華嚴經 義疏通講 · 冊23Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Exposition Throughout · Vol. 23

What Sudhana Sees First This Time Is Twenty-Four Kinds of Body

Sudhana comes to the night goddess Great Vow, Vigor, and Power Who Rescues All Beings, and the first passage is not a conversation but a seeing. The scripture text writes the seat first — “seated upon a lion seat of the treasury of maṇi-kings that universally manifests all palaces,” with a net of maṇi jewels spread out and covering the seat; then it writes the body, twenty-four clauses one after another, every clause opening with the graph for “manifests” and closing with the graph for “body.”

Why should so many bodies be written first? Chengguan divides the twenty-four bodies into three passages: the first ten are the bodies that gather and convert in answer to the occasion; the six clauses from “a body that bows at the place of every buddha” onward are the bodies that answer to the Dharma and accomplish the practice; the rest are the bodies that leave obstruction behind and answer to principle. The order of the three passages runs from meeting the occasion, to cultivating the practice, to answering to principle — that is, from without inward. And upon this he sets down one general clause: “Mostly it is the inner virtue that makes the difference among the bodies manifest; seeing the body, one understands the mind.” The bodies differ because the inner virtue differs; to look at her body is in truth to look at her mind.

A misreading must be set aside: that this is an exhibition of spiritual power. Were it an exhibition, the twenty-four clauses might be added to or cut down at will; yet the last clause of the scripture text is “a body of dharma-nature pure from the origin,” and the first clause is the reflected images of sun, moon, and constellations — beginning at an image and ending at dharma-nature, this order is itself a statement. Brought down to the ground: in reading this passage one should ask all the way through, ‘for whom is this kind of body manifested,’ and the answers will sort themselves into those three passages.

Raising Ten Kinds of Mind toward the Good Friend: Regarding the Teacher as Oneself

What Sudhana does after seeing the bodies is to “bow with a single mind, cast his whole body down upon the ground, and only after a long while rise,” and then to raise ten kinds of mind. The pattern of these ten minds is one throughout: first it says what mind it is, then it says how it “causes me” to be — it speaks of the benefit from his own side.

The first of the ten minds is “toward the good friend he raised the mind that regards her as himself.” To regard her as oneself is to see the good friend as oneself and not to look upon her as a second person. After it come, in order, the mind of the pure fruit of one’s own deeds, the mind that adorns the bodhisattva practices, the mind that perfects all buddha-dharmas, the mind that is able to give birth, the mind of going forth, the mind complete in the sea of all merit and knowledge, the mind of increase, the mind complete in all good roots, and the mind that can accomplish great benefit. These ten minds are not ten bare names: each carries with it the reason why it is so, and two of them are the easiest to read past. The second, the mind of the pure fruit of one’s own deeds, is fastened by the scripture text to the cause “because to draw near to her and make offerings gives birth to good roots” — the fruit of one’s own deeds comes to be pure because drawing near and making offerings gives birth to good roots, and not because one cultivates some separate course of one’s own. The fifth, the mind that is able to give birth, is put by the scripture text as “because she is able to give birth to the unsurpassed Dharma in me” — the one who gives birth is the good friend, and what is born is the unsurpassed Dharma; what is born is not good feeling but Dharma. The gloss upon the last mind is the longest, saying three “becauses” in one breath — because it causes him to abide in all the dharmas of the bodhisattva, to perfect the path of all-knowledge, and to gain all buddha-dharmas — and so it gathers up the benefits of the nine minds before it.

A misreading must be set aside: that “the mind that regards her as himself” says that one is already equal to the teacher. The scripture text’s own gloss is “because this can cause me diligently to accomplish the dharmas that aid the path to all-knowledge” — to regard her as oneself is not to say that one already is the same, but that only by looking upon her as one body will one take the teacher’s business as one’s own and set about it. Brought down to the ground: if the first mind raised toward a good friend is admiration from below, one will remain a guest forever.

Eighty-Four Samenesses: Only after the Ten Minds Are Raised Is the Same Practice Gained

The moment the ten minds are raised, the scripture text follows immediately with one clause — “Having raised such a mind as this, he gained the same practice, as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land, that this night goddess holds in common with all the bodhisattvas” — and then sets out eighty-four items. Chengguan here points to the cause and the effect: because the ten minds beginning with regarding her as oneself were raised before, therefore the practice equal to that of the good friend is gained. The mind is first, the practice after.

The pattern of these eighty-four items is in two members: the former member sets up the name, the latter glosses the meaning. Chengguan judges of this pattern that “in the eighty-four samenesses, each has the setting up of a name and the glossing of a meaning, and the shape of the text displays it of itself.” The number Fazang reads out upon the sixty-fascicle witness is likewise eighty-four. The order of the list is not set down at random: it opens with the same mindfulness, the same wisdom, the same orientation, the same awakening, the same faculty, the same mind, the same objective realm, the same realization, and the same meaning, which speak of the inner realization; the middle turns to the same form-body, the same power, the same fearlessness, the same vigor, the same eloquence, the same kindly speech, the same wondrous voice, and the same perfect voice, which speak of the converting of others; below these come the same great kindness, the same great compassion, the same bodily deed, the same verbal deed, and the same mental deed, which speak of the three deeds; and the last passage turns to the same spiritual power, the same spiritual might, the same dhāraṇī, the same secret Dharma, and the same profound Dharma, closing at “the same going forth, because he fulfills the sea of all the great vows and perfects the knowledge of the ten powers of the Tathāgata.”

The eighty-four items cannot be read as names alone, and the glosses upon two of them must be made plain on the spot. Of the same unobstructedness, the gloss fastened to it is “because he understands that all dharmas are altogether without marks” — unobstructedness is not a strength great enough to pass through, but the understanding that all dharmas are from the first without marks: having no marks, there is nothing that can obstruct, and therefore it is unobstructed. Of the same non-reliance, the gloss fastened to it is “because he has cut off forever every mind that relies” — non-reliance is not the having of nowhere to dwell, but the cutting off forever of the very mind that would go and rely and dwell; what is cut off is the mind that relies, not the object relied upon.

The Four Meanings of Sameness, and Which One Is Meant Here

The graph for “same” must be asked after: the same as whom? Chengguan says in general discussion that sameness has four meanings — that person and dharma are not two is to be the same as the whole Dharma realm; that cause and effect are not two is to be the same as all the buddhas; that self and other are not two is to be the same as all the bodhisattvas; that the defiled and the pure are not two is to be the same as all beings. And he judges of the present text: what is said now is that he gained the bodhisattva practice held in common by this night goddess and the bodhisattvas, and that is exactly the third meaning, while the meaning also embraces the remaining three.

Why does it embrace them? He says that because one sees the first meaning, one is not other than the remaining two — because one sees that the substance of the Dharma realm is the same, one is therefore the same as the buddhas above and the same as beings below, and only so is the sameness ultimate.

Then why is sameness set out at length here, with this one good friend? Chengguan’s reason is tied to the station: “It is because upon the eighth ground one realizes the principle of non-arising, so that self and other act upon one another with no hindrance at all; therefore sameness is made clear especially here.” And he at once takes the scripture text itself as his witness: among the eighty-four items there is the one item “the same forbearance of non-arising, because he enters the sea of the assemblies of all buddhas.” This is to prove his own judgment in reverse by one clause of the scripture text, not to fit the station in mid-air.

A misreading must be set aside: that “sameness” means level equality, and that there is no more need to study. Were it level equality, Sudhana would not need to ask again for the name of the Dharma gate, nor to go on to the next friend. Brought down to the ground: it is sameness of practice, not sameness of station.

The Ten Verses of Praise: Sudhana Speaks Back to the Teacher What He Has Gained

Having gained the same practice, Sudhana “bared his right shoulder, bowed to her feet, and joined his palms with a single mind,” and spoke ten verses. Chengguan divides these ten verses into three passages: the first eight verses sing of the raising of the increasingly excellent mind above; the ninth verse sings of the deep realization and the sameness from afar above; the tenth verse sings of the weight of the kindness he bears. And he matches them clause by clause: each of the first six verses sings one clause of the ten minds; of the seventh verse the upper three lines sing the seventh clause and the lower line the eighth; of the eighth verse the upper half sings the ninth and the lower half the tenth.

The meaning of the ten verses also forms an order of its own. The first verse speaks of setting the will — “I have raised a firm resolve, and set my will upon seeking the unsurpassed awakening” — and points out “and I raise the mind that regards her as myself,” which answers exactly to the first of the ten minds. The second verse speaks of seeing the good friend and so extinguishing offenses and perfecting the fruit. The third verse speaks of seeing the good friend and of adorning his own mind with merit and virtue, and of vowing to cultivate the path “to the end of the land-kalpas of the future” — the one who adorns the mind and cultivates the path is Sudhana. The fourth verse says that the good friend gathers him in and enriches him, and shows him in full the right teaching and the true Dharma. The fifth verse says that she shuts the evil destinies, reveals the road of men and devas, and further reveals the path by which the tathāgatas perfect all-knowledge — it lists the benefits received layer by layer. The sixth verse says that the good friend is “the treasury of the merit and virtue of the buddhas,” who in thought after thought gives birth to a sea of merit and virtue like empty space. The seventh verse says what she gives: the perfections, merit beyond reckoning, pure merit and virtue; and its last line, “causes me to wear the headcloth of a buddha,” says that she causes him to put on the head-wrapping of a buddha, that is, the mark of the conferring of a prediction. The eighth verse speaks of the vow ever to rely upon her. The ninth verse says that by this his merit and virtue is complete, so that he can universally expound the path of all-knowledge for beings — benefit received turns into the benefiting of others. The tenth verse bears the kindness: “though measureless and numberless kalpas should pass, I could not repay her kindness.”

A misreading must be set aside: that the verses of praise are a courtesy. The order of the scripture text is benefit first, benefiting others after, and at the last the saying that the kindness cannot be repaid; were it mere courtesy, there would be no need to count out item by item what has been gained. Brought down to the ground: only the one who can say clearly what he has gained has truly gained it.

Three Questions, and Only Two Answered

The verses done, Sudhana asks three things: what this liberation gate is named, how long it has been since she raised the mind, and how much longer before she becomes a buddha. Chengguan first explains why he does not ask about the dharmas of cultivation: “Having already beheld the working of the liberation, he does not ask how it is cultivated, but simply inquires after the name.” The working has already been seen, and so he asks only after the name.

And the night goddess answers only the first two questions. Upon this Chengguan sets forth two meanings: one is to display the increase of compassion — as was said of Fulfilled Vow before; the other is to display the long-since accomplished, showing that she abides upon the ground of the cause. And he takes the latter text of this very section as his witness: those she rescued have long since become buddhas, how much more the one who rescued them.

A misreading must be set aside: that the non-answering is a missed answer. The scripture text says plainly further on, “Those offenders, whom I rescued, are Krakucchanda and the rest, the thousand buddhas of the Worthy Kalpa” — those rescued have become buddhas, and the one who rescued them still shows herself upon the bodhisattva station; this very matter is the answer to that third question. Brought down to the ground: some questions go unanswered because the answer has already been given elsewhere.

The Name of the Dharma Gate: Teaching and Converting Beings So as to Cause Good Roots to Be Born

The night goddess tells him, setting up the name: “This liberation gate is named: teaching and converting beings so as to cause good roots to be born.”

This name must be read in three lengths. Teaching and converting is what she does; beings are what it is directed toward; causing good roots to be born is the fruit accomplished. Chengguan glosses this name, saying: “That is, she manifests bodies and converts widely, causing good things to be born and ultimately to gain buddhahood; therefore it is named a root.” Why is it called a “root” and not a “fruit”? Because what is born is a good that is able to give birth; once the good root is born, buddhahood will ultimately be gained — the name is taken upon the cause.

Li Tongxuan reads this name along another road, tying it to the knowledge that does not act: he says that all beings are born from the knowledge that does not act, and that within this knowledge all good roots are born of themselves and all sufferings are extinguished of themselves. In the witness upon which Zhiyan relied, the name of this gate reads “the Dharma gate of awakening beings in answer to their kind and nurturing their good roots,” and Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, glosses the meaning of its name, saying, “the body converts in answer to their kind and the knowledge opens and awakens well, causing creatures to increase in good; therefore it says nurturing.” The glosses of the three houses each have their own track.

A misreading must be set aside: that “causing good roots to be born” means giving people a little advantage. The good roots the scripture text speaks of are threefold — “those not yet planted he causes to be planted, those already planted he causes to increase, those already increased he causes to ripen” — and at the last it comes down to non-retrogression. Brought down to the ground: a good root is a root because it grows of itself.

Inwardly Answering to Principle and to Phenomena: Sameness Is Spoken of First, and Only Then the Form-Bodies

After the setting up of the name, the night goddess says what it is that she has awakened to upon entering this liberation: “I have awakened to the sameness of the own-nature of all dharmas, entered into the true nature of all dharmas, realized the Dharma that leans upon nothing, and cast off the world.” These four clauses draw inward all the way — sameness, truth, non-dependence, casting off. Only then does she say “I know in full the differences among the forms of all dharmas,” and say further that blue, yellow, red, and white are in their nature not real.

Chengguan judges this passage to be “first, the making clear of the inward answering to principle and to phenomena,” and judges of the whole working: “That is, because it is a working that answers to principle, therefore the working is without bound and moving and still are not two.” The working is without bound because it answers to principle; and moving and still are not two for this same reason.

The Yanyi chao states the line of reasoning more directly: because within she realizes the real, therefore without she manifests form. It cites a question and an answer of the Qixin lun, as witness — if the dharma-body of the buddhas is apart from form, how can it manifest form? What is answered is that form and mind are not two: because the nature of form is the very nature of knowledge, the substance of form is without shape and is named the knowledge-body; because the nature of knowledge is the very nature of form, it is named the dharma-body pervading everywhere. Having cited it, the Chao sets down its own bound and measure: that was said with respect to buddhas, yet this station is already at its utmost and is greatly the same as a buddha.

A misreading must be set aside: that “in their nature not real” says that colors are false and need not be attended to. The clause the scripture text sets immediately after is “while yet I ever show measureless form-bodies” — it is precisely because she knows them to be unreal that she can show them measurelessly. Brought down to the ground: forms do not obstruct because one first does not cling, not because one first does not look.

Ninety-Seven Clauses of Form-Bodies: She Counts the Bodies She Can Manifest Ninety-Seven Times

Then comes the longest passage of this section: from “manifold form-bodies” onward, every clause closes with the two graphs for “form-body,” down to “form-bodies that show the image of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra” — counted clause by clause, ninety-seven clauses.

These ninety-seven clauses are not a saying of the same thing over again. The opening clauses speak with respect to number and measure: manifold, not of one kind, boundless, pure. Thereafter it turns to the marks of gathering and converting: form-bodies equal to all beings, form-bodies universally present before all beings, form-bodies that appear before beings according to what their minds delight in and subdue them. Further on it turns to the images of merit and virtue: form-bodies of great merit like the king of jewel mountains, form-bodies complete in a sea of great kindness. The last stretch turns wholly into images of cloud and rain: showing clouds of sun-wheels beyond telling, showing clouds of vast moon-wheels, sending forth clouds of measureless wondrous flowers of Mount Sumeru, raising clouds of all burning incense filling the Dharma realm, scattering clouds of the jewel treasury of all powdered incense — from body to cloud, from cloud to pervading. It closes at the one clause “form-bodies that show the image of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra,” answering to the return to Samantabhadra at the end of this assembly. Two further clauses within this list are clauses of limitation, and are not to be read past as more of the same spreading out. One is “form-bodies that toward all beings neither grasp nor cast away” — both ends, the grasping and the casting away, are set aside together: she manifests a body and yet does not grasp at the marks of beings, nor does she cast beings aside and go her own way; and it is just because there is no grasping that the body can be manifested toward all. The other is “form-bodies without fixity and without finality” — without fixity, it is not settled upon any one shape; without finality, it does not stop at any one body. It is these two clauses of limitation that keep the ninety-odd clauses before them from turning into a list that merely grows longer.

The numbers reckoned by the ancient worthies are not level with one another. Chengguan says, “He briefly displays ninety-eight kinds of form-body, and with the setting forth at the beginning and the conclusion at the end it makes a hundred bodies,” reckoning the opening clause and the closing clause into the count to make it up to a hundred. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, says, “Separately there are a hundred kinds of form; upon examining the text two clauses are wanting,” saying that the witness he relied upon lacked two clauses in this passage. The number in the two sayings stands alike at a hundred, while the reckoning by which the hundred is made differs in each.

By What Are These Bodies Manifested: Five Kinds of Power

The ninety-seven clauses listed, the scripture text makes a general conclusion: in thought after thought she manifests form-bodies such as these filling the ten directions, causing beings whether to see, or to call to mind, or to hear the Dharma spoken, or by drawing near, or by gaining awakening, or by seeing spiritual power, or by beholding a transformation, all in accord with what their minds delight in, to be subdued in due season.

Then it points out the causes, five “becauses” one after another: by the power of the great vow, by the power of all-knowledge, by the power of the bodhisattva’s liberation, by the power of great compassion, by the power of great kindness.

A misreading must be set aside: that the manifesting of bodies is the power of spiritual power. Among the five powers the scripture text lists, the first is the great vow and the last are great compassion and great kindness, with all-knowledge and liberation set between — spiritual power is not among them. Brought down to the ground: how many bodies one can manifest depends upon how great the vow is, not upon how strong the power is.

Within a Single Body, Layer upon Layer without End

In the passage below, the night goddess says the matter more fully still: “knowing that dharma-nature is without difference, and yet able to show measureless form-bodies,” each single body showing a measureless sea of forms, each single form sending forth measureless clouds of light, each single light showing measureless buddha-lands, each single land showing measureless buddhas arising in the world, each single buddha showing measureless power of spiritual power.

This is a chain running from body to form, to light, to land, to buddha, to spiritual power, and every link of it is “measureless.” Yet its landing place is not adornment but beings: opening up the good roots of beings from former lives, those not yet planted caused to be planted, those already planted caused to increase, those already increased caused to ripen; and in thought after thought causing measureless beings to become non-retrogressive in anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.

A misreading must be set aside: that this passage describes the greatness of a realm. The syntax of the whole passage enlarges layer by layer, and then the last clause closes suddenly upon one very concrete matter — causing people to be non-retrogressive. Brought down to the ground: after all the spreading out, without this one clause the foregoing would be only scenery.

Taking Up the Question and Granting the Telling: She Reads the Question Over Once First

Before answering the second question, the night goddess reads Sudhana’s question over once first: “As to what you have asked — ‘From what time onward did you raise the mind of awakening and cultivate the bodhisattva practices?’” — and then says, “sustained by the Buddha’s spiritual power, I shall proclaim it for you.”

Chengguan outlines this portion as “praising its depth and granting the telling,” within which there are three members: first the taking up of the question and the granting of the telling; next the praising of the Dharma as most profound; after, the concluding by the sustaining power and the telling. Within the three members not a single clause of the true answer has yet been said.

A misreading must be set aside: that this is a formality. The five similes below and a whole passage of a former life all hang upon this clause “sustained by the Buddha’s spiritual power”; without first setting up this word of sustaining, what is said after would become self-praise. Brought down to the ground: to read the question over once is to acknowledge what the other has asked — this step taken, the answer can meet it.

The Bodhisattva’s Wheel of Knowledge: It Cannot Be Measured by Kalpas

Before the true answer, a general setting forth is put up first: “The bodhisattva’s wheel of knowledge is far removed from every realm of discrimination, and it cannot be displayed by such kalpa-discriminations as long and short, defiled and pure, broad and narrow, many and few, within birth and death.” Then she asks and answers herself: why is this? Because “the bodhisattva’s wheel of knowledge is pure in its own nature, apart from every net of discrimination, beyond every mountain of obstruction, and shines universally according to whom is to be converted.”

Chengguan ties one meaning to each of these three clauses: the own nature is spoken of with respect to principle, being apart from discrimination with respect to knowledge, and being beyond obstruction with respect to what is cut off.

Thereupon a question arises: since there is no long or short, why does the scripture text plainly speak of kalpas further on — is this not self-contradictory? Chengguan resolves this difficulty, saying: “Since there is no long or short, that long and short are now spoken of is for the sake of benefiting the living. Would one have it long, then it is long, to display that the root of the Dharma is deep; would one have it short, then it is short, to display that the Dharma is surpassing.” Long and short are spoken of in order to benefit the living; it is not that within knowledge there truly is long and short.

The Yanyi chao also points out a general rule: the devas of the night of this assembly are for the most part asked how long ago they raised the mind, and what they all answer with is the wheel of knowledge — this is to answer substance and working to one another. What is asked is time; what is answered is substance and working.

A misreading must be set aside: that this is an evasion. The passage of the former life below tells out the name of the kalpa, the title of the buddha, the name of the land, and the names of the persons one by one, more concretely than any number of years. Brought down to the ground: to say first that ‘it cannot be measured by kalpas,’ and then to speak of kalpas, keeps the reader from taking the kalpas for the answer itself.

The First Simile: The Sun-Wheel of Itself Has Neither Day nor Night

The five similes follow in order. The first simile takes the rising and setting of the sun: a sun-wheel of itself has neither day nor night; only when it comes forth is it called day, and when it goes down is it called night. So too is the bodhisattva’s wheel of knowledge: it has no discrimination and no three times; only in accord with the mind does it appear, and it is said to abide in a former kalpa or a latter kalpa.

Chengguan sets up a name for this simile, “the simile of the bright sun according with the seasons,” and glosses its two sides: “The substance of the sun is ever bright, and it is against the mountains that it rises and sets; knowledge has no three times, and it is by the obstruction of the mind that the seeing differs.” The substance of the sun is bright from first to last, and its rising and setting are cast up against it by the mountains; within knowledge there are from the first no three times, and long and short are cast up against it by the obstructions in the minds of beings. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, sets up the name “the simile of the sun’s nature having no darkness,” taking the meaning to be that knowledge has no falsity and can break falsity; Zhiyan sets up the name “the simile of the gate of knowledge being perfect and ultimate.” The names set up by the three houses differ, while the image they point to is one.

Brought down to the ground: day and night are real; only they are not on the side of the sun.

The Second Simile: The Sun Is in the Sky, and Its Reflection Falls into All Waters

The second simile takes the sun’s casting of a reflection: the sun-wheel abides in the sky above Jambudvīpa, and its reflection appears within all jewels and within the pure waters of rivers and seas, and there is not a being who does not see it, “and yet that pure sun has not come here.” So too is the bodhisattva’s wheel of knowledge: it goes forth from the sea of the modes of existence, abides upon the Buddha’s true Dharma, “leaning upon nothing in the sky of stillness,” and for the sake of converting beings takes birth in the destinies according to their kinds, while in truth there is no birth and death.

Here the scripture text sets a question of its own: why is this? The answer is three clauses — the bodhisattva has ultimately left behind the thoughts of the mind and sees every inversion; he gains the true seeing and sees the true nature of the dharmas; he knows that all the worlds are like a dream and like an illusion and that there are no beings. And at the last it turns: “only by the power of great compassion and the great vow does he appear before beings to teach, convert, and subdue them.”

Chengguan sets up the name “the simile of the sun-wheel casting a reflection,” glossing it: “The white sun does not come, and yet it is hidden or shown according to the place; the wheel of knowledge is ever still, and yet the occasion sees it short or long.”

A misreading must be set aside: that “there are no beings” means there is no need to ferry beings across. The syntax of the scripture text is to say first that there are no beings, and then to say “only by the power of great compassion and the great vow” does he appear and convert — the two clauses run together. Brought down to the ground: only one who knows there are no beings to ferry across can ferry them for long.

The Third Simile: The Ferryman Cleaves to Neither Shore

The third simile changes the image it takes: the ferryman ever uses a great ship, and within the flow of the river depends not upon this shore, cleaves not to the far shore, and abides not in mid-current, and so ferries beings across without rest. The bodhisattva, with the ship of the perfections within the flow of birth and death, is likewise so, and “though through measureless kalpas he cultivates the bodhisattva practices, he has never discriminated the length or shortness of the kalpas.”

The first two similes both take the sun, speaking with respect to the substance of knowledge; this simile takes a boat, speaking with respect to the gathering in of beings. Chengguan sets up the name “the simile of the empty boat carrying creatures,” glossing outright what it likens as “the bodhisattva’s gathering in of beings without abiding.” Fazang names it “the simile of the empty boat relieving creatures”; the meaning is the same.

The three non-abidings are the bone of this simile: not depending upon this shore is not abiding in birth and death; not cleaving to the far shore is not abiding in nirvāṇa; not abiding in mid-current is not letting even “non-abiding” come to rest in the middle. Brought down to the ground: the boat can go on ferrying people precisely because it comes ashore on neither side.

The Fourth Simile: Empty Space Does Not Hinder Forming or Decaying

The fourth simile takes space: all the worlds form within empty space and decay within it, while space has no discrimination and is pure in its own nature, “no defilement and no disorder, no hindrance and no weariness, neither long nor short,” and to the end of the kalpas of the future upholds all the lands. The bodhisattva, with a vast and deep mind equal to the realm of empty space, sets in motion the wind-wheel of the great vow and gathers in beings, causing them to leave the evil destinies, to be born in the good destinies, and to abide in the station of all-knowledge, extinguishing the afflictions and the bonds of suffering of birth and death, “while in himself he has no mind of sorrow or joy, of fatigue or weariness.”

Chengguan sets up the name “the simile of great emptiness being without hindrance,” and what it likens is “the bodhisattva’s benefiting of creatures without effort” — benefiting creatures with no effortful working is exactly the mark of the eighth ground. Li Tongxuan, reading this passage, reckons the wind-wheel of the great vow as a further simile of its own, and so counts six similes; Chengguan, Fazang, and Zhiyan all make five.

A misreading must be set aside: that “no sorrow or joy” is coldness. Within the very same clause of the scripture text, the gathering in of beings, the causing them to leave the evil destinies, and the extinguishing of the bonds of suffering are all being done. Brought down to the ground: to work without being worn out is because the one who works does not reckon success and failure to his own account.

The Fifth Simile: The Conjured Man Has Limbs Complete and Yet Not the Ten Matters

The fifth simile is the most thorough: a man conjured up by illusion, though his limbs and members are complete, has not the ten matters of the out-breath and the in-breath, cold, heat, hunger, thirst, sorrow, joy, birth, and death. So too is the bodhisattva: with illusion-like knowledge and the dharma-body of sameness he shows forth many forms, and within the destinies of existence abides for measureless kalpas teaching and converting beings, while upon every realm within birth and death he has “nothing he is glad of and nothing he wearies of, nothing he loves and nothing he hates, no suffering and no pleasure, nothing he grasps and nothing he casts away, nothing that eases him and nothing that frightens him.”

Chengguan sets up the name “the simile of the illusory transformation having nothing real,” and what it likens is “stillness in the very working.” The first four similes all say ‘though it appears, it is not’; this simile takes outright a thing that from the first is not, as its image — the conjured man has shape and yet no matters, which answers exactly to the ten clauses of five pairs of “nothing.”

Chengguan also points out that this set of similes is the general pattern of this assembly: “Now, in the praising of depth by the devas of the night above, all take this Dharma and simile as their model.”

Brought down to the ground: the ten clauses of five pairs list opposite ends, and not one end is kept — it is not that suffering and pleasure have been held down, but that there is fundamentally no one there to receive suffering and pleasure.

Concluding by the Sustaining Power: Only at This Point Does the True Answer Begin

The five similes told, the night goddess says once more that she is sustained: “Though the bodhisattva’s wisdom is profound and hard to fathom such as this, I shall yet, sustained by the awesome spiritual power of the Buddha, expound it for you,” and she says what it is for — “so as to cause the bodhisattvas of ages to come to fulfill the great vow and to perfect the powers.”

This clause is the pivot of this section. Before it is the praising of depth; after it is the true answer; before it, it is said that kalpas cannot display it; after it, kalpas, lands, and persons are the very things spoken of. The turn between the two halves rests upon this clause.

Brought down to the ground: to speak of what cannot be spoken, one must first make clear by what one speaks.

The Former Life, One: The Kalpa Good Light and the Buddha King of the Lamp of Empty Space and the Sound of the Dharma Wheel

The true answer begins at “in an age long past, kalpas as many as the dust motes of a sea of worlds ago.” The kalpa is named Good Light, the world is named Jewel Light, within which ten thousand buddhas arose in the world, the first of them styled the Tathāgata King of the Lamp of Empty Space and the Sound of the Dharma Wheel. The royal city is named Jewel Adornment; to its east there is a great forest named Wondrous Light; within the forest there is a place of the Way named Jewel Flower; the seat is named the lion seat of the universally luminous maṇi lotus treasury. That tathāgata upon this seat perfected right awakening and “sat in the place of the Way for a full hundred years,” and expounded the Dharma.

Li Tongxuan takes each name for a symbol: the kalpa named Good Light symbolizes the setting up of the substance of the knowledge without effort; the world named Jewel Light symbolizes the knowledge without effortful working that manifests dharmas as creatures require; the arising of ten thousand buddhas symbolizes answering to the ten thousand practices with one knowledge; the sitting for a full hundred years symbolizes the fullness of the ten grounds and the ten perfections within a single ground. This is his consistent track of symbolic reading, another road than Chengguan’s clause-by-clause outlining and glossing.

A misreading must be set aside: that these names are a spreading out of background. What the night goddess answers is “how long has it been since you raised the mind,” and the starting point of the answer must have a definite time, place, and buddha — the names are the framework of the answer. Brought down to the ground: only when one can say at whose seat the mind was raised does that raising of the mind have a provenance.

The Former Life, Two: A King Who Built a Prison

The second passage turns dark of a sudden. The king is named Victorious Light, the lifespan of men was then ten thousand years, and in the world there was much taking of life, stealing, lewdness, false speech, ornate speech, double-tongued speech, and harsh speech, covetousness, anger, and wrong views, and also unfiliality toward father and mother and disrespect toward śramaṇas and brahmins. The king, in order to subdue them, “built a prison, shut them in with cangue and chain, and measureless beings suffered within it.”

Chengguan here glosses one graph: “Lingyu is the name of the prison of the Zhou.”

A misreading must be set aside: that this king is an evil man. The scripture text says that the king built the prison “wishing to subdue them,” and the repeated verses say further that he “ever governed the multitude with the right Dharma.” Brought down to the ground: the hard thing in this passage is precisely that the suffering was not made by a bad man but by a good intention.

The Former Life, Three: The Prince Good Subduing

The third passage brings out the chief person: the king had a prince named Good Subduing, “upright and excellent in his features, whom men delighted to see, complete in the twenty-eight marks of a great man.”

Here there is a divergent gloss of one of the ancient worthies. Li Tongxuan sets up a symbol upon the “twenty-eight marks,” saying that they are “wanting four marks and not filling out the thirty-two marks,” using this to symbolize that upon the eighth ground the fourfold cause and effect of the ninth and tenth grounds is not yet full. The scripture text says only twenty-eight and does not say why; Tongxuan’s gloss is his own symbolic reading. It is recorded without judgment.

Brought down to the ground: a man born complete in the marks, whom men delight to see, does as the first thing in the next passage this — he walks into a prison.

The Former Life, Four: He Walks into the Prison

Within the palace the prince heard from afar the voices of the prisoners in their bitter pain, and his heart was moved to pity; and so he came out from the palace and went into the prison. What the scripture text writes of what he saw grows heavier clause by clause: manacle, fetter, cangue, and chain binding them to one another in succession, set in a dark place, some roasted with fire, some smoked with smoke, some flogged, some suffering the cutting of the knee, naked in body and disordered in hair, hungry and thirsty and gaunt, “their sinews severed and their bones laid bare, crying aloud, their pain violent.”

Chengguan here glosses two graphs: “To flog is to beat. The knee-cutting is of the sort of the severing of the foot.” And the Yanyi chao adds a clause naming the five punishments of the world to make clear the knee-cutting as a punishment.

When the prince had seen them, “with a voice of fearlessness he consoled them” — first saying “do not be distressed,” then saying “do not be anxious and afraid,” and last saying “I shall surely cause you all to gain release.” The consoling comes first, the promise after. Then he goes to see the king, and what he says is very short: “The offenders in the prison suffer a bitter poison hard to dwell in; I pray you will grant them clemency and bestow fearlessness upon them.”

A misreading must be set aside: that compassion is a matter within the heart. The order of the scripture text is hearing the voices, coming out from the hall, entering the prison, seeing the suffering, uttering a voice, and going to the king — at every step the body is moving. Brought down to the ground: if compassion stays within the palace, it is only a pleasant sound.

The Former Life, Five: The Five Hundred Great Ministers Say That the One Who Rescues Should Die as Well

The king calls the five hundred great ministers and asks, “How stands this matter?” The ministers answer with great thoroughness: those offenders stole the goods of the state in secret, plotted to seize the royal throne, and entered by theft into the women’s quarters, and their offense is worthy of execution; and at the last they add one clause — “and if there be any who plead for their rescue, his offense too should reach to death.”

This one clause is the pivot of the whole passage of the former life. Before it, the matter is only whether the offenders should die; after this clause, it becomes that the one who rescues must die along with them.

Brought down to the ground: many a hard place is not in ‘whether one ought to rescue,’ but in the other side setting the price of rescue before you first.

The Former Life, Six: He Asks to Take Their Place with His Own Body

Hearing them, the prince’s “compassionate mind grew keener still.” What he says to the great ministers falls into two lengths. The former length is upon the matter: according to what you say, only release these men; as you deem fitting, it may be visited upon me; for their sake I can bear every bitter thing, “though my body be ground to powder and my life be lost, I shall not begrudge it,” if only the offenders may all be spared their pain.

The latter length is his asking himself the reason, and is also the most essential clause of this section: “If I do not rescue these beings, how shall I be able to rescue all the suffering beings in the prison of the three realms?” Then he speaks of the prison of the three realms in the finest detail — all beings within the three realms are bound by craving, veiled by delusion, poor and without merit and virtue, fallen into the evil destinies; their minds are confused, they do not seek the path of going forth, they have lost the light of wisdom, they delight in and cleave to the three modes of existence, “they dwell in the prison of suffering and have fallen into the net of Māra,” and the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, grief, and harm ever press upon them. And the last clause: “I should cast away body and life and draw them out!”

Chengguan judges of this passage that “in eleven items there is the compassionate rescue of the offenders, the true answer to the beginning of the raising of the mind” — this one matter is the starting point of her raising of the mind.

A misreading must be set aside: that this is a passing fit of indignation. The reason given by the scripture text is a single comparison: if this one prison before his eyes is not relieved, with what will that prison of the three realms be relieved? Brought down to the ground: the raising of the mind of awakening is not a vow made first and then met with an occasion; it is this one matter before one’s eyes that forces that vow out.

The Former Life, Seven: The Ministers Threaten with the Throne

The great ministers go together to where the king is and “all raised up their hands and cried aloud” — raising the hands and crying aloud is the look of many mouths speaking as one. What they say is: according to the prince’s intent, the law of the king is ruined and the calamity will reach ten thousand men; if the great king, out of love for him, does not reprove and punish him, “the jewelled throne of the great king too will not long stand.”

Chengguan glosses the two graphs for “jewelled throne”: “As for the jewelled throne, the throne is the station.” What they bring out is the royal station.

Hearing these words, the king “flushed with great anger” and gave order that the prince and the offenders be put to death.

Brought down to the ground: after this step, the rescuing of men is no longer a matter of compassion or no compassion, but of whether power and station stand firm.

The Former Life, Eight: The Queen and the Thousand Court Women

Hearing of it, the queen grieved and wept aloud, “marred her features and put on plain garments” — marring her looks and changing into unadorned clothing — and hastened with a thousand court women to where the king was, cast her whole body upon the ground and bowed to the king’s feet, and together they said one clause: “We pray only that the great king will pardon the prince’s life!”

The two clauses the king turns and says to the prince are harder still: “Do not rescue the offenders; if you rescue the offenders, I shall surely kill you!” — he hands the choice straight back into the prince’s hands.

What was the prince’s mind then? The scripture text lists three “because he would”: because he sought all-knowledge alone, because he would benefit beings, and because with great compassion he would universally rescue and gather them in — and therefore “he was firm in mind and without any shrinking back.” He answered in two clauses: “I pray you will forgive their offense; let my body receive the execution!” The king answered in one: “As you will!”

A misreading must be set aside: that firmness is a holding on by force. The scripture text sets the three reasons before the firmness — it is not that he could hold out, but that those three matters weighed more than his life. Brought down to the ground: what does not turn back has never been the will, but the one for whose sake it is done.

The Former Life, Nine: Giving for Half a Month

The queen speaks once more, and this time turns another way: “Great king! I pray you will let the prince give for half a month and cultivate merit as he pleases, and only then punish him.” The king consented.

To the north of the capital there was a great park named Sunlight, an old place of giving. The prince went there and set up a great assembly of giving, and the scripture text lists what was given: food and drink, garments, flower garlands, necklaces, unguent incense, powdered incense, banners and pennants, jewelled canopies, and adornments of every kind, “whatever any man sought, there was nothing not given to him in full.” The half month full, upon the last day, the king, the great ministers, the elders, the householders, the people of the town, and the followers of the other paths all came and gathered.

