ornament, and some take everything within a thousand lands to deck themselves out. The fifty-third says that some take the goods of a koṭi lands to adorn a single land, their appearances unlike and “all of them appear as reflected images.” The fifty-fourth pushes to the limit: taking the goods of an unspeakable number of lands to adorn a single land, each and every one giving off light, all arising from the power of the Tathāgata's vows. The fifty-fifth gathers up: some lands are what the power of vows has purified, and within all their adornments multitudes of seas of lands are seen everywhere.

One, ten, a thousand, a koṭi, unspeakable — the five verses are an ascending stair, and at every step the last line lets go: the fifty-third says “all of them appear as reflected images,” the fifty-fourth says “arise from the power of the Tathāgata's vows,” the fifty-fifth says “multitudes of seas of lands are seen everywhere.” The more there are, the less substantial; and the less substantial, the more they can enter one another.

Correcting a misreading: do not read these five verses as a comparison of riches. The adorning furnishings pile higher and higher precisely so that the line “appear as reflected images” may stand — of a thing that really could be piled up, one could not say that it is like a reflection.

Bringing it home: read this passage together with the one before it: the former says that the substance is the Buddha's sound, this one says that the appearance is like a reflected image. Substance real and appearance like a reflection — the two lines are to be kept in mind together.

The Fifth Passage: The Reach of Adornment, Without Any Break

Ask first: what does “the reach of adornment without any break” mean? Chengguan gives two sentences of explanation: because it gathers in the adornments of the three times, there is no break; and because it is referred back to the Buddha, it is seen everywhere within a single dust-mote.

The five verses are read accordingly. The fifty-sixth says that the purified lands gained by cultivating the vows of Samantabhadra have within them the adornments of all lands of the three times appearing entire — this is “gathering in the adornments of the three times.” The fifty-seventh says, “Son of the Buddha, you should contemplate the awesome spiritual power of the land-seeds; the lands to come, of every kind, are made to be seen, as in a dream” — what is to come can be seen now, as in a dream. The fifty-eighth says that the worlds of the ten directions and the seas of lands gone by are all within a single land, appearing as images that seem conjured — the past too can be seen now. The fifty-ninth says that all the buddhas of the three times together with their lands can all be contemplated and seen within a single land-seed. The sixtieth closes upon the spiritual power of the Buddha: within a single dust-mote multitudes of lands appear, all of them clearly seen and yet “like shadows, having no reality.”

“Without any break” does not mean unceasing in time; it means that the three times have not been cut apart. Past and future are not elsewhere: they are in a single land, a single dust-mote, here.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “as in a dream,” “seem conjured,” “like shadows, having no reality” as denials. All three similes come after “are made to be seen,” “can all be contemplated and seen,” “all of them are clearly seen” — it is first said that they are clearly seen, and only then that they are like reflections. Were they unreal, they could not be seen at all, and there would be no five verses here.

Bringing it home: this passage is the recompense of the vows of Samantabhadra. The fifty-sixth verse says it at the outset: cultivate the vows of Samantabhadra, and these are the purified lands one gains.

The Sixth Passage: The Shapes of the Worlds

Ask first: ten verses list shapes — how many in the end are listed? Going through them line by line: the great sea, Sumeru, Indra's net, a forest, a jewel wheel, a lotus flower, a throne, three corners, a qulejia, a walled city, the body of the Brahmā king, the topknot of the lord of gods, a half-moon, a maṇi mountain, the sun's disc, the whirlpool of a fragrant sea, a wheel of light, the rim of a wheel, an altar-terrace, the Buddha's white hair-mark, his fleshly topknot, his broad long eyes, the Buddha's hand, a vajra scepter, a mountain of flame, a lion, a sea-clam — twenty-seven kinds. Chengguan says that the meaning of this passage is to be seen in the text above, referring to the two verses distinguishing shape among the nine verses on what sustains.