A misreading must be set aside: that this is a bargaining for merit at the end of life. What the queen asked for was that he “cultivate merit as he pleases,” and what the prince did was that “whatever any man sought, there was nothing not given to him in full” — he spent the whole of his last half month upon giving to others. Brought down to the ground: what a man who knows he has half a month left does, tells what he has been doing all along.

The Former Life, Ten: The Buddha Comes upon the Last Day

Upon the last day the Tathāgata King of the Lamp of Empty Space and the Sound of the Dharma Wheel, “knowing that the season for the subduing of beings had come,” came together with a great company. The scripture text writes the eight classes attending him, each in its own manner: the deva kings encircling him, the dragon kings making offerings, the yakṣa kings guarding him, the gandharva kings praising him, the asura kings bending their bodies and bowing, the garuḍa kings with pure minds scattering jewelled flowers, the kiṃnara kings joyfully entreating him, and the mahoraga kings gazing up with a single mind.

The prince and the company saw from afar the Buddha coming, and the scripture text writes the marks of the Buddha: “upright and excellent, his faculties still and settled like a well-trained elephant, his mind without stain or turbidity like a pure pool,” showing great spiritual power, displaying great mastery, manifesting great awesome virtue, sending forth a great light that universally shone upon the worlds, from every pore giving birth to clouds of fragrant flame, quaking measureless buddha-lands in the ten directions. And the effect of it is one clause only: “those beings who saw him were pure and joyful in mind, and their afflictions were extinguished.”

Brought down to the ground: the season of the Buddha’s coming was not begged for by the prince; it was that “the season for the subduing had come” — beings ripened, and only then did the Buddha appear.

The Former Life, Eleven: Asking the Buddha to Sit, the Buddha Expounds the Dharma, the Prince Gains the Dharma

The prince and the company cast their five limbs upon the ground, bowed to the Buddha’s feet, set out a seat, joined their palms, and said: “Welcome, World-Honored One! Welcome, Well-Gone One! We pray only that you will have pity and gather us in, and be seated upon this seat!” By the Buddha’s spiritual power, the devas of the Pure Abodes transformed this seat into a seat of fragrant maṇi lotus flowers. The Buddha sat upon it, and the assembly of bodhisattvas encircled him on every side. All the beings in the assembly, because they had seen the Tathāgata, “had their suffering extinguished and their obstructions removed, and were fit to receive the holy Dharma.”

The Tathāgata, knowing that they might be converted, with a perfect voice proclaimed a sūtra named Universally Illuminating Wheel of Causes, causing all beings to understand it each according to his kind. Chengguan glosses this title of the sūtra, saying: “As for the Universally Illuminating Wheel of Causes, it causes them to know that good and evil each have their own cause, that the offenders are drawn on by an evil cause, and that the prince’s good cause is about to be fulfilled.” — what this sūtra expounds is exactly this very matter: what the offenders undergo is drawn on by an evil cause, what the prince does is a good cause about to be fulfilled. The title of the sūtra and the matter clasp one another.

The scripture text lists the benefits item by item: eighty nayutas of beings left dust and stain behind and gained the purity of the Dharma eye; measureless nayutas of beings gained the ground of no further learning; ten thousand beings abided in the path of the Great Vehicle, entered the practice of Samantabhadra, and brought their great vows to fullness; beings as many as the dust motes of a hundred buddha-lands in each of the ten directions were subdued in mind within the Great Vehicle; all beings of measureless worlds were spared the evil destinies and born among the devas. Only the last clause comes down to the chief person: “The prince Good Subduing, at this very time, gained the bodhisattva liberation gate of teaching and converting beings so as to cause good roots to be born.”

Brought down to the ground: he rescued men first, and only then gained the Dharma — the order must not be read the other way about.

Joining the Ancient and the Present, One: That Prince Was Myself

Only when she has said this much does the night goddess disclose it: “Was that prince of that time then another? He was my own self.” She tells of the cause by which she gained this liberation: in the past she raised a mind of great compassion, cast away body, life, and goods to rescue suffering beings, and opened the gates and gave greatly and made offerings to the Buddha.

Then she rules out, item by item, what her mind was then: only benefiting all beings, “not cleaving to the three realms, not seeking recompense, not coveting renown, not wishing to praise herself and belittle others,” upon every realm nothing coveted and clung to and nothing feared, only adorning the essential path of going forth in the Great Vehicle, ever delighting to contemplate the gate of all-knowledge, and cultivating ascetic practice.

A misreading must be set aside: that to cast away the body is of itself the bodhisattva practice. The four “nots” and the two “nothings” listed in this passage all say what was not mixed in at that time. Brought down to the ground: the very same casting away of the body, with the seeking of a recompense mixed in, is another thing altogether.

Joining the Ancient and the Present, Two: The Five Hundred Great Ministers Who Would Have Killed Me

The second question is harder: “Were those five hundred great ministers of that time, who would have harmed me, then others?” The answer is today’s Devadatta and the rest, five hundred in all.

And this saying does not stop at the identification. The night goddess goes on to say: these men, having received the Buddha’s teaching and conversion, will all gain anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi; after kalpas as many as the dust motes of Mount Sumeru there will be a kalpa named Good Light and a world named Jewel Light, and within it they will become buddhas, five hundred buddhas arising in the world in order — the first named Great Compassion, the second Enriching the World, the third Lion of Great Compassion, the fourth Rescuing Beings, and so on down to the last, named King of Physicians.

What is worth noting is the titles of the buddhas: Great Compassion, Enriching the World, Lion of Great Compassion, Rescuing Beings — the five hundred men who in that day held that even the one who rescued should die will bear titles that are wholly upon kindness, compassion, and rescue. And the scripture text says further that, though the great compassion of those buddhas is the same, yet their lands, their clans, their fathers and mothers, their taking of birth, their going forth from the household, their study of the path, their turning of the Dharma wheel, their lifespans, and their titles are “each and all different.”

Brought down to the ground: the settling of an enmity lies not in his admitting his fault, but in his becoming a buddha too — and a buddha with a title like that.

Joining the Ancient and the Present, Three: Those Who Were Rescued Have Already Become Buddhas

The third question is of those offenders. The answer is: they are Krakucchanda and the rest, the thousand buddhas of the Worthy Kalpa, together with a million asaṃkhyeyas of great bodhisattvas — they raised the mind at the place of the Tathāgata Measureless Vigor and Power, Renown, Merit, and Wisdom, and now in the lands of the ten directions walk the bodhisattva path, and what they cultivate and increase is this very same liberation gate. King Victorious Light of that time is today’s great treatise-master Satya Nirgrantha-putra; the men of the palace and their kin are that Nirgrantha’s sixty thousand disciples, who came together with their teacher, set up the banner of the great treatise, disputed with the Buddha, were all subdued, and received the prediction.

Chengguan here glosses the name: “Satya means ‘having.’ Nirgrantha means ‘not bound’: naked in body and starving themselves, they are not bound by clothing and food.”

This passage is precisely where the witness lies for the ‘not answering the question about becoming a buddha’ above: the thousand buddhas she rescued have been accomplished, and the one who could rescue them is still upon the ground of the cause. Chengguan says this meaning is “to display the long-since accomplished, showing that she abides upon the ground of the cause.”

Brought down to the ground: that those you have rescued have walked on ahead of you is not a loss; it is what this road looks like of itself.

Going Forth and Gaining the Dharma: A Million within Five Hundred Years

After rescuing the offenders, his father and mother let him cast off land, wife and child, and treasure, and go forth and study the path at the place of the Buddha King of the Lamp of Empty Space and the Sound of the Dharma Wheel. In five hundred years he purely cultivated pure conduct, and what he gained is reckoned item by item in “a million”: a million dhāraṇīs, a million spiritual powers, a million treasuries of the Dharma, a million valorous vigors that seek all-knowledge; he purified a million gates of forbearance, increased a million minds of pondering, perfected a million powers of the bodhisattva, entered a million gates of bodhisattva knowledge, gained a million gates of prajñā-pāramitā, saw a million buddhas of the ten directions, and raised a million great vows of the bodhisattva; in thought after thought he shone upon a million buddha-lands in each of the ten directions, in thought after thought called to mind a million buddhas, in thought after thought knew the sea of the transformations of a million buddhas, in thought after thought saw the manifold destinies of all the beings of a million worlds.

Chengguan sets down a judgment upon this “million”: “That each is said to be a million means that at that time she had already gained the fourth ground.” The Yanyi chao glosses the reckoning: the first ground a hundred, the second a thousand, the third ten thousand, the fourth a million — the station is inferred backward from the number.

A misreading must be set aside: that these numbers describe abundance. The ancient worthies read them as numbers from which a station may be inferred. Brought down to the ground: the numbers in the scripture text are sometimes a measuring rod.

Taking Birth Again and Meeting Buddhas: He Keeps Changing His Standing

When his life came to its end, he was born again into that royal house and became a wheel-turning king. After the Tathāgata King of the Lamp of Empty Space and the Sound of the Dharma Wheel had passed into extinction, he met eight buddhas in order, and each time his standing was different: meeting the Tathāgata King of the Emptiness of Dharmas he served and made offerings; next as Śakra he met the Tathāgata Treasury of the Deva Kings; next as the Yāma deva king he met the Tathāgata Mountain of the Awesome Might of the Great Earth; next as the Tuṣita deva king he met the Tathāgata King of the Sound and Light of the Dharma Wheel; next as the Nirmāṇarati deva king he met the Tathāgata King of the Knowledge of Empty Space; next as the Paranirmitavaśavartin deva king he met the Tathāgata Banner That None Can Break; next as an asura king he met the Tathāgata King of the Thunder-Voice of All Dharmas; next as a Brahmā king he met the Tathāgata Universally Manifesting and Expounding the Sound of the Dharma of Transformation.

Chengguan outlines this, saying: “Eight buddhas are briefly listed, and the ten thousand are concluded in general” — the eight are a brief setting out, and the total is the ten thousand buddhas of that kalpa.

Brought down to the ground: his standing changed in every life, and the thing he did was one only — to draw near and make offerings.

The Ten Buddhas and the Sixty Koṭis of Buddhas within the Kalpa of Sunlight

The ten thousand buddhas of the kalpa Good Light having all been drawn near and served, there came next a kalpa named Sunlight, in which sixty koṭis of buddhas arose in the world. The scripture text lists ten of them one by one together with his standing at the time: at the Buddha Mountain of Wondrous Marks he was a king named Great Wisdom; at the Buddha Perfect Shoulders a householder; at the Buddha Stainless Youth a great minister; at the Buddha Valorous Upholding an asura king; at the Buddha Marks of Sumeru a tree spirit; at the Buddha Stainless Arm a caravan leader; at the Buddha Lion’s Roaming Step a city spirit; at the Buddha Jewelled Topknot the deva king Vaiśravaṇa; at the Buddha Supreme Renown of the Dharma a gandharva king; at the Buddha Crown of Light a kumbhāṇḍa king.

Among the ten standings there are a king, a householder, a great minister, and a caravan leader, and also a tree spirit, a city spirit, and kings of the non-human sort — there is no sorting out. Li Tongxuan, reading the number of the sixty koṭis of buddhas, takes it to symbolize that within the ten grounds the six stations are level, that cause and effect are one substance, and that there is neither before nor after.

Brought down to the ground: what is called ever following the Buddha in study is not the doing of one kind of person all the way through.

Concluding with Kalpas as Many as Dust Motes: From One Kalpa Inferred to All Kalpas

The last passage is the general conclusion. She says that within that kalpa she received manifold bodies, drew near and made offerings at the place of every buddha, taught, converted, and perfected measureless beings, and gained manifold gates of samādhi, gates of dhāraṇī, gates of spiritual power, gates of eloquence, gates of all-knowledge, gates of the illumination of the Dharma, and gates of wisdom, shining upon manifold seas of the ten directions, entering manifold seas of buddha-lands, and seeing manifold seas of buddhas. Then she pushes this one kalpa out to all: “And just as within this kalpa I drew near to and made offerings to buddhas so many, so too, in every place and in kalpas as many as the dust motes of a sea of worlds, to all the buddhas who arose in the world I drew near and made offerings, heard the Dharma expounded, and received it in faith and guarded it — this too was just so.” And at the last it comes home to the present gate: “At the place of every tathāgata I cultivated this liberation gate, and gained measureless further skillful means of liberation.”

Brought down to the ground: the last clause of the answer to ‘how long since you raised the mind’ is not a number, but the four graphs ‘this too was just so.’

The Repeated Verses, the Former Passage: Granting the Telling, the Kalpa and the Land, the King and the Prince

The prose done, the night goddess “wishing to proclaim once more the meaning of this liberation” spoke verses, counted verse by verse at thirty-four verses. Chengguan divides them into four passages: the first one verse sings of the concluding by the sustaining power and the granting of the telling; the next two verses sing of the arising of the ancient buddha; the next one verse and a half of the former king’s governing and converting; and the rest all sing of the night goddess’s cultivation of the cause.

The first verse says first why Sudhana is able to ask — “with a mind of joy and faith and delight you ask of this Dharma of liberation, hard to conceive” — and then why she herself is able to answer: “sustained by the Tathāgata’s power of protective mindfulness.” The second and third verses speak of the kalpa and the world, and say that ten thousand tathāgatas arose, that she drew near to and made offerings to them all, and “from them I studied out this liberation.”

The fourth verse brings out a name the prose does not have: the royal city is named Joyful Adornment, “broad and level in length and breadth, exceedingly fair,” and those who dwell within it are “beings of mingled deeds,” some pure in mind and some doing evil. In the prose the royal city is named Jewel Adornment; here it reads Joyful Adornment, and the two names stand together. The fifth verse speaks of the king and the prince: King Victorious Light “ever governed the multitude with the right Dharma,” and the prince Good Subduing was “upright in body and complete in every mark.”

A misreading must be set aside: that the repeated verses are only a repetition. The prose does not say how the king governed, and here one clause is added, “ever governed the multitude with the right Dharma”; the prose does not say who dwelt in the capital, and here one clause is added, “beings of mingled good and evil deeds dwelt within it.” Brought down to the ground: in reading repeated verses one must watch for what they say in addition.

The Repeated Verses, the Middle Passage: Nine and a Half Verses upon the Rescuing of the Offenders

From the sixth verse onward is the bone of the former life. The sixth verse says that the offenders were bound in prison and about to be executed, that the prince, seeing them, raised compassion, and that he made his plea above to the king asking clemency. The seventh verse is the word of the ministers, saying outright, “this prince now endangers the kingdom.” The eighth verse is the word of the king, only a clause and a half: “If you rescue those offenders, take it upon yourself!” — and the prince’s response is that “the prince’s pitying thought grew deeper still, and he vowed to rescue beings without shrinking back.” The ninth verse is the request of the consort and the court women; the tenth verse is the king’s consenting and the setting up of the great assembly of giving “to relieve the poor.” The eleventh verse writes the half month full and the time of the execution come, and “the great multitude, hundreds of thousands of myriads of millions of men, at one time gazed up and wept aloud together” — the prose does not write the weeping of the multitude, and this verse supplies it.

The twelfth verse says that the Buddha came, and its reason is the same as the prose: “that buddha, knowing that the faculties of the multitude were about to ripen.” The thirteenth verse says that the Buddha with a single voice expounded by skillful means “that sūtra of the Universal Shining of the Lamp of the Dharma” — the prose reads Universally Illuminating Wheel of Causes, and here it reads the Universal Shining of the Lamp of the Dharma, and the two names stand together. And the benefit is that “measureless beings were made supple in their intent, and all received the conferring of the prediction of awakening.” The fourteenth verse says that the prince raised joy, raised the mind of unsurpassed awakening, and vowed to serve the Tathāgata. The fifteenth verse says that he went forth and abided in reliance upon the Buddha and cultivated the path of the knowledge of all modes, and “at that time he then gained this liberation.”

Chengguan judges these nine and a half verses to sing of the former matter while in the household, and the next one verse to sing of the going forth and the gaining of the Dharma.

Brought down to the ground: it is when the same matter is told a second time that the sound of weeping gets written in.

The Repeated Verses, the Latter Passage: The Sixteenth to the Thirty-Fourth Verse

What this section sets out runs from the sixteenth verse to the thirty-fourth, nineteen verses in all; Chengguan sets up a separate outline here, counting seventeen verses from “next, in buddha-lands” onward as singing the general conclusion as to time, place, and the gaining of the Dharma, and what he counts begins at the eighteenth verse — the two do not begin at the same place.

From the sixteenth verse it turns to what follows the gaining of the Dharma. “Abiding therein through seas of kalpas, he closely contemplated the true nature of all dharmas, ever rescuing beings within the sea of suffering” — abiding, close contemplation, and the rescuing of beings run together. The seventeenth and eighteenth verses say that all the buddhas of that kalpa were served, and that within kalpas as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land offerings were made to each one.

The nineteenth verse is the reflecting back of the whole set of verses: “I call to mind that in the past, when I was a prince, I saw beings within the prison, and vowed to cast away my body and to rescue and guard them, and thereby realized this liberation gate.” It gathers the whole passage of the former life into four lines and says plainly that the cause of the realizing of the gate lies in that very vow. The twentieth and twenty-first verses say that through seas of kalpas she ever cultivated it, that in thought after thought it increased, and that she was awakened by the tathāgatas.

From the twenty-second verse below it turns to the working of the Dharma gate. The twenty-second verse says, “the sea of the Dharma of the buddhas is without bound, and I am able at one time to drink it all universally.” The twenty-third verse says that her body enters all the lands of the ten directions without obstruction and that in thought after thought she knows the names of the lands of the three times. The twenty-fourth verse says that she sees the buddhas of the three times clearly and can show forth her body and go universally to them. The twenty-fifth verse says that she universally rains down clouds of adornment as an offering. The twenty-sixth verse says, “and with a boundless sea of great questions I make entreaty to all the World-Honored Ones” — question as offering — and the Dharma she receives she “receives and upholds in full, without forgetting.” The twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth verses say that before the assemblies of the tathāgatas she sits upon a seat of wondrous adornment and shows forth transformations, “one body shows measureless bodies, and within measureless bodies one body appears.” The twenty-ninth and thirtieth verses say that from her pores she sends forth light to extinguish the fires of affliction, and sends forth clouds of transformed bodies to rain the Dharma rain universally.

The last four verses are exhortation and conclusion. The thirty-first verse says that the sons of the Buddha of the ten directions who enter this gate abide and cultivate to the end of the kalpas of the future; the thirty-second verse says that in accord with what their minds delight in she expounds the Dharma for them and rids them of the net of wrong views, and what is revealed runs from the road to the devas and the two vehicles “and on up to the all-knowledge of the Tathāgata” — the order is not overstepped. The thirty-third verse says that in the places where beings take birth she shows manifold bodies, “appearing in many images together with their kinds.” The thirty-fourth verse makes the conclusion: “If there be one who gains this liberation gate, he abides then within a boundless sea of merit and virtue,” whose measure is like the dust motes of a sea of lands.

The numbers of verses reckoned by the ancient worthies are not level: Chengguan makes thirty-four verses; Fazang and Zhiyan both make thirty-six verses; and the scripture text, counted verse by verse, is thirty-four verses. It is recorded without judgment.

Humbling Herself and Pointing to the Superior: I Know Only This One

The verses done, the night goddess says, “I know only this liberation gate of teaching and converting beings so as to cause good roots to be born,” and then sets out what the bodhisattvas know: they surpass the worlds, show forth bodies within the destinies, do not abide upon what is clung to, are without obstruction, penetrate the own-nature of all dharmas, gain the knowledge of no-self, realize the Dharma of no-self, teach, convert, and subdue all beings ever without rest, their minds ever abiding in the Dharma gate of non-duality, and universally enter the sea of all words and speech. At the last she asks herself of five matters: their sea of merit and virtue, their valorous knowledge, the place where their minds walk, the realm of their samādhi, and the power of their liberation — “how could I now be able to know or to tell of them?”

A misreading must be set aside: that this is politeness. Of the five matters she lists, each one is a concrete inability. Brought down to the ground: one who can say which five things he does not know is truly clear about which one thing he does know.

Pointing Out the Next Friend: Perfect in Wondrous Virtue of the Park of Lumbinī

At the last she points out the next friend: in this Jambudvīpa there is a park named Lumbinī, and within that park there is a spirit named Perfect in Wondrous Virtue. The things to be asked are four: how a bodhisattva is to cultivate the bodhisattva practices, to be born within the house of the Tathāgata, to be a light for the world, and to be without weariness to the end of the kalpas of the future.

Chengguan has a gloss upon each of these two names. Of the park named Lumbinī he says, “here it means Excellent in Delight and Round in Light,” and records its origin — of old a deva woman came down to be born in this place, and hence the name; and with respect to the symbolism, it symbolizes that the light of the retention of the ninth ground shines upon everything. Of the friend’s name, Perfect in Wondrous Virtue, he says, “because good wisdom is without lack.” He supplies further the situation of this park: “Now, this park lies twenty li east of the city of Kapilavastu, and is the place where Māyā gave birth to the Buddha.” And at the last he explains why Sudhana here asks about “being born within the house of the Tathāgata”: “Moreover, from the ninth ground one is about to gain the anointing of station, and therefore he now asks about being born within the house of the Tathāgata.”

Chengguan’s Explicit Judgment

The judgment of assignment shows its traces here: the asking about “being born within the house of the Tathāgata” is because the next friend is assigned to the ninth ground, and upon the ninth ground one is about to gain the anointing of station. And this whole matching of stations is Chengguan taking it over from the ancient worthies; it is not set forth by the scripture text itself — Chengguan himself states its provenance quite plainly in the general judgment upon the five aspects of this assembly, saying that some of the ancient worthies only glossed the text as it ran and made no separate matching, and that some matched them all to the grounds, and that “both have their reason,” each having its reason, whether matched or not; yet Chengguan’s evenhanded word has a latter half as well — “yet within the absence of successive stations the successive stations are not hindered, and the displaying of stations is the common rule, and to match them is likewise no fault,” “the crosswise and the upright do not hinder one another” — and only at the last does he say, “and for the present we follow the ancient worthies in matching them as five aspects.”

Brought down to the ground: in reading the four graphs “assigned to the Immovable Ground,” one should remember that this is a pair of spectacles, and not one the scripture text put on itself.

Cherishing Her Virtue and Taking Leave

The last passage is very short: Sudhana bowed to her feet, circled her measureless times, joined his palms and gazed up, and took his leave and departed. After several of the good friends before this there is often a passage setting out at length what was gained; here there is none.

Chengguan’s outline of this section stops at the pointing out of the next friend; for this passage he sets up no separate outline heading.

Brought down to the ground: what needed saying has all been said above, and at the going there remain only four actions.

Lineage

In the text of this section there are five lines of what is taken over from above and what is opened out below.

The first is the line of form and mind not being two. The Yanyi chao, in glossing the “inward answering to principle and to phenomena” of this section, cites the question and answer of the Qixin lun to make clear how the dharma-body can manifest form, and cites also its clause “fourth, the defilement of manifest form that is not associated, because it can be left behind by relying upon the Ground of Mastery over Form,” to prove that the eighth ground is the Ground of Mastery over Form, and sets forth its own way of judging the ground: there are seven grounds before and the ninth after, and therefore it is known that what is spoken of is the eighth ground. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, ties it likewise to the same authority, saying that in the Qixin lun the eighth ground is named the Ground of Mastery over Form. The authority the two houses cite is the same and the meaning made out is the same — that this section can manifest a hundred bodies is precisely because this ground is the Ground of Mastery over Form. The Yanyi chao points out further that the one meaning of the inward answering to principle and to phenomena in this section is wholly the same as the penetration of the knowledge of all form-bodies among the ten penetrations of this scripture, and so ties the meaning of this section back to another chapter of this scripture.

The second is the line of the long-since accomplished and the increase of compassion. The Yanyi chao, in glossing the phrase “the thousand buddhas she rescued” in Chengguan’s Shu, cites as authority the chapter on the Lifespan of the Tathāgata of the Fahua jing: “Since I in truth became a buddha, measureless, boundless, inconceivable asaṃkhyeyas of kalpas have passed.” The night goddess does not answer the third question, and Chengguan sets forth two meanings, one displaying the increase of compassion and one displaying the long-since accomplished; and that those rescued have become buddhas while the one who could rescue still dwells upon the ground of the cause is stated plainly within the scripture text of this section itself.

The third is the line of the divergent glosses of the several houses, each having its own track, recorded without judgment. As to the outline of this section, Chengguan divides it into seeking in accord with the teaching, seeing and paying respect and inquiring, conferring her own Dharma realm, humbling herself and pointing to the superior, and pointing out the next friend; Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, divides it into raising the Dharma and exhorting to cultivation, entering in accord with the teaching, seeing and paying respect and making request, and making clear the present realization of the Dharma realm; Zhiyan divides it into the teaching, entering in accord with the teaching, and the true entering; Li Tongxuan outlines at length six gates within the Dharma gate of the present friend’s true entering upon this station, and at the end of that passage sets up three further gates — the showing of the place where the good friend dwells, the glossing of the good friend’s name, and the paying of respect and taking of leave — to point to the next friend; as for the three gates of advancing by pushing on from virtue, that within this place of the Way there is a night goddess named thus, and the paying of respect and taking of leave, these are the outline at the end of the former friend’s passage pointing toward the present friend, and are not an outline of the present friend herself. As to the friend’s name, the eighty-fascicle witness has Great Vow, Vigor, and Power Who Rescues All Beings; the sixty-fascicle has Vow-Valor and Light Who Guards Beings; the witness Zhiyan relied upon has Vow-Valor and Light; the forty-fascicle has the Night Goddess Who Guards All Beings, of Great Vow, Vigor, Power, and Light. As to the glossing of the name, Fazang ties it to the ascendancy of the perfection of the vow, and notes upon the Sanskrit witness that it is the meaning of vigor and valor and not the look of a valor that stands out; Li Tongxuan ties it to the benefiting of creatures without rest by the wind of the original vow; Chengguan sets up no separate glossing of the name within the passage upon the present friend, saying only that the way without effortful working entrusts itself to the wind of the great vow; his glossing of the name stands apart in the cross-reading upon the company of night goddesses in the chapter on the Wondrous Adornments of the Lords of the Worlds. As to the number of the bodily forms, Chengguan upon the eighty-fascicle witness makes twenty-four bodies; Fazang upon the sixty-fascicle makes twenty kinds of mastery of body-clouds. As to the number of the dharmas held in common, the sixty lists eighty-four of them item by item, while Zhiyan, upon that one passage of dharmas held in common, makes a hundred clauses. As to the number of the form-bodies, Chengguan makes ninety-eight kinds and with the setting forth and the conclusion a hundred; Fazang makes a hundred kinds and says that upon examining the text two clauses are wanting. As to the number of the similes, Chengguan, Fazang, and Zhiyan all make five similes and each sets up his own names for them; Li Tongxuan makes six similes and sets out the wind-wheel of the great vow as one apart. As to the number of the repeated verses, Chengguan makes thirty-four verses; Fazang and Zhiyan both make thirty-six verses. As to the marks of the prince, the scripture text makes twenty-eight, and Li Tongxuan sets up upon this the symbol of four marks being wanting. All these divergent glosses are the settled sayings of the ancient worthies.

The fourth is the line of the glosses the ancient worthies devote to this friend in other chapters. Chengguan, glossing the company of night goddesses in the chapter on the Wondrous Adornments of the Lords of the Worlds, matches them station by station to the night-goddess friends of this assembly, and his seventh is the present friend; there he sets the friend’s name beside the name of the Dharma gate, saying that teaching and converting and opening and awakening differ in wording and are the same in meaning, that causing to be born and bringing to ripeness differ only as beginning and end, and saying further that equal guarding and nurturing is precisely the rescuing and guarding of all, and that it is by vigor and the great vow that one can do it — Chengguan does not set up the glossing of the friend’s name in the present passage, but there. The Yanyi chao looks back upon this section in two further places: in one it takes up the name of the scripture expounded by the ancient buddha of this section, notes that the Jin scripture names it only the Perfect Sūtra, and points out that this is the night goddess Great Vow, Vigor, and Power telling how of old she was the prince Good Subduing, rescued the prisoners, gave for half a month, and how, as the time of execution drew near, the Tathāgata entered the assembly and expounded the scripture; in the other, glossing the commentary upon another chapter, it takes this section directly for its instance, saying that when Sudhana first saw this night goddess he raised toward the good friend the ten minds beginning with regarding her as himself, and at once gained practices as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land. Li Tongxuan, for his part, sets up under the eighth ground, the Immovable, in the chapter on the Ten Grounds a separate gate upon Sudhana’s symbolic reading, and there glosses item by item the present friend’s place of the Way, her title, her palace, and her net of maṇi jewels, saying that the seventh ground practises knowledge in accord with compassion and is hard to accomplish, while this station practises compassion in accord with knowledge and is easily accomplished. Zhiyan, in the Kongmu zhang, lists the meanings of Sudhana’s friends, and his eighth is the present friend, fastened to mastery in the great vow, swift accomplishment, the gathering in of beings, and accomplishment in one substance; while his passage listing the devas of the night sets out only the name and no gloss — the gloss upon the actual meaning and the bare hit upon a listed name are two different things, and are not to be run together.

The fifth is the line of the sameness and divergence of the three witnesses. This friend’s window in the eighty, in the sixty, and in the forty is complete from beginning to end in each, and yet the numbers and the passages diverge again and again. Of the bodily forms first seen, the eighty lists twenty-four clauses, the sixty does not list them clause by clause but tells them in prose, and the forty lists twenty-five. Of the same practice, the eighty and the sixty both have eighty-four items, while the forty has eighty-eight. Of the form-bodies manifested, the eighty has ninety-seven clauses, the sixty ninety-eight, and the forty one hundred and three — Fazang relied upon the sixty, and his saying that upon examining the text two clauses are wanting answers exactly to the number ninety-eight. Of Sudhana’s first praise, the eighty and the sixty both have ten verses, while the forty has eleven. In the passage of the former life the forty adds twenty verses of the prince in praise of the Buddha, and the prince’s name there is not Good Subduing but Nature Able to Conquer. In the passage upon going forth, the eighty has five hundred years and reckons what was gained item by item in millions, the sixty likewise has five hundred years and reckons item by item in ten thousands, while the forty has a thousand years and reckons item by item in hundreds of koṭis. In the kalpas at the end, the eighty speaks of sixty koṭis of buddhas in the kalpa Sunlight and lists ten of them separately, while the forty speaks of a hundred thousand buddhas in the kalpa Sunlight and sets up a further kalpa named Wondrous Lotus, within which there are sixty koṭis of tathāgatas — the same number, sixty koṭis, is fastened to different kalpas in the two witnesses. Recorded without judgment.

Within one section, the former half says that ‘it cannot be measured by kalpas,’ and the latter half says nothing but kalpas and names. The two halves do not contradict one another — to say first that it cannot be measured is for fear that one take the number for the answer; to say it afterward in such detail is so that one may know that that raising of the mind truly had its time, its place, and its person. Asked ‘how long since you raised the mind,’ what she gave at the last was not a number, but a prison, a company of the condemned, and a man willing to die in their stead.

Why Sudhana Must Walk to the Very Garden Where the Buddha Was Born

Sudhana comes out from the night goddess Great Vow, Vigor, and Power Who Rescues All Beings, and having gained the Dharma he “calls it to mind and cultivates it, penetrates it and makes it grow,” and only then does he “step by step journey on until he came to the Lumbinī Grove.” What sort of place is Lumbinī? It is the very place where the prince of the Śākyas was born. Fazang points out where this park lies, saying that it is more than twenty li east of the city of Jiapiluo, and is the place where Māyā gave birth to the prince. Li Tongxuan for his part analyzes the name, saying that “Lumbi” means in this tongue surpassing delight and that “nī” means park, and upon the meaning of this section he says that “birth and death are as the park and the manifold practices as the grove.”

A misreading to be set aside: that in setting Sudhana down at the place of the birth the scripture text is only filling in a stretch of the Buddha’s life. Were it so, this section might well have told nothing but the story of the prince’s coming down to be born. In fact what Sudhana asks here is how one is “born into the house of the Tathāgata,” and the ten gates this good friend confers are named, gate after gate, “treasuries of taking birth” — the place and the Dharma gate are two faces of one and the same matter.

Brought down to the ground: in reading this section, keep it in mind throughout that the two graphs for “taking birth” carry a double sense. On the one side, Śākyamuni comes down from Tuṣita and is born in this park; on the other, the bodhisattva is born in thought after thought into the house of the Tathāgata.

What Is First Seen Is Not a Person but an Expounding Already Under Way

When Sudhana finds this goddess, what the scripture text writes is not that she is sitting in meditation but that she is expounding the Dharma — “seated upon a lion seat of jewelled lotus blossoms, with twenty koṭis of nayutas of devas reverently circling her, expounding for them the Scripture of the Sea of the Bodhisattva’s Taking of Birth” — and the effect of the scripture she expounds the text states on the spot: “so that they might all be born into the house of the Tathāgata and make the great sea of the bodhisattva’s merit and virtue grow.”

Why write this scene first? Because what Sudhana is about to ask is precisely how one is “born into the house of the Tathāgata,” and the answer was already being expounded before he arrived. The good friend does not get up a lesson for Sudhana on the spot; Sudhana has walked into a Dharma assembly that has been going on all along.

A misreading to be set aside: that going to study means a good friend opens a private class for you. The order here is the reverse — first there is the Dharma, and after it the question; the question only fastens onto oneself what was already being expounded. Brought down to the ground: whether one gains the Dharma often turns upon what was already going on in that place at the moment one walked in.

Sudhana Asks Three Things, and Only One Is Answered

What Sudhana asks after bowing is, by the graphs, three matters: “how a bodhisattva is to cultivate the bodhisattva practices, to be born into the house of the Tathāgata, and to be a great light for the world.” Yet what is answered below is only the ten treasuries of taking birth. Three questions, one answer: this is the first structural point of this section to be noticed.

Chengguan makes one remark upon it: within the passage of setting forth the number and praising its excellence, “being born into the house of the Tathāgata is just the direct requiting of his question” — that is to say, the ten treasuries of taking birth answer directly the second of the three questions. And the other two? The scripture text gives the answer itself: the long passage of concluding praise at the end of the ten gates, from “then within one adornment he can display every kind of adornment” onward, is precisely the mark of “cultivating the bodhisattva practices”; and in the passage of setting up the name of the Dharma, “a pure light for all the worlds” is precisely the requital of “being a great light for the world.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the three things asked are three topics. The three are in truth three faces of one thing — being born into the house of the buddhas is the substance, cultivating the bodhisattva practices is the function, and being a great light for the world is the effect. Brought down to the ground: if a question is asked in pieces, the answer need not be in pieces; only by watching how an answer closes does one learn that the question was one all along.

The General Setting Forth of the Ten Gates: Accomplish This Dharma and One Is Born into the House of the Tathāgata

The answer opens with a general setting forth — “a bodhisattva has ten treasuries of taking birth; if a bodhisattva accomplishes this Dharma, then he is born into the house of the Tathāgata” — and beneath it there follow more than ten clauses upon the marks of merit and virtue: making the roots of good grow in thought after thought, not wearied and not slack, not disgusted and not turned back, without break and without loss, leaving behind the many delusions, no mind arising that is timid and weak or vexed and regretful, and on to “according with the objective realm of the real meaning of all-knowledge.” Chengguan outlines this passage as “setting forth the number and praising its excellence,” and points out that the clause within it upon being born into the house of the Tathāgata is the direct answer to Sudhana’s question.

The syntax of this passage must be seen clearly: it does not say ‘cultivate the ten gates to the full and thereafter be born into the house of the buddhas,’ but says “accomplish this Dharma, then he is born into the house of the Tathāgata.” That word “then” is one Chengguan will use again and again below.

A misreading to be set aside: that this long string of merits and virtues is a heaping up of adjectives. In truth they are a set of alternating denials and affirmations — first what will not happen: not wearied, not disgusted, without break, without loss, no timid or weak mind; and then what will happen: raising up a vast mind, making the perfections grow, obtaining surpassing spiritual power. The first half says what will not occur, the second what will. Brought down to the ground: the mark of being born into the house of the buddhas shows first in ‘not falling back,’ and only afterwards in ‘advancing.’

The Ten Names, and Chengguan’s Matching Them to the Six Stations

In the passage of calling for the number and listing the names the ten names are set out one by one: vowing ever to make offerings to all the buddhas; raising the mind of awakening; contemplating the gates of the Dharma and cultivating them with diligence; illumining the three times universally with a deep and pure mind; even light; being born into the house of the Tathāgata; the light of the buddhas’ power; contemplating the gate of universal knowledge; universally displaying adornment; entering the ground of the Tathāgata — and all ten gates are named “treasuries of taking birth.”

Upon these ten names Chengguan draws up a table of matching stations, saying “these ten run through six stations,” and matching them one by one: the first answers to the ten faiths; the second is the ten abodes; the third runs through the practices and the dedications; the fourth is the first ground; the fifth runs from the second ground to the seventh; the sixth and the seventh are both the eighth ground, the sixth being its own portion and the seventh its advancing beyond; the eighth is the ninth ground; the ninth answers to the tenth ground; the tenth is equal awakening entering the ground of the Tathāgata. This is Chengguan’s judgment, not something the scripture text sets forth of itself — the scripture text has only ten names and not one name of a station.

A misreading to be set aside: that once one has this table, reading the ten gates is a matter of fitting each into its slot. Chengguan himself immediately loosens the table again, which is the matter of the next section. Brought down to the ground: first read the ten names until they are familiar, and treat the table of matching as a rule that may be used and may be set down.

Why Chengguan Will Not Let the Table of Matching Be Read as Fixed

Having finished the matching, Chengguan at once raises a difficulty against himself. He says, “now, according to the graded array, matching them vertically is settled” — if one goes by the gate in which the stations are set up in sequence, then matching them vertically in this way is decided; “if taken by perfect interfusion, the first and the last are used interchangeably” — if one goes by the gate of perfect interfusion, then first and last may be used of one another. His reason lies in that word “then” in the scripture text: the scripture says “accomplish this Dharma, then he is born into the house of the Tathāgata.”

Then he uses the scripture text itself as counter-evidence, saying: if one must be complete in all ten gates before it counts as being born into the house of the buddhas, why is it that in the text both the second gate and the sixth already say “born into the house of the Tathāgata,” and the tenth says further that one has already received consecration in the presence of the buddhas of the three times? From this it is known that a vertical reading is needed, taking the shallow and the deep by the stations of realization. But if only a vertical reading were allowed, that would go against the words “be complete in the ten and one is born.” So his conclusion is, “from this it is known that a horizontal reading is needed, cultivating contemplation by way of perfect interfusion.” The Chao reads this passage of the commentary in five layers: first, the vertical matching by station (also named the gloss of the graded array); second, from “now, according to the graded array” onward, concluding what precedes and raising perfect interfusion after; third, from “if taken by perfect interfusion” onward, the gloss that runs through all the stations (also named the gloss of perfect interfusion); fourth, from “if one must be complete in the ten” onward, the concluding that establishes the vertical above; fifth, from “if one settles upon the vertical” onward, the concluding that the horizontal is needed — and the intent of it lies in “the horizontal and the vertical being unobstructed,” so that both glosses stand.

A misreading to be set aside: that Chengguan is wavering between two positions. He is not wavering; he is pointing out that the scripture text holds both readings at once, each with its own reason — read vertically one gets its sequence, read horizontally one gets its perfect interfusion. Brought down to the ground: in reading the stations of the Avataṃsaka, whenever one meets a text saying ‘one station gathers in all stations,’ do not be quick to judge it self-contradictory.

The First Treasury: Taking “Seeing Buddhas and Never Having One’s Fill” as the First Root of Good

The first gate is “the treasury of taking birth of vowing ever to make offerings to all the buddhas.” What the scripture text writes is the vow set up when the mind is first raised: to honor, revere, and make offerings to all the buddhas, “seeing the buddhas and never having one’s fill,” ever giving rise to love and delight in the presence of the buddhas, ever raising up deep faith, cultivating every kind of merit and virtue, and never resting. The closing clause is “this is the bodhisattva’s treasury of taking birth of the first gathering of the roots of good for the sake of all-knowledge.”

Chengguan glosses this gate, saying “the first is the raising of the mind in faith,” and cites in evidence the verse of 〈賢首品〉 within this very scripture, “ever wishing to benefit and gladden the many multitudes, adorning lands and making offerings to the buddhas,” saying “and so the text speaks of the first gathering of the roots of good.” That is to say, this gate is matched to the station of faith because its content is vow, is faith, is a first gathering.

A misreading to be set aside: that making offerings means giving the Buddha things. Of the eight matters listed in this gate of the scripture text, apart from the making of offerings itself, only “cultivating every kind of merit and virtue” bears at all upon doing; all the rest are mind — honoring, revering, never having one’s fill, loving and delighting, deep faith, never resting. Brought down to the ground: the substance of making offerings lies in the four graphs “seeing buddhas and never having one’s fill”; if a person can still weary of the Buddha-Dharma, the first root of good has not yet been gathered.

The Second Treasury: Raising the Mind of Awakening Is Ten “Raisings”

The second gate is “the treasury of taking birth of raising the mind of awakening.” The scripture text writes this mind in ten clauses, clause after clause led by the graph for “raising” and closed by the graph for “because”: raising the mind of great compassion because he would rescue and protect beings; raising the mind of making offerings to the buddhas because he would serve them to the very end; raising the mind of seeking the right Dharma everywhere because he grudges nothing at all; raising the mind of vast tending-toward because he seeks all-knowledge; raising the mind of measureless kindness because he would gather in beings universally; raising the mind of not forsaking any being because he has put on the armor of the firm vow that seeks all-knowledge; raising the mind without flattery or deceit because he would gain the knowledge in accord with the real; raising the mind that acts as he has said because he would cultivate the bodhisattva path; raising the mind that does not deceive the buddhas because he would guard the great vows of all the buddhas; raising the mind of the vow of all-knowledge because he would convert beings to the end of the future and never rest. It closes with “comes to be born into the house of the Tathāgata.”

Upon this gate Chengguan says, “the second is the raising of the mind at the first abode; the text is complete in the three minds and in being born into the house of the Tathāgata, and the first abode too is a being born into the house” — matching it to the first abode, and pointing out that the scripture text itself already has the words upon being born into the house of the buddhas. Lest anyone misread this “first abode being born into the house” as a being born into the house at the first ground, the Chao sets forth the six stations of being born into the house — at the first abode, the house of the mind of awakening; at the fourth abode, the house of the holy teaching; at the first ground, the house of suchness; at the fourth ground, taken by the assignment of station, the house that transcends the world; at the eighth ground, the house of the forbearance of non-arising; at the ground of the Tathāgata, the house ultimately — and settles this gate as “here it is the first abode, that is, the first of them, being born into the house of the mind of awakening.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the mind of awakening is a single thought. What the scripture text writes is ten “raisings,” and every one of them has a “because” — it is raised for the sake of something. Brought down to the ground: to test whether a mind of awakening is genuine, do not look at whether a vow has ever been made; look at how many of those ten matters one can answer to.

The Third Treasury: Ten Clauses of Mind, the First Two Marking the Practices and the Dedications

The third gate is “the treasury of taking birth of contemplating the gates of the Dharma and cultivating them with diligence.” The scripture text lists nine minds, each clause led by the graph for “raising”: the mind that contemplates the sea of all the gates of the Dharma; the mind that dedicates and directs toward the fully rounded path of all-knowledge; the mind of right mindfulness without faulty deeds; the mind of the purity of the sea of all the bodhisattva samādhis; the mind that cultivates to completion all the merit and virtue of a bodhisattva; the mind that adorns all the bodhisattva paths; the mind of the great and vigorous practice that seeks all-knowledge, blazing as a kalpa-fire and never resting; the mind that cultivates the practice of Samantabhadra and converts all beings; the mind that is well trained in every deportment, that cultivates the merit and virtue of a bodhisattva, that casts off all it possesses, and that abides in the real mind of having nothing at all.

Chengguan’s way of reading this passage is very fine. He says, “in the third there are ten clauses: the first, contemplating the sea of the gates of the Dharma, marks the ten practices; the second, directing toward all-knowledge, marks the dedications, and because practice and vow support one another they are joined into one; the remaining eight run through both the practices and the dedications” — the first clause marks the station of the ten practices, the second marks the station of the ten dedications, and because practice and vow support one another they are made one gate, while the remaining eight clauses run through both the station of the practices and that of the dedications. One difference of reckoning must be kept clear here: the clauses the scripture text leads with the graph for “raising” are nine, while what Chengguan calls them is “ten clauses”; his commentary does not set forth how he divides them into ten, and so no tenth mind is invented to fill out the number, and the two reckonings are recorded together without judgment. Fazang sets a further question: how do the nine minds of the third gate differ from the ten minds of the second? He answers, “the former are the minds that are the root of practice, these are the minds of practice now arising, and therefore one is born into the family of the buddhas” — the ten minds of the second gate are the root of all the practices, the nine minds of the third are the practices that arise upon that root; the practices having arisen, one is born into the family of the buddhas. This question and answer stands as its own house beside Chengguan’s reckoning and matching, and neither replaces the other.

A misreading to be set aside: that the ten clauses are ten matters set side by side. Chengguan’s reading is that the first two each mark a station and the latter eight run through both — a structure of ‘marking and running through.’ Brought down to the ground: the last clause matters most — “casting off all that it possesses and abiding in the real mind of having nothing at all”; the first eight clauses are all doing, and the last says how far the doing must reach before it counts as real.

The Fourth Treasury: The Deep and Pure Mind Is the First Ground

The fourth gate is “the treasury of taking birth of illumining the three times universally with a deep and pure mind.” The scripture text says that this bodhisattva is furnished with a pure and superior mind, gains the light of the Tathāgata’s awakening, enters the sea of the bodhisattva’s skillful means, that “his mind is firm as a diamond,” that he turns his back upon and casts off the taking of birth in all the destinies of existence, accomplishes the sovereign power of all the buddhas, and on to “he shatters all the mountains of hindrance and obstruction, and becomes universally a place of reliance for beings.”

Chengguan fastens the clauses one by one, saying “in the fourth, according with principle and cutting off the obstructions is named the deep and pure mind, that is, the ground of the purified mind,” and setting out the reason for each of three clauses: “because he has already realized principle, he is firm as a diamond; because he has already gained the path that departs from birth, he casts off the destinies of existence; because he has already broken the two mountains of obstruction, he is a place of reliance for creatures.” Three clauses, three matters — realizing principle, departing from birth, breaking the obstructions — each with its own fruit. The Chao glosses this gate further, clause by clause: gaining the light of the Tathāgata’s awakening is the awakening of the mind; entering the sea of the bodhisattva’s skillful means is realizing the real and penetrating the conventional, and so casting off the destinies of existence; accomplishing sovereignty is dividing the body into a hundred lands; cultivating the bodhisattva’s surpassing practice is the constant cultivating of the ten practices that purify and order the dharma of the ground; being furnished with the bodhisattva’s faculties is that by realizing faith all the rest are made into faculties, great compassion being foremost; the mind being bright and clean is that the obstruction of the knowable has been cut off; the vows being unmoved is that the ten vows are ripened; gaining the buddhas’ protection is realizing suchness as the buddhas do; and the breaking of the obstructions is that discrimination is exhausted all at once.

A misreading to be set aside: that “deep and pure mind” means a mood of purity. The definition Chengguan gives is “according with principle and cutting off the obstructions” — two matters, realization and severance. Brought down to the ground: the last clause of this gate is “becomes universally a place of reliance for beings”; whether one can be another’s support turns on whether one has first broken down that mountain of obstruction in oneself.

The Fifth Treasury: The Six Perfections Written Straight Through, and at the End the Unobstructed Eye Turns Out

The fifth gate is “the treasury of taking birth of even light.” The way the scripture text writes it is to run through the six perfections in order: complete in the many practices and converting beings universally (giving); all that he possesses he can give away (giving); abiding in the objective realm of the buddhas’ ultimate pure discipline (discipline); complete in the dharma of patience and accomplishing the light of the buddhas’ patience with the dharmas (patience); with great vigor tending toward all-knowledge and reaching the further shore (vigor); cultivating the meditative concentrations and gaining the concentration of the universal gate (meditation); pure knowledge fully rounded, and with the sun of wisdom clearly illumining all dharmas (knowledge) — and then it turns out into “he gains the unobstructed eye, sees the sea of the buddhas, and awakens into the real nature of all dharmas.”

Chengguan divides it into two lengths, saying “in the fifth, realizing suchness and setting practice in motion is the even light, and discipline, patience, vigor and the rest are the five grounds that follow,” and pointing out especially that from “he gains the unobstructed” onward is the seventh ground, the reason being that “upon the seventh ground one gains the light of the forbearance of non-arising, and so enters all real dharmas.” The Chao, glossing the words “and the rest” in Chengguan’s “discipline, patience, vigor and the rest,” says that they take in meditation and wisdom, each with its own increase; and it divides the last two clauses of this gate: the upper clause is the skillfulness of the three kinds of action, so that whoever sees is gladdened, and the lower is the fullness of the practice of contrivance, the practices being gained by non-contrivance.

A misreading to be set aside: that this gate is only a list of the six perfections. What Chengguan reads out of it is an ascending line — from realizing suchness one sets practice in motion, and when the practice is full one gains the unobstructed eye. Brought down to the ground: at what point do the six perfections turn the corner? The signal the scripture text gives is “gaining the unobstructed eye,” not ‘how much one has given away.’

The Sixth Treasury: Sharing One Substance and Nature with the Tathāgata — That Is What Being Born into the House of the Buddhas Means

The sixth gate is “the treasury of taking birth of being born into the house of the Tathāgata,” whose wording repeats that of the general setting forth. The scripture text says that this bodhisattva is born into the house of the Tathāgata and abides in the company of the buddhas, accomplishes all the profound gates of the Dharma, “is furnished with the pure great vows of the buddhas of the three times, gains the one same root of good of all the buddhas, and shares one substance and nature with the Tathāgatas,” is furnished with world-transcending practice and white and pure good dharmas, “abides in the gate of the Dharma of vast merit and virtue,” “enters the samādhis and sees the spiritual power of the buddhas,” “purifies beings according to what may be converted,” and closes with “he answers according to what is asked, and his eloquence has no end.” These last clauses are not a loose praise of merit: what he abides in is bounded — it is the gate of the Dharma of vast merit and virtue; and the beings he purifies are bounded too — they are those “according to what may be converted,” for only what can be converted can be purified. The Chao outlines what follows here in three: from “abides in” onward is practice proper, vast; from “enters the samādhis” onward is the departure from obstruction and quiescence; and the three clauses after that are the benefit of conversion by the three wheels. This is the Chao’s outline and not something the scripture text marks of itself.

Chengguan glosses this gate, saying “in the sixth, by gaining the forbearance of non-arising and according with the same nature of dharmas, one is born into the house of the buddhas; the pāramitā of vow being superior, and the root of good being one in substance; and, not being moved by delusion and the rest — these are the white and pure dharmas,” and he matches this gate to the own portion of the eighth ground.

A misreading to be set aside: that “born into the house of the Tathāgata” is the title of a fruition. The content the scripture text gives is three matters — the same vow, the same root of good, the same substance and nature. Those three graphs for “same” are what the house means. Brought down to the ground: what makes people family is not living under one roof but having one and the same vow. That this gate closes suddenly upon eloquence is just because those who share one substance and nature answer to one another of themselves in question and reply.

The Seventh Treasury: Six Similes, Which Say That Spiritual Power Has No Intrinsic Nature

The seventh gate is “the treasury of taking birth of the light of the buddhas’ power.” The scripture text says that this bodhisattva enters deeply into the power of the buddhas, journeys through the buddha-lands without his mind turning back, and makes offerings to and serves the assemblies of bodhisattvas without weariness; and then it runs off six similes: he understands that all dharmas arise as a conjuring does; knows that the worlds are as things seen in a dream; that all forms and marks are like light and shadow; that what spiritual power does is like a transformation; that all takings of birth are like reflections; that the buddhas’ expounding of the Dharma is like the echo in a valley.

Upon this gate Chengguan says, “in the seventh, because the Buddha exhorts him he is able to rouse himself and cultivate all at once, and this is named the light of the buddhas’ power,” and says further, “his cultivation is without contrivance, and so he is without weariness and the rest” — the reason there is no weariness is that he has already entered a cultivation without contrivance. The Chao further judges what he is at ease within in this gate to be the three worlds: the first two clauses are ease within the vessel-world, the next two the perfectly awakened, and the last three beings, because he expounds the Dharma and delivers them.

A misreading to be set aside: that the six similes say all things are false and need not be taken in earnest. Look at where they are placed: among the six similes one clause is “all takings of birth are like reflections” — while the whole set of Dharma gates in which this gate stands is named “treasuries of taking birth.” The scripture text on the one hand teaches taking birth, and on the other says taking birth is like a reflection. Brought down to the ground: only one who knows that taking birth is like a reflection can bear the taking of birth through measureless kalpas; the one who takes it in earnest cannot bear it.

The Eighth Treasury: Abiding in the Station of Youthful Purity, between the Distinguished and the Undistinguished

The eighth gate is “the treasury of taking birth of contemplating the gate of universal knowledge.” The scripture text says that this bodhisattva “abides in the station of youthful purity,” contemplates each single gate of knowledge of all-knowledge, and through measureless kalpas sets forth all that bodhisattvas practice, “gains ease of mind in the profound samādhis of the bodhisattvas,” “is born thought after thought in the presence of the Tathāgatas of the worlds of the ten directions”; and then it runs off four clauses that oppose and complete one another: within objective realms that have distinctions he enters the concentration without distinction; within dharmas without distinction he displays the knowledge that has distinctions; within measureless objective realms he knows that there is no objective realm; within the very least of objective realms he enters measureless objective realms. It closes with “he knows that the worlds are all set up as mere designations, and that all of them are what the discerning mind raises up.”

The ease of the samādhi and the place of the taking of birth each carry their own bound in this gate: what is at ease is the mind within the “profound samādhis,” and where birth is taken is “in the presence of the Tathāgatas of the worlds of the ten directions,” and that “thought after thought” — this is neither a loose talk of gaining concentration nor a loose talk of taking birth. The Chao judges these to be three kinds of ease — ease in samādhi (setting forth all at once as the mind wills), ease in taking birth, and, from “within objective realms that have distinctions” onward, ease in the Dharma. This is the Chao’s outline and not something the scripture text marks of itself. Upon the words “station of youthful purity” Chengguan points out where it stands, saying “in the eighth, from the eighth ground one enters the ninth, and so it says abiding in the station of youthful purity”; and he glosses those two opposing clauses one by one, saying “because knowing principle in the very matter is in accord with the real, within objective realms that have distinctions he enters the concentration without distinction; because exhausting matter in the very principle is in accord with the real, within dharmas without distinction he displays the knowledge that has distinctions,” while the clause that holds them together is “contemplating the gate of the knowledge of all-knowledge is the virtue of a master of the Dharma.” The Chao further explains, upon the two clauses “the three natures and the rest” and “each single gate,” how the master of the Dharma comes to be accomplished: the three natures are the dharmas by which he transforms, and this is the accomplishment of knowledge; the word “and the rest” takes in the knowledge that accomplishes entry into practice and the eleven thickets; from “each single gate” onward is the accomplishment of speech, furnished with the forty kinds of unobstructedness, and so he is able to expound at length — beyond the three kinds of ease, the virtue of a master of the Dharma has its root here.

A misreading to be set aside: that “entering the concentration without distinction” is higher than “displaying the knowledge that has distinctions.” What Chengguan gives is a pair — the one is knowing principle in the very matter, the other exhausting matter in the very principle, and both are “in accord with the real.” Brought down to the ground: without distinction in concentration and with distinction in knowledge — this is just where one who expounds the Dharma is able to expound it; this section is assigned to the Ground of Excellent Wisdom, and the Ground of Excellent Wisdom is the ground of expounding the Dharma.

The Ninth Treasury: Ever within Samādhi, and Yet the Adorning Never Misses Its Time

The ninth gate is “the treasury of taking birth of universally displaying adornment.” The scripture text says that this bodhisattva is able to adorn measureless buddha-lands in every kind of way, is able universally to conjure forth all beings and the bodies of the buddhas, gains fearlessness, expounds the pure Dharma, flows throughout the Dharma realm without obstruction, causes them all to know and to see according to what their minds delight in, and displays every kind of practice that accomplishes awakening; and the closing clause is “what he does in this way never misses its time, while he is ever within the samādhi that is the treasury of Vairocana’s wisdom.”

Chengguan glosses this gate’s name together with its closing clause, saying “in the ninth, he adorns with the adornment of a buddha, and so it is named universal adornment; because he has already gained the samādhis of freedom from defilement and the rest, though he is ever functioning he is ever within samādhi.” The reason the adorning is called “universal” is that what he adorns with is the very adornment of a buddha. The Chao divides this gate into the supported and the supporting: the first clause adorns the environment that supports (the buddha-lands) and the rest all adorn the supported (beings and the bodies of the buddhas); and within the supporting there is throughout the secret knowledge — the first three clauses the secret of the body, from “he sets forth the pure” onward the secret of speech, and from “according to their minds” onward all the secret of mind.

A misreading to be set aside: that “ever within samādhi” and “never missing its time” are two stretches of time — first entering concentration, then coming out of it to do things. The scripture text writes the two clauses joined together precisely in order to bar this misreading. Brought down to the ground: what he does never misses its moment, and this rests not upon reckoning the times rightly but upon never having come out of that treasury at all.

The Tenth Treasury: Receiving Consecration, Knowing Every Sequence

The tenth gate is “the treasury of taking birth of entering the ground of the Tathāgata.” The scripture text says that this bodhisattva receives the Dharma of consecration in the presence of all the Tathāgatas of the three times and knows universally the sequence of all objective realms, and it lists six kinds of sequence: the sequence of the dying away and taking of birth of all beings in their earlier and later limits; the sequence of the practice of all bodhisattvas; the sequence of the thoughts in the minds of all beings; the sequence of the becoming buddhas of the Tathāgatas of the three times; the sequence of expounding the Dharma by skillful means; and the sequence of the names of all the kalpas of the first, middle, and last limits, whether forming or falling apart. It closes with “according to what beings ought to be taught and delivered, he displays for them the merit and virtue and the adornment of accomplishing the path.”

Upon this gate Chengguan makes a twofold judgment, saying “in the tenth, taken by his own portion it says this bodhisattva; taken by his advancing beyond it is named entering the ground of the buddhas; having received the position of office it says receiving consecration; his knowledge being level with the buddhas’ objective realm it says knowing all,” and he points out that the sense of “knowing all” is set out at length in 〈十定品〉 of this scripture. Upon this gate the Chao says that the scripture text is plain and all of it accords with the doctrinal meaning of the station itself, and that “this gloss is not made so as to press down upon the scripture text” — that is, the Shu’s gloss here does not override the scripture itself; it is not that the Chao has no gloss here.

A misreading to be set aside: that the tenth gate speaks of vast spiritual power. What it speaks of is in truth the two graphs for “sequence” — of the six things known, every one is a sequence. Brought down to the ground: the look of entering the ground of the Tathāgata is that one sees clearly what comes before and what after; and the use of seeing clearly lies in the closing clause — displaying for beings the accomplishing of the path.

Concluding Praise of the Excellent Benefit: Within One Adornment Every Kind of Adornment Appears

After the tenth gate comes the concluding praise, which Chengguan outlines as “concluding praise of the excellent benefit.” The scripture text says that if one “cultivates, makes grow, brings to fullness, and accomplishes” these ten dharmas, then within one adornment one can display every kind of adornment, and adorning all lands in this way, one opens the way for and awakens all beings to the end of the kalpas of the future without rest; and on to turning the wheel of the Dharma within the sea of the mind-and-conduct of beings, displaying the accomplishing of buddhahood in all worlds constantly and without break; and the closing clause is “he reveals measureless and profound treasuries of the Dharma, and teaches and brings to accomplishment all the worlds.”

Upon this passage Chengguan sets down only six graphs — “the concluding praise of the excellent benefit may be understood.” That it may be understood means that the scripture text is sufficient of itself and there is no need of further gloss.

A misreading to be set aside: that this passage is a merit added on outside the ten gates. It is the “then” of the ten gates — the answering of that clause of the general setting forth, “accomplish this Dharma, then he is born into the house of the Tathāgata.” Brought down to the ground: the eye of this passage is in its first clause, “within one adornment he can display every kind of adornment.” The sense of one being many is here no lofty talk but the natural function that follows when the ten gates are cultivated to completion.

The Ten Verses in Repetition: Putting the Ten Dharmas into Verse in Order, with a Different Appellation in Each

After the prose come the verses in repetition. The opening clause of the scripture text is “at that time, the goddess of the Lumbinī Grove, wishing to make this meaning plain once more, by the spiritual power of the Buddha contemplated the ten directions universally and spoke in verse, saying,” and below it there are twenty lines, each of two clauses — forty clauses, four clauses to a verse, ten verses in all. Upon these Chengguan sets down only one judgment — “in the second, the verses in repetition, there are ten verses, putting the foregoing ten dharmas into verse in order” — that is, verse and gate answer one to one, without displacement.

What is worth looking at is the closing line of each verse. The closing lines of the ten verses are of one and the same form, while the appellation named in them differs in all ten: the one of bright wisdom, the one hard to conceive, the one of renown, the most surpassing one, the heroic and mighty one, the one of bright knowledge, the inconceivable, the one of the true body, the one of great name, the sons of the buddhas. The first verse puts the first gate into verse and names “the one of bright wisdom,” its two lines above being “seeing all buddhas and never having its fill, vowing to make offerings ever to the end of the future”; the third verse puts the third gate into verse and names “the one of renown,” its line being “hearing the Dharma and never having one’s fill, delighting to contemplate”; the fourth verse puts the fourth gate into verse and names “the most surpassing one,” its line being “firm as a diamond and as a mountain of jewels,” answering to the prose “his mind is firm as a diamond”; the tenth verse puts the tenth gate into verse and names “the sons of the buddhas,” its line being “swiftly he can tend toward and enter the station of the Tathāgata.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the verses in repetition shorten the prose and say it once again. Here the prose speaks of the marks of the gates, and the verses speak of the appellations of the person who holds the gates — one and the same Dharma, named once from the Dharma and once from the person. Brought down to the ground: in reading these ten verses one may work backward from the closing line to find which gate is meant; this is a way of checking that the scripture text gives of itself.

Setting Up the Name of the Dharma: Taking Birth at Ease, Running through Both the Displaying and the Displayed

After the verses this good friend at last states the name of her Dharma gate herself. The scripture text first takes up what was made clear before — “a bodhisattva furnished with these ten dharmas is born into the house of the Tathāgata and becomes a pure light for all the worlds” — and after that sets up the name: “I, from measureless kalpas onward, have gained this liberation gate of taking birth at ease.” Chengguan outlines this passage as “setting up the name of the Dharma,” and divides it into two: taking up what was said before, and pointing to what was set up before as its heading.

How are the two graphs for “at ease” to be understood? Chengguan glosses them, saying “when the capacity feels, it at once appears, with nothing to block or hinder, and this is named taking birth at ease, which runs through both the displaying and the displayed” — as soon as the capacity feels, at that instant it appears, with no blocking or hindering in between: this is called taking birth at ease; and this name runs through both the side that displays and the side that is displayed.

A misreading to be set aside: that being at ease means ‘being born wherever one wishes to be born.’ In the definition Chengguan gives there is not one graph about wishing — only that when the capacity feels it at once appears, with nothing to block or hinder: it is answering to capacities, not following one’s own will. Brought down to the ground: what makes taking birth able to be at ease is not the power to choose but that there is nothing in between standing in the way.

Sudhana’s Second Question: He Asks after the Objective Realm, and Is Answered with What Is Seen

Sudhana then asks, “Holy one! What is the objective realm of this liberation gate?” This one question brings this section into its second great passage. Chengguan outlines it as “making clear the working of the Dharma gate,” with the question first and the answer after, and sets down one judgment that matters — “within the answer, the knowing and seeing of this objective realm is just the working.”

That sentence deserves a pause. What Sudhana asks after is the “objective realm,” and by ordinary expectation the answer should be a description of an objective realm. Yet what is answered below is all that this goddess herself has seen — the ten auspicious signs, the ten lights, the ten spiritual transformations, and the marks of the birth. That is to say, the working of this Dharma gate lies in ‘being able to see.’

A misreading to be set aside: that the working of spiritual power lies in being able to transform and display. The working of this gate lies in being able to see — to see the Buddha take birth in this park, and to see all buddhas take birth in all parks. Brought down to the ground: when one asks what use a Dharma gate has, the answer is sometimes not ‘what it can do’ but ‘what it can see.’

Taking Birth in Accord with a Vow: First the Vow Is Made, and Then She Is Born in That Garden

The answer does not open with the auspicious signs but with a vow. The scripture text says “I made a vow before this,” and the two things vowed are “may I be able to draw near whenever all bodhisattvas display the taking of birth” and “may I enter the measureless sea of the taking of birth of the Tathāgata Vairocana.” Because of this vow, “by the power of that vow of old, I was born in the Lumbinī Park within Jambudvīpa of this world”; and having been born there, “single-mindedly I kept in mind when the bodhisattva would come down and be born”; and then, “when a hundred years had passed, the World-Honored One did indeed come from the Tuṣita heaven and take birth here.”

Chengguan divides this in two, saying that first it makes clear the taking of birth in accord with a vow, and that from “when a hundred years had passed” onward is the beholding according to the vow of old — taking birth in accord with the vow is the cause, and beholding as was vowed is the fruit.

A misreading to be set aside: that this goddess happened to live in that park and had the good luck to be there. The scripture text writes the cause and the fruit very plainly: first there was the vow, and only then was she born there; and having been born there, she waited a hundred years more. Brought down to the ground: this passage is the most solid place in this section for speaking of “vow” — a vow is not asking to obtain something; it is deciding where one will be standing, and for how long one will wait.

The Ten Auspicious Signs in the Grove: The Changing Begins from the Ground

Before the bodhisattva comes down to be born, ten signs first appear in the grove. The first seven are all changes in the vessel-world, and their order runs upward from the ground: the ground of itself became level all at once and the pits and mounds vanished; diamond was made the ground and there were no shards, thorns, or stumps; jewelled tāla trees stood ranged in rows all around with their roots planted deep down to the water’s verge; there grew forth fragrant shoots and there appeared treasuries of fragrance whose fragrance surpassed the fragrances of the heavens; wondrous garlands of blossoms and jewelled implements of adornment stood ranged and spread abroad; all the trees within the park of themselves opened blossoms of maṇi jewels; within all the ponds and pools blossoms were born of themselves, welling up out of the ground.

Among these seven, the first two are the levelling and the cleansing of the ground, the middle two are the trees and the fragrance, and the last three are the blossoms — from the coarse to the fine, from the hard to the soft. The clause of the third sign, “their roots were planted deep, down to the water’s verge,” is especially to be noticed: what is written is not the height of the trees but the depth of their roots.

A misreading to be set aside: that the auspicious signs are decoration. The first thing the scripture text changes is the taking away of the pits and mounds — first the uneven places are made level, and only then is there talk of adornment. Brought down to the ground: the sequence the scripture text gives for receiving a great matter is levelling first and adorning after; when the ground is not level, the blossoms open crooked.

The Last Three Signs and the Conclusion: From the Vessel-World over to Sentient Beings and the Light of the Buddhas

The last three signs turn to sentient beings and to the buddhas. Eighth, of the devas and the eight classes and all the kings who dwell in the desire and form realms of the Sahā world, “there was not one who did not come and gather, and all of them stood with palms joined”; ninth, all the goddesses of this world down to the mahoraga women gave rise to gladness and each bore up implements of offering and “stood in reverence before the Biluocha tree”; tenth, from within all the buddhas 『𪗇』 of the ten directions there was sent forth a light named “the Lamp of the Bodhisattva’s Taking of Birth at Ease,” which shone universally upon this grove, and within each single light there appeared in full all the spiritual transformations at the buddhas’ taking of birth and at their being born.

The Biluocha tree here appears for the first time. Chengguan glosses this name, saying “Biluocha means, in this tongue, lofty and manifest” — and it is beneath this very tree that Lady Māyā will be seated when she gives birth. After the ten signs the scripture text closes with one clause: “when these signs appeared, the deva kings and the rest knew that a bodhisattva was about to come down and be born; and when I saw these auspicious signs, my gladness was without measure.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the tenth sign is only one more beam of light. The content of the tenth sign is ‘within the light the taking of birth appears’ — before the bodhisattva has been born at all, the taking of birth of the buddhas of the ten directions has already appeared within the light. Brought down to the ground: the coming down to birth of one buddha has never been an isolated matter; this clause is the forerunner of the “concluding its all-pervadingness” below.

The Ten Lights: What Appeared When Māyā Came Forth from the City

When Lady Māyā came forth from the city of Jiapiluo and entered this grove, ten auspicious signs of light appeared again, whose effect is “causing beings to gain the light of the Dharma.” The ten names one by one are: the light of the treasury of all jewelled blossoms; the light of the treasury of jewelled fragrance; the light of the jewelled lotus opening and setting forth real and wondrous sound; the light of the first raising of the mind by the bodhisattvas of the ten directions; the light of the spiritual transformations displayed by all bodhisattvas who have gained entry into the grounds; the light of the knowledge of all bodhisattvas who have cultivated the perfections to fullness; the light of the knowledge of the great vows of all bodhisattvas; the light of the knowledge of the skillful means by which all bodhisattvas convert beings; the light of the real knowledge by which all bodhisattvas realize the Dharma realm; the light of all bodhisattvas gaining the sovereign taking of birth, the going forth from the household, and the accomplishing of right awakening of a buddha. The closing clause is “these ten lights shone universally upon the minds of measureless beings.” Chengguan outlines this passage as “seeing the light displayed as she came forth from the city.”

The order of the ten names has a reason of its own: the first three lights belong to blossoms, fragrance, and sound, and are marks; the latter seven run from “first raising the mind” through the grounds, the perfections, the great vows, the skillful means, and the realizing of the Dharma realm, to “taking birth, going forth, and accomplishing right awakening” — a complete bodhisattva path.

A misreading to be set aside: that the lights are the ornament of an auspicious omen. The scripture text says that they “shone universally upon the minds of measureless beings” — what is shone upon is minds, not objects. Brought down to the ground: the latter seven lights ranged in order are a course of the path; before a bodhisattva may come down to be born, the whole road is first played through once for beings in the form of light.

The General Calling of the Ten Spiritual Transformations, and the First: The Host Gathers and Suffering Is Stilled

When Lady Māyā was seated beneath the Biluocha tree, ten spiritual transformations appeared again. The first is the gathering of the eight classes like clouds and the sending forth of light from her pores: the deva sons and the goddesses of the desire realm and all the devas of the form realm, together with the dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras, and mahoragas and their retinues, gathered like clouds one and all for the sake of making offerings; and from Lady Māyā “all the pores of her body sent forth a light” that shone universally upon the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system without obstruction, so that “every other light was hidden away and did not appear,” and it put an end to the afflictions of all beings and to the sufferings of the evil destinies.

Chengguan sets up one heading for each of the ten transformations, the first being “gathering the host and stilling suffering” — the upper half is the gathering of the host and the lower half the stilling of suffering, one heading holding two matters.

A misreading to be set aside: that “every other light was hidden away and did not appear” means the other lights were blocked from view. Read together with “shone universally upon the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system without obstruction,” what is written is that when this light appears the rest lose their color. Brought down to the ground: the weight of this transformation lies in its closing clause — what is put an end to is the afflictions and the suffering of the evil destinies, not darkness.

The Second Transformation: Within Her Womb the Three-Thousandfold World Appears

The second transformation writes that within Lady Māyā’s womb “there appeared in full all the forms and images of the three-thousandfold world,” that within its hundred koṭis of Jambudvīpas each had its cities and each its parks and groves, their names differing, and that “in each there was a Lady Māyā dwelling within it with the host of devas circling her,” and for each of them was displayed the mark of the inconceivable spiritual transformations preceding the bodhisattva’s coming to birth. Chengguan sets up for this transformation the heading “rolling up and spreading out without obstruction.”

Those two graphs, “rolling up and spreading out,” are set down with great exactness: the womb of one body is the rolling up, the forms of the three-thousandfold world are the spreading out; and that within each of the hundred koṭis of Jambudvīpas there is a Lady Māyā is a rolling up within the spreading out.

A misreading to be set aside: that this says a womb can hold a world and is merely a way of speaking of magnitude. What the scripture text displays is not mountains and rivers but “each had its cities and each had its parks and groves, their names differing one from another” — worlds of distinction that have names and headings. Brought down to the ground: the unobstructedness of one and many is here no abstract proposition but a fact obtaining between a mother’s body and a hundred koṭis of worlds.

The Third through the Sixth Transformations: Four Layers of the Past Displayed by the Pores

The third through the sixth transformations are all spoken of by way of the pores, and what is displayed goes deeper layer by layer. The third displays how the Tathāgata in ages past, when cultivating the bodhisattva path, reverently made offerings to all the buddhas and heard the sound of the buddhas expounding the Dharma, and it makes it plain with a simile — “it is just as a bright mirror, or as water, can display the forms of the sun and moon, the stars and constellations, the clouds and thunder that are in empty space” — and Chengguan sets up the heading “the pores display the Buddha’s causes.” The fourth displays the worlds he dwelt in when in ages past he cultivated the bodhisattva practices, the cities and hamlets, mountains, groves, rivers and seas, the kalpa-numbers of beings, the meeting with buddhas arising in the world, the births he received, the length or shortness of his life-span, and its closing clause is “in every place of his birth in every land, Lady Māyā was ever his mother”; Chengguan sets up the heading “displaying the Buddha’s former matters.” The fifth displays, according to the place where he was born, the form and marks and figure, the clothing and food and drink, the suffering and ease, “each of them displayed universally, plain and distinct”; Chengguan sets up the heading “displaying the body relied upon in practice.” The sixth displays how in ages past, when cultivating the practice of giving, he gave away what was hard to give — head, eyes, ears, nose; lips, tongue, teeth; body, hands, feet; blood, flesh, sinews, bones; sons, daughters, wife and consorts; cities and palaces; clothing and necklaces; gold, silver, and jewelled goods — and one saw also the figures and voices of those who received them and the places where they were; Chengguan sets up the heading “displaying the practice of giving universally.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the four transformations say one and the same thing four times over. The four headings divide them clearly: the first displays the causes, the second the matters, the third the body, the fourth the giving. The closing clause of the fourth transformation weighs most — “ever his mother”; this is why the body of Māyā can display these four layers at all. Brought down to the ground: the sixth transformation displays even the receivers because giving, to be giving, requires two sides to stand at all.