These twenty-seven kinds are scattered through nine verses, and may be pointed out verse by verse: the sixty-first raises the great sea and Sumeru; the sixty-second raises Indra's net and the forest, and says “the buddhas fill them”; the sixty-third raises the shape of a jewel wheel and the form of a lotus, saying that at their eight corners adornments of every kind are furnished; the sixty-fourth raises the shape of a throne, three corners, the qulejia, a walled city, and the body of the Brahmā king; the sixty-fifth raises the topknot of the lord of gods, the half-moon, the maṇi mountain, and the sun's disc; the sixty-sixth raises the whirlpool of a fragrant sea and the wheel of light, and appends the line “which the Buddha in ages past adorned and purified”; the sixty-seventh raises the rim of a wheel, an altar-terrace, the Buddha's white hair-mark, his fleshly topknot, and his broad long eyes; the sixty-eighth raises the Buddha's hand, the vajra scepter, and the mountain of flame, and says “with bodhisattvas everywhere throughout them”; the sixty-ninth raises the shape of a lion and the shape of a sea-clam, and closes with the line “their measureless colors and forms of every kind differ each in their substance.”

These twenty-seven kinds fall into three classes. One class is natural shapes: the great sea, Sumeru, the forest, the half-moon, the sun's disc, the whirlpool of a fragrant sea, the mountain of flame, the lion, the sea-clam. One class is things made by human craft: Indra's net, the jewel wheel, the throne, the walled city, the rim of a wheel, the altar-terrace, the vajra scepter, and the whole train of furnishings such as the maṇi crown. And one class is the most singular of all, the persons of buddhas and gods: the body of the Brahmā king, the topknot of the lord of gods, the Buddha's white hair-mark, his fleshly topknot, his broad long eyes, the Buddha's hand — the shape of a world turns out to be a part of the Buddha's body.

The seventieth verse gathers all twenty-seven at once: within a single land-seed the shapes of lands are without end, and all abide by the power of the Buddha's vows, guarded and kept in mind. So the listing of twenty-seven kinds is not for the sake of exhausting them; it is so that you may come to a stop at the twenty-eighth — there are more after this, and they cannot be told.

Correcting a misreading: do not get stuck on “some are like a qulejia.” In Chengguan's Huayan jing shu, within this passage, no text explaining this name is to be found; here it is left, as the fact stands, undetermined, and no explanation is supplied on the ancient worthies' behalf.

Bringing it home: the most usable thing in this passage is that class of shapes belonging to the Buddha's body. The shape of a world is the Buddha's hand, the Buddha's brow, the Buddha's eye — here the dependent recompense and the direct recompense meet.

The Seventh Passage: The Differences of Kalpas, Each of Its Own Kind

Ask first: two verses speak of time — what do they say? They say the length of abiding and the frequency of coming to be and breaking down.

The seventy-first verse says that some lands abide for a kalpa, some abide for ten kalpas, and on beyond a hundred thousand to the number of the dust-motes of a land — this is length. The seventy-second says that some, within a single kalpa, see lands coming to be and breaking down, while some are measureless and numberless on to the inconceivable — this is frequency. Chengguan outlines these two verses as “setting forth the time-spans in which lands abide.”

Taken together, the two verses mean this: time itself is also each of its own kind. One kalpa of one land is not equal to one kalpa of another; in one place there is a single arising and a single ceasing, in another measureless arisings and ceasings.

Correcting a misreading: do not treat “kalpa” as a common measuring-rod. This passage exists precisely to knock that rod away.

Bringing it home: read it against “there has never been any crowding” of the second passage: in space there is no crowding, in time there is no evenness. Neither space nor time is a container standing outside.

The Eighth Passage: In Each, Buddhas Appear

Ask first: eight verses set forth the appearing of buddhas, and the very first line is a difficulty — some lands have buddhas and some lands have no buddha. How is this to be understood?

The seventy-third verse sets four cases side by side: lands with buddhas, lands without a buddha, some with only one buddha, some with measureless buddhas. The seventy-fourth then resolves the case of no buddha: if a land has no buddha, then from a world in another quarter a buddha comes by transformation and displays there every kind of deed that can be done. The seventy-fifth sets out the sequence of the deeds displayed: vanishing from the heavens, descending in spirit, entering the womb, being born, subduing Māra, accomplishing right awakening, turning the unsurpassed Dharma wheel — this is the constant course of a buddha's display. The seventy-sixth says that according to what the minds of beings delight in he displays appearances of every kind, and turns the wheel of the wondrous Dharma answering to their faculties and their wishes.