The Seventh through the Ninth Transformations: The Grove Displays the Buddhas of Old · From Her Body Come Palaces · From Her Body Come Bodhisattvas

The seventh transformation writes that when Māyā entered the park “this grove universally displayed the entering of their mothers’ wombs by all the buddhas of the past” — their lands and parks and groves, clothing and blossom garlands, paste-incense and powdered incense, banners and silks, pennons and canopies, and the finest and most wondrous sounds of music and chanting, causing beings universally to see and to hear them; Chengguan sets up the heading “displaying the parks and groves of the taking of birth of the buddhas of old.” The eighth writes that from her body came forth the palaces and storeyed pavilions of the maṇi jewel king in which bodhisattvas dwell, surpassing what is dwelt in by the eight classes and by the human kings, “within and without they were pure, each of them had its distinctions and they were not confused with one another, and they filled the whole of the Lumbinī Park all around”; Chengguan sets up the heading “displaying the palaces where the present buddha dwells.” The ninth writes that from her body came forth bodhisattvas as many as the dust motes of ten unspeakable hundreds of thousands of koṭis of nayutas of buddha-lands, whose bodily figures and features, marks and signs and light, bearing in going and staying, spiritual power and retinues were “all equal to those of the bodhisattva Vairocana and without difference from them, and all of them at one and the same time praised the Tathāgata”; Chengguan sets up the heading “bringing forth bodhisattvas of the same kind.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the three transformations are only a matter of saying more and more grandly. The three in truth each face something of their own — the seventh faces the buddhas of the past, the eighth faces where the present buddha dwells, the ninth faces bodhisattvas of the same kind; the ancient, the present, and the peers are all made complete, and only so is this one birth not something arising alone. Brought down to the ground: the clause of the eighth transformation, “each of them had its distinctions and they were not confused with one another,” is the measure most to be remembered when the Avataṃsaka speaks of layer upon layer without end.

The Tenth Transformation: From the Diamond Verge Comes Forth the Great Lotus

The tenth transformation is the utmost of the ten. The scripture text writes that all at once before her “there came forth from the diamond verge a great lotus blossom” named “the Treasury Adorned with All Jewels,” with diamond for its stalk, the many jewels for its filaments, the wish-fulfilling jewel king for its calyx, with leaves as many as the dust motes of ten buddha-lands, all made of maṇi, with jewelled nets and jewelled canopies covering it above. Beneath it the kings of the eight classes each do one thing: the deva kings together hold it up; the dragon kings send down a rain of fragrance; the yakṣa kings scatter the blossoms of the heavens; the gandharva kings chant in praise of the merit and virtue of his offerings to the buddhas in ages past; the asura kings cast off arrogance and bow their heads; the garuḍa kings let down jewelled silks and pennons that fill empty space; the kiṃnara kings gaze up in gladness and chant in praise; the mahoraga kings rain down universally clouds of jewelled adornment. Chengguan sets up the heading “the ground displays a lotus about to bear up the utmost holy one.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the lotus is merely a seat. Chengguan’s heading points out its use — “about to bear up the utmost holy one”: it is there to receive him. And it comes forth from the “diamond verge,” that is, straight up from the lowest verge of the great earth; a blossom that is to bear a buddha has its roots down at the very bottom. Brought down to the ground: what the asura kings cast off here is arrogance — of the eight classes this one king alone must first cast something off before he can enter this scene.

The Birth: Four Similes and One Clause of Penetration

The ten signs having appeared, then the bodhisattva is born. The scripture text writes the light of his bodily marks in four similes — as when a pure sun-disc appears in empty space, as when an auspicious cloud comes forth on the crest of a high mountain, as when lightning flashes out from within thick cloud, as when a great torch is kindled within the dark of night — and records the matter: “the bodhisattva was born from his mother’s side, and the light of his bodily marks was just so.”

Upon these four marks Chengguan says “the gloss runs through both matter and principle,” and sets out four meanings of each. Taken by the matter, they are the turning of radiance and standing out alone, the loftiness and manifestness and the ample calm, the awesome light blazing forth, the plainness and visibility. Taken by principle, they are appearing in reliance upon the nature that is empty and without abiding, coming forth without a mind in reliance upon the mountain of nirvāṇa, the transformation-body without abiding appearing within the cloud of great kindness, and the breaking of the great darkness of the ignorance of beings’ birth and death. Each of the four similes gets one matter and one principle. Below this the scripture text turns to the inward virtue — “though he displayed a first coming to birth, he had long since penetrated all dharmas as like a dream and like a conjuring, like a shadow and like an image, without coming and without going, unarisen and unceasing” — which Chengguan outlines as “understanding his inward virtue.” Zhiyan, upon the sixty, divides this passage into three layers: “the light of knowledge of the causal practice displaying the substance through its marks,” “the ease of great working gathering in virtues without obstruction,” and “displaying purity without stain”; and the layer of purity without stain he divides again into three — first, manifesting the body for the benefit of beings; second, conforming to the Dharma and taking on its likeness; third, being accomplished and yet without contrivance. The four similes, as he reads them, each signify something: like the sun in the sky is the brilliance standing out alone; like lightning is the immediate appearing to the assembled capacities; like clouds rising from the mountain is the gradual benefit of kindness spread abroad; like a lamp in the dark is the image appearing to dispel delusion. Chengguan’s matter and principle and Zhiyan’s three layers read the same four similes with different weight.

A misreading to be set aside: that the passage of the birth is where this section most resembles a life of the Buddha. The scripture text says immediately after it, “though he displayed a first coming to birth” — that one graph “though” turns the whole passage over. Brought down to the ground: the sun-disc, the auspicious cloud, the lightning, and the great torch grow brighter simile by simile, and the clause at the end says “unarisen and unceasing”; what can be seen and what is real, the scripture text hands you both at once.

Concluding Its All-Pervadingness: To See One Place of Birth Is to See All Places of Birth

The end of the answer is this goddess’s own account of how wide her seeing is. The scripture text says: when I saw the Buddha display his first coming to birth with every kind of spiritual transformation in the Lumbinī Park within Jambudvīpa of this set of four continents, “I saw also the Tathāgata displaying his first coming to birth with every kind of spiritual transformation in the Lumbinī Park within the Jambudvīpas of the hundred koṭis of sets of four continents of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system”; and saw also the measureless buddha-lands within each single dust mote of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system; and saw also the measureless buddha-lands within each single dust mote of a hundred buddha-worlds, a thousand buddha-worlds, and on to all the worlds of the ten directions — “and within all such buddha-lands as these there was in every one a Tathāgata displaying the taking of birth with every kind of spiritual transformation”; and the closing clause is “thus in thought after thought, ever without a break.”

Chengguan outlines this passage as “concluding its all-pervadingness,” and sets down one phrase — “then the horizontal and the vertical are without end.” The horizontal is pervading all places; the vertical is thought after thought without break.

A misreading to be set aside: that this says she saw a great many things. The syntax of the scripture text is “when I saw the Buddha … I saw also” — it is not looking at one place and then looking at the next, but that in the moment of seeing this one place all places are seen. Brought down to the ground: this is precisely the answer to the “objective realm” Sudhana asked after; the objective realm of this gate lies in just this one matter, that one place is all places.

Sudhana’s Third Question and the Former Life: The Arising of a Buddha in an Ancient Age

Sudhana asks again, “Great deva, how long has it been now since you gained this liberation?” Chengguan outlines this as “displaying the source and root of the Dharma,” with the question first and the answer after, and the prose of the answer divided into six passages. The first passage is the arising of a buddha in an ancient age: in an age long past, beyond kalpas as many as the dust motes of a koṭi of buddha-lands and beyond that number again, there was a world named “Universal Jewel” and a kalpa named “Joyful Delight,” and eighty nayutas of buddhas appeared within it, the first of them named “Banner of Sovereign Merit and Virtue,” complete in all ten titles. The second passage displays the parents of old: the set of four continents was named “Adorned with Wondrous Light,” the royal capital “Banner Adorned with Sumeru,” the king “Jewel-Flame Eyes,” the consort “Joyful Light”; and the scripture text draws the comparison itself — “just as in this world Lady Māyā is the mother of the Tathāgata Vairocana, so too, within that world, was the consort Joyful Light the mother of the first of those buddhas.”

A misreading to be set aside: that this string of names is narrative furnishing. It is the setting up of a correspondence: the mother of the first buddha of that world and the mother of the buddha of this world stand in the same rank. Brought down to the ground: what allows the former life to serve as “the source and root of the Dharma” is just this pairing — it is not the telling of an old story but the pushing of the present scene back to the very first time.

The Heart of the Former Life: The Wet-Nurse’s One Thought of Receiving with Reverence

The third passage is grasping the tree and giving birth: the consort Joyful Light went with twenty koṭis of nayutas of attendant women to the Golden Blossom Park, where there was a tower named “Wondrous Jewel Peak” and beside it a tree named “All-Giving,” and the consort “grasped a branch of that tree and gave birth to the bodhisattva,” and the hosts of deva kings each bore up scented water and together bathed him. The fourth passage is beholding the Buddha and gaining the Dharma: at that time there was a wet-nurse named “Pure Light” standing in attendance at her side; the bathing finished, the hosts of deva kings handed him to the wet-nurse, and “the wet-nurse received him with reverence, and great gladness arose in her, and at once she gained the bodhisattva samādhi of the universal eye”; having gained this samādhi she saw universally the measureless buddhas of the ten directions, and “gained further the bodhisattva liberation at ease of displaying the taking of birth in all places,” its swiftness likened by “just as the consciousness that first receives conception is swift and unobstructed.” The fifth passage joins the ancient and the present: “that wet-nurse — was she some other person? It is this very body of mine.” The sixth passage displays the all-pervadingness of the working: from that time onward, in thought after thought she has ever seen the Buddha Vairocana displaying the sovereign spiritual power of the sea of the bodhisattva’s taking of birth and taming beings.

Upon the fifth passage Chengguan points out one thing in particular: the scripture text joins the ancient and the present but does not join the parents, and the reason is “the intent is to make clear that they are Śuddhodana and Māyā, and that the buddha is the present buddha” — there is no need to join them, because they are the same from the start.

A misreading to be set aside: that gaining the Dharma must rest upon long cultivation. The place where the scripture text writes her gaining of the Dharma is the very moment she takes the infant into her arms — “received him with reverence, and great gladness arose in her,” and then “at once she gained.” Brought down to the ground: one thought of reverence and gladness is the source and root of this whole Dharma gate; all the measureless kalpas of cultivation that follow begin from that one embrace.

Forty-Six Lines of Verse in Repetition: Chengguan Divides Them into Four Passages

After the prose of the former life come the verses in repetition. The opening clause is “at that time the goddess of the Lumbinī Grove, wishing to set forth once more the meaning of this liberation, sustained by the spiritual power of the Buddha, contemplated the ten directions universally and spoke in verse, saying,” and below it there are forty-six lines. Chengguan judges these as twenty-three verses and divides them into four passages — “the first one, enjoining attention and granting the telling; the next nine, the first cultivation and realization; the next twelve verses, passing through matters and increasing cultivation; the last verse, concluding praise that it cannot be exhausted.”

Read by this division, the four passages each have their own face. The first verse is “what you have asked, son of the Buddha, is the profound objective realm of the buddhas; now you should listen and receive it, and I shall tell its causes and conditions” — the enjoining of attention and the granting of the telling. The next nine verses are the first cultivation and realization, running from “beyond kalpas as many as the dust motes of a koṭi of lands” through “at that time I was the wet-nurse, and my wisdom was exceedingly keen and sharp,” “at that time I swiftly bore him up, and beheld him closely, yet could not see the crown of his head,” “the stainless and pure body, adorned with the marks and signs,” to “and seeing this matter of spiritual power, I raised up the great mind of awakening,” and on to “single-mindedly seeking the merit and virtue of a buddha,” “universally, within the lands of the ten directions,” “in the presence of that buddha I heard the Dharma and gained liberation” — from seeing the Buddha to raising the mind, from raising the mind to making vows, from making vows to gaining the Dharma. The next twelve verses are the passing through matters and the increasing of cultivation, running from “all the buddhas within that kalpa I had once made offerings to, every one” through “in the space of a single thought I saw, within the dust motes of these lands,” “within the lands there were buddhas one and all, displaying their being born within a park,” “within measureless seas of lands the buddhas display their taking of birth,” “in a single thought I see, within koṭis of lands, bodhisattvas as many as the dust motes, going forth from the household and tending toward the place of the Way,” “I see within the dust motes of the lands measureless buddhas accomplishing the path,” “within each single dust mote the buddhas turn the wheel of the Dharma,” “I see the Tathāgata one and all displaying his entering of parinirvāṇa,” to “within measureless lands such as these the Tathāgata displays his being born; and I, dividing my body among them all, raise up offerings before them” and “inconceivable seas of lands, the measureless differences of the destinies” — and what is passed through is precisely the five matters of a buddha’s taking birth, going forth, accomplishing the path, turning the Dharma wheel, and entering parinirvāṇa, each of them seen universally within the dust motes of the lands. The last verse is “son of the Buddha, I know this liberation gate hard to conceive; through measureless koṭis of kalpas to extol it could not be exhausted” — the concluding praise that it cannot be exhausted.

A misreading to be set aside: that the verses merely restate the prose. The prose of the former life stops at the wet-nurse’s gaining of the Dharma and her all-pervading seeing of the buddhas, while the third passage of the verses spreads out what is seen into the five matters of a buddha’s whole career, which the prose does not have. Brought down to the ground: in reading these forty-six lines one may keep them apart by Chengguan’s four divisions — one of enjoining attention, nine of cultivation and realization, twelve of passing through matters, one of concluding praise; the boundaries being clear, every line finds its place.

Humbling Herself and Pointing to the Superior: I Know Only This One

After the verses comes the humbling of herself and the pointing to the superior. The scripture text says “I know only this bodhisattva liberation at ease of displaying the taking of birth in all places through measureless kalpas,” and below it pushes on to what the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas can do: they can make a single thought the treasury of all the kalpas, contemplating all dharmas and displaying the taking of birth by good skillful means; they make offerings universally to all the buddhas and penetrate all the dharmas of the buddhas to the very end; within all the destinies they display the taking of birth, and before all the buddhas they sit upon lotus seats; they know the time when beings ought to be delivered and display for them the taking of birth and tame them by skillful means; within all lands they display spiritual transformations, appearing in full before them like reflected images. It closes with a question — “how am I able to know or to tell of their merit and virtue and their practice?” Li Tongxuan outlines this passage as pointing to virtue and advancing upward.

A misreading to be set aside: that humbling oneself is mere courtesy. Look closely at what is pointed to: the very first clause is “they can make a single thought the treasury of all the kalpas” — whereas what this goddess herself has gained is “through measureless kalpas, in all places”; the one takes kalpas into a thought, the other passes through the kalpas, and their directions are exactly opposite. Brought down to the ground: true humbling of oneself is being able to say at which clause the line between what one knows and what one does not know is drawn.

Pointing Out the Friend Who Comes Next: The Woman of the Śākya Clan in the City of Jiapiluo

At the last is the pointing out of the friend who comes next. The scripture text says, “in this city of Jiapiluo there is a woman of the Śākya clan named Gopā. Go to her and ask: how is a bodhisattva to teach and convert beings within birth and death?”

Chengguan here glosses her name and what it signifies, saying “Gopā means, in this tongue, guarding the great earth,” and gives the reason — in her father’s house she guarded the prince’s store and guarded the ground of the realm; and being his consort, she takes her name from the master she belongs to; and the meaning it signifies is that “it signifies that the ten grounds being complete, there is no ground she does not guard.” He records a further matter: the prince had three consorts, the first named Gopā, the next Yaśodharā, and the third Manuṣā, and here the first is taken, since “now, because the station of cause is at its utmost, the first of them is taken; and because the joy of the Dharma is already full, the former consort is what it is assigned to.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the question set here is asked at random. What the friend before conferred was taking birth at ease, and what is asked here is “teaching and converting beings within birth and death” — the taking of birth having gained its ease, what naturally comes next to be asked is what one does within birth and death. Brought down to the ground: the question a good friend frames when pointing out the road is often the very next step of his or her own Dharma gate.

Cherishing Her Virtue and Taking Leave

The last passage is Sudhana’s leave-taking. The scripture text has only one clause: “at that time Sudhana the youth bowed to her feet, circled her numberless times, gazed up at her with earnest care, took his leave, and departed.” Four matters — bowing, circling, gazing up, taking leave — all of them of the utmost brevity.

Compared with the units before and after, there is here no listing of what was gained and no heading of what is upheld. Chengguan’s outline of this section stops at the pointing out of the friend who comes next, and he sets up no separate heading for this passage.

A misreading to be set aside: that brevity is an economy of the brush. What is gained in this section has already been stated by the goddess herself in the passage of humbling herself, and so at the leave-taking there is no need to list it again. Brought down to the ground: the four graphs “gazed up at her with earnest care” are the one stroke in this passage that carries feeling — already about to go, and still looking back: this is what cherishing her virtue is.

Lineage

From the text of this section three threads open onward.

The first is the thread of the assignment of station. The scripture text of this section has not one graph of a name of a ground; the judgment “assigned to the Ground of Excellent Wisdom” comes out of Chengguan’s outline. And Chengguan, in the general discussion of the five aspects before this chapter, has himself stated plainly where this matching comes from — he first records two houses, that Dharma Master Yi and the Taishan lun only gloss as the text runs and make no separate matching, while Preceptor Guangtong and the rest all match the stations of the grounds, and then says, “both have their reason; that is, since each single station is complete in many gates of the Dharma, how should the mind of a common man be forbidden to practice and seek the dharma of good friends? — and so not to match them has its reason. Yet within what has no sequence of stations the sequence of stations is not hindered, and to display the stations is the constant rule, so that to match them is likewise no fault. The horizontal and the vertical being unobstructed, we shall for now follow the ancient worthies in matching them as five aspects.” Li Tongxuan likewise glosses this friend’s name by the Ground of Excellent Wisdom, saying that “it makes clear that upon the Ground of Excellent Wisdom the wondrous wisdom is complete”; and Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, outlines it as “within the ninth, the friend of the Ground of Excellent Wisdom.” All three houses set up their teaching upon the Ground of Excellent Wisdom, while Chengguan himself marks it as a matching handed down from the ancient worthies and not a judgment made by the scripture text.

The second is the thread of the matching of the stations of the ten gates. Upon the judgment of the ten treasuries of taking birth, Fazang records one track, that various worthies were to match them to the ten grounds and gloss each separately, while he himself takes a general gloss of ten headings — the vow to make offerings to the buddhas; the branch of the mind of awakening; contemplating quiescence; the pure and straightforward mind; knowledge shining universally; being born into the house of the buddhas; the power of the buddhas’ light; reaching the buddhas’ knowledge; adorning the Dharma realm; diligence in reaching buddhahood. Chengguan for his part matches the gates one by one to six stations and sets up the two gates of the graded array and of perfect interfusion, judging that “the horizontal and the vertical are unobstructed” and letting the two glosses stand together. Li Tongxuan makes no matching of stations at all but glosses it only by the one station of the ninth ground, saying that this bodhisattva “gains the forbearance of non-arising, and the knowledge without contrivance first comes forth before him”; and Zhiyan, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, settles the station and the Dharma gate in a single clause, saying “ninth, the deva named Wondrous Virtue Complete, that is, the station of the bodhisattva of the ninth ground: the Dharma gate of entering measureless objective realms and taking birth at ease,” and sets up no table of matchings. The bone each of the four houses sets up differs.

The third is the thread of the divergences of names and of numbers. As to the name of the park, Fazang upon the sixty-fascicle witness has “Lumini,” saying that “it has no proper rendering, and rendered by sense means being complete in surpassing and wondrous things such as blossoms and fruits”; Li Tongxuan upon the eighty-fascicle witness analyzes its three graphs into two segments, saying “Lumbi means in this tongue surpassing delight, and nī means park.” As to the friend’s name, the eighty-fascicle witness has “Wondrous Virtue,” the sixty-fascicle “Wondrous Virtue Complete,” and the forty-fascicle “the grove goddess Wondrous Virtue Complete, Loved and Revered,” while Fazang further hands down a separate name from the Indic witness. As to the reckoning of the verses, Chengguan calls the verses of the former life twenty-three verses, and Li Tongxuan calls the ten verses in repetition twenty lines of verse and the verses of the former life twenty-three lines of verse. As to the name of the wet-nurse, the eighty-fascicle witness has “Pure Light” in its prose while its verses set forth no name and call her only a wet-nurse; the sixty-fascicle witness has “Light Free of Defilement” in both prose and verses; and the forty-fascicle witness has “Undefiled Light” in its prose and “Undefiled Flame” in its verses. As to the glossing of the tree’s name, Chengguan sets forth only the rendering by sense, “Biluocha means, in this tongue, lofty and manifest,” while Fazang sets forth both the transcription and the rendering by sense, saying “as to Biliyicha, in full it is Bolacha; rendered by sense it is the lofty and manifest tree,” and distinguishes it as the tree of the birthplace and not the tree of awakening. As to the glossing of the park’s name, Li Tongxuan in 〈入法界品〉 has “nī means, in this tongue, park,” while in 〈十地品〉, fascicle twenty-seven, he has “as to nī, it is a feminine sound” and “Lumini means surpassing delight, complete radiance”; and Chengguan, handing this friend on at the end of the preceding friend’s passage, has “the Lumbinī Grove means, in this tongue, Surpassing Delight, Complete Radiance,” and glosses the friend’s name, saying “that the friend is named Wondrous Virtue Complete is because the excellent wisdom lacks nothing.” Zhiyan in the Kongmu zhang sets up separately the meaning of the ninth good friend, saying that she is “in the Lumini Park, roaming and beholding at ease, displaying the gate of the Dharma, benefiting beings.” All these divergent glosses and divergent names are the established teachings of the ancient worthies and the established wording of the ancient translations, and are recorded without judgment.

Chengguan’s Explicit Judgment

Having recorded the two houses, Chengguan does not stop at setting them side by side. When the recording is done he sets down a word of his own: “yet within what has no sequence of stations the sequence of stations is not hindered, and to display the stations is the constant rule, so that to match them is likewise no fault” — not to match them has its reason, and to match them is no fault either; both readings stand, and each has its ground. And where he comes to rest is in the words “the horizontal and the vertical are unobstructed”; the Chao, glossing this passage, sets forth their intent, saying “in truth, the horizontal and the vertical being unobstructed is the intent here, and therefore both glosses are kept, the wording and the meaning being plain.” So Chengguan’s judgment is not to withdraw the one and take the other, but that the two glosses stand together without hindering each other: read vertically one gets the sequence, read horizontally one gets the perfect interfusion, and between the two readings there is no obstruction. The setting up of the two gates of the graded array and of perfect interfusion in the matching of the ten gates to the stations comes to rest here as well.

What is essential to this section lies in that turn between what Sudhana asks and what he is answered. He asks how one is born into the house of the Tathāgata, and what answers him is ten gates and a garden; and the road pointed out to him at the last is to go back into birth and death to teach and convert beings. To be born into the house of the buddhas and to enter birth and death are, in this section, the two ends of one and the same road.

Where This Section Stands within the Whole Pilgrimage

Sudhana began his consulting with the monk Cloud of Virtue, and by the time he reaches this Śākya woman Gopā she is the fortieth good friend. When Chengguan outlines this section, his very first clause is “tenth, the Śākya woman Gopā, assigned to the Dharma Cloud Ground” — the tenth of the ten grounds, the Dharma Cloud Ground. And at the close of this section the commentary sets down one summing clause: “the marks of the practice assigned to the stations above are finished.”

A misreading must be set aside first: “assignment to a station” is not something the scripture text says of itself. Chengguan already made this plain where he set up the five aspects of this assembly. Of old, Dharma Master Yi and the line of the Taishan lun only glossed as the text ran and made no separate matching at all; it was Preceptor Guangtong and the rest who matched the good friends one by one to the stations. Chengguan first judges that “both have their reason” — matching and not matching each have their own ground.

Chengguan’s Explicit Judgment

But Chengguan's word has a latter half. The two positions having been raised, he sets down his own judgment: “yet within the absence of graded stations the graded stations are not hindered, and to display the stations is the constant rule, so that to match them is likewise no fault” — where there are no graded stations to speak of, speaking of graded stations is not thereby hindered, and to display the order of stations is the constant rule, so that matching them is no fault at all; and only at the last does he say “for now, following the ancient worthies, matching them as five aspects.” So he does not set out two positions and withhold his own: he judges outright that to match them is no fault, and only declines to use that judgment to throw out the position that does not match. “Gopā assigned to the Dharma Cloud Ground” is therefore a pair of spectacles Chengguan himself allows; the reader must not read it as the scripture text judging of itself.

Bringing it to the ground: in reading this section you in fact hold two measuring rods. One is the scripture text's own order — Sudhana comes, asks, listens, looks, and goes. The other is the rod of the stations as the ancient worthies matched them — this is the fortieth, and it is the close of the one mark of assignment to the stations. Use both rods, but know which rod belongs to whom.

What He Was Thinking About While He Walked (Chengguan's Outline · Seeking in Accord with the Teaching)

The opening clause of this section has Sudhana walking toward the city of Jiapiluo, and all along the way “pondering and cultivating the liberation of taking birth, making it grow and become vast, calling it to mind and not letting it go.” This is the Dharma gate that the good friend before him, the goddess of the Lumbinī Grove, displayed, and he carries it with him as he walks.

Why record this one clause? Because consulting is not a matter of changing the topic at each stop. Chengguan outlines this one division as “first, the cultivating and realizing in reliance upon the one before; after, from ‘step by step’ onward, the seeking of the next friend” — first there is the cultivating in reliance upon what the one before realized, and only then the seeking of the one who comes next. What was gained at the last stop is the provision for walking to the next.

A misreading to be set aside: that to consult forty friends is to have changed Dharma gates forty times. Were it so, the scripture text would need only to write “next he went to such a place,” and would have no need to add at the head of this section the clause about cultivating in reliance upon the one before.

Bringing it to the ground: what turns over in your mind along the stretch of road after you leave one teacher decides what you will be able to see when you reach the next.

The One Who Welcomes Him Speaks First: The Spirit Sorrowless Virtue's Four Passages of Praise (Chengguan's Outline)

Before Sudhana has yet seen Gopā he first meets the spirit Sorrowless Virtue within the lecture hall. This spirit is not the good friend, yet he speaks a long passage first. Chengguan judges this passage as four, saying: “within the second there are four: first, the praising that his practice is ultimate; second, from ‘I see that you, kind sir, cultivate the many’ onward, the praising of his vigor and the fruit he gains; third, from ‘I see that you, kind sir, are valorous’ onward, the praising of his vigor and the Dharma he gains; fourth, from ‘why is this’ onward, the establishing of it by reasoning.”

The first passage praises that his practice is already ultimate: he has great wisdom, has great valor, is able to cultivate the inconceivable liberation of ease, in mind does not forsake the vast vow, and has accomplished the great sea of the merit and virtue of the Tathāgatas. What this passage speaks of is the ‘already so.’

The second and third passages both begin with ‘I see that you, kind sir,’ and what they speak of is the ‘to be so’ — before long he will gain the pure and adorned unsurpassed three karmas, before long he will gain the seeing everywhere of the buddhas of the three times, will gain the many samādhi joys, and will enter the profound liberation. One passage belongs to the fruit and one to the Dharma.

The fourth passage argues the reason, and it gathers upon a single clause, ‘why is this’: because he who sees a good friend draws near and makes offerings, hears and receives his teaching, calls it to mind and practices it, is without sloth and without turning back, without sorrow and without regret, and without hindrance, therefore Māra cannot trouble him, and therefore before long he accomplishes the unsurpassed fruit.

A misreading to be set aside: that this is a courteous speech of welcome. Were it mere courtesy, there would be no need to set up a passage upon ‘why is this.’ This passage joins the ‘already so’ and the ‘to be so’ of the three passages before it — everything is fastened to the one matter of ‘serving the good friend.’ And this one matter is precisely the bone of the two sets of ten dharmas that Gopā is about to expound below.

Bringing it to the ground: how a person will fare hereafter may be seen in how he treats, now, the one who teaches him.

Sudhana's Reply: He Does Not Only Say “May I Gain It All” (Chengguan's Outline · Sudhana Receives and Sets Forth)

Sudhana answers with one clause, “Holy one! May I gain everything just as you have said,” and this is the receiving. But what he says next is a long passage, and this passage is the weightiest one in the first part of this section.

Chengguan judges this passage as two: “within it there are two: first, the making clear of the four equalities that gather in beings; after, the making clear of the myriad virtues that benefit beings. Within the former there are four, namely the Dharma, the simile, the joining, and the gloss. In the Dharma there are kindness and compassion; within the joining, joy is included; within the gloss, non-covetousness, and equanimity is also made clear.”

The four equalities are kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. The scripture text does not list the four graphs ‘kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity’ at all; the four measureless minds are hidden within the structure of these four passages of Dharma, simile, joining, and gloss. In the passage of the Dharma, ‘I vow that all beings may quiet the many burning torments and leave behind the many evil deeds’ is kindness, and ‘when the bodhisattva sees this, sorrow arises in his mind’ is compassion; the passage of the simile is the simile of the only son; the passage of the joining says that when he sees beings raise up the three kinds of good karma, ‘great gladness arises’ — and joy lies within the joining; the passage of the gloss says ‘he does not covet the desires and pleasures of birth and death’ and ‘he does not cling with relish to the joy of the meditative concentrations’ — and equanimity lies within the gloss.

A misreading to be set aside: that to read the four measureless minds one must find four technical names. This passage is an instance of the scripture text expounding by structure — the names do not appear, yet the meaning is complete; and what allows one to read out this layer is the outlining of the ancient worthies.

Bringing it to the ground: real compassion is not thinking that one ought to be compassionate; it is that the mind aches of itself at the sight of suffering, and rejoices of itself at the sight of good, and in both of these places takes no sweetness for oneself.

The Simile of the Only Son: Why This Simile

The scripture text takes its figure, saying “it is as when there is a man who has an only son, whose love reaches to the utmost, and who suddenly sees the child's limbs cut off by another, and whose mind is so pierced with pain that he cannot compose himself,” and only then says “so it is also with the bodhisattva mahāsattva.”

Why take an only son? Because the matter of an only son has two features: first, he is beyond replacing — he is not one among many sons, and so the pain cannot be shared out; second, love reaches to the utmost, and it is not a duty held on reasoned grounds. When the bodhisattva sees beings fall into the three evil destinies, the nature of the pain is of just this kind.

A misreading to be set aside: that great compassion is a very large goodwill spread very evenly over beings. This simile is exactly the opposite — it writes the compassion felt for all beings as that sort of pain felt for one person. Breadth does not come by dilution.

Bringing it to the ground: to test your own mind of compassion, do not look at how many people it has cared for; look at whether the mind can stir at all when it meets one particular person who suffers.

Not Seeking All-Knowledge for One's Own Sake: The Purity of the Raising of the Mind (Chengguan's Outline · Within the Gloss, Non-Covetousness, and Equanimity Also Made Clear)

In the ‘gloss’ passage of the four equalities the scripture text sets down several ‘nots’ one after another: he does not seek all-knowledge for his own sake, he does not covet the desires and pleasures of birth and death, he is not turned about by the inversion of perception, the inversion of view, the inversion of mind, the fetters, the latent tendencies, or the force of craving and views, he does not raise up the many notions of pleasure regarding beings, nor does he cling with relish to the joy of the meditative concentrations, and it is not through hindrance, weariness, or turning back that he dwells within birth and death.

This string of ‘nots’ must be seen in two classes. The first several exclude the defilement of the ordinary man — coveting desire and pleasure, following inversion. The last two exclude the defilement of the practitioner: ‘he does not cling with relish to the joy of the meditative concentrations’ excludes the sweetness of one who cultivates concentration, and ‘it is not through hindrance, weariness, or turning back that he dwells within birth and death’ excludes that state of mind which says ‘I am only staying in birth and death because I have no choice.’

A misreading to be set aside: that the bodhisattva's dwelling in birth and death is a kind of sacrifice, a staying on under constraint. The scripture text says plainly that it is not — he dwells in birth and death not because he cannot get out, but because “he only sees that beings, within the many kinds of existence, undergo in full measure measureless sufferings of every kind, and therefore raises up the mind of great compassion and by the force of the great vow gathers them in everywhere.”

Bringing it to the ground: to judge whether a raising of the mind is pure, look forward at how much desire and pleasure it has excluded, and look back at whether it can exclude the single thought ‘I have been hard done by.’

The Sixteen Clauses of Separate Similes: What the Bodhisattva Is to Beings (Chengguan's Outline · The Myriad Virtues That Benefit Beings)

The second passage of Sudhana's setting forth of what he himself does runs sixteen clauses in a row, and each clause begins with ‘is a so-and-so’: is an adornment, is father and mother, is a nurse, is a guard, is a ferryman, is a refuge, is an ultimate, is a ford, is a guide, is a wondrous blossom, is an ornament, is a delight, is a thing revered, is Samantabhadra, is a great brightness, is a great cloud. Chengguan judges of them, “at the first there are sixteen clauses, displaying them separately by way of simile, as what beings turn toward,” and only after them comes the clause concluding the benefit to beings.

These sixteen clauses are not an array upon one level. The first several are similes of human kinship (father and mother, nurse, guard); the middle several are similes of ferrying across (ferryman, refuge, ultimate, ford, guide); the last several are similes of bodily marks and of the virtue sent forth (wondrous blossom, ornament, delight, thing revered, Samantabhadra, great brightness, great cloud). From kinship to ferrying, and from ferrying to virtue, is a single line running upward from below.

A misreading to be set aside: that this is a heaping up of rhetoric, and that having read one clause one may infer the rest. Were it so, there would be only one thing that beings turn toward; but since the scripture text sets up sixteen, there are sixteen different ‘needs’ turned toward — the need to be raised, to be guarded, to be ferried, to be shown the road, to see what is beautiful, to have something to revere.

Bringing it to the ground: beings do not need one thing only from a good friend. What you need at this moment is a ferryman; what you need at the next may be no more than a single wondrous blossom.

The Scattering of Blossoms and the Ten Verses: Why the Spirit Sees Him Off This Far (Chengguan's Outline · The Spirit's Reverence Grows Deeper)

As Sudhana is about to ascend the Dharma hall, the spirit Sorrowless Virtue and the host of spirits scatter blossoms as an offering and speak ten verses. Chengguan says the reason this passage exists is that “fourth, the spirit's reverence grows deeper, because of hearing the Dharma above” — it is because he heard that passage above that his reverence deepened.

As to the judging of the ten verses, Chengguan has “the ten verses divide into two: the first three praise the practice of benefiting beings below; the last seven praise the practice of seeking above without hindrance.”

The first three verses face downward: the first verse says that he appears in the world as the world's great lamp and everywhere for beings diligently seeks unsurpassed awakening; the second, that the sun of merit and virtue comes forth and extinguishes the world's darkness, and that he is hard to meet with; the third, that seeing beings covered over by inversion and delusion he raises great compassion and seeks to realize the way awakened to without a teacher. The landing place of all three verses is ‘for the sake of beings.’

The last seven verses turn upward: the fourth says that with a pure mind he seeks the Buddha's awakening and serves good friends without begrudging body and life; the fifth, that within the world he has nothing to depend on and nothing to cling to and his mind is pure as empty space; the sixth, that he cultivates the practice of awakening and his merit and virtue is complete and he sends forth the light of knowledge illumining all worlds; the seventh, that he does not leave the world nor cling to it, and moves within the world unhindered as the wind journeys in space; the eighth takes the fire that nothing can put out as a figure for the fire of his vigor; the ninth says he is valorous and firm as the lion of adamantine wisdom; the tenth says he is able to go to all the seas of lands of the Dharma realm and draw near to good friends. The landing place of all seven verses is ‘seeking the way.’

A misreading to be set aside: that praise is an ornament given by an outsider. After these ten verses the scripture text adds one clause: “because he loved and delighted in the true Dharma he followed along after Sudhana and constantly would not forsake him” — the one who spoke the praise has himself set out upon the road. Praise here is not a giving; it is a being moved.

Bringing it to the ground: when a person is truly on the way, those beside him will walk a stretch of it with him; and this is more solid than any commendation.

Seeing the Host and Seeing the Companions: Why the Maidens Are Widely Praised and Gopā Is Not (Chengguan's Outline)

Sudhana enters the hall and sees Gopā seated upon a lion throne of jeweled lotus blossoms, surrounded by eighty-four thousand maidens. Of Gopā herself the scripture text writes only a seat; of the maidens it writes a long passage of surpassing virtues: born from a royal clan, cultivators of the bodhisattva practices, planters of the same roots of goodness, givers and speakers of kindly speech, seeing clearly the objective realm of all-knowledge, constantly abiding in right concentration, constantly roaming in great compassion, gathering in beings everywhere as an only child, complete in the mind of kindness, pure in retinue, gaining irreversibility, furnished with the perfections, free of the many graspings, pure in mind though moving within the many kinds of existence, free of the net of hindrances and coverings, displaying transformed forms from the Dharma body, bringing forth the practice of Samantabhadra, with the sun of knowledge and the lamp of wisdom both complete.