The seventy-seventh says that within each and every buddha-land a single buddha arises in the world and over a koṭi thousand years expounds the unsurpassed Dharma. The seventy-eighth is the joint of this passage: if beings are not vessels for the Dharma they cannot see the buddhas, and if there is delight and seeking in their minds then in every place they can see him. The seventy-ninth says that within each and every land there is a buddha arising in the world, and the buddhas within all lands, numbering in the koṭis, are inconceivable. The eightieth closes upon spiritual transformation: each and every buddha among them displays measureless transformations, filling the Dharma realm everywhere and taming beings numerous as a sea.

Correcting a misreading: “lands without a buddha” does not mean that the Buddha does not go there. The seventy-fourth verse says that a buddha comes by transformation from another quarter, and the seventy-eighth says that one who is not a vessel cannot see him — so “without a buddha” is said with respect to seeing, not with respect to the Buddha.

Bringing it home: the seventy-eighth verse may be taken word for word as a mirror for oneself. Whether or not one gets to see a buddha, the only variable the sūtra gives is whether the mind delights and seeks.

The Ninth Passage: The Presence and Absence of Light

Ask first: ten verses set forth light, and Chengguan's division is of the utmost simplicity: the first verse speaks of absence, the latter nine of presence.

The eighty-first speaks of absence: some lands have no light, dark and full of terror, the touch of suffering like knives and swords, and those who see it feel for themselves its bitter sting.

The latter nine speak of presence, one kind of light-source to a verse. The eighty-second: the light of the gods, of palaces, of sun and moon. The eighty-third: light the land has of its own, and pure light given off by trees, with the reason pointed out — there has never been any suffering there, and that is by the power of the merit of beings. The eighty-fourth: the light of mountains, of maṇi jewels, of lamps, gathered up with the line “all of this is the karmic power of beings.” The eighty-fifth: the light of the Buddha and the light of lotus flowers. The eighty-sixth: the light of flowers, of fragrant waters, of unguent incense and burning incense, gathered up with the line “all of this is by the power of pure vows.” The eighty-seventh: the light of clouds, of maṇi and clam-pearls, of the Buddha's spiritual power, and says that this light “can proclaim sounds that delight the mind.” The eighty-eighth: the light of jewels and the light of vajra flame, saying “their pure sound can quake afar, and wherever it reaches there is no mass of suffering.” The eighty-ninth: the light of maṇi jewels, of adorning furnishings, and of the seat of awakening, shining amid the gathered assembly. The ninetieth closes upon the Buddha: the Buddha sends forth a great light, transformation-buddhas fill it, the light touches everywhere in its shining, and the Dharma realm is wholly pervaded.

Three times in the nine verses the cause is pointed out: the power of merit, karmic power, the power of pure vows. And from the eighty-seventh verse on, the light begins to give off sound — light and sound meet here, and this leads straight into the last passage.

Correcting a misreading: do not read “some lands have no light” as meaning that the Buddha's light does not reach them. The eighty-first verse speaks of the state of that land, and the ninetieth says that the Buddha's light “wholly pervades the Dharma realm” — both sentences hold at once; whether or not one can receive the light is another matter.

Bringing it home: this passage gives a usable list: which kind is the light around you? The light of the gods, the light of sun and moon, lamplight — or the light of the power of vows?

The Tenth Passage: Sounds Good and Evil

Ask first: the last eleven verses — why end with sound? Because among the ten “each of its own” phrases of the summing-up there is one that reads “each expounds Dharma-teachings like a sea”; the last of them, “each is sustained by the spiritual power of all buddhas,” Chengguan has already assigned to the last of the nine verses on what sustains. Chengguan says that this passage is precisely to set forth that phrase, “each expounds Dharma-teachings like a sea.” He divides the eleven verses into three layers: the first two say that the evil destinies are evil only; the middle three say that humans and gods run through both good and evil; the last six say that buddhas and bodhisattvas are good and not evil.