Upon this Chengguan sets down an excellent judgment: “first, the seeing of the host; after, from ‘eighty’ onward, the seeing of the companions. He widely praises the surpassing virtues of the attendant companions, for the virtue of the host is already beyond words.”

“The virtue of the host is already beyond words” — it is not that it goes unwritten, but that it cannot be written. Since the virtue of the companions is already such, the virtue of the host needs no telling. This is a way of writing that sets off the principal by way of what stands beside.

A misreading to be set aside: that fullness and brevity in the scripture text are arbitrary. The brevity here is the weightiest stroke of praise in the whole section.

Bringing it to the ground: to look at a teacher, look at what the people around that teacher have become.

The Eleven Clauses of the Question: What Sudhana Is Asking (Chengguan's Outline)

As to Sudhana's question, Chengguan judges that it “has eleven clauses, asking about the practice of compassion and knowledge, of the contrary and the compliant, of the provisional and the real, and the twofold practice of quiescence and function without hindrance,” and gathers the first ten clauses into five pairs: “the first ten clauses are gathered into five pairs: first, the pair of passing beyond the ordinary and going past the lesser; second, the pair of leaving the fruit and going beyond the cause; third, the pair of displaying birth and displaying form; fourth, the pair of the utmost mark and the exhausting of speech; fifth, the pair of converting below and making offerings above. The eleventh displays in general the twofold practice of the real and the conventional in all good things.”

The form of the five pairs is the same throughout: the first half is ‘already thus,’ and the second half is ‘and yet still so.’ To be within birth and death and not defiled by birth and death is passing beyond the ordinary; to penetrate the own-nature of the Dharma and not abide in the stage of the two vehicles is going past the lesser — this is the first pair. To be furnished with the Buddha's Dharma and yet cultivate the bodhisattva practices is leaving the fruit; to abide in the bodhisattva grounds and yet enter the objective realm of the buddhas is going beyond the cause — this is the second pair. To go beyond the world and yet take birth in the world, to accomplish the Dharma body and yet display bodily form, is the third pair. To realize the markless Dharma and yet display the many marks, to know that the Dharma is beyond speaking and yet widely expound the dharmas, is the fourth pair. To know that beings are empty and yet not forsake the work of converting beings, to know that the buddhas neither arise nor perish and yet make offerings diligently without turning back, is the fifth pair. The eleventh clause, ‘to know that the dharmas have no karma and no recompense and yet cultivate the many good practices constantly without ceasing,’ gathers up the first ten and runs through both sides, the real and the conventional.

Chengguan's Yanyi chao carries this one step further. He says that within what the commentary calls “the twofold practice, without hindrance, of compassion and knowledge, of the contrary and the compliant, of the provisional and the real, of quiescence and function,” the kinds of non-hindrance contained are in fact only four — “within this the commentary has four kinds of non-hindrance, also named the four twofold practices.” Clause by clause all eleven are twofold practice, and with respect to the matters of twofold practice there are ten differences, while the twofold practices themselves have only four distinctions. Matched clause by clause: the first, “how is one within birth and death and yet not defiled by the faults of birth and death,” is the non-hindrance of compassion and knowledge — to be within birth and death is to have great compassion, and not to be defiled by the faults of birth and death is to be furnished with great knowledge; the second, penetrating the own-nature of the dharmas and yet not abiding in the stage of the two vehicles, is the twofold practice of quiescence and function; the third is the provisional within the real, the fourth the real within the provisional; the fifth is the twofold practice of the contrary and the compliant; the sixth is again the twofold practice of quiescence and function; the seventh and eighth are both the provisional within the real; the ninth and tenth are both the twofold practice of the provisional and the real, the ninth with respect to converting beings and the tenth with respect to making offerings to buddhas; the eleventh is the twofold practice of the real and the conventional. So these eleven questions are not eleven kinds of non-hindrance; they are four kinds of non-hindrance spoken of in eleven places — and “each has its own distinct mark,” for one and the same twofold practice does not display the same mark in every clause.

A misreading to be set aside: that these eleven questions are eleven topics. They are in fact one topic asked eleven times over — how emptiness and existence can both be true at once.

Bringing it to the ground: at a certain stage of practice the hard thing is no longer ‘whether one believes in emptiness,’ but ‘whether, having believed it, one can still go on doing those things.’ These eleven questions ask exactly this.

The Ten Dharmas of Indra's Net: Ten Conditions Set Side by Side — Why Are They Called Indra's Net (Chengguan's Outline · The Meaning of the Dharma)

After Gopā grants the telling, the first passage of Dharma is the ten dharmas that complete “the bodhisattva practice of the light of universal knowledge that is Indra's net”: relying on good friends, gaining vast superior resolve, gaining pure desire and delight, gathering all merit and knowledge, hearing the Dharma in the presence of the buddhas, in mind constantly not forsaking the buddhas of the three times, practicing together with all bodhisattvas, being guarded and borne in mind by all the Tathāgatas, having great compassion and wondrous vows wholly pure, and being able by the power of knowledge to cut off everywhere all birth and death. There is a setting forth, there is a gloss, and there is a conclusion.

Indra's net is the jeweled net of the palace of Śakra, with pearls knotted upon the net, each pearl reflecting all the others, one pearl displaying within itself all the pearls, layer upon layer without end. Why do these ten dharmas gain this name? Chengguan's gloss sets up no separate meaning outside the ten dharmas, but says “first, the making clear of the practice of the light of knowledge that is Indra's net, meaning that in reliance upon these ten one illumines the layered and endless dharmas.”

Further down, at the verses, he makes it more transparent: the prose gave only one general name, while in the verses the first two verses take the general name and the last eight each set up a separate designation, so that “then one knows that each one of the ten names runs through all ten practices, layer upon layer without hindrance, and only so does it receive the name of Indra's net.” That is to say — these ten dharmas are not ten conditions set side by side, but ten mutually containing aspects: within relying on good friends the remaining nine dharmas are already complete, and so too within gathering merit and knowledge.

A misreading to be set aside: that this is a checklist, and that ticking off the items one by one counts as completion. If the ten dharmas were merely set side by side, it would be enough to call them the ‘practice of the ten dharmas,’ and there would be no need to call them Indra's net.

Bringing it to the ground: when one actually sets to work one finds that carrying any one of these ten through to the end brings the other nine along within it; and that failing to carry any one through is always because the other nine have not kept pace.

The Ten Dharmas of Serving Good Friends: The Dharma Must Be Spread by People (Chengguan's Outline)

The second passage of Dharma is the serving of good friends with ten dharmas: having no regard for one's own body and life, having no coveting mind toward the pleasurable things of the world, knowing that the natures of all dharmas are equal, never turning back from or forsaking the vow of all-knowledge, contemplating the true mark of all the Dharma realms, in mind constantly forsaking all the seas of existence, knowing that the Dharma is like empty space and that the mind has nothing to depend on, accomplishing the great vows of all bodhisattvas, being constantly able to display all the seas of lands, and purely cultivating the bodhisattva's unhindered wheel of knowledge.

Why, having finished the ten dharmas of Indra's net, must a further passage be set up? Chengguan gives the reason: “after, from ‘son of the Buddha, if a bodhisattva’ onward, the practice of serving good friends. The former made clear the reliance upon the Dharma; this discriminates the reliance upon the person, for the Dharma is spread by borrowing the person.” The former passage is reliance upon the Dharma, this one is reliance upon the person; the Dharma must be spread by people, and so besides relying upon the Dharma one must also rely upon the person.

And among these ten items, only the first two look like what is ordinarily called ‘serving a teacher’ (not begrudging body and life, not coveting worldly pleasures); the other eight are all matters of the Dharma — knowing the equality of the natures of dharmas, not turning back from the vow of knowledge, contemplating the true mark of the Dharma realms, forsaking the seas of existence, knowing that the Dharma is like empty space, accomplishing the great vows, displaying the seas of lands, purely cultivating the wheel of knowledge.

A misreading to be set aside: that serving good friends is a matter of labor and offerings. Among the ten dharmas the scripture text lists, labor and offerings and the like take up only the beginning; the other eight say this — how far you have come in the Dharma yourself decides how far a good friend you are able to serve.

Bringing it to the ground: the most solid offering to a teacher is actually to walk to the end of the stretch that the teacher taught.

The Twelve Verses in Repetition: The Form of the Verse Is the Form of the Meaning (Chengguan's Outline)

Gopā puts the foregoing Dharma into twelve verses. Chengguan judges, “after, within the verses, there are twelve verses divided into two: the first ten verses put into verse, in order, the foregoing ten practices of Indra's net,” while of the last two he says, “the last two verses put into verse the last two of the foregoing ten dharmas of serving the friend, for the last two are hidden in their marks, and the rest are left aside and not versified.”

The first ten verses put the ten practices of Indra's net into verse one by one, and the last line of each verse sets up a name of practice: the first verse, revering good friends as one reveres the buddhas, is named the practice of Indra's net; the second, superior resolve vast as empty space, with the lands, beings, and buddhas of the three times all entering into it, is named the practice of the light of universal knowledge; the third, aspiration like empty space, forever cutting off afflictions, cultivating merit and virtue in the presence of all buddhas, is named the practice of the cloud of the body; the fourth, cultivating all-knowledge and purifying the body of merit and knowledge, is named the practice of no defilement; the fifth, hearing the Dharma in the presence of the buddhas without being sated and giving rise to the lamp of the knowledge of the true mark, is named the practice of illumining everywhere; the sixth, entering in a single thought the buddhas of the ten directions and in mind not forsaking the Tathāgatas, is named the practice of the great vow; the seventh, entering the assemblies of the buddhas, the sea of the bodhisattvas' samādhis, the seas of vows and of skillful means, is named the practice of Indra's net; the eighth, sustained by the buddhas and to the end of the future cultivating everywhere the way of Samantabhadra, is named the practice of dividing the body; the ninth, seeing beings undergo suffering and raising kindness and compassion and displaying himself in the world and expounding the Dharma to dispel gloom, is named the practice of the sun of knowledge; the tenth, seeing beings within the destinies and gathering the wondrous wheel of the Dharma to make them cut off the stream of birth and death, is named the practice of Samantabhadra.

The first verse and the seventh bear the same name, the practice of Indra's net; the tenth is named the practice of Samantabhadra; and the rest each set up a separate designation — Chengguan has a further layer of outline: “the first two take the general name of what came before, and the last eight practices each set up a separate designation” — his “first two” are the first and second verses, which take in turn the general name of the prose, “the practice of the light of the jeweled net” (the net, the light); this is a different matter from the first and seventh verses sharing the name of the practice of the jeweled net, and the two are not to be mixed into one grouping. That one and the same name of practice appears twice within the ten verses is itself the shape of the layered mutual containing in the meaning.

The last two verses turn to versify the last two of the ten dharmas of serving good friends: the eleventh says that the bodhisattva cultivates these skillful means and in accord with the minds of beings displays his body, converting and delivering conscious beings everywhere within the destinies; the twelfth says that by the force of great kindness, compassion, and skillful means he displays his body everywhere and preaches the Dharma in accord with their understanding and desires so as to turn them toward awakening. Why versify only the last two? Chengguan says it is because ‘the last two are hidden in their marks’ — the first eight were already manifest in the prose, while the last two were hidden and unshown, and so the verses point them out expressly.

A misreading to be set aside: that the verses in repetition say the prose over again. Here the verses do at least three things the prose did not: they give each of the ten practices a separate name, they make the name of Indra's net appear twice, at the first verse and at the seventh, so as to display mutual containing, and they bring out the two items that were hidden and unshown in the prose.

Bringing it to the ground: in reading the verses of the Avataṃsaka, do not skip them. The prose gives you the meaning; the verses often give you the shape of the meaning.

The Name of the Dharma: The Two Graphs, Deep and Broad, Each Have What They Are Matched To (Chengguan's Outline · The Name of the Dharma)

When the verses are done, Gopā at last utters the name of the Dharma gate: “I have already accomplished the liberation gate of contemplating the sea of the samādhis of all bodhisattvas.”

Chengguan glosses this name graph by graph, saying that this gate means “that the Samantabhadra samādhi of all bodhisattvas is deep and broad as the sea — deep because it is like the Dharma realm, broad because it is like the names of beings — and that with extraordinary and wondrous knowledge one contemplates it in thought after thought, and therefore this name is set up.”

‘Sea’ as a figure is here split into two meanings, deep and broad. What depth is matched to is the Dharma realm — the Dharma realm has no bottom, and so it is deep; what breadth is matched to is the names of beings — beings are measureless, and so it is broad. And the two graphs ‘contemplating’ fasten upon knowledge, not upon seeing: it is a contemplating in thought after thought with extraordinary and wondrous knowledge, not a chancing to catch sight.

A misreading to be set aside: that ‘the sea of samādhis’ means that the concentrations she enters are many and large. The ‘sea’ within the name is not a measure word; it is the nature of the objective realm contemplated. And what makes the contemplating possible lies in the two graphs ‘thought after thought.’

Bringing it to the ground: what is called depth is that there is no bottom below; what is called breadth is that there is no edge outside. If at some place you feel ‘this far and no farther,’ then you have not yet touched the sea.

The Working, First: Knowing the Causes and Fruits, Good and Evil, of the Sahā World (Chengguan's Outline · The Working of the Dharma)

Sudhana asks what the objective realm of this liberation gate is, and Gopā first answers as to the breadth of what she knows. The first layer is knowing, within the kalpas as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land of this Sahā world, all beings who die here and are born there, do good and do evil, and undergo the many recompenses, those who seek release and those who do not, the rightly fixed, the wrongly fixed, and the not fixed, and on to roots of goodness with afflictions and roots of goodness without afflictions, complete and not complete, roots of goodness gathered in by roots of non-goodness and roots of non-goodness gathered in by roots of goodness.

The most important thing to look at in this string is the last pair. ‘Roots of goodness gathered in by roots of non-goodness’ and ‘roots of non-goodness gathered in by roots of goodness’ are two items set against each other, and together they make one pair, not two. For the former, the example Chengguan gives is “as when one upholds the precepts with a mind of anger” — a good deed whose root is not pure; the latter is to do what is not good with a good mind. Li Tongxuan takes the matter wider: the worldly roots of goodness of gods, men, and non-Buddhist practitioners are gathered in by worldly roots of goodness and yet cannot cut off the karma of suffering of the three realms, and so Li Tongxuan judges them to be a root of non-goodness; while the two vehicles and the bodhisattvas of the pure lands subdue the karma of the three realms so that it does not manifest, which is gathered in by a root of goodness, yet they have not been able to reach and awaken to the knowledge and compassion of the Tathāgata, and so this is again a root of non-goodness gathered in by a root of goodness. The scripture text sets out these two mixed conditions separately just because this is the class hardest to judge.

A misreading to be set aside: that karmic fruit falls into only two heaps, good and evil. Among the four pairs the scripture text lists, the last one is mixed — and it is upon just that pair that the ancient worthies spend the most ink.

Bringing it to the ground: what you really need another person to see clearly for you is usually not the plain evil, but those matters of which you yourself cannot say whether they are good or evil.

The Working, Second: Knowing the Causes and Fruits of the Buddhas and the Assemblies of the Three Vehicles

The second layer is knowing the names and the order of the buddhas within those kalpas, and knowing how those buddhas from their first raising of the mind sought all-knowledge by skillful means, brought forth the great seas of vows, made offerings to the buddhas, cultivated the bodhisattva practices, accomplished right and perfect awakening, turned the wondrous wheel of the Dharma, displayed great spiritual powers, and converted and delivered beings — this is knowing the causes and fruits of the buddhas.

Further down is knowing the assemblies of the buddhas: knowing the roots of goodness the śrāvaka hosts cultivated in the past and the knowledge they gained; knowing the roots of goodness the pratyekabuddhas had, the awakening they gained, their quiescent liberation, their spiritual powers and transformations, their ripening of beings, and their entering of nirvāṇa; knowing how the bodhisattva hosts from their first raising of the mind cultivated roots of goodness, brought forth vows and practices, and accomplished the perfections, and on to their entering the grounds, abiding in the grounds, contemplating the grounds, and purifying the grounds, together with the marks of the grounds, the knowledge of the grounds, the gathering knowledge, the knowledge of teaching and converting beings, the knowledge of establishing, the objective realm of vast practice, the practice of spiritual power, the sea of samādhis, and skillful means, and together with the seas of samādhi entered in thought after thought, the light of all-knowledge gained, the lightning-cloud of all-knowledge obtained, the forbearance of the true mark gained, the all-knowledge penetrated, the seas of lands abided in, the seas of the Dharma entered, the seas of beings known, the skillful means abided in, the vows made, and the spiritual powers displayed.

Among the three vehicles, the class of the bodhisattva is opened out most finely. This is not partiality; it is that the bodhisattva's practice has of itself the most layers — the grounds have the four layers of entering, abiding, contemplating, and purifying, and what is gained in thought after thought forms a sea of its own.

A misreading to be set aside: that ‘knowing’ means knowing a set of facts. Every item known here is a ‘practice’ — what is cultivated, what is gained, what is entered, what is vowed, what is displayed. The object of the knowing is not data; it is the whole course of practice.

Bringing it to the ground: a good friend is able to help you not because he knows your affairs, but because he can recognize which stretch of road you are walking.

The Working, Third: The Sixfold Knowing by Kinds, Each Later One Broader Than the One Before

Next Gopā says: she knows the Sahā world and all its seas of kalpas to the end of the future, unfolding without a break; and as she knows the Sahā world, so she also knows the worlds as many as the dust motes within the Sahā world, all the worlds within the Sahā world, all the worlds within a dust mote of the Sahā world, the worlds abiding without interval in the ten directions outside the Sahā world, the worlds gathered in by the world-seed to which the Sahā world belongs, and the worlds gathered in by the measureless world-seeds of the ten directions within the Flower-Treasury sea of worlds.

Chengguan judges the layering, saying “here at the first there is a sixfold knowing by kinds, each later one broader than the one before” — each layer is broader than the last. The first two layers both gather many lands within the whole land, but the first gathers only those of the same kind, and so it says ‘as many as the dust motes’; the second gathers those of a different kind, and so it says ‘all.’ The third layer gathers lands within a dust mote, and is finer than the ones before. The fourth is the realms of the outer ring. The fifth is what the land-seed belonged to gathers in, running through the twenty layers. The sixth is the whole Flower-Treasury sea of worlds.

Below this are also listed ten shapes of what is known, and Chengguan glosses them one by one: the first is vastness, that is, the world-seed relied upon; the second is establishment, that is, causes and conditions, or that which is dwelt in and relied upon; the third is the encircling wheel; the fourth is the site within that wheel; the fifth is that their substances and kinds each differ, their shapes and classes being not the same; the sixth is turning — and upon this one name Chengguan gives two senses: one, that it turns like the form of a wheel upon its side, for which he cites this scripture's own Chapter on the Formation of Worlds, “some worlds turn along with a wheel”; two, that kalpas turn and change; the seventh is the lotus blossom relied upon; the eighth is the Sumeru within that blossom; the ninth is the name set up according to conditions; and the tenth is not a shape at all but the gathering of the fruit of the first nine back to its cause — “the tenth is the concluding of the fruit as belonging to the cause, meaning that the Flower-Treasury sea of worlds is what the Buddha's original vow adorned, and so it says ‘because of the power.’” So the last clause, ‘because of the power of the original vow of the World-Honored One Vairocana,’ is not a closing remark; it is the tenth item itself.

The one name ‘turning’ has another gloss besides. Li Tongxuan says, “as to the turning of worlds, it is a great number of the western region” — reading ‘turning’ as the name of a great number used in the western lands, which differs from Chengguan's two senses of wheel-turning and kalpa-change. The two glosses are recorded together without judgment. Li Tongxuan glosses several other names in this passage as well: ‘wheel’ is order — “‘wheel’ means order, for they come to be in order one after another”; and as for ‘the site of worlds,’ “one may take the Dharma gate practiced as the site of worlds; and again, a site is level, and being able to level the high and the low it is a site” — one taking the Dharma practiced as the site, one taking the levelness of a site that can level high and low. And for the name ‘world-seed’ he points back to this scripture's Chapter on the Flower-Treasury World, saying that what a world-seed gathers in is one great world with lands of its retinue, as many as the dust motes of ten buddha-lands, encircling it on its four sides.

A misreading to be set aside: that this merely says her experience is wide. The pushing out of the six layers is an expanding layer by layer; and the last clause gathers the whole of what is known back to the power of the original vow — what is known is endless because the things known are themselves made by vow.

Bringing it to the ground: how large a world a person can see depends upon how large a vow there is in his mind.

The Working, Fourth: Calling to Mind Vairocana's Causes and Conditions of the Past

The next passage displays separately the causes and fruits of Vairocana: gathering together the skillful means of the vehicles, abiding for measureless kalpas in the bodhisattva practices, purifying buddha-lands, teaching and converting beings, serving the buddhas, raising up dwelling places, hearing and receiving the preaching of the Dharma, obtaining the many samādhis, gaining the many kinds of ease; cultivating the perfection of giving and entering the sea of the Buddha's merit and virtue, upholding the precepts and ascetic practice, being furnished with the many forbearances, valorous vigor, accomplishing the many meditative concentrations, completing pure wisdom; displaying the taking of birth in all places, the practices and vows of Samantabhadra wholly pure, entering everywhere into the lands, purifying everywhere the buddha-lands, entering everywhere the sea of the Tathāgatas' knowledge, gathering in everywhere the awakening of the buddhas, gaining the great light of the Tathāgatas' knowledge, realizing the nature of all-knowledge of the buddhas, accomplishing right and perfect awakening, and turning the wondrous wheel of the Dharma; together with the roots of goodness planted in past ages by all beings within the assemblies at the place of the Way, their first raising of the mind, their ripening of beings, their cultivating of skillful means, their growth in thought after thought, and their obtaining of the many samādhis, spiritual powers, and liberations.

At the last it gathers upon a ‘why is this’: the reason she can know all this is that this liberation can know the mental activities of all beings, the roots of goodness they cultivate, their defilement and purity, and their many differences, and can know the gates of samādhi of all śrāvakas, the quiescent samādhis and spiritual powers and liberations of all pratyekabuddhas, and the light of the liberation of all bodhisattvas and all Tathāgatas.

A misreading to be set aside: that ‘calling to mind the Tathāgata's causes and conditions of the past’ is recalling a life of the Buddha. What is called to mind is the whole course of the six perfections and of vow and practice, and at the last it comes back to ‘being able to know the mental activities of beings’ — to know the causes of the buddhas is precisely for the sake of knowing the capacities of beings.

Bringing it to the ground: to read the Buddha's original practice is not to read anecdotes; it is to set your own present step back onto that line and look at it there.

One Short Question Brings Back Half a Book of Former Lives (Chengguan's Outline · The Root of the Dharma)

Sudhana next asks only four graphs: how long ago did she gain this liberation. And Gopā's answer is a whole account of causes and conditions of a past age.

Why is the question so short and the answer so long? Chengguan breaks it open: “though within the question he only asks how long ago the Dharma was gained, the meaning already contains how long the practice was, since it was by that that the Dharma gate was gained.” To ask how long ago the Dharma was gained is already to have asked how long the practice was — because the Dharma is gained by cultivation.

Chengguan further judges this answer into four divisions: first, the making clear of the raising of the mind and the practice in the presence of the first buddha; second, the practice in the presence of the many buddhas in between; third, the direct making clear of the time of gaining the Dharma; fourth, the burnishing of this Dharma through many kalpas. The skeleton of the whole second half of this section is just these four divisions.

A misreading to be set aside: that the account of the former life is a story, an extra thrown in beyond the main text. It is the only honest way of answering the two graphs ‘how long’ — to answer with a mere number would be to have given no answer.

Bringing it to the ground: ask a person how long he has practiced, and the most solid answer is not a count of years but the road he has walked.

The Former Life, One: The Royal Capital, the Prince, and the Thirty-Two Marks (Chengguan's Outline · Within the Former Part It Divides into Ten)

The former life begins with a kalpa named Surpassing Practice, a world named Fearless, four continents named Peace and Ease, and a royal city named Lofty and Surpassing Tree, foremost among eighty royal cities. The king was named Lord of Wealth, with sixty thousand maidens, five hundred great ministers, and five hundred princes. The crown prince was named Lord of Majestic Virtue, and below this the marks and signs are listed one by one: soles level and full, wheel marks complete, insteps arched, fingers and toes webbed, heels even and straight, hands and feet soft, calves of the aiṇeya deer king, seven places rounded and full, male organ hidden within a sheath, upper body like a lion king, shoulders level and full, arms long, bodily form upright and straight, three lines upon the neck, cheeks like a lion's, forty teeth even and close, four canines bright and white, tongue broad and long sending forth a Brahmā voice, eyes dark blue, lashes like a bull king's, the hair mark between the brows, the fleshy topknot upon the crown, skin of the color of true gold, body hairs curling upward, hair of the color of Indra's sapphire, body full and ample like a nyagrodha tree.

Chengguan judges the former part of the former life into ten passages, and these are the first two: first, the time and place of the royal capital; second, the prince's surpassing of all others — and within the passage of the prince, first the marks and then the going out to roam and look.

Upon the words ‘first the marks’ Chengguan's Yanyi chao has a gloss of its own: the scripture has thirty-two marks here, and “the text before points to this passage for their full setting forth, because the text here is complete” — the reason they are not listed earlier is that the text here is already complete, and so the earlier text points forward to this place. The Chao then lists the names of the thirty-two marks once in the order given by the Mahāprajñāpāramitā, and once again in the order of this passage of our scripture, annotating the one against the other, and concludes, “the above briefly joins the two scriptures.” The two scriptures differ in two respects: first, this passage of our scripture lacks the mark of ‘the constant light of one fathom,’ which the Chao says is contained within ‘what people delight to see’; second, if one follows the Yogācārabhūmi and counts ‘the forty teeth’ and ‘the canines bright and white’ separately, the number then fills out thirty-two. So in reading this long string of marks and signs one need not count them for oneself — the ancient worthies have already set out where the two witnesses diverge.

A misreading to be set aside: that this long string of marks and signs is a heaping up of adjectives. It has a definite function within the text — what the mother says below in dissuading her daughter, ‘this man is furnished with the marks of a wheel-turning king and hereafter is to succeed to the throne and become a wheel-turning king,’ and at the last the coming of the seven jewels to the prince and his becoming in fact a wheel-turning king, are all set up by this passage beforehand. The marks and signs here are a laid thread, not an ornament.

Bringing it to the ground: when you meet a long passage describing marks and signs in a scripture, do not skip it first; ask, ‘what has this passage prepared for, further on?’

The Former Life, Two: The Two Layers of Display in the Passage of Roaming and Looking

The prince, having received his father's command, goes with ten thousand maidens to the Fragrant Sprout Park to roam and look. The scripture text writes his chariot, his throne, the five hundred maidens taking up jeweled cords and driving, the hundred thousand myriads of men holding canopies and banners and pennants and making music and burning incense and scattering blossoms, and further the level road, the rows of jeweled trees, the spread jeweled nets, the towers stretching out.

And the passage of the towers suddenly turns direction: within those towers some have jewels heaped up, some have adornments set out, some have food and drink laid out, some have garments hung, some have the goods of livelihood provided — and the last clause is “whatever anyone had need of was wholly given to him.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the first half of the display is there to show wealth and honor. The first half is indeed wealth and honor, but the second half turns that wealth and honor into giving — everything set out along the road is there for people to take. With this turn the prince is joined to the vow below, ‘to the end of the future to practice the perfection of giving.’

Bringing it to the ground: with the same wealth, see whether it is being hoarded or is flowing, and you know what it will become.

The Former Life, Three: The Jeweled Maiden's Virtue and “If My Wish Is Not Fulfilled, I Shall Put an End to Myself”

The matron Excellent Manifestation brings the young girl Complete in Wondrous Virtue out of the city and goes before the prince. The scripture text first lists the girl's virtues: face upright and fine, form and features dignified and clean, stoutness and slenderness as they should be, tallness and shortness fitly measured, eyes and hair dark blue, voice like a Brahmā voice, skilled and penetrating in the crafts, thoroughly versed in disputation, respectful and diligent and never slothful, kind and doing no harm, furnished with shame and conscience, gentle and upright, free of delusion and of little desire, without the many flatteries and deceits. Chengguan judges this passage as the head of ‘the jeweled maiden seeking to belong to him,’ saying that within it there is “first, the being furnished with virtue and upright fineness.”

Next she sees the prince and love and attachment arise in her mind, and she tells her mother that she wishes to serve this man with reverence, and that if the wish is not fulfilled she will put an end to herself. Her mother enjoins her, saying that this man is furnished with the marks of a wheel-turning king and is hereafter to become a wheel-turning king, and that a jeweled woman will appear who soars through the air at ease, and that we are lowly and no match for him.

A misreading to be set aside: that the scripture text here approves this thought of love and attachment. The scripture text does not approve it; the mother enjoins her on the spot. As for the verse in the closing set, ‘though it was with a mind of love and attachment that I made offering to that son of the Buddha; for two hundred and fifty kalpas I did not fall into the three evil destinies,’ what it tells of is not this passage of the girl Wondrous Virtue seeing the prince, but an earlier stretch of causes in a far-distant kalpa — when she was the daughter of the householder Excellent Renown and was named Light of the Pure Sun, and seeing the monk Excellent Light gave rise to defiled attachment, and loosed her necklace and put it with its pearls into his bowl. Both stretches are a defiled mind; but here the scripture text first has the mother enjoin her, while there it says that even so, because of the offering, for two hundred and fifty kalpas she did not fall into the evil destinies.

Bringing it to the ground: an impure motive cannot be washed clean by calling itself pure; but if it meets the right object, it may still become a starting point.

The Former Life, Four: Dreaming of the Buddha and What the God Told Her

Beside the Fragrant Sprout Park is a place of the Way named Dharma Cloud Light, and a Tathāgata named Body of the Surpassing Sun, who has appeared seven days before. The young girl sleeps a while and dreams of that buddha; and when she wakes a god in the air tells her that the Buddha accomplished the way seven days ago, that bodhisattva hosts surround him before and behind, and that the devas and dragons and the eightfold host, and on up to the Highest Form Heaven, and the spirits of the earth, of the wind, of the fire, of the water, of the rivers, of the sea, of the mountains, of the trees, of the parks, of the herbs, and those who preside over cities, have all come and gathered for the sake of seeing the Buddha.

Chengguan judges this as “third, from ‘that fragrant sprout’ onward, the dreaming and beholding of the Buddha's arising.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the dream is a chance thing. The order in the scripture text is: first a thought arises that is outside the seeking of the way (love and attachment), then she dreams of the Buddha, then a god confirms it, then she speaks verses before the prince — and the whole working of this passage is to twist the causes and conditions of a marriage around toward the Buddha. And she says it more plainly herself in her verses of reverent compliance: in a past age there was a god of her retinue named Light of Gladness, and that god told her of a buddha arisen in the world at the place of the Way — neither the dream nor the god's telling is without a cause. As for the causes and conditions of the far-distant kalpa supplied by the verses at the end, those are an earlier stretch again: she was once the girl Light of the Pure Sun, who made offering with a mind of love and attachment to the monk Excellent Light as he begged food.

Bringing it to the ground: what is called the ripening of roots of goodness is often not a sudden turning for the better; it is that old matters, at some one moment, suddenly answer to each other.

The First Verses of the Girl Wondrous Virtue: A Turn within the Ten Verses (Chengguan's Outline)

The young girl speaks ten verses before the prince. Chengguan judges the first three as “setting forth her own virtue as fit,” and the last seven as “praising him and asking to be received.”

The first three verses speak of herself: the first says that her body is most upright and fine, her name heard in the ten directions, her wisdom beyond compare, and her skill in the crafts penetrating; the second says that measureless hundreds of thousands seeing her give rise to covetous attachment, while her mind gives rise to not the least desire toward them; the third says that she is without anger and without hatred, without aversion and without delight, and only raises the vast mind to benefit beings.

The most important of the three are the second and the third. The second says that she herself raises no desire toward others — and this clause marks off what follows, ‘in my mind I wish to serve you,’ from the passion of men and women in the world. The third says that what she raises is the vast mind and what she works for is the benefit of beings.

The last seven verses turn to praising the prince and asking to be received: the fourth says that seeing the prince furnished with the marks of merit and virtue her mind is greatly delighted and her faculties are glad; the fifth praises his color like a jewel of light, his fine hair curling to the right, his broad forehead and arched brows, and says ‘in my mind I wish to serve you’; the sixth takes an image of true gold and a mountain of great jewels as figures for the radiance of his bodily marks; the seventh praises his broad dark blue eyes, his moon-like face and lion-like cheeks, his glad countenance and fine voice, and begs ‘may you have pity and receive me’; the eighth praises the mark of his tongue, broad and long like the color of red copper, and his Brahmā voice like a kiṃnara's; the ninth praises his square mouth and white teeth, and that when he speaks a smile appears and those who see it are glad; the tenth praises his pure body free of defilement furnished with the thirty-two marks, and declares that ‘you must surely, within this world, take the seat of a wheel-turning king.’

A misreading to be set aside: that these ten verses are a proposal of marriage. On the face of the text they are; but not one clause of what the seven verses praise is wealth or power — all of it is the marks and signs and the virtue they display, and the last verse comes down upon the station of a wheel-turning king. What is sought is in fact a place upon one and the same road.

Bringing it to the ground: to see what a person seeks, do not look at whom he seeks; look at which side of the other person it is that he praises.

The Prince's Twelve Questions: The Passage Where the Bone Shows Most in This Section (Chengguan's Outline)

The prince first asks in prose, “Whose daughter are you? By whom are you guarded? If you already belong to another, then I ought not to raise a mind of love and attachment,” and then asks in twelve verses. Chengguan judges, “fourth, the prince examines her, in twelve verses divided into three: the first two ask about the condition of whom she belongs to; the next three examine her inward faults; the last seven invite her onward into the good.”

The first two verses ask whom she belongs to: the first asks in whose place she dwells; the second asks who are her father and mother and to whom she now belongs, and says that if she already belongs to another then that man has received her. These two verses are of one intent with the prose — first to ask clearly whether she already belongs to another.

The next three verses examine her inward faults: the third asks about not stealing the goods of others, not having a mind to harm, not committing unchastity, and upon what speech she abides; the fourth asks about not speaking the evil of others, not breaking apart the kin of others, not encroaching upon the boundaries of others, and not being angry at others; the fifth asks about not giving rise to wrong and perilous views, not doing deeds that contradict one another, and not using the power of flattery and crookedness to deceive the world. What the three verses ask about is just the three faults of body, the four of speech, and the three of mind.

The last seven verses invite her onward into the good, one verse to a set: the sixth asks whether she honors father and mother, reveres good friends, and can raise a gathering mind at the sight of the poor; the seventh asks whether toward the Dharma taught her by a good friend she can raise a firm mind and honor it to the end; the eighth asks whether she loves and delights in the buddhas, understands the bodhisattvas, and reveres the sea of merit and virtue of the host of monks; the ninth asks whether she can know the Dharma, can purify beings, and whether she abides within the Dharma or within what is not the Dharma; the tenth asks whether she can raise a mind of kindness at the sight of the orphaned and alone, and great compassion at the sight of beings of the evil destinies; the eleventh asks whether she can be glad when others gain glory and joy, and be without anger when others press upon her; the twelfth asks whether, raising the intent of awakening, she can enlighten beings, and whether in practice through boundless kalpas she can be without weariness.

A misreading to be set aside: that these are the conditions of choosing a spouse. What the eighth verse asks about is the three jewels, and what the twelfth asks about is the mind of awakening and freedom from weariness — this is no longer a question of marriage; it is an examination of qualification as a fellow traveler. And so Chengguan judges the last seven verses as ‘inviting her onward into the good,’ not as ‘asking whether she has this or that.’

Bringing it to the ground: to walk a long road with someone, the first question is not whether he likes you, but whether he can bear up under the road.

The Girl's Mother's Thirty-One Verses in Answer: How a Mother Presents Her Evidence (Chengguan's Outline)

The girl's mother answers for her, and Chengguan judges, “thirty-one verses divided into six: the first eleven verses display in general the excellence of her recompense; the next three verses praise separately her upright fineness; the third, three verses making clear that she is without peer; the fourth, five verses on her skills being full within; the fifth, eight verses on her being free of faults and furnished with virtue; the last one verse concluding in praise of what befits her,” and he says the intent of this passage is to “make clear that she has virtue and is without fault, and does not belong to another, and therefore ought to be received” — answering exactly to the three things the prince asked about.