The first two verses: the ninety-first says that some lands are exceedingly fearsome, giving off the howling sound of great suffering, a sound bitter in the extreme at which hearers give rise to revulsion and dread. The ninety-second names them: the hells, animals, and the place of Yama — turbid and evil worlds, constantly giving off sounds of grief and suffering.

The middle three verses: the ninety-third says that within some lands sounds that can be delighted in constantly come forth, gladdening the mind and according with the teaching, and this is gained by pure karma. The ninety-fourth says that in some the sound of Śakra is constantly heard, in some the sound of Brahmā, in some the sound of the lords of all the worlds. The ninety-fifth says that within some lands wondrous sounds come forth from the clouds, and jeweled seas, maṇi trees and the sound of music fill them.

The last six verses belong wholly to buddhas and bodhisattvas. The ninety-sixth says that within the round light of the buddhas the manifested sounds are without end, and the wondrous voices of bodhisattvas are heard everywhere in the ten directions. The ninety-seventh says that in lands inconceivable there is the sound of the Dharma wheel turning everywhere, the sounds issuing from the sea of vows, the wondrous sound of cultivation. The ninety-eighth says that all the buddhas of the three times are born in worlds of every kind, their names wholly complete and their sounds without end. The ninety-ninth says that some within a land hear the sound of the power of all buddhas, and that the ten grounds, the perfections and measureless Dharma-gates are all expounded. The hundredth says that by the power of the vows of Samantabhadra wondrous sounds are expounded in a koṭi lands, that sound like a peal of thunder, abiding through kalpas without end. The hundred and first is the last line of the whole chapter: the Buddha, within purified lands, displays a sovereign sound, and within the Dharma realm of the ten directions there is not a being who does not hear it.

Correcting a misreading: do not read the three layers as a graded ranking. The ninety-ninth verse says “the grounds, the perfections, and the measureless — Dharma such as this is all expounded”: what is expounded is precisely the ten grounds and the perfections, that is, the content of the other chapters of this very sūtra. This passage does not merely say that there are pleasant sounds; it says that the whole of the Avataṃsaka is being expounded within these lands.

Bringing it home: the hundred and one verses of the whole chapter begin at “the great sea of the Flower-Treasury world is equal to the Dharma realm and without difference” and end at “within the Dharma realm of the ten directions there is not a being who does not hear it.” The opening line says the Dharma realm, equal and without difference; the closing line says that within the Dharma realm there is none who does not hear — head and tail are buckled onto the two words “Dharma realm.” All those sea-names, seed-names, buddha-names, shapes and lights come home in the end to one thing: this sound, you can hear.

Lineage

Immediately after this passage comes the chapter “Vairocana,” and fascicle ten ends here. Looking back, this passage carries on from the sea-by-sea naming of the net of lands sustained in the two preceding passages of the same chapter; and before that stand the two passages on the Flower-Treasury in its causes, fruits and own substance, and on the arrangement and adornment of the treasury-sea. Chengguan closes the prose of the whole chapter with “the general summary and explanation,” and then gathers the meaning of the whole chapter with the restatement in verse; with this the chapter is complete.

At the third subdivision of the summing-up, “concluding the differing modes of the seeds,” Chengguan links the passage directly to the chapter “The Formation of the Worlds,” saying that it is largely the same as the earlier section explaining the land-seeds and as the ten aspects in “The Formation of the Worlds.” The unit for chapter four in this edition may be read alongside: chapter four states the ten matters of the world-sea, while this chapter states the actual condition of the single sea that is the Flower-Treasury; the one states it in general, the other in particular.

As for the provenance of the name “world-seed,” the ancient worthies assign it differently. Zhiyan, commenting on the sixty-fascicle text, cites the gradation in fascicle fifty of the Da zhidu lun — a three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system is one world; worlds as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā are one buddha-world; buddha-worlds like these are a sea of buddha-worlds; and seas of buddha-worlds like these are a buddha-world-seed — and by this establishes the name; he further cites the names of ten kinds of world (world-nature, world-sea, world-wheel, world-fullness, world-differentiation, world-whirl, world-turning, world-lotus, world-Sumeru, world-appearance), and asks himself why ten are stated, answering that it is in order to show the measureless. Fazang, commenting on the same sixty-fascicle text, does not use the term “world-seed” within the range of the corresponding chapter as recorded. Chengguan, commenting on the eighty-fascicle text, explains the “world-seed” of the sūtra text directly, subdivision by subdivision, and does not trace the name back further. The three are recorded together without adjudication.

On the number of the world-seeds too the two reckon differently. Chengguan speaks from the summing-up: one sea governs one unspeakable number, so ten seas have ten unspeakable numbers, and one sea to one seed, so the numbers are alike — he takes the number of the sūtra text and sets up no formula of his own. Li Tongxuan, for his part, sets up a model: within the great lotus there are said to be, in sum, world-seeds as many as the dust-motes of ten unspeakable numbers of buddha-lands, but because the text of the teaching is limited he provisionally posits one hundred and twenty-one world-seeds — eleven at the centre, each with twenty tiers above and below, the lowest tier having vast worlds as many as the dust-motes of one buddha-world surrounding it, the second tier the dust-motes of two buddha-worlds, the third the dust-motes of three buddha-worlds, doubling tier by tier from below upward until the topmost tier is complete with the dust-motes of twenty buddha-worlds; outside these eleven are one hundred world-seeds of one tier each, and further out, near the vajra mountains, ten world-seeds of four tiers each. At the end he works out the total: reckoning thus through above and below, altogether vast lands as many as the dust-motes of two hundred and ten buddha-lands make up one world-seed. And by this he marks off the teaching of the three vehicles: the world-seed of which the three vehicles speak is built up in layers with the sands of the Gaṅgā for its measure, whereas this sūtra does not limit its number by the sands of the Gaṅgā. The two follow different routes of calculation. Recorded together without adjudication.

As for the name of the lotus in the second subdivision of the summing-up differing from the earlier text, Chengguan brings out two explanations — either one flower with different names according to its meaning, or a name the translator took by mistake — and settles on neither. Recorded without adjudication.

On the form of the verse restatement itself, Fazang has a separate general treatment. At the head of his explanation of the corresponding chapter he sets up ten instances of the difference between prose and verse restatement: with respect to the sharp and the dull; to before and after; to the ripe and the unripe; to the plain and the ornate; to the two kinds of retention; to mutual completion; to the accomplishment of the round; to substance and appearance; to the general and the particular; and to mind and speech. Of these the ninth, “with respect to the general and the particular” — prose points particularly to its aim, while the verse restatement covers and gathers generally — he supports by citing the verses of this very chapter on the worlds. Read accordingly, the reason the hundred and one verses of this passage can gather thousands of characters of names and forms into a hundred and one verses is precisely that the office of the verse form is to cover and gather generally, not to repeat item by item. Recorded together without adjudication.

The sixty-fascicle text has no text for this passage that can be collated line by line. Within the range of the corresponding chapter as recorded, the sixty-fascicle text uses “world-sea” and the name “world-seed” is not to be found, nor is the manner of naming the twenty tiers one by one; the nearest in function is the passage in which Samantabhadra raises “the ten matters of the world-sea,” together with the verses praising the inconceivability of the world-sea that follow it. The two texts share a structure while differing in wording: who speaks, to whom, what is spoken, and why — these four agree; the names and forms and the syntax are wholly different. Recorded in full without adjudication.

In the unit for the chapter “Entry into the Dharma Realm” in this edition there is a passage that cites “the Flower-Treasury world-sea” and lists the names of the worlds gathered in by the world-seeds; the names it lists overlap with, but do not wholly coincide with, the names of the ten kinds of world cited by Zhiyan. Recorded without adjudication.

Throughout the whole chapter “The Ten Grounds” no text with the words “the Flower-Treasury world” is to be found. The Ten Grounds chapter sets forth the stages of practice, while this chapter sets forth the dependent recompense, the sea of lands; compared by the structure of their scenes the two are different from the outset — that the term is absent here is only to be expected, and is not an omission.