The first eleven verses tell of the excellence of the recompense, and bring it out as narrative: the opening verse says that she now tells of the girl's birth and growing up and all the causes and conditions; next, that upon the day the prince was born this girl too was born from a lotus blossom, her eyes pure and long and broad, her limbs and joints complete; next, a recollection of roaming in the Sāla Park in the spring months, seeing the herbs luxuriant, the extraordinary trees putting forth blossoms like auspicious clouds, the fine birds calling in harmony, and eight hundred women roaming with her; next, that in the park was a bathing pool named Lotus Banner, and that she sat upon the bank surrounded by maidens; next, that within the pool there suddenly grew a thousand-petaled blossom, with jeweled petals and a lapis stalk and jāmbūnada gold for its dais; next, that as the night ended and the sun came forth the lotus just then opened and sent forth a great pure light; next, that the light was blazing like the sun first rising, illumining Jambudvīpa so that the multitude sighed that they had never seen the like; next, that she then saw this jade-like girl born from the lotus blossom, her body utterly pure and her limbs rounded and full; and the last verse settles it, saying that this is a jewel among men, born of pure karma, whose causes of past ages were not lost or spoiled, and who this day receives this recompense. Eleven verses run on together, and only the last verse points out the reason — it is not a marvel; it is karma.

The next three verses praise separately her upright fineness: dark blue hair and blue-lotus eyes, Brahmā voice and golden radiance, flower garland and jeweled topknot, pure and without defilement; limbs and joints complete and nothing lacking, like an image of true gold set amid jeweled blossoms; sandalwood fragrance from her pores perfuming all things, and blue-lotus fragrance from her mouth, constantly sending forth a Brahmā voice.

The third passage, in three verses, makes clear that she is without peer: where this girl dwells there is constantly the music of the gods, and she should not be matched with one of low degree; in the world there is no man fit to be her husband, none but him whose body the marks adorn; neither long nor short, neither coarse nor fine, upright and fine in every way. The latter two of the three verses come home to ‘may you look with favor and receive her.’

The fourth passage, in five verses, tells of her skills being full within: penetrating graphs and reckoning and the crafts and arts; skilled in the arts of war, deft at settling disputes, able to tame the hard to tame; her body pure and those who see it never sated, her merit and virtue adorning her of itself; skilled in penetrating the arising through conditions of the ailments of beings and giving medicine according to the ailment; penetrating the methods of speech of Jambudvīpa and on down to the sounds of music.

The fifth passage, in eight verses, tells of her being free of faults and furnished with virtue: whatever a woman can do she knows it all and yet is without the faults of women; not jealous and not stingy, without greed and without ill will, upright and soft and far from coarseness and harshness; reverent toward those to be honored, serving without opposing, delighting in cultivating good practices and so able to be in accord with him; constantly raising great kindness and pity at the sight of the aged, sick, poor, and those in hardship without rescue; constantly contemplating the highest meaning, not seeking benefit and joy for herself but vowing only to benefit beings and adorning her mind with this; without heedlessness in walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, and glad to those who see her whether she speaks or is silent; without a mind of defiled attachment though she is in all places, and delighting to look, never sated, upon one who has merit and virtue; honoring good friends, delighting to see those who have left evil behind, her mind not restless and her thinking coming before the deed.

The last verse concludes in praise of what befits her: adorned with merit and knowledge, without any hatred, highest among women, and fit to serve the prince.

A misreading to be set aside: that these thirty-one verses are a mother boasting of her daughter. Look closely at the order of the six passages: recompense, bodily marks, being without peer, skills, freedom from fault and possession of virtue, and the concluding praise — the first three passages belong to the outward and the last three to the inward, and the last three grow more and more into matters of the Dharma: constantly contemplating the highest meaning, vowing only to benefit beings, honoring good friends. Among the prince's twelve verses seven asked about ‘going onward into the good,’ and here eight verses answer as to ‘freedom from fault and possession of virtue’ — question and answer match.

Bringing it to the ground: evidence should be brought to what has actually been asked. If the other asks about your mind, do not keep talking about your appearance.

The Prince Invites Her Again: Saying the Hardest Thing First (Chengguan's Outline)

Having heard this, the prince does not receive her at once, but first speaks a passage of prose. Chengguan judges this passage as “sixth, the prince invites her again, meaning that if she will not hinder the way, he will follow her wish,” and the prose divides in two: first he sets forth the depth of his practice, and after he fears that she may make hindrance.

In the passage setting forth the depth of his practice, he says that he seeks awakening and will through measureless kalpas to the end of the future gather the dharmas that aid the way to all-knowledge, cultivate boundless bodhisattva practices, purify all the perfections, make offerings to all Tathāgatas, uphold and guard all the buddhas' teachings, and adorn and purify all buddha-lands; that he will cause the Tathāgatas' lineage not to be cut off, ripen beings everywhere in accord with their lineage, extinguish the suffering of birth and death of beings and set them in ultimate ease and joy, purify the eye of wisdom of beings, cultivate all that bodhisattvas practice, abide in the mind of equality, accomplish the grounds walked, and make all beings glad everywhere; that he will give up all things, and to the end of the future practice the perfection of giving, and on to garments and food and drink, wives and consorts and sons and daughters, head and eyes and hands and feet, and that all he has within and without he will renounce and give without begrudging.

In the passage fearing that she may make hindrance, each clause is heavier than the last: when he gives away goods and wealth her mind will begrudge them; when he gives away sons and daughters her mind will be pained; when he cuts off his limbs her mind will be distressed; when he forsakes her and leaves the household life her mind will be filled with regret.

A misreading to be set aside: that this is meant to frighten her off. It is a laying out of the worst case beforehand. The prince does not say ‘do not hinder me’; what he says is ‘when that time comes, you may perhaps’ — he speaks for her, beforehand, the difficulty that will be hers.

Bringing it to the ground: to invite someone to travel with you without telling how hard the road is, is a dishonest invitation.

The Prince's Ten Verses of Inviting Again: Six Verses on the Practice, Two and a Half on Not Hindering, One and a Half on Considering Carefully (Chengguan's Outline)

Chengguan judges these ten verses, saying “after, the verses, ten verses divided into three: the first six verses put into verse the depth of his practice; the next two and a half invite her not to make hindrance; the last one and a half conclude by bidding her consider carefully.”

The first six verses versify the depth of the practice: the first says that out of pity for beings he has raised the mind of awakening and will through measureless kalpas practice all-knowledge; the second, that within measureless kalpas he will purely cultivate the seas of vows, and that the entering of the grounds and the countering of hindrances will each pass through measureless kalpas; the third, that in the presence of the buddhas of the three times he will study the six perfections, be furnished with the practice of skillful means, and accomplish the way of awakening; the fourth, that the defiled lands of the ten directions he will wholly adorn and purify and from the hardships of the evil destinies he will make them forever come forth; the fifth, that he will by skillful means widely deliver beings, extinguishing the darkness of delusion and setting them in the Buddha's way of knowledge; the sixth, that he will make offerings to all buddhas and purify all grounds, and raising great kindness and compassion give away all things within and without.

The next two and a half verses invite her not to hinder: the seventh says that when she sees those who come to beg she may give rise to a stingy mind, while his mind constantly delights in giving, and she should not go against him; the eighth says that if she sees him give away his head she should by no means give rise to sorrow, and that he tells her beforehand to make her mind firm; the first half of the ninth says that even when he cuts off hand and foot she should not hold the beggar in aversion.

The last one and a half verses conclude by bidding her consider carefully: the second half of the ninth says that now that she has heard his words she should ponder them truly; the tenth says that sons and daughters and the things he loves he will all give away, and that if she can be in accord with his mind he will fulfill her intent.

A misreading to be set aside: that Chengguan's ‘two and a half verses’ and ‘one and a half verses’ are cut arbitrarily. Look at the content and you see that they are not — the first half of the ninth verse is still speaking of ‘not hindering’ (do not hold the beggar in aversion), while the second half has turned to ‘think it through for yourself.’ The turn of the meaning falls within a half verse, and so the outline can only be cut at a half verse.

Bringing it to the ground: in reading the outlines of the ancient worthies, where you meet an uneven cutting, that is usually the very joint of the meaning of the text.

The Girl's Fourteen Verses of Reverent Compliance: From Forgetting Suffering to Raising the Mind (Chengguan's Outline)

The young girl answers with four graphs, “I reverently receive what you have taught,” and then speaks fourteen verses. Chengguan judges, “seventh, the girl reverently complies. There are fourteen verses divided into three: the first three forget the suffering and cleave to his virtue; the next six hope to cultivate the surpassing practice together, which is just the raising of the mind of awakening; the last five urge him to go to the Tathāgata.”

The first three verses forget the suffering: within measureless seas of kalpas the fires of hell burning this body, in measureless places of taking birth the body crushed to dust motes, through measureless kalpas bearing upon her head a vast adamantine mountain — three things all gathered by one and the same closing clause, ‘if you can look with favor and receive me, I gladly accept such suffering.’

The next six verses hope to cultivate the surpassing practice together. The fourth says that within the measureless sea of birth and death the flesh of her body will be given away, and that when he gains the station of a Dharma king it may be granted her to be so too; the fifth says that if he receives her and is lord to her, then in life after life, wherever he practices giving, may she always be the thing given; the sixth says that out of pity for the suffering of beings he raises the mind of awakening, and since he has already gathered in beings he should gather her in too; the seventh says that she does not seek wealth and rank nor covet the joys of the five desires, but only for the sake of practicing the Dharma together vows to take him as her lord; the eighth says that his dark blue eyes, long and broad, look upon the world with pity and raise no mind of defiled attachment, and that he must surely accomplish the bodhisattva way; the ninth says that where the prince walks blossoms of the many jewels spring from the ground, and that he must surely become a wheel-turning king, and that she prays he may receive her. Upon these six verses Chengguan sets down his most important judgment — “which is just the raising of the mind of awakening.”

The last five verses urge him to go to the Tathāgata: the tenth says she once dreamed of the wondrous Dharma's site of awakening, with the Tathāgata seated beneath the tree surrounded by a measureless host; the eleventh, that in the dream the Tathāgata's body was like a mountain of true gold and with his hand he stroked the crown of her head, and that when she woke her mind was glad; the twelfth, that a god of her retinue in the past named Light of Gladness told her that at the place of the Way a buddha had arisen in the world; the thirteenth, that she once gave rise to the thought of wishing to see the prince's body, and the god replied that this very day she would see him; the fourteenth, that her aspirations of the past are now all fulfilled, and she prays only that they may go together and make offerings to that Tathāgata.

A misreading to be set aside: that the ‘I gladly accept such suffering’ of the first three verses is the speech of a lover. Were it only that, the fourth verse onward would not turn into ‘may I always be the thing given away’ and ‘only for the sake of practicing the Dharma together.’ Chengguan judges the fourth through the ninth verses as the raising of the mind of awakening because what is sought within these six verses is no longer to be received, but to cultivate and travel together.

Bringing it to the ground: a single thought of private feeling, if it is truly willing to go forward, will walk itself into a vow. What fails to do so is what stopped halfway at the matter of being received.

The Prince Receives Her, and That Woman's “Unmoved in Mind”

The prince, hearing the name of the Tathāgata Body of the Surpassing Sun, gives rise to great gladness and wishes to see that buddha, and so scatters five hundred maṇi jewels upon the woman, crowns her with a jeweled crown of the light of the wondrous treasury, and clothes her in a jeweled robe of flaming maṇi. Chengguan judges this passage, “eighth, the prince receives her, because of the gladness of his mind of reverence for the Buddha” — the cause of the receiving lies not in the woman's virtue but in his gladness at hearing the Buddha's name.

And the clause the scripture text adds next is the one most worth pausing at: that woman at that time was “unmoved in mind and had no mark of gladness either; she only joined her palms in reverence and gazed up at the prince, her eyes not turning away for a moment.”

A misreading to be set aside: that one who gains what she sought must be glad. Here she is precisely not glad. The one who a moment ago in fourteen verses so ardently sought to be received, when she truly is received has no mark of gladness — because what she sought had already turned into ‘practicing the Dharma together,’ and the jeweled crown and jeweled robe are not the thing sought.

Bringing it to the ground: when a thing is obtained and there is no great rise and fall in the mind, that is what shows that the thing sought at the outset was not that thing.

The Mother's Ten Verses Setting Forth Her Joy: The Order of the Four Passages (Chengguan's Outline)

The mother Excellent Manifestation speaks ten verses before the prince. Chengguan judges, “ninth, the mother sets forth her joy that it has been fulfilled, and therefore again praises the girl's virtue,” and that “the ten verses divide into four: the first one sets forth that her aspiration has been fulfilled; the next two, that her virtuous conduct is wholly the same; the next four, that her bodily and verbal karma surpass all others; the last three, the virtue stored within her mind.”

The first verse sets forth that her aspiration has been fulfilled: this girl is utterly upright and fine, merit and virtue adorn her body, in the past she vowed to serve the prince, and this day her intent is satisfied.

The next two verses say that her virtuous conduct is wholly the same as the prince's: one verse says she upholds the precepts and has wisdom and is furnished with merit and virtue and is everywhere in all the worlds most excellent and without peer; one verse says this girl was born from a lotus blossom, that in her clan there is nothing to reproach or shame, that she is of one and the same practice with the prince, and that she has left far behind all faults.

The next four verses say that her bodily and verbal karma surpass all others: her body soft as the silk floss of the heavens, so that wherever her hand touches the many afflictions are quenched; wondrous fragrances from her pores, so that those who smell them abide in pure precepts; the color of her body like true gold as she sits upright upon a dais of blossoms, so that those who see her leave harm behind and are furnished with a mind of kindness; her speech and voice utterly soft, so that those who gain the hearing of it leave behind the many evil deeds. Of the four verses the first three belong to the body and the last to speech, and every verse does more than describe the marks — each adds a clause on ‘what happens if beings see or hear’: the virtue of the bodily marks here does work.

The last three verses tell of the virtue stored within her mind: her mind pure and without flaw, far from crooked flatteries, speaking in accord with her own mind so that those who hear are glad; tamed and gentle and furnished with shame and conscience, reverent toward her elders, without greed and without deceit, and pitying toward beings; her mind not relying upon her form and features nor upon her retinue, but only with a pure mind reverent toward all buddhas.

A misreading to be set aside: that the mother has simply praised her over again. The thirty-one verses before were for the sake of asking that she be received; these ten verses are the rejoicing after it has been fulfilled. And the last verse says ‘she does not rely upon her form and features nor upon her retinue’ — setting down again everything that was praised before.

Bringing it to the ground: the best last clause in praising a person is to say that he does not lean upon the things you have praised.

Going to the Buddha, the Offerings, and the Ten Samādhis (Chengguan's Outline · The Tenth, Rightly Cultivating Together)

Chengguan judges the last passage of the former life as “tenth, rightly cultivating together,” and it divides below into ten passages. The first is going to the Buddha and making offerings: the prince, the girl Wondrous Virtue, ten thousand maidens, and their retinues come out from the Fragrant Sprout Park and go to the place of the Way called Dharma Cloud Light; having arrived they get down from their chariots and go forward on foot, see that the Buddha's bodily form is dignified and quiescent, his faculties tamed and compliant, pure within and without like a great dragon pool without defilement or turbidity, and all give rise to pure faith and leap for gladness, bow to the Buddha's feet and circle him numberless times, each scattering five hundred wondrous jeweled lotus blossoms as offering upon that buddha, the prince also building for the Buddha five hundred vihāras.

The second passage is hearing the sūtra and gaining the Dharma: the Buddha expounds for them the sūtra of the gate of the universal-eye lamp, and having heard it he gains within all dharmas the seas of samādhi, ten in all: the samādhi of illumining everywhere the sea of the vows of all buddhas, of illumining everywhere the treasury of the three times, of seeing directly the sites of the Way of all buddhas, of illumining everywhere all beings, of the lamp of knowledge illumining everywhere all the worlds, of the lamp of the knowledge of the faculties of all beings illumining everywhere, of the cloud of light that rescues and guards all beings, of the great lamp illumining everywhere all beings, of expounding the wheel of the Dharma of all buddhas, and of being furnished with the pure practice of Samantabhadra. What the girl Wondrous Virtue gains is only one, named Treasury of the Sea Hard to Surpass, and she becomes irreversible in awakening.

A misreading to be set aside: that those who hear one and the same sūtra should gain the same thing. The scripture text says plainly that they do not — the prince gains ten and the woman gains one, and hers is named ‘Treasury of the Sea Hard to Surpass’ and is fastened to irreversibility. The difference in what is gained reflects exactly the difference in what each has cultivated.

Bringing it to the ground: from one and the same lesson, what each person carries away will not be the same; this is not a matter of who listened better, but of what each brought when he came.

Telling the Father, Yielding the Throne, and the Simile of the Poor Man Gaining a Hidden Treasure

The prince returns to the palace and tells his royal father that the Tathāgata Body of the Surpassing Sun accomplished the way not long ago. The king asks who told him, and the prince answers that it was the girl Complete in Wondrous Virtue. The king, hearing it, is gladdened beyond measure, “as when a poor man gains a great hidden treasure,” and makes the thought that the Buddha is an unsurpassed jewel hard to meet with, that the Buddha is like a king of physicians able to cure the illnesses of the afflictions, and that the Buddha is like a guide able to bring beings to the place of ease. Having made this thought, he gathers the lesser kings, ministers, retinues, kṣatriyas, brāhmaṇas, and the rest of the great multitude, gives up the throne and confers it upon the prince, and when the anointing is done goes with ten thousand men to the Buddha's place.

Chengguan judges this as the third, fourth, and fifth of the passages: taking leave and telling the father; the king examining and rejoicing at what he hears; yielding the throne and going to look.

A misreading to be set aside: that the giving up of the throne is an impulse of the moment. Before the giving up of the throne the scripture text first writes the three similes of ‘he made this thought’ — first there is the seeing, and then the act. And he does not simply walk away: he first gathers the multitude, first confers the throne, first performs the anointing, and only then goes.

Bringing it to the ground: a true relinquishing is relinquished cleanly and also settled cleanly.

The Buddha Sends Forth Light, Expounds a Dhāraṇī, and the Assembly of That Time Is Benefited

The Tathāgata, contemplating that king and the great multitude, sends forth from the mark of the white hair a great light named Lamp of the Mind of All the Worlds, illumining everywhere the ten directions and abiding before all the lords of the worlds, displaying the power of great spiritual power and causing everywhere all who are fit to be converted to gain purity of mind; and further, with spiritual power of ease, displays a body that goes beyond all the worlds, and with a perfect voice expounds for the great multitude a dhāraṇī named Lamp That Leaves Behind the Gloom of the Meaning of All Dharmas, having dhāraṇīs as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land for its retinue.

Its benefit falls into four classes: that king at once obtains the great light of knowledge; within his assembly bodhisattvas as many as the dust motes of Jambudvīpa at the same time realize this dhāraṇī; six hundred thousand nayutas of men exhaust the outflows and their minds gain liberation; ten thousand beings leave the dust and part from defilement and gain the pure Dharma eye; and measureless beings raise the mind of awakening. Thereafter the Buddha again widely displays spiritual transformations and in the ten directions expounds the Dharma of the three vehicles and converts and delivers beings.

A misreading to be set aside: that the benefit of one preaching of the Dharma is uniform. What is listed here — those who realize the dhāraṇī, those who exhaust the outflows, those who gain the pure Dharma eye, and those who raise the mind of awakening — are each a class, and what they gain is deep or shallow in different measure, and yet all are within one assembly.

Bringing it to the ground: one and the same clause of the Dharma becomes a different medicine for different people, and this is the very reason why one who preaches need not hesitate at the unevenness of his hearers.

The Royal Father Leaves the Household Life: One Thought and the Whole Road After It

The royal father makes the thought, ‘if I remain in the household I cannot realize such a wondrous Dharma; if in the Buddha's presence I leave the household life and study the way, then I shall accomplish it,’ and so tells the Buddha and asks to leave the household life, and the Buddha answers, ‘as you wish; know for yourself when the time is fitting.’ The king Lord of Wealth and ten thousand men leave the household life at the same time. Before long they all gain the dhāraṇī Lamp That Leaves Behind the Gloom of the Meaning of All Dharmas, and gain also the gates of samādhi as above, and the bodhisattva's ten gates of spiritual power, boundless eloquence, and unhindered pure body, and go to the presence of the Tathāgatas of the ten directions to hear and receive their Dharma and as great Dharma masters expound the wondrous Dharma; and again by spiritual power they go throughout the lands of the ten directions and in accord with the minds of beings display their bodies, praising the appearing of the buddhas, expounding the original practice of the buddhas, revealing the original conditions of the buddhas, extolling the Tathāgatas' spiritual power of ease, and upholding and guarding the teachings the buddhas preach.

A misreading to be set aside: that leaving the household life is for the sake of gaining the Dharma oneself. The order of this passage is first gaining the Dharma, then becoming Dharma masters, then displaying bodies throughout the ten directions to preach the Dharma and guard the teaching — everything gained is at the last turned outward.

Bringing it to the ground: to judge whether a retreat or a stretch of intensive practice has come to anything, see whether, after coming out of it, it has become someone else's road.

The Prince Succeeds to the Throne: The Seven Jewels and the Monastic Dwellings of the Eighty Royal Cities

On the fifteenth day the prince, upon the main hall and surrounded by maidens, has the seven jewels come to him of themselves: the wheel jewel named Unhindered Course, the elephant jewel named Adamantine Body, the horse jewel named Swift Wind, the pearl jewel named Treasury of Sunlight, the woman jewel named Furnished with Wondrous Virtue, the treasurer jewel named Great Wealth, and the general jewel named Eye Free of Defilement. The seven jewels being complete he becomes a wheel-turning king, rules as king over Jambudvīpa, governs the world with the true Dharma, and the people are happy; the king has a thousand sons, upright and fine and valorous and strong, able to subdue enemies.

Within his Jambudvīpa there are eighty royal cities, and within each city five hundred monastic dwellings, and in each monastic dwelling a caitya of the Buddha is raised, all high and broad and ornamented with the many wondrous jewels; and each royal city invites the Tathāgata and makes offerings with inconceivable wondrous articles. When the Buddha enters a city he displays great spiritual power, causing measureless beings to plant the roots of goodness, to gain purity of mind, to be glad at seeing the Buddha, to raise the intent of awakening, to raise the mind of great compassion, to benefit beings, to cultivate diligently the Buddha's Dharma, to enter the true meaning, to abide in the Dharma nature, to penetrate the equality of dharmas, to obtain the knowledge of the three times, to contemplate the three times equally, to know the order in which the buddhas arise, to preach the many dharmas and gather in beings, to raise the bodhisattva's vow, to enter the bodhisattva's way, to know the Tathāgata's Dharma, to accomplish the sea of the Dharma, to display their bodies everywhere throughout all lands, to know the faculties and natures and desires of beings, and to make them raise the vow of all-knowledge.

A misreading to be set aside: that the station of a wheel-turning king and the way of awakening are two different matters. The whole doing of the wheel-turning king written in this passage is building monastic dwellings, raising caityas, and inviting the Buddha into the cities; and the fruit gained is not lands but beings raising the vow of all-knowledge. Station here is a thing used to do work with.

Bringing it to the ground: for one who has gained a position, look at what he has turned the position into.

Joining the Ancient and the Present: Bringing the Past Age Back to This Day (Chengguan's Outline)

Gopā asks Sudhana: that prince who at that time gained the station of a wheel-turning king and made offerings to the Buddha, could he be another? He is today's Buddha Śākyamuni. The king Lord of Wealth is the Buddha Jeweled Blossom — and she tells in detail how the Buddha Jeweled Blossom is now in the east, in such a sea of worlds, such a world-seed, such a world, and such a place of the Way, become a buddha and preaching the Dharma, and says that the buddhas of the three times who arise within that sea of worlds were all taught and converted by the Tathāgata Jeweled Blossom when he was a bodhisattva, so that they raised the mind of awakening. The girl's mother of that time, Excellent Manifestation, is today her own mother Excellent Eye. The retinue of that king is today's assembly in the presence of the Tathāgata, and they all cultivate the practices of Samantabhadra and have fulfilled the great vow, and though constantly within this assembly are able to display themselves everywhere throughout all the worlds, abiding in the equal samādhi, constantly seeing the buddhas, hearing and receiving the wheel of the Dharma, at ease in all dharmas, their names heard everywhere, going everywhere to the sites of the Way, displaying themselves everywhere before beings, taming according to what befits, and to the end of the kalpas of the future cultivating the bodhisattva way without interruption.

And the last clause is the crux: that girl Wondrous Virtue who made offerings of the four requisites to the Tathāgata Body of the Surpassing Sun — “is my own self.”

Chengguan judges here, “second, from ‘son of the Buddha, what do you think’ onward, the joining of the ancient and the present”; Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, opens it into five joinings — joining the prince, joining the royal father, joining the girl's mother, joining the retinue, and joining her own person.

A misreading to be set aside: that the joining is a way of rounding off a story. It has a real function here: it joins that seemingly worldly marriage, item by item, to the persons of this present assembly — the Śākya who preaches, the Buddha Jeweled Blossom in the east, Gopā's mother Excellent Eye, the multitude in the assembly, and this good friend who is speaking now. The matters of the past age are not of the past age; they are the origins of those seated here at this moment.

Bringing it to the ground: the person you meet at this moment is most likely not one you are meeting for the first time.

The Sixty Koṭis of Buddhas and That Long Passage of Listed Names

After the girl Wondrous Virtue and the wheel-turning king Lord of Majestic Virtue made offerings of the four requisites to the Tathāgata Body of the Surpassing Sun, after that buddha's extinction sixty koṭis of hundreds of thousands of nayutas of buddhas arose in the world within that world, and she together with the king served and made offerings to them all; and the scripture text lists the buddhas' names one by one, from Pure Body, Body of the Light of the Moon of All-Knowledge, and King of the Light of Jāmbūnada Gold on down to Wondrous Lotus Blossom of the Sea of the Dharma.

Chengguan judges this passage, “second, from ‘after that buddha's extinction’ onward, the seeing of the many buddhas in between, briefly listing forty,” and Fazang's judgment likewise reads ‘briefly listing forty’ — while the base text, counted one by one, gives forty-eight names. The word both houses use is ‘briefly listing.’

Li Tongxuan reads a layer of symbolism into this passage besides: of the first buddha, Body of the Surpassing Sun, he says “it symbolizes the fundamental knowledge”; of the sixty koṭis of hundreds of thousands of nayutas of buddhas who arose thereafter, that it is “upon the fundamental knowledge raising up the differentiating knowledge”; and “that from the first buddha Body of the Surpassing Sun down to the last buddha Vast Understanding she made offerings to fifty buddhas within that span symbolizes the causes and fruits of the preparatory practice of the five stations” — the number of buddhas served between the first and the last he reads as the causes and fruits of the preparatory practice of the five stations. Of one and the same string of buddha names, what Chengguan reads out is the length of the ‘how long ago,’ and what Li Tongxuan reads out is the order of the fundamental knowledge and the differentiating knowledge. Recorded together without judgment.

A misreading to be set aside: that this passage may be skipped in reading. The reason the names must be listed one by one is precisely that what was asked was ‘how long ago.’ A number cannot answer ‘how long ago’; a string of names can — for each name is one act of serving and making offering.

Bringing it to the ground: what is called a long term is not a stretch of time; it is one matter set down after another.

The Last Buddha and the Time of Gaining the Dharma

The last buddha was named Vast Understanding, and in his presence she gained the pure eye of knowledge. When that buddha entered the city and taught and converted, Gopā was the king's consort, and together with the king she paid respects and looked upon him and made offerings with the many wondrous things, and in his presence heard the expounding of the Dharma gate of bringing forth the lamp of all Tathāgatas, and at once obtained the liberation of the objective realm of contemplating the sea of the samādhis of all bodhisattvas.

Chengguan judges this as the third division, “the direct making clear of the time of gaining the Dharma.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the gaining of the Dharma is a sudden point. It is indeed a point — ‘at once obtained’; but behind this point are pressed the servings of sixty koṭis of hundreds of thousands of nayutas of buddhas. The point is instantaneous; the ground it stands upon is not.

Bringing it to the ground: those things that look sudden are usually only the last stroke.

Burnishing Through Many Kalpas, One: Even After Gaining the Dharma She Still Does Not Know the Body of the Bodhisattva (Chengguan's Outline)

After gaining this liberation she cultivated diligently with bodhisattvas through kalpas as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land, and through such kalpas served and made offerings to measureless buddhas — sometimes in one kalpa serving one buddha, sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes unspeakably many, sometimes meeting buddhas as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land, drawing near to all of them and serving and making offerings — and the last clause is “I still could not know the shape, measure, form, and appearance of the body of the bodhisattva, nor the karma of his body, the activity of his mind, his knowledge, or the objective realm of his samādhis.”

A misreading to be set aside: that gaining a Dharma gate is reaching the top. Chengguan judges the fourth of the four divisions as ‘the burnishing of this Dharma through many kalpas’ — the Dharma is gained, and still it must be burnished. And after burnishing this long, what is still not known is ‘the body of the bodhisattva.’

Bringing it to the ground: to obtain a Dharma gate is to enter the door, not to graduate.

The Bodhisattva Is Hard to Meet, and He Who Sees Him Does Not See in Vain

A passage is inserted here: if there are beings who gain a sight of the bodhisattva cultivating the practice of awakening, whether they doubt or whether they believe, the bodhisattva gathers them all in with skillful means both worldly and world-transcending, making them his retinue and causing them to gain irreversibility in awakening.

This passage looks like a digression, but it is in fact the most important single thread in the second half of this section. Chengguan says: “the first one displays in general that the bodhisattva benefits beings, versifying beyond its place the foregoing ‘he who sees does not see in vain,’ and giving rise to the benefit of the woman's defiled mind below” — the first verse of the closing set, ‘if any see the bodhisattva cultivating practices of every kind, and give rise to a good mind or a mind that is not good, the bodhisattva gathers them all in alike,’ versifies just this passage; and that girl Light of the Pure Sun who made offering with a mind of love and attachment to a monk begging food is one instance among ‘whether they doubt or whether they believe.’

A misreading to be set aside: that one must draw near to a bodhisattva with a pure mind for there to be benefit. The scripture text says plainly ‘whether they doubt or whether they believe’ — even those who doubt are gathered in.

Bringing it to the ground: there is no need to wait until your own mind is clean before drawing near; wait so, and the time will never come.

Burnishing Through Many Kalpas, Two: Why the Ten Grounds Do Not Know the Liberation of Samantabhadra

Another passage: she cultivated in common with bodhisattvas through kalpas as many as the dust motes of a hundred buddha-lands, and in the presence of all those Tathāgatas gained the many Dharma gates of this liberation, knowing the many three times, entering the many seas of lands, seeing the many accomplishings of right awakening, entering the many assemblies of buddhas, making the many great vows, cultivating the many wondrous practices, and gaining the many liberations — and yet still could not know the liberation gate of Samantabhadra that the bodhisattva gains.

Why is this? The scripture text answers itself: the liberation gate of Samantabhadra is like great empty space, like the names of beings, like the sea of the three times, like the sea of the ten directions, like the sea of the Dharma realm, measureless and boundless; and the last clause is “the bodhisattva's liberation gate of Samantabhadra is equal to the objective realm of the Tathāgatas.”

Upon this Chengguan judges with great transparency: “first, the general displaying of its depth and breadth. It means that the reason for not knowing it is that it accords with the boundlessness of matter and principle and is equal to the objective realm of the buddhas. This then is the liberation of the bodhisattva of equal awakening, which the ten grounds do not know, and therefore it is named the liberation of Samantabhadra.”

A misreading to be set aside: that the ‘not knowing’ is this good friend's modesty. It is not modesty but a necessity in principle — the objective realm of what is not known is equal to that of the Tathāgatas, while the station she is assigned to is the ten grounds; that the ten grounds do not know the liberation of equal awakening is a matter of the order of stations, not a matter of largeness of mind. And the name ‘liberation of Samantabhadra’ arises from just this.

Bringing it to the ground: to admit that there is something one cannot at present possibly know is not discouragement; it is having seen one's own position clearly.

The Three Worlds and the Bodhisattva Practices Within a Single Pore

What follows displays separately the marks of what is hard to know, and all of it comes down upon the four graphs ‘each single pore.’ Chengguan judges, “it means that a single hair is already inexhaustible, how much more the vast working of many hairs and many bodies, since it is an endless and boundless Dharma gate.”

The scripture text first takes a simile: as men of much desire, men and women, come together and grow attached to one another and give rise to measureless deluded thoughts and imaginings; ‘so it is with me’ — taking the most defiled mark in the world as a figure for her never being sated in contemplating the bodhisattva's body.

What is seen falls into four layers. The first is the world of vessels: within each single pore, in thought after thought, she sees measureless and boundless vast worlds of every kind of abiding, adornment, and shape, with mountains, grounds, clouds, names, arisings of buddhas, sites of the Way, and assemblies of every kind, expounding sūtras of every kind and preaching consecrations, vehicles, skillful means, and purities of every kind. The second is the world of the knowledge of right awakening: within each single pore, in thought after thought, she constantly sees boundless seas of buddhas sitting at sites of the Way of every kind, displaying transformations, turning wheels of the Dharma, and preaching sūtras, constantly without break. The third is the world of beings: within each single pore she sees boundless seas of beings with dwelling places, shapes, deeds, and faculties of every kind. The fourth is the boundless gates of practice of the bodhisattvas of the three times: boundless vast vows, boundless differentiated grounds, boundless perfections, boundless matters of past ages, boundless gates of great kindness, boundless clouds of great compassion, boundless minds of great joy, and boundless skillful means for gathering in beings.

A misreading to be set aside: that the simile of the man of much desire is an unseemly figure. What the figure takes is only one point — that state of mind that cannot look enough and will not let go from thought to thought. The scripture text borrows the most defiled state of mind to speak of the purest contemplative practice, and this is the most perilous and also the most apt of the figures of this section; and the verse at the close, ‘though it was with a mind of love and attachment,’ turns upon the same axis.

Bringing it to the ground: practice is not exchanging that force for another; it is turning it around.

Where She Has Already Come She Does Not Come Again, What She Has Already Seen She Does Not See Again

The concluding passage says that through kalpas as many as the dust motes of a buddha-land she has in thought after thought thus contemplated each single pore of the bodhisattva — “the places I have already come to I do not come to again, and the places I have already seen I do not see again, and seeking its outer bound I could not in the end obtain it” — and on to seeing that prince Siddhārtha abiding within the palace surrounded by maidens. She says: by the power of this liberation, contemplating each single pore of the bodhisattva, I see in each the matters within the Dharma realm of the three times.

The clause ‘where she has already come she does not come again, what she has already seen she does not see again’ deserves close looking: it is not that she is unwilling to come again, but that there is simply no repeated place to come to again — since what a single hair contains is without bound, what is entered in thought after thought must be new.

And the last clause suddenly gathers upon ‘the prince Siddhārtha within the palace, surrounded by maidens’ — that is precisely the aspect of the Śākya before he left the household life, and it reflects exactly that stretch of palace causes and conditions in her own former life. The endless seeing comes back to the one scene closest to her.

A misreading to be set aside: that this is an exaggeration of spiritual power. What it says is in fact a very plain thing: if the objective realm contemplated is truly endless, then the contemplator never has an old road to walk.

Bringing it to the ground: if a road always feels to you like repetition, it is usually not that the road is narrow, but that the way of looking has grown old.

Humbling Herself and Pointing to the Superior: She Says She Has Gained Only One (Chengguan's Outline)

At the last she says, “I have gained only this liberation of contemplating the sea of the samādhis of the bodhisattvas,” and then points to the superior: as for the bodhisattva mahāsattvas, they have brought to the end measureless seas of skillful means, for all beings display bodies according to their kinds and expound practices according to what they delight in, and within each single pore display boundless seas of forms and marks; they know that the nature of the dharmas has no-nature for its nature, that the nature of beings is the same as the mark of empty space and without discrimination, and that the Buddha's spiritual power is the same as suchness, and everywhere display boundless objective realms of liberation; and within a single thought can at ease enter the vast Dharma realm and sport within the Dharma gates of all the grounds — and how then could she know or expound their practice of merit and virtue.

A misreading to be set aside: that humbling oneself is a set phrase of this assembly. The humbling in this section connects with what came before — she has just said that the ten grounds do not know the liberation of Samantabhadra, and so ‘I have gained only this’ here is not courtesy but plain fact.

Bringing it to the ground: to say ‘I know only this one thing’ and to have every clause of it be true is far harder than to say ‘I know a little of everything.’

Pointing Out the Next Friend: The Questions Themselves Are the Next Stretch of Road (Chengguan's Outline)

She points Sudhana to go and see Māyā, the mother of the Buddha, and sets out clause by clause what he is to ask: how a bodhisattva cultivates the bodhisattva practices, is without defiled attachment within the worlds, makes offerings to the buddhas constantly without rest, does the bodhisattva's work never turning back, leaves all hindrances and enters the bodhisattva's liberation not by way of another, abides in the ways of all bodhisattvas, goes to the presence of all Tathāgatas, gathers in all the realms of beings, and to the end of the kalpas of the future cultivates the bodhisattva practices and raises the vow of the Great Vehicle, making the roots of goodness of all beings grow constantly without rest.

A misreading to be set aside: that pointing out the next friend is merely giving an address. What she gives is a whole set of questions; and the questions are the map of the next stretch of road.

Bringing it to the ground: what a good teacher hands you is often not an answer but the next question you ought to ask.

Verses Again at the Departure: Those Fifteen Verses the Prose Does Not Have (Chengguan's Outline)

After the pointing out, she speaks thirty-one verses more. Chengguan judges, “thirty-one verses divided into three: the first one displays in general that the bodhisattva benefits beings, versifying beyond its place the foregoing ‘he who sees does not see in vain,’ and giving rise to the benefit of the woman's defiled mind below,” “the next fifteen verses make clear the matters of a far-distant kalpa, which the prose does not have,” “the last fifteen verses rightly versify the causes and conditions of the virtuous woman in the prose,” and he explains why these fifteen verses must be supplied: “the prose speaks of the truly pure raising of the mind and discusses only the virtuous woman; here he gathers in her mixed goodness, and so relates the far-distant conditions, taking the coarse as a figure for the wondrous.”

The first verse displays in general: if any see the bodhisattva cultivating practices of every kind, and give rise to a good mind or a mind that is not good, the bodhisattva gathers them all in.

The next fifteen verses tell of the matters of the far-distant kalpa: in a past age past kalpas as many as the dust motes of a hundred lands there was a kalpa named Pure and a world named Light; within this kalpa sixty thousand myriad koṭis of buddhas arose in the world, and the last was titled Lamp of the Dharma Banner; after that buddha's nirvāṇa there was a king named Mountain of Knowledge who ruled Jambudvīpa without an enemy; the king had five hundred sons, upright and fine and able to be valorous, whom those who saw were glad to see; that king and his princes made offerings to the Buddha with minds of faith, upheld and guarded his treasury of the Dharma, and delighted to cultivate his Dharma; the crown prince was named Excellent Light, free of defilement and of many skillful means, his marks rounded and full and those who saw him never sated; five hundred koṭis of men together left the household life and studied the way, valorous and firm in vigor, upholding and guarding his Buddha's Dharma; the royal capital was named Tree of Knowledge with a thousand koṭis of cities surrounding it, and there was a grove named Quiescent Virtue adorned with the many jewels; Excellent Light dwelt within that grove and widely expounded the true Dharma, and by the power of eloquence and wisdom made the multitude pure; once, because of begging food, he entered that capital city, his walking and stopping utterly serene, with right knowing and a mind undistracted; within the city there was a householder titled Excellent Renown, and she at that time was his daughter, named Light of the Pure Sun; at that time she was within the city and met Excellent Light, and seeing his marks utterly dignified and fine, defiled attachment arose in her mind; he begged for food in order and came before her door, and love and attachment grew in her mind, and she loosed the necklace from her body and with its pearls put it into his bowl; though it was with a mind of love and attachment that she made offering to that son of the Buddha, for two hundred and fifty kalpas she did not fall into the three evil destinies; sometimes she was born in the house of a heavenly king, sometimes the daughter of a human king, and constantly saw that body of Excellent Light adorned with wondrous marks.

The last fifteen verses rightly versify the prose: the kalpas that passed thereafter were again two hundred and fifty, and she was born in the house of Excellent Manifestation and named Furnished with Wondrous Virtue; at that time she saw the prince and a mind of honoring arose, and she vowed to be ranked among those who attend him and was favored with his pity and reception; she together with the prince looked upon the Buddha Body of the Surpassing Sun, and when the reverent offerings were done raised the intent of awakening; within that one kalpa there were sixty koṭis of Tathāgatas, and the last World-Honored One was named Vast Understanding; in his presence she gained the pure eye, penetrated the marks of the dharmas, saw everywhere the places of taking birth, and forever removed the inverted mind; she gained the liberation of contemplating the objective realm of the samādhis of the bodhisattva, and in a single thought entered the inconceivable seas of lands of the ten directions; she saw the many worlds pure and defiled in every kind of difference, and toward the pure did not covet and toward the defiled did not hate; she saw everywhere the Tathāgatas of the many worlds seated at the sites of the Way, all within a single thought sending forth measureless light; within a single thought she can enter everywhere unspeakably many assemblies and also know all the gates of samādhi they have gained; within a single thought she can wholly know their vast practices, the skillful means of the measureless grounds, and the seas of vows; she contemplates the bodhisattva's body and the practice of boundless kalpas, and the measure of each single pore, and seeks it and cannot obtain it; the lands within each single pore are numberless and unspeakably many, and the wheels of earth, water, fire, and wind are all of them within; establishings of every kind, shapes of every kind, substances and names of every kind, and boundless sorts of adornment; she sees the many seas of lands and unspeakably many worlds and the buddhas within them preaching the Dharma and converting beings; and the last verse still comes home to not knowing — she cannot penetrate the bodhisattva's body and the karmas of that body, nor know his mind and knowledge and the way he has walked through the kalpas.

A misreading to be set aside: that those fifteen verses are a branch grown outside the trunk. Chengguan says it plainly: the prose spoke only of that stretch of the virtuous woman's causes and conditions belonging to the ‘truly pure raising of the mind,’ and the verses must gather in the ‘mixed goodness’ as well — and so a farther stretch is related, and within that stretch the offering was made with a defiled mind. Taking the coarse as a figure for the wondrous means that even such a cause as that does not fall empty, how much less a pure cause.

Bringing it to the ground: a person's origins hold more than the stretch he is willing to tell. All of it counts.

The End of the Section: Verses and Prose Both Come Home to the Same “I Do Not Know”

The last verse of the thirty-one and the humbling at the end of the prose come home to one and the same clause — she cannot penetrate the bodhisattva's body, and does not know his mind and knowledge and the way he has walked. The prose says it once, and the verses say it again.

And at the very end of his whole outline Chengguan sets down: “sixth, the taking of leave, which may be understood. The marks of the practice assigned to the stations above are finished.” The forty-one friends of the assignment to the stations come to their end here.

A misreading to be set aside: that having walked to the fortieth and been assigned to the tenth ground, it ought to close upon an ‘I have understood.’ The scripture text closes instead upon an ‘I do not know’ — and this not-knowing is precisely the doorway into the mark that comes next (the gathering of conditions and entering the real, beginning with Māyā).

Bringing it to the ground: when a stretch of road has been walked to its end, if one can still say honestly what one does not know, then that stretch was not walked in vain.

Lineage

The text of this section opens three threads that run onward.

The first is the thread of the outlining by assignment to stations. Chengguan set up the five aspects in the sixth of the ten gates at the head of this assembly, and this section belongs to the end of the first mark; and when he set that mark up he first raised the two positions, matching and not matching, saying that they “both have their reason,” next set down his own judgment, “yet within the absence of graded stations the graded stations are not hindered, and to display the stations is the constant rule, so that to match them is likewise no fault,” and only then closed with “for now, following the ancient worthies, matching them as five aspects” — so that Chengguan judges outright that to match them is no fault, rather than setting out two positions and withholding his own. At the end of this section the commentary writes “the marks of the practice assigned to the stations above are finished,” and so the first mark is complete. For anyone who reads this assembly using the rod of the stations, these two places are the two ends of that rod — one where it is set up, one where it is gathered in.

The second is the thread of the glossing of the name. All four houses gloss it; only the outline passages in which they do so differ, and in reading one must keep clear who is speaking, and in which passage.

Chengguan's gloss does not stand within this friend's own outlined passage but within the heading of the former friend's “pointing out of the next friend”: he says, “as to the word Gopā, in this tongue it means Guardian of the Great Earth,” and explains why — at home she was guarded by her parents, and once she became his consort she took her name from her lord; and with respect to the Dharma, “it symbolizes that since the ten grounds are already complete, there is no ground she does not guard.”

Fazang, at the head of his glossing of this friend's name, examines the Indic witnesses and hands down “Guyi means, in the old rendering, Bright Woman,” and lists also “or the name Qiaobi, which in this tongue means Covering Obstruction” and “or the name Qupo, which in this tongue means Guardian of the Great Earth,” and taking the meaning of the jeweled woman of a king says “and further, since the realization of the Dharma is already full and the joy of the Dharma is fitting and pleasing, this is the sense of ‘wife.’”

Li Tongxuan's gloss too stands not within this friend's passage of true entering but within the former friend's pushing on from virtue: “this Gopā is also called Guyi, which in this tongue means Guardian of the Ground, the guarding of the ground of great kindness and great compassion within the bodhisattva practice.” And in the passage upon the Dharma Cloud Ground in the Chapter on the Ten Grounds he says: “Gopā means, in this tongue, Guardian of the Ground. It makes clear that at this Dharma Cloud Ground the power of the vow and knowledge and compassion are all already full, and she only constantly guards the mind-ground of all beings, taking that as the substance of the ground, and therefore is named the spirit who guards the ground” — what is guarded is not land but the mind-ground of all beings, and that mind-ground is taken as the substance of the Dharma Cloud Ground. Beyond this he does not enter by way of glossing the name, but sets up his account by way of symbolizing the Dharma, judging that she “symbolizes the penetrating through of the great compassionate practice of the ten grounds,” and citing the four clauses of the ancients — gaining the real without realizing it, knowing the real while practicing the conventional, dwelling amid the bonds without defilement, and great compassion in shared work — and then setting up ten gates of his own to praise her virtue, concluding “with these ten dharmas I praise Gopā's practice of the practice of Samantabhadra.”

Zhiyan, at the head of his glossing of this friend's name, says “tenth, Guyi, whose name in this quarter is Bright Woman, that is, the station of the bodhisattva of the ten grounds,” and points directly to what she symbolizes: “this Bright Woman symbolizes that the practice of kindness and compassion is ultimate.” He also records that the prince had three consorts and that Guyi was the third of them, differing from Fazang and Chengguan, who both take Guyi as the first — upon one and the same matter the order the three houses record does not agree. Recorded without judgment.

The approaches of the four houses each differ: one glosses within the heading of the former friend's pointing out and comes home to “there is no ground she does not guard”; one examines the Indic witnesses and obtains four accounts; one glosses in two places, the former friend's pushing on from virtue and the Chapter on the Ten Grounds, and comes home to “guarding the mind-ground of beings”; one takes “Bright Woman” as directly symbolizing that the practice of kindness and compassion is ultimate. Recorded without judgment.

The third is the thread of the matching of the order of stations. Li Tongxuan takes this section as the end of the ten grounds and fastens it to the doorway of the eleventh ground, saying “this Gopā is the end of the way of the ten grounds, where the world-transcending knowledge is full, and it is meant to bring the bodhisattvas who have reached the way of the ten grounds into the gate of the practice of Samantabhadra of the eleventh ground,” and at the end of his fascicle judges the matching of her perfection, saying “this is the good friend of the Dharma Cloud Ground, having the perfection of knowledge as principal and the remaining nine as companions,” and saying that what she counters is “the countering, within knowledge, of the hindrance of not being at ease in the practice furnished with great kindness.” Within Chengguan's own outlined passage no such matching of the ten perfections appears. Further, as to the dividing of the former life, Chengguan makes ten passages while Fazang makes fifteen; as to the judging of the numbers of verses in the several passages, Chengguan upon the eighty-fascicle witness has ten verses, twelve verses, ten verses, twelve verses, thirty-one verses, ten verses, fourteen verses, ten verses, and thirty-one verses, while Fazang upon the sixty-fascicle witness has thirteen verses, eleven verses, twenty-four verses, and seven and a half verses — the witnesses the two houses rely upon differing, the numbers they judge differ as well. As to the number of the buddhas in between, both houses have ‘briefly listing forty,’ while the base text counted one by one gives forty-eight names. All these divergent glosses are the established teachings of the ancient worthies, and are recorded without judgment.

At the end of this section Zhiyan sets up a question and answer besides, aimed squarely at the rod of the stations. He asks: if one takes the texts above and below, the Dharma practice of Samantabhadra seems to be ultimately gained already from the station of the ten faiths and understandings onward; yet by the text of this section the force of the practice of Samantabhadra seems hard to accomplish, and to be gained only upon reaching the ten grounds — how is this? He answers himself: “the substance of the practice of Samantabhadra truly cannot be gained in reliance upon a station. Why? Because it belongs to the dharma of nature-origination.” The substance of the practice of Samantabhadra was never a thing to be gained by way of the order of stations, for it belongs to the dharma of nature-origination; and if one argues by the stations of faith and understanding in the three vehicles, then from the first station of faith and understanding on up to the ten grounds none is ultimate, that being a way of speaking that “grasps by the marks of the stations,” while in the thought-moments between them the universal dharma is already complete. So with Zhiyan the rod of the stations and the dharma of nature-origination are spoken of apart: the rod may measure, but what it measures is not the thing itself.

Having walked down through forty good friends, this one first confers a Dharma gate — “I have already accomplished the liberation gate of contemplating the sea of the samādhis of all bodhisattvas” — sets up its name, and answers as to its working; and only then does she answer the question ‘how long have you practiced’ by telling ‘how I came to be here.’ And within those origins there is a dream, a marriage, love and attachment, and a necklace in a begging bowl — not one of which looks like practice. The scripture text does not here say that those things are practice; what it says is that of those who see the bodhisattva cultivating practices of every kind, “whether they give rise to a good mind or a mind that is not good, the bodhisattva gathers them all in” — the one who gathers in is the bodhisattva, and those gathered in include even those who raise a mind that is not good. Chengguan puts this layer as “gathering in her mixed goodness.” That one portion of offering within the defilement does not fall empty either.

This Section Is a Turn: From ‘One Friend, One Station’ to “the Conditions Gathered and Entering the Real”

The good friends before this — forty-one counting from the first meeting with Mañjuśrī, or forty counting forward from the monk Cloud of Virtue — Chengguan, following the ancient worthies, outlines as ‘the mark of practice assigned to the stations’ — Mañjuśrī assigned to the ten faiths, and from Cloud of Virtue onward assigned to the ten abodes, the ten practices, the ten dedications, and the ten grounds, one friend matched to one station, station rising above station. When we come to Lady Māyā the name of the outline changes, and is called ‘the mark of the conditions gathered and entering the real.’

A misreading must first be set aside: this is not ‘the stations have been cultivated through, and now a new subject is taken up.’ Chengguan, in glossing the meaning of this mark, says it very plainly — it is “gathering the conditions of the differences of the stations that came before and making them return to the one real Dharma realm, and being born into the buddha-fruit as Māyā gave birth to the Buddha — and so it is made clear next.” What the forty-one stations before this cultivated were conditions taken one by one, apart from one another; here, those separated conditions are gathered back into one real Dharma realm. So the “conditions” in “gathering the conditions” point precisely to the road already walked.

Brought down to the ground: in reading this section, if one reads it as a forty-second new Dharma gate, one has read it backward. It turns back to gather up the forty-one that came before. And the way it gathers them the scripture text renders not by argument but by a mother.

Why There Are Eleven Persons, and Why This One Is Called “the General”

Chengguan lays down here the weightiest judgment of this section: “now although the persons are eleven, taken by the dharmas they are only nine, and taken by the gatherings they are ten, since the first one is the general and the remaining nine are the particulars.” Eleven persons; taken by the dharmas only nine kinds; taken by the gatherings there are ten gatherings, the first gathering being the general and the nine after it the particulars — and Māyā is that “general.”

Someone will ask: since Māyā has already gathered the conditions and entered the real, what need is there for the ten persons who follow? Chengguan asks this himself first and then answers himself: “was it not said just now that the general and the particular gather one another, and that without the particular there is no way to accomplish the general?” Without the particular, the general cannot stand up. And he adds one further meaning: “further, it displays that they are the conditions that are gathered; saying ten sets forth that they are inexhaustible.” To say “ten” is not to count as far as ten and stop; it sets forth the inexhaustible.

A misreading to be set aside: to take “the general” for ‘a summing up,’ as though one sentence were enough and what follows were repetition. The usage of the scripture text is just the opposite — the general is held up by the particular. Brought down to the ground: if a man says ‘I understand the principle of it all’ and cannot state one particular mark, that “general” of his is most likely empty.

Who Māyā Is: Four Houses Give Four Names

For the two graphs of “Māyā” the names transmitted by the ancient worthies are more than one. Chengguan says, “now the first, Māyā: of old it was rendered Queen of the Gods, since the queen of the gods is able to give birth to a buddha”; the Yanyi chao adds a clause, saying that the new rendering is illusion-craft, and again illusion-birth, because “she gains the gate of the knowledge of illusion.” Fazang says, “Māyā means, in this tongue, illusion-birth,” and transmits her Sanskrit name Tipoduo, which rendered properly should be Queen of the Gods. Zhiyan for his part says, “Lady Māyā means, in this quarter, pure and wondrous,” and elsewhere says again, “Māyā is here named illusion-transformation.”

The four accounts stand together, each having its own track, and they are recorded without judgment. Yet one should see that they point together to one thing: whether Queen of the Gods, or illusion-birth, or illusion-transformation, or pure and wondrous, what they point to are the two meanings of “being able to give birth to a buddha” and “being as an illusion.” Later in this section the name of the Dharma gate Māyā sets forth of herself is the bodhisattva liberation gate of the illusion of great vow and knowledge, and the graph “illusion” stands in the very middle of it — the name and the Dharma answer to each other.

Brought down to the ground: in reading the renderings handed down by the ancient worthies, do not pick out only one and remember that; look at where several names together are pointing.

Whether Māyā Is Real or an Emanation: Chengguan Cites Four Clauses and Does Not Stop at Four Clauses

There is an old question: Māyā gave birth to the Buddha and on the seventh day her life ended and she was born among the gods — how then does this scripture say she is in the city of Kapila? Fazang sets this difficulty and answers, “the mark of emanation displays its ceasing, while the real recompense abides constantly” — the mark displayed has ceased, and the real recompense is still there. Chengguan follows the same road, saying, “yet the Jin scripture points to her being in the city of Kapila, which displays that she is constant and does not perish.”

A layer further in: is Māyā after all real or an emanation? The houses have a saying in four clauses — real and not an emanation, an emanation and not real, both an emanation and real, neither an emanation nor real. Chengguan lays down his own judgment upon the four; see ‘Chengguan’s Explicit Judgment’ below. Fazang matches the four clauses one by one to the five teachings, and his judgment too is recorded there — the two houses matching them to differing marks of the teachings; recorded without judgment.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the four clauses for four positions among which one must choose. Chengguan cites four clauses in order to display that they all “carry skillful means.” Brought down to the ground: to ask ‘is this true or false’ is already to be standing inside the four clauses.

Chengguan’s Explicit Judgment

After the four clauses Chengguan lays down a judgment of his own. It is not a holding of the balance; it is the settled account of his house: “some say she is real and not an emanation, some that she is an emanation and not real, some that she is both an emanation and real, some that she is neither an emanation nor real — all of these carry skillful means. Speaking by the doctrine of this house, she is just the real virtue of the Dharma realm, person and dharma fused into roundness.” All four clauses are skillful means; none of them stops at the ultimate. That all four clauses carry skillful means means that each of the four answers some capacity and none of them reaches the ultimate. Speaking by the doctrine of this house, Māyā is just the real virtue of the Dharma realm — and “person and dharma fused into roundness”: she is at once a person and a gate of the Dharma, and the two are not divided. To go on asking whether she is real or false is no longer to ask about the Māyā this house is speaking of. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle text, judges as well: having matched the four clauses to the five teachings, “within the perfect teaching they are all the real virtue of the Dharma realm” — coming to rest alike in the real virtue of the perfect teaching, only the marks of the teachings he matches differ from Chengguan’s.

Before He Has Seen Her, Eighteen Layers of Contemplation Arise

This section does not open with walking; it opens with thinking. Sudhana “wished with one mind to go on to the place of Lady Māyā,” and at that very moment gained the knowledge of contemplating the objective realm of the buddhas, and then a long string of contemplations arose: this good friend “has left the world far behind, abides in what has no dwelling place, has passed beyond the six sense-fields, has left every attachment,” and her body then is a body born according to her wish, a body without arising or ceasing, a body without coming or going — on to “a body that is neither body nor mind.” And it closes with one clause: “only Samantabhadra’s pure eye beholds it.”

Why should so much thinking come before he has even seen her? Chengguan divides this passage into two, saying “first, calling to mind her surpassing virtue in general, which already tallies unawares with the gate of the illusion of vow and knowledge,” and then “calling to mind severally seventeen bodies, seen only by the universal eye, which tallies in the dark with what the Queen of the Gods displays in the text below” — the thought raised first has already tallied, unawares, with her Dharma gate; and the bodies called to mind after answer precisely to the bodies displayed in the text below. The bodies listed in the base text, counted one by one, come to eighteen; Chengguan, outlining the “calling to mind severally,” counts from “born according to her wish” and so makes seventeen; Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, has “the calling to mind of her body severally has nineteen kinds”; the three numbers are each fastened to their own witness, and are recorded without judgment.

These seventeen bodies are no idle calling to mind. The Yanyi chao matches them one by one against the forty bodies displayed in the text below: the body born according to her wish is the general, displaying in general that she is born according to her vow; the body without arising or ceasing answers to the two form-bodies below, the one that does not arise and the one that does not cease; the body without coming or going answers to the two, the one that does not go and the one that does not come; the body neither empty nor real answers to the two, the one that is not real and the one that is not empty; the body that does not change or perish answers to the form-body that does not perish; the body without rising or exhausting answers to two, the one that does not arise and the one that ever displays itself — and these two clauses “are both set forth by the nature and glossed by the mark,” unlike the foregoing, which spoke throughout of the absence of arising and ceasing; the body in which all marks are one mark answers to the form-body of one mark; the body that has left the two extremes runs through the whole list, and if matched severally answers to the form-body of the Dharma nature and the form-body of great compassion, the upper leaving the extreme of existence and the lower the extreme of emptiness — that is, having knowledge one does not abide in birth and death, and having compassion one does not abide in nirvāṇa; the body with no place of support answers to the form-body with no place; the body without end answers to the form-body that is inexhaustible; the body that has left the many discriminations and appears as a shadow answers to the form-body without discrimination and the form-body as a shadow; the body known as a dream answers to the form-body as a dream; the body penetrated as an image answers to the form-body that appears facing all universally; the body as a pure sun answers to the form-body that is pure; the body that transforms and appears everywhere in the ten directions answers to the form-body that transforms into all; the body unchanging throughout the three times answers to the form-body that does not move; and the body that is neither body nor mind answers to the denial of the five aggregates at the last, displaying the body throughout.

So the bodies called to mind and the bodies seen are one and the same set. This passage is no mere spreading out: it says that what one can call to mind is the measure of what one will see.

A misreading to be set aside: that this is Sudhana advertising the good friend. It is not. It is his tuning of his own eye — one cannot see what one cannot call to mind at that height. Brought down to the ground: what a man is able to see depends first on what arises in his mind before he sets out.

The Principal One Has Not Appeared, and Three Companion Friends Come Forth First

Māyā has not yet displayed herself, and three come first. The first is the presiding spirit of the city Jewel Eye, “with his retinue circling him, who displayed his body within open space,” who takes jewelled blossoms in his hand and scatters them upon Sudhana, and then opens his mouth and teaches the city of the mind.

Chengguan outlines these three together as the guidance by surpassing conditions, and fastens the office of each: “first, the spirit of the city, teaching openly the cultivation of the mind; next, the spirits of the bodily host, secretly adding and conferring the Dharma; third, the rākṣasa of the Dharma hall, teaching the way of seeking friends.” Zhiyan sets up another track, saying “the first sets forth the dharma that is known; the next sets forth the knowledge that knows; the third sets forth the mark of skillful means” — the two houses dividing differently, recorded without judgment.

A misreading must be set aside: to take these three for supporting figures who may be read past quickly. Chengguan, upon the passage of the spirit of the city, lays down a saying that is exactly the reverse — “just because it is a spirit of a city who by words of teaching bids him guard the city of the mind, it is known that there is not one thing that is not a gate of the Dharma.” If even the spirit who guards a city is expounding the Dharma, then there is not one matter that is not a gate of the Dharma. Brought down to the ground: the people met before seeing a great good friend are often not an interlude but a preparation.

The Thirty Gates of the City of the Mind: Why the Mind Is Called a City

The thirty gates the spirit of the city teaches run, clause after clause, ‘you should do such and such to the city of the mind.’ Why is the mind called a city? Chengguan answers with the utmost brevity: “that the mind is named a city is because within it is the Dharma-king of right awakening, and the myriad virtues are gathered there.” What makes a city a city is that there is a lord within and a guard without. Within the mind is the Dharma-king of right awakening, and therefore it must be guarded.

The thirty gates do not lie flat side by side; Chengguan divides them into three passages: the first twelve gates “make clear the practice of the ten perfections, the first and the last joining two together and the eight in the middle taking one apiece”; the eleven clauses in the middle “are the ten surpassing practices of the dharmas that cleanse the ground in the first ground,” and he says “the wording is somewhat out of order, yet the number is entirely complete” — the sequence is not tidy, yet the number is whole; the last seven clauses are “merit and knowledge brought to fullness: the first two are merit and the last five are knowledge. Within the knowledge, the first three are provisional and the last two are real.” Twelve and eleven and seven is exactly the base text’s number of thirty.

Each of the three passages has its own meaning. The first twelve gates are the practice of the ten perfections, and each gate is fastened to its own matter: guarding is not craving any realm of birth and death; adorning is single-mindedly seeking the Tathāgata’s ten powers; cleansing is cutting off utterly stinginess, envy, flattery and deceit; cooling is pondering the real nature of all dharmas; making grow is accomplishing all the dharmas that aid the path; ornamenting is building the palaces of the dhyānas and liberations; making shine is entering every buddha’s place of the Way to hear and receive prajñā; increasing is gathering in all the buddhas’ paths of skillful means; making firm is ever diligently cultivating Samantabhadra’s practices and vows; defending is ever guarding against evil friends and the armies of Māra; opening wide is opening and drawing in the light of all the buddhas’ knowledge; mending well is hearing and receiving all that the buddhas teach — twelve gates speaking ten perfections because “the first and the last join two together and the eight in the middle take one apiece”: the first two gates together set forth one perfection, the last two gates together set forth one, and the eight in the middle set forth one apiece — twelve gates, ten perfections. The eleven clauses in the middle are the first ground’s “ten surpassing practices of the dharmas that cleanse the ground,” and Chengguan names them clause by clause: first faith; second kindness; third firmness; fourth compassion; fifth relinquishing; sixth and seventh both shame and conscience, “because they do not harbor evil”; eighth freedom from weariness; ninth practicing as one has spoken; tenth knowing the scriptures and treatises; eleventh accomplishing worldly knowledge and thereby “able to make beings understand universally” — eleven names, ten dharmas, which is why he says “the wording is somewhat out of order, yet the number is entirely complete”: the sequence of the scripture text is untidy and its words are spare, and yet not one of the ten surpassing practices is missing. The last seven clauses are merit and knowledge brought to fullness, “the first two are merit and the last five are knowledge,” and within the knowledge again “the first three are provisional and the last two are real” — provisional first and real after, not two knowledges but the function and the essence of one.

Why those eleven clauses are ten surpassing practices the Yanyi chao proves by citing the original text of 〈十地品〉: “Sons of the Buddha! A bodhisattva who thus accomplishes the ten dharmas that cleanse the ground — which is to say faith, compassion, kindness, relinquishing, freedom from weariness, knowing the scriptures and treatises, understanding worldly dharmas well, shame and conscience, firmness and strength, making offerings to the buddhas, and practicing in accord with the teaching.” And it then glosses the number itself: “the making of offerings to the buddhas and the practicing in accord with the teaching are simply the one practice of practicing as one has spoken” — so eleven clauses come to ten practices, and the scripture text has not one kind too many.

Here is one thing that must be made plain: the sixty-fascicle witness has only twenty-four gates in this passage, and Fazang and Zhiyan both, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, make the number twenty-four. The number of gates in the two witnesses differs, each following its own witness; recorded without judgment.

Brought down to the ground: in reading these thirty gates one should look at the movement of their three passages — first the practice of the ten perfections, next the practice of cleansing the ground, last the two adornments of merit and knowledge. Guarding a city is not merely to fend off; it is to go on strengthening it until there is something there to guard.

After the City of the Mind Is Purely Cultivated: Five Kinds of Hindrance Are Cleared Away

When the thirty gates have been spoken, the spirit of the city gives a conclusion. He says that if a bodhisattva is able to cleanse and cultivate the city of the mind in this way, “then he is able to gather all good dharmas,” and he asks himself why this is, and answers himself that it is “because he has cleared away every kind of hindrance,” and then lists five hindrances: the hindrance to seeing the buddhas, the hindrance to hearing the Dharma, the hindrance to making offerings to the Tathāgata, the hindrance to gathering in beings, the hindrance to purifying buddha-lands.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the cultivation of the mind for a cultivation by addition — the piling up of a little more good. What the scripture text speaks of here is subtraction first: clear away the five hindrances, and good dharmas gather of themselves. And the order of the five hindrances is not arbitrary either — seeing the buddhas, hearing the Dharma, making offerings, gathering in beings, purifying lands — this is precisely a movement from what one receives for oneself to what one gives to others.

The last clause deserves still more notice: “if he raises up a mind that seeks and longs for good friends, then without expending effort he straightway comes to see them.” Once the hindrances are cleared, the seeing of a good friend becomes a thing that costs no effort. Brought down to the ground: if seeking a good friend is very laborious, most likely it is not that good friends are hard to meet, but that the hindrances are still there.

The Spirits of the Bodily Host Send Forth Light, and Sudhana Gains Ten Eyes

The second of the companion friends is the spirits of the bodily host Lotus Blossom Dharma Virtue and Wondrous Blossom Light. What they do is not to expound the Dharma but to praise and to send forth light — they “praised Lady Māyā in every manner,” and again “from their ear-pendants sent forth nets of light of measureless colors and marks.” This light shines universally upon boundless buddha-worlds and makes Sudhana see all the buddhas of the ten directions, then circles the world once to the right, comes back and enters the crown of Sudhana’s head, and spreads on into all his pores.

The benefit gained is the ten eyes: the eye of pure light, the eye free of film, the eye free of stain, the eye of pure wisdom, the eye of Vairocana, the eye of universal light, the eye of unobstructed light, the eye of universal shining, the eye of the universal objective realm, the eye of universal seeing. Chengguan judges this passage in three, saying “first, praising the friend so as to make him glad,” next the sending forth of light and the adding of its power, last “Sudhana gains the benefit, which is to say the ten eyes.” Upon two clauses within it he gives a separate gloss: “as to the words the inconceivable body, it is because the ten bodies are unobstructed. As to the buddhas being even, it is because buddha and buddha are the same.”

The ten eyes are not ten spiritual powers; they are one thing seen along ten directions, and the scripture text fastens a reason to each: the eye of pure light leaves “all the darkness of delusion”; the eye free of film penetrates “the natures of all beings”; the eye free of stain contemplates “the gates of the nature of all dharmas”; the eye of pure wisdom contemplates “the natures of all buddha-lands”; the eye of Vairocana sees the “Dharma body” of the Buddha; the eye of universal light sees the “body even with the buddhas and inconceivable”; the eye of unobstructed light observes “the forming and breaking of all the seas of lands”; the eye of universal shining sees the buddhas “raising up great skillful means and turning the true wheel of the Dharma”; the eye of the universal objective realm sees measureless buddhas “taming beings by their sovereign power”; and the eye of universal seeing beholds “the buddhas of all lands appearing in the world.” The order of the ten runs from darkness to nature, from nature to lands, from lands to buddhas, from buddhas to what the buddhas do — pushing outward all the way, and coming to rest at the last on the two graphs for appearing in the world: only when one can see where a buddha appears is the eye open.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the sending forth of light for a marvel. What matters in this passage is that the light is sent forth from the ear-pendants and the benefit gained is in the eyes — the light comes out from the place of praising, and the benefit is gathered in at the place of seeing. Brought down to the ground: only after someone has praised that person well into your hearing are you able to see him.

The Rākṣasa Who Guards the Dharma Hall: Why It Falls to Him to Teach the Way of Seeking Friends

The third companion friend is of a particular kind: he is a rākṣasa ghost king named Good Eye, “together with his retinue of ten thousand rākṣasas,” and he too scatters blossoms and expounds the Dharma. In the world a rākṣasa is of a fearsome sort, and yet the office the scripture text gives him is to “guard the bodhisattva Dharma hall.”

At the end of this passage Chengguan turns back and glosses this office of his, saying “to be able to practice in this way is to guard the hall of the true Dharma” — that is to say, what the rākṣasa guards is not a building but that road on which a practitioner seeks friends.

A misreading must be set aside: to think that one of a fearsome sort cannot be a teaching master. The scripture text here uses precisely him to teach the weightiest passage of all — how to seek a good friend. Brought down to the ground: the one who teaches you how to find a teacher need not look like a teacher.

The Ten Dharmas for Drawing Near to Good Friends: Yet the Gloss Has Eleven Minds

The rākṣasa first teaches ten dharmas. Chengguan judges this passage of his to be “first the teaching of the ten dharmas to increase his knowledge, after the displaying of the samādhis to still his confusion, each having a setting forth, a gloss, and a conclusion” — the ten dharmas curing the insufficiency of knowledge, and the ten samādhis after them curing the confusion of the mind.

Within the ten dharmas Chengguan counts out eleven minds: “first, the straight; second, compassion; third, knowledge; fourth, vigor; fifth, faith; sixth, depth; seventh, kindness; eighth, purity; ninth, benefit; tenth, skill; eleventh, constancy.” What is set forth is ten and what is glossed is eleven — and this is no error: the second clause of the scripture text, “his great compassion is even, and he takes in beings universally, knowing that beings have no reality,” itself holds the two meanings of compassion and knowledge.

The eleven minds answer clause by clause to the scripture text. The straight mind: the text has “his mind is pure and has left the many flatteries and deceits” — neither flattering nor deceiving, the mind is straight. Compassion and knowledge both come out of the second clause: to take in beings is compassion, to know that they have no reality is knowledge. Vigor: the text has “he goes toward all-knowledge with a mind that does not turn back” — to go and not turn back is vigor. Faith: the text has “by the power of faith and understanding he enters universally into all the places of the Way of the buddhas.” Depth: the text has “he gains the eye of pure wisdom and penetrates the nature of dharmas” — to penetrate the nature is depth. Kindness: the text has “his great kindness is even and covers beings universally.” Purity: the text has “with the light of knowledge he clears away the many false objective realms” — when the false realms are cleared the mind is pure. Benefit: the text has “with the rain of sweet dew he washes away the fever of birth and death” — to wash away the fever is to benefit others. Skill: the text has “with a broad eye he sees through all dharmas” — only what is seen through can be used skillfully. Constancy: the text has “his mind ever accords with the good friends,” and the very graph for ever is the name of the last mind. The eleven minds are not eleven separate things; they are one line: the mind is first straight, then compassion and knowledge rise together, then there is vigor and faith, then depth, kindness, purity, benefit and skill, and at the last it comes to rest in an accord that is never broken.

A misreading to be set aside: to think that drawing near to a good friend depends upon diligent running about and abundant offerings. The first clause of these ten dharmas is “his mind is pure and has left the many flatteries and deceits” — first, do not flatter. Flattery and deceit are exactly the two minds that most readily arise when one seeks the Dharma: one wishes to be thought well of, and so one’s speech is bent out of shape. Brought down to the ground: whether or not you can draw near to a good friend depends mostly on whether you have been making yourself out to be another man in his presence.

The Ten Gates of Samādhi: Neither Casting Away nor Lessening Any Objective Realm

Among the ten samādhis Chengguan singles out one gate for a long gloss, namely “the samādhi of neither casting away nor lessening any objective realm.” He displays it by three contrasts: “the common man is stained by the objective realm, the two vehicles cast the objective realm away, and the provisional teaching, even where it contemplates, sets emptiness and existence forth by turns — all of these are a lessening. As for one who cultivates perfectly, whatever meets his eye and faces him as an objective realm he exhausts to the source of dharmas, since he neither grasps nor casts away.” The common man sticks to objective realms, the two vehicles throw them away, the provisional teaching speaks emptiness and existence by turns — all three count as “a lessening.”

He cites a scripture besides as his ground, bringing forward a clause of the Yangjue jing: “as for the Great Vehicle, it is to say that that eye-faculty sees, clearly and distinctly, the permanence of all the Tathāgatas, complete in a cultivation with nothing lessened.” The eye-faculty is itself the Great Vehicle; there is no need to exchange it for another.

Counted one by one, the ten gates fall into two passages. The first five are the objective realm contemplated: “the samādhi of the pure wheel of the emptiness of dharmas” contemplates the emptiness of dharmas so that the wheel contemplated is pure; “the samādhi of contemplating the seas of the ten directions” contemplates the breadth of the seas of lands; “the samādhi of neither casting away nor lessening any objective realm” is the one gate glossed at length above; “the samādhi of universally seeing all buddhas appear in the world” turns from the objective realm to the buddhas’ appearing; “the samādhi of gathering the treasury of all merit and virtue” gathers what the first four have gained and makes a treasury of it. The last five are fastened, every one, to the good friends, and each has its own measure: “the samādhi in which the mind never casts away the good friends” is the mind not letting go; “the samādhi of ever seeing all good friends give birth to the merits of the buddhas” is seeing the virtue they give birth to and not merely their persons; “the samādhi of never being apart from any good friend” is the body not departing; “the samādhi of ever making offerings to all good friends” is serving them with practice; “the samādhi of being without fault toward any good friend” is not giving rise to fault there — not that one never errs, but that toward a good friend no thought of blame arises. And at the last one gate is brought out besides, “the samādhi of the good friend turning the wheel of the Dharma of all buddhas,” which is to hear the Dharma turned from a good friend. Having gained this samādhi, one “knows utterly that the natures of the buddhas are even, and everywhere meets with the good friends.” Brought down to the ground: to meet friends everywhere is not good luck; it is that the eye which neither grasps nor casts away has been trained through. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle text, gives three further reasons: only by entering samādhi does one know the even Dharma body of buddhas and bodhisattvas; only relying on samādhi does one get to see the buddhas and bodhisattvas; and Māyā is herself the objective realm of samādhi — the third reason is the most pressing: the good friend sought is not outside samādhi, and so to seek her one must first enter it.

Sudhana’s Question: Not a Question About the Dharma, but About How to Go and Find

When the rākṣasa has finished, Sudhana “raised his head, looked up into the sky, and answered him,” first praising, “it is good, it is good,” then stating the reason for his praise — “because you take pity on me and gather me in, you have by skillful means taught me to see good friends” — and only then asking.

The two clauses he asks are well worth looking at: “how am I to go on to the place of a good friend? In what quarter, in what city or town, am I to seek good friends?” One clause asks the method, one asks the place. A man who has already walked past forty-one friends is still asking these two most elementary clauses.

A misreading to be set aside: to think that at the later stages of study one need no longer ask ‘how do I find them.’ The order of the scripture text is the reverse — the further on it goes, the more plainly this question is asked. Brought down to the ground: to speak the question ‘where do I go to find one’ out loud is proof that one is still on the road; the man who feels there is no need to ask has usually stopped.

The Four Ways of Seeking the Rākṣasa Answers: The Question Was About a Place, and the Answer Is About the Mind

The rākṣasa’s answer is very short — four clauses, each of them closing with “seek good friends”: pay reverence universally to the ten directions and seek; hold in right mindfulness and ponder every objective realm and seek; with courage and at ease roam through the ten directions and seek; contemplate the body and the mind as a dream and a shadow and seek.

Chengguan fastens the reason to each clause in turn: “there are four dharmas: first, because there is nowhere the friend is not; second, because the Dharma is taken as the essence; third, because the body is as all-pervading as the friend; fourth, because knowledge joins with the objective realm, as a dream and as a shadow.” And he divides the four clauses into two passages besides: “further, the first three are the leaving of the marks of the objective realm, and the fourth is the leaving of the marks that the mind takes as its conditions. Let those who seek good friends be so good as to ponder these words.” The first three break the outward mark; the fourth breaks the inward condition.

A misreading to be set aside: Sudhana asked ‘in what city or town,’ and not one clause of the answer names a place. This is not a failure to answer the question asked — the first clause, “because there is nowhere the friend is not,” answers the question of place exactly: everywhere. Brought down to the ground: when one asks the road far enough, the answer is often a tuning of the one who asks.

The Dependent Recompense He Sees: The Lotus Blossom, the Storeyed Pavilion, the Jewelled Seat

Sudhana receives and carries out the teaching, and at once sees three layers of the dependent recompense. First, a great jewelled lotus blossom wells up from the ground, with vajra for its stalk and maṇi for its leaves; next, upon the blossom-terrace, a storeyed pavilion named Treasury That Universally Takes In the Dharma Realm of the Ten Directions, a thousand pillars ranged in rows; and next, within the pavilion, a seat of wish-fulfilling jewelled lotus blossoms.

Each of the three layers has something it sets forth, and Chengguan sets up a gloss for each in turn. The lotus blossom is “the first makes clear the lotus blossom, the Dharma realm that is realized. Its own nature is unstained, and so it is called a lotus blossom. Since ignorance has opened out, and it is not apart from within the mind, it is as though it welled up from the ground”; the storeyed pavilion is “the two knowledges, provisional and real, which are what realizes, appearing again in layers in dependence upon what is realized. Knowledge wraps all with nothing outside it, and so it says universally takes in the ten directions. It gathers up altogether the own portion and the advancing beyond of the five stations, and so it says a thousand pillars ranged in rows”; the jewelled seat then is “the essence of knowledge is of itself empty, and so it says that within the pavilion there is a seat. Emptiness is complete in the virtues of its nature, and so the adornments are displayed at large.”

And as to why Sudhana is able to see at this moment, Chengguan fastens it to the three friends before: “near at hand it takes up the words of the rākṣasa, and far off it runs through the three surpassing friends before … it is just because of the tempering by those three that he was able to behold this surpassing recompense.” Brought down to the ground: the surpassing thing seen is not given suddenly; it was tempered out of him all along by the three who came before.

The Forty Bodies: How Can One Person Have Forty Kinds of Body

As soon as the direct recompense appears, the scripture text lists forty bodies, clause after clause of one pattern: ‘such and such a form-body, because of such and such’ — the first half the name, the second half the reason. A form-body that passes beyond the three realms, a form-body following upon what the mind delights in, a form-body universally spread everywhere — on to a form-body that is pure. The forty need not be learned by heart one by one; they may be read in groups. Of the first six (passing beyond the three realms, following upon what the mind delights in, universally spread everywhere, without equal or comparison, of measureless kinds, of boundless marks), the first two are named by going forth — passing beyond the three realms because it has gone out from all the destinies of existence, following upon what the mind delights in because in all the world it is attached to nothing — and the latter four are named by the capacities they answer, so that their reasons run “because it is equal to the number of all beings,” “because it appears in every kind according to the minds of beings.” The next seven (appearing facing all universally, transforming into all, ever displaying itself, not going, not coming, not arising, not ceasing) speak of appearing and not appearing — appearing with “nothing that it brings to an end” and “nothing that it puts forth,” so that to appear is not to come and to withdraw is not to go. The next six (not real, not empty, not moving, not perishing, without mark, of one mark) put nature and mark alike to rest: “because it gains what is real” keeps it from falling into the empty, “because it appears according to the world” keeps it from falling into the real. The next five (as an image, as an illusion, as a flame, as a shadow, as a dream) display by five similes that it appears and yet has no own-nature, and each has its own reason: as an image because it appears in answer to the mind, as an illusion because it is born of illusion-knowledge, as a flame because it is held only by conception, as a shadow because it appears and is born according to vows, as a dream because it appears according to the mind — image and dream both fastened to the mind, illusion to knowledge, flame to conception, shadow to vow. The next ten (the Dharma realm, great compassion, unobstructed, boundless, measureless, without abiding, without place, without birth, unsurpassed, as it really is) are named by pervading and by compassion, and their eyes are “because in thought after thought it spreads everywhere through the Dharma realm” and “because it ever guards beings.” The last six (not arising — because it appears according to the deeds of beings — the wish-fulfilling jewel, without discrimination, having left discrimination, inexhaustible, pure) come to rest in deeds, in the fulfilling of wishes, and in the absence of discrimination. Six groups make forty, and they are what the three kinds Chengguan divides — matter, principle, and the two penetrating each other — rest upon.

Chengguan divides them into three kinds: “some are taken only upon matter, as the universally spread form-body; some only upon principle, as the twelfth and thirteenth, the bodies that do not arise and do not cease, since there is fundamentally no arising, and ceasing likewise is not a ceasing”; and the third kind then “have matter and principle penetrating each other, as the thirty-second and thirty-fifth, the form-bodies without birth and not born, since matter displays principle.” He brings out besides the way of reading that penetration — “without birth” being taken as made by her own vow, “not born” as appearing in accord with others; the birth is the not-being-born.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the forty bodies for forty separate bodies standing apart and replacing one another. What the scripture text speaks of is a Dharma body that is not divided and yet displays bodies in answer — “a form-body of measureless kinds, because it appears in every kind according to the minds of beings,” “a form-body that appears facing all universally, because it displays itself with great sovereignty,” “a form-body that transforms into all, because it appears before beings according to what suits them.” The appearing is a real appearing, and what appears does not turn from one body into another. Brought down to the ground: what enables one to answer forty kinds of capacity without splitting into forty persons is not a dividing of the body, but the not setting up of that ‘body of mine.’

The Denial of the Five Aggregates: Why, After the Forty Bodies, There Must Be a Round of Negation

When the forty bodies have been listed, the scripture text closes with no affirming clause but with five clauses of negation: it is not form, not feeling, not perception, not formation, it has left consciousness. And every clause is given its reason as well — not form because “all form-marks are as reflected images,” not feeling because “the painful feelings of the world are utterly stilled,” not perception because “it appears only according to the perceptions of beings,” not formation because “it is accomplished in reliance upon deeds that are as an illusion,” having left consciousness because “the vow-knowledge of a bodhisattva is empty and without own-nature.”

Chengguan judges this passage to be “making clear the body throughout, which is to say that it has left the appropriating aggregates.” The forty clauses before display the particular marks; these five clauses display the body throughout.

A misreading to be set aside: to think that having spoken of forty bodies and then saying not form and not feeling is a self-contradiction. One must see clearly what is being denied — what is denied is the “appropriating aggregates,” not the displaying of a body. Brought down to the ground: only when one can display measureless bodies and yet not fall into a single ‘body of mine’ is it called the illusion of great vow and knowledge.

According to What the Minds of Beings Delight In: First the Bodies of Goddesses Are Displayed

After the forty bodies the scripture text opens another passage, saying that Sudhana “saw further that Lady Māyā, according to what the minds of the many beings loved and delighted in, displayed form-bodies passing beyond all the world.” What is displayed goes first from above downward: “she displayed a body passing beyond that of a goddess of the Heaven of Free Enjoyment of Others’ Emanations, and on to a body passing beyond that of a goddess of the heavens of the four great god-kings” — the goddesses of the six heavens of the desire realm, layer by layer descending.

Chengguan judges this passage to be “making clear the surpassing body of one kind, taken as being of women only” — the forty bodies being the myriad kinds hard to conceive, while this passage takes the one kind of a woman’s body alone. Why display a woman’s body alone? Because what is set forth at this station is “mother,” and the meaning of mother can be displayed only upon a woman’s body.

A misreading to be set aside: since forty bodies have already been displayed, why list one kind again? The former passage displays the pervading; this passage displays the answering — the pervading is spoken of upon herself, the answering upon what beings delight in. Brought down to the ground: a true universality must come down into the one particular shape that some one person needs.

According to What the Minds of Beings Delight In: Down to Dragon Women and Human Women

The next clause continues the descent: “or she displayed a body passing beyond that of a dragon woman, and on to a body passing beyond that of a human woman,” closing at the last with “and she displayed measureless form-bodies such as these, benefiting beings.” From a goddess of Free Enjoyment of Others’ Emanations, through the goddesses of the four god-kings’ heavens and the dragon women, all the way down to human women — the lower what is displayed, the broader the capacities to which it answers.

One graph deserves notice: every clause runs “passing beyond.” A body passing beyond that of a goddess of Free Enjoyment of Others’ Emanations is not a display of a goddess; it is the display of a body that passes beyond that rank. The scripture text uses “passing beyond” and not “becoming,” precisely to guard against reading it as “turning into.”

A misreading to be set aside: to think that descending to a human woman is a stooping. The intent of the scripture text is in the benefiting — the four graphs “benefiting beings” are the resting place of this whole passage. Brought down to the ground: to be able to go up is not the hard part; to be willing to go down without losing the “passing beyond” is what is hard in this passage.

The Virtues Māyā Has Practiced: The Ten Perfections Practiced Together, with Vigor Before Forbearance

After the surpassing body comes a long passage of the working of her practice — gathering all the dharmas that aid the path of all-knowledge, practicing the even perfection of giving, with great compassion covering and guarding all the world, on to the last clause, “wishes to be the mother of all bodhisattvas.”

Chengguan judges this passage to be the practice of the ten perfections, and points out one difference in its order: “first it makes clear the practice of the ten perfections; only vigor stands before forbearance, and the rest are all in their order.” Chengguan matches the ten perfections clause by clause: the first makes clear giving; next, from “brings forth” onward, discipline (“because discipline is able to make things grow”); third, from “cultivates” onward, vigor; fourth, from “contemplates” onward, forbearance; fifth, from “complete in the many” onward, meditation; sixth, from “ever turns” onward, wisdom; seventh, from “sees the Tathāgatas” onward, skillful means; eighth, from “accomplishes the great vow” onward, vow; ninth, from “his mind ever enters everywhere” onward, power; tenth, from “gains the light of a buddha’s knowledge” onward, knowledge — the ten perfections being giving, discipline, forbearance, vigor, meditation, wisdom, skillful means, vow, power, and knowledge, four more standing after the first six; and the one difference of this passage lies in a single place: vigor is lifted ahead of forbearance, and all the rest “are in their order.” And he judges the last passage to be “making clear the practice of the two adornments. That she has not yet become a buddha-mother is because this is her original practice” — the last section being the two adornments of merit and knowledge, the original practice of a time before she was a buddha-mother.

A misreading to be set aside: to take “buddha-mother” for a rank. What this passage gives is a record of service: the ten perfections practiced together, the two adornments complete, and only then that “vow” of the last clause. Brought down to the ground: to be a mother is not a title; it is first to have practiced through everything that ought to be practiced.

Sudhana Displays That Many Bodies: He Answers What He Saw with His Body

Having seen so much, Sudhana does not speak first. He first, according to the number of bodies Māyā displayed, “likewise displayed just that many bodies,” bowing in reverence in every place, and at that moment realizing measureless and numberless gates of samādhi; and only then does he rise from samādhi, circle her to the right, and join his palms.

Chengguan glosses this as “the paying of respect: since his own way is already deep, he displays bodies equal to hers. The two above are both abiding in the essence and answering everywhere” — that he is able to display bodies of equal number is because his own way is already deep. The Yanyi chao divides this further into the same essence and differing essences, saying that Māyā’s answering differently to the myriad kinds is the many within differing essences, that Sudhana’s bodies of one kind facing Māyā everywhere is the many within the same essence, and that “in the meaning of abiding in the essence and answering everywhere there is no difference between them.”

A misreading to be set aside: to take the bowing for a piece of etiquette. The bowing here is an answer — by the very act of displaying bodies he proves that he has understood what he saw. Brought down to the ground: reverence toward a person that stops at the gesture is politeness; only when the same thing grows out of one’s own body is it reverence.

Sudhana’s Inquiry: Why Mañjuśrī Is Still Mentioned

The question itself is very ordinary: “the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī taught me to raise the mind of anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi, to seek good friends, and to draw near to them and make offerings to them,” and then “I pray you speak for me: how is a bodhisattva to learn the bodhisattva practices and be able to bring them to accomplishment?” What is remarkable is this — having already walked past forty-one friends (counting from the first meeting with Mañjuśrī; forty counting forward from Cloud of Virtue), why does he still open with Mañjuśrī?

Chengguan gives two glosses: “if taken by equal awakening, it is because the station of cause is at its utmost; if taken by the gathering of conditions, then from the first raising of the mind each and every good friend is a condition that is gathered, and they enter alike into this comparison.” The first gloss speaks by the station, the second by the gathering of conditions — from the first raising of the mind every friend is a condition that is gathered, and so to mention the very first is to lift up the whole road at once.

A misreading to be set aside: to take this for a set phrase. Brought down to the ground: that a man who has walked very far still remembers who set him on the road — that clause is itself the very shape of the two graphs “gathering the conditions.”

The Liberation Gate of the Illusion of Great Vow and Knowledge: Four Graphs, Which Chengguan Takes Apart into Two Meanings and Two Meanings Again

Māyā, opening her mouth, sets forth the name and the essence at once: “I have already accomplished the bodhisattva liberation gate of the illusion of great vow and knowledge, and therefore I am ever the mother of the bodhisattvas.” Four graphs, and Chengguan takes them apart graph by graph.

“Great” has two meanings: “first, the vow is great, since she vows to be the mother of all buddhas; second, the knowledge is great.” Knowledge again has two: “first, provisional knowledge, which is able to raise the great vow and able to accomplish the affairs of illusion; second, real knowledge, which is just wisdom, giving birth to the true body of a buddha.” “Illusion” too has two: first, “that vow and knowledge are empty in essence and are named illusion just as they stand”; second, “the meaning of giving birth to a buddha, which is done by knowledge: that is, in her own body, not destroying the small and yet holding broadly; and in the buddha-body, without arising and yet appearing to arise.” And he gathers it all up at the last in one clause: “further, the vow gathers up Samantabhadra and the knowledge gathers up Mañjuśrī; both enter the great illusion, both alike are wisdom, and it is likewise named the buddha-mother.”

Fazang, glossing these four graphs upon the sixty-fascicle witness, fastens them somewhat differently and comes to the same place: “great vow means the power of a vow of old, by which birth after birth she is ever a buddha-mother” — the great vow is the force of a vow made long ago, and so birth after birth she is a mother; “great knowledge means that wisdom is the mother” — wisdom itself is the buddha-mother; “illusion is the meaning of giving birth to a buddha, done by vow and knowledge: that is, in her own body, not destroying the small and yet holding broadly; and in the buddha-body, in reality without birth and yet appearing to be born.” He records besides that the Indian witness he saw reads “I abide in the bodhisattva liberation named the adornment of the illusion of great vow and knowledge,” the same form as the name in the forty-fascicle witness.

A misreading to be set aside: to take “illusion” to mean that she is false. The illusion Chengguan glosses has two faces — emptiness of essence is one face, and the power to give birth to a buddha is the other. Brought down to the ground: illusion is not uselessness; illusion is to be able to do and yet to leave nothing behind.

Light Sent Forth from the Pores: The Sign That Precedes the Taking of Birth

At the beginning of her direct account Māyā does not begin from the entering of the womb; she speaks first of a passage of light. When the bodhisattva was about to come down to be born, she “saw that from each and every pore of the bodhisattva’s body there was sent forth light,” the light named the Wheel of the Merit and Virtue of the Taking of Birth of All Tathāgatas, and within each and every pore there appeared the adornments of the taking of birth as many as the dust motes of unspeakable buddha-lands; and after the light had shone upon all worlds it came back and entered her crown and her pores.

What appears within the light is a whole life of a buddha — the names, the spiritual transformations of the taking of birth, the palaces and retinues, the taking of pleasure in the five desires; then the going forth from the household, the going on to the place of the Way, the accomplishing of right awakening, the sitting upon the lion seat, the turning of the wheel of the Dharma; and then further back to the cultivating of the bodhisattva way in ages past, and at the last the entering of parinirvāṇa. Chengguan judges this to be “the light from the pores as the preceding sign,” and divides it into five sections: the light enters the body, the light displays transformations, the eight aspects are seen, cause and fruit appear, the body is made hard to conceive.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the taking of birth for the beginning of an affair. What this passage displays is the reverse — before the taking of birth, the whole road has already appeared once within the light. Brought down to the ground: cause and fruit do not queue up one after the other; they are present at the same moment.

The Measure of the Body Equal to Space, While Its Form and Measure Do Not Exceed the Original

Next comes the hardest clause of this section: “the form and measure of my body, though they did not exceed what they originally were, yet in truth had already passed beyond the many worlds.” She sets herself the question why this is, and answers herself: “because at that time the measure of my body was equal to open space, since it was able utterly to take in and hold the many palaces of the adornments of the taking of birth of the bodhisattvas of the ten directions.”

The text below pushes it to the utmost — the bodhisattvas roam at ease within her belly, “taking now a three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system for a single step”; the places of all the Tathāgatas of the ten directions, the assemblies of bodhisattvas, the four god-kings’ heaven and the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, and on to the Brahmā kings of the form realm, all enter her body. And the closing clause is: “although within my belly I was able utterly to take in and hold assemblies such as these, yet my body was neither made vast nor pressed narrow.” Not made vast is not to swell with what is held; not pressed narrow is not to be crowded by what is held.

What appears in the passage of the entering of the womb is not spread out all at once; it is told one thing at a time. First, those who come together with him: bodhisattvas as many as the dust motes of ten buddha-lands who are with this bodhisattva “of the same vow, the same practice, the same roots of good, the same adornment, the same liberation, the same knowledge,” and on to “the grounds, the powers, the Dharma body, the form body” and “Samantabhadra’s spiritual penetrations, practices and vows, all of them alike and equal” — so the entering of the womb is not one person’s affair but the coming of a host of the same vow. Next, the offerings of the world-lords: “there were also eighty thousand dragon kings and the rest, all the lords of the world, who riding their palaces came together to make offerings.” Next, the place displayed: “he universally displayed all the Tuṣita palaces,” and within each palace “displayed the reflected images of the taking of birth within Jambudvīpa in all the worlds of the ten directions,” whose use lies in “teaching and converting measureless beings by skillful means, and causing the bodhisattvas to leave indolence behind and grasp at nothing” — the reflected images are teaching material, not a spectacle. Next, the use of the light: “by his spiritual power he sent forth great light, shining universally upon the world, breaking the many darknesses and stilling the many sufferings,” and the suffering stilled is not a moment’s: it is “causing all beings to recognize the deeds of their former lives and to leave the evil destinies forever” — the benefit of the light is that one comes to know one’s own past deeds. Last, the rescuing: “and further, in order to rescue and guard all beings, he appeared everywhere before them and worked the many spiritual transformations.” Only when these five — the same vow, the offerings, the place displayed, the light, the rescuing — have been told does the text come to the roaming within the belly and to the body neither made vast nor pressed narrow.

Brought down to the ground: this passage is not about the dimensions of spiritual power; it is about a manner of holding — one who can truly hold shows nothing on the outside of the holding.

I Am His Mother: First One Set of Four Continents, Then a Hundred Koṭis

The first of the workings is being the mother of the present Vairocana. The scripture text speaks first of the small: “as here within Jambudvīpa in these four continents, when the bodhisattva takes birth I am his mother”; then pushes on to the great: within Jambudvīpa in the hundred koṭis of sets of four continents of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system it is likewise so in every one. And then she heads off a question herself — would that not mean there are a great many Māyās?

She answers: “yet this body of mine is originally not two: it does not dwell in one place, nor does it dwell in many places,” and the reason for it, “because I have cultivated the liberation gate of the adornment of the illusion of great vow and knowledge of the bodhisattvas.” Upon these three clauses Chengguan lays down four turns of the phrase: “originally not two — because it answers to the one nature. It does not dwell in one place — because its essence is all-pervading. Nor does it dwell in many places — because it is not as the matter is”; and again “the upper clause is because it does not destroy the many, and the lower clause because it does not destroy the one”; and again principle is as matter and matter is as principle; and again one and many are mutually identical and mutually entering.

The Yanyi chao draws these four turns still finer. The first “takes it upon the essence alone in discriminating the twofold denial,” and so it says “because it is not as the matter is” — principle is of one taste and cannot be counted as many the way matters can. The second “speaks by not destroying nature and mark”: the upper clause does not destroy the mark, the lower does not destroy the nature. The third “speaks by matter and principle being as one another”: matter is as principle and principle as matter, which is matter and principle pervading each other. The fourth “speaks only by matters fusing into one another,” which is the unobstructedness of matter and matter. The four are not four answers but one retreat taken in four steps: back to the essence, then to nature and mark, then to matter and principle, and at the last not even matter and matter stand apart.

A misreading to be set aside: to take ‘neither one nor many’ for a refusal to answer straight. The four turns of the phrase are exactly four straight answers. Brought down to the ground: what enables a man to be in many places at once without being torn apart is not a dividing of the body, but the not setting up of that “place.”

In an Age Past I Was Once the Spirit of a Lotus Pool: Two Old Affairs

The second working is being the mother of the buddhas of the past, and what she cites are two very small old affairs. One is that she was once the spirit of a lotus pool, and a bodhisattva came suddenly to birth by transformation within the treasury of a lotus blossom, and she “took him up in her hands and looked after him and served him and reared him,” whereupon “all the world alike called me the mother of the bodhisattva.” The other is that she was once the spirit of a site of awakening, and a bodhisattva came suddenly to birth by transformation within her bosom, and the world too called her the mother of the bodhisattva.

One should see plainly what these two affairs have in common: both passages say plainly that a bodhisattva “came suddenly to birth by transformation,” and both say plainly that the world therefore called her the mother of the bodhisattva — birth by transformation and the calling her mother are what the two share. As for the clause “took him up in her hands and looked after him and served him and reared him,” the scripture text fastens it to the first affair alone, and the second affair does not tell that deed again. And the last clause spreads it further: “there are measureless bodhisattvas of the final body who by every kind of skillful means display the taking of birth within this world, and of them all I am the mother.”

A misreading to be set aside: to take being a buddha-mother for a rank in the fruit of recompense. What these two affairs display is a condition — a bodhisattva came to birth by transformation there, and she thereby gained the name of mother; and the first affair brings out her practice besides, for there the deed of taking up and rearing came first and the name came after. Brought down to the ground: all titles grow out in this way; those who reverse it and go seeking the name usually stop doing the deed.

The Mother of the Buddhas of the Worthy Kalpa: Why They Must Be Counted Off Name by Name

The third working is being the mother of the buddhas of the Worthy Kalpa. The scripture text first cites three buddhas of the past and the present World-Honored One — the buddha Krakucchanda, the buddha Kanakamuni, the buddha Kāśyapa, and the buddha Śākyamuni; then cites Maitreya who is to come, saying that when Maitreya descends in spirit from the Tuṣita heaven “I at that time shall likewise be his mother”; and then with “and so in order thereafter” draws out a long string of buddha-names, from the buddha Lion down to the buddha Most Honored Deva, listed name by name, closed at the last with “and so on to the Tathāgata Luzhi.”

Chengguan judges this passage to be “being the mother of the thousand buddhas of the Worthy Kalpa, the meaning running through the three times,” and beneath it there is a further section, “concluding that it runs through the horizontal and the vertical without end” — pushing on from this three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system to all the kalpas of the ten directions of the sea of worlds.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the long list of buddha-names for a spread that may be skipped. The scripture text might well have finished it off in one clause, and it chose instead to count them off name by name — what is called being a mother is reckoned one by one, not wrapped up in a single sentence. Brought down to the ground: whatever has really been done, when it is told, has names and surnames.

Great Holy One, How Long Has It Been Since You Gained This Liberation: The Question Is About Time, and the Answer Is a Former Life

Sudhana asks a very short clause: “how long has it now been since the Great Holy One gained this liberation?” Māyā does not answer with a number; she answers with a passage of a former life.

She begins from what is long past — beyond a number of kalpas inconceivable and “not to be known even by the eye of the supernormal path of a bodhisattva in the final body”; a kalpa named Pure Light; a world named Sumeru Virtue; within it a thousand koṭis of sets of four continents; one set of four continents named Lion Banner; within it eighty koṭis of royal cities; one city named Banner of Sovereignty; a wheel-turning king named Great Awesome Virtue; north of the city a place of the Way named Full Moon Light, and the spirit of that place named Kindness Virtue; a bodhisattva named Stainless Banner about to accomplish right awakening, and an evil Māra named Golden Light coming to trouble him; the wheel-turning king conjuring up armies manifold in number and circling the place of the Way, the Māras fleeing and scattering, and the bodhisattva accomplishing right awakening.

Upon the first clause of this passage Chengguan says: “as to the words not to be known by a bodhisattva of the final body, it displays that only a buddha knows it, and not merely that it is long ago; it displays also that time has no mark of time, and that the knowledge of a buddha tallies with it.” It is not merely that it is long; it is that “time has no mark of time.” Brought down to the ground: to be asked ‘how long ago’ and to answer with a story is precisely because the time of that affair was never a thing to be counted.

Was That Spirit of the Place of the Way Some Other Person: The Ancient and the Present Are Joined in One Clause

The former life comes to the point where the spirit of the place of the Way sees the Māras scattered and the buddha accomplished, and is “gladdened beyond measure, and toward that king she gave rise to the thought of a son,” and bows to the Buddha’s feet and makes a vow: that she may ever be his mother. Having made the vow she makes offerings besides to ten nayutas of buddhas. And then Māyā turns back with a question: “was that spirit of the place of the Way some other person? It is this body of mine. That wheel-turning king is the present World-Honored One Vairocana.”

Chengguan judges the order of the six sections of this passage, saying “third, the sage emperor aiding in the subduing, which sets forth that the king of knowledge aids the essence, since original awakening appears,” and again “fourth, the spirit of the place of the Way raising a vow: knowledge borrows kindness in order to rise, and so the spirit gives rise to the thought of a son,” and the last two sections then, “fifth, the concluding joining of the ancient and the present. Sixth, the being a mother spread universally.” And he divides “mother” further into two layers: “what came before was the mother at the time of birth, which is the vow-mother; here it makes clear the being a mother at the time of accomplishing the way, which is the knowledge-mother.” As for the passage in which the buddhas, when about to become buddhas, send forth light that shines upon her, he glosses it as “that the light is sent forth from within the navel is because it is the place where the breath of birth and growth is shared, and it sets forth that buddha after buddha is born from the principle that is not two.”

Li Tongxuan reads this passage along another track. He does not follow the Shu clause by clause; within 〈入法界品〉 he outlines this section at length into eleven passages, from Sudhana advancing beyond and entering the gate down to the answer about how long ago the Dharma was gained. Māyā herself he glosses as accomplished, in her general mark, by three dharmas — the wondrous principle of the pure Dharma body as her essence, the knowledge of universal light that does nothing and leans on nothing as her function, and the great kindness and compassion that is of one body with beings as her practice — with the ten gates of great vow as her skillful means. The ten vows begin from the great vow of compassion, equal to the number of beings, raised at the first arising of the mind; the middle eight in order are to serve and make offerings to the buddhas, to study under those whose virtue and skill surpass one’s own without growing proud, to accomplish the faculties and powers by the four stations of mindfulness and the four right exertions, to illumine the twelve links by the seven limbs of awakening, to keep the eightfold path ever present, to abide in the world with the right path benefiting the six destinies and not to seek some other pure land, to know clearly the gates of practice of the five stations and cultivate them in order, and to hold the original knowledge by the wind-wheel of the original vow, fanning the perfections and appearing in body according to capacities; the last comes to rest in the body of great kindness and compassion raising all-knowledge — the ten vows go from compassion into knowledge, answering exactly to the three dharmas’ taking great compassion as practice. As for the buddhas all sending forth light from the navel when they are about to become buddhas, he glosses the navel as standing at the middle of the body, at the juncture where all beings are born and grow, so that light sent forth from within the navel sets forth the very beginning of the taking of birth: the middle at which knowledge is accomplished is the hair-mark between the brows, and the middle at which great compassion is accomplished is within the navel. And glossing the spirit of the place of the Way giving rise toward that king to the thought of a son, he says that the breaking of views is by knowledge and the raising of practice to convert the common world is by compassion, that the knowledge of this station is born of kindness and compassion, and that knowledge is therefore looked upon as a son.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the former life for a telling of the causes and conditions of a past existence. What is joined here is “vow” and “accomplishment” — a vow made in a thought of a son in that year has become the mother of all buddhas today. Brought down to the ground: a single thought looks very small at the time, and what it will grow into can only be seen very long afterward.

I Know Only This: One Who Stands in the Station of the General Still Says This One Clause

The clause of humbling herself and pointing to the superior is of the same pattern as with the forty-one before her: “I know only this bodhisattva liberation gate of the illusion of great vow and knowledge,” and beneath it the pointing to the superior — that the bodhisattvas, the mahāsattvas, are complete in the treasury of great compassion, teach and convert beings ever without satiety, and within each and every pore display the spiritual transformations of measureless buddhas, so that “how am I now able to know or able to tell of their practice of merit and virtue?”

This clause deserves particular notice here: she is the general of the mark of the conditions gathered and entering the real, she is at what Chengguan calls the station answering to equal awakening, and still she opens with “I know only this.” Upon the last three divisions of this section Chengguan writes only “the last three passages may be understood” and gives them no separate gloss, precisely because the meaning of these three passages has been given fully in the text before.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the humbling of oneself for a courtesy, and to suppose that once the station is high it may be dispensed with. The pattern of the scripture text is exactly the reverse — the higher the station, the less this clause is dispensed with. Brought down to the ground: whether a man is willing to say ‘I know only this one thing’ has nothing to do with how much he knows, and everything to do with whether he knows how much is left.

Pointing Out the Next Friend: From a Buddha-Mother to a Daughter in the Heavens

The words of the pointing out are of the utmost brevity: “in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three of this world there is a king named Right Mindfulness, and that king has a daughter named Light of the Lord of Gods. Go to her and ask: how is a bodhisattva to learn the bodhisattva practices and to cultivate the bodhisattva way?”

What deserves notice is the drop of this one pointing — the one before is the mother of all buddhas, and the one after is the daughter of a king of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three. Chengguan has already laid this line down at the general outline, saying “equal awakening turns back to enter within the gate of redoubled mystery, and so there are ten persons who for the most part make clear the entering of the common world,” and he takes up one by one what each of the nine friends after her gains, and upon Light of the Lord of Gods writes “first, Light of the Lord of Gods: for now, right mindfulness must be without loss” — her father’s name being precisely Right Mindfulness, so that this pointing is spoken together with the name.

A misreading to be set aside: to think that the later the friend the higher he ought to be. What the scripture text does here is to enter the common world, not to climb higher. Brought down to the ground: for one who has truly reached the top, the next step is often a walking back.

Cherishing Her Virtue and Taking Leave: Four Actions

The last passage is very short, only four actions: reverently receiving her instruction, bowing head and face to the ground in respect, circling her numberless times, gazing up at her with longing — and then “he withdrew, walking backward as he went.”

The two graphs for “walking backward” mean to go retreating — not turning one’s back upon the one from whom one takes leave. This is the constant pattern of the taking of leave in the sections of this assembly, and set at the end of this section it weighs the more: the one from whom he takes leave is the one who gathers the forty-one before her into the one real.

A misreading to be set aside: to take the cherishing of her virtue and the taking of leave for a closing courtesy. Of the four actions three are of the body and only one is of the mind — the body arrives first, and then the mind is displayed. Brought down to the ground: the manner in which a man leaves a place often tells more than the manner in which he stayed there.

Lineage

From the text of this section three threads open onward.

The first is the thread of the general and the particular gathering one another. Chengguan sets up “taken by the gatherings they are ten, the first one is the general and the remaining nine are the particulars,” and Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, likewise has “the first one is the general and the remaining nine are the particulars” — the two houses on one and the same track. And as to why the particular is not done away with, Chengguan answers, “without the particular there is no way to accomplish the general” — this clause being the key by which the Huayan house reads the last assembly; and what the nine friends after her gain (right mindfulness without loss, the exhausting of the manifold arts, without support and without exhaustion, unattached and pure, pure knowledge sending forth light, the mark of knowledge inexhaustible, sincere vows not gone against, returning at last to the abiding in illusion) the Yanyi chao takes up and matches one by one against this.

The second is the thread of matching to the gates of the ten mysteries. The Yanyi chao matches Māyā’s “not destroying the small and yet holding broadly” to the gate of the unobstructedness of the broad and the narrow, and “without arising and yet arising” to the gate of the unobstructedness of principle and matter; and it glosses “abiding in the essence and answering everywhere” by the three meanings of the mutual dependence of arising conditions (the many conditions each distinct, pervading one another and aiding one another, essence and function unobstructed), and divides Māyā as the many within differing essences and Sudhana as the many within the same essence. This is an instance of taking the text of this section into the ten mysteries.

The third is the thread of the divergent interpretations of the houses, each having its own track, recorded without judgment. The outline of this section: Chengguan makes six divisions (seeking in accord with the teaching · seeing, paying respect, and inquiring · displaying her own Dharma realm · the last three passages may be understood), Fazang makes six divisions and sets up separately a passage of displaying her own Dharma realm, Zhiyan makes seven divisions, and Li Tongxuan, within 〈入法界品〉, outlines it at length into eleven passages, above which stands further his outline of the ten gates of the eleventh ground, while his general judgment upon it is “the virtue of compassion and knowledge is accomplished and Samantabhadra’s practice is fulfilled,” taking Māyā as “the first good friend of the eleventh ground.” The glossing of Māyā’s name: Chengguan transmits Queen of the Gods, the Yanyi chao transmits illusion-craft and illusion-birth, Fazang transmits illusion-birth and Tipoduo, Zhiyan transmits pure and wondrous and illusion-transformation. Whether she is real or an emanation: Chengguan and Fazang each cite four clauses, which have been given above; the judgments at which each of them comes to rest are set apart above under ‘Chengguan’s Explicit Judgment’ and under Fazang’s matching to the five teachings, and are not listed here. The number of bodies in the calling to mind before the meeting: Chengguan makes it seventeen bodies, Fazang nineteen kinds. The number of the gates of the city of the mind: Chengguan, upon the eighty-fascicle witness, makes it thirty gates, while Fazang and Zhiyan, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, make it twenty-four kinds. The number of the bodies of the direct recompense: Chengguan, upon the eighty-fascicle witness, makes it forty bodies, Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, fifty-seven kinds of cloud of bodies of the Dharma realm, Zhiyan, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, fifty clauses. All these divergent interpretations are the settled accounts of the ancient worthies.

Chengguan’s Explicit Judgment

As for the outline of assignment to the stations itself, Chengguan had already laid down an explicit judgment of his own within the ten gates of the last assembly. He first records the two accounts handed down of old — some who merely gloss the text as it comes and match nothing to it, and some who match it all to the stations of the grounds — and then says “both have their reason; that is, since each single station is complete in many gates of the Dharma, how should the mind of a common man be forbidden to practice and seek the dharma of good friends? — and so not to match them has its reason.” And his words have a second half: “yet within what has no sequence of stations the sequence of stations is not hindered, and to display the stations is the constant rule, so that to match them is likewise no fault,” after which he takes the matching of the ancient worthies and sets up the five marks. So both accounts, matching to the stations and not matching, have their reason — and Chengguan himself takes the matching, and says why the matching is no fault. The scripture text itself sets forth no name of a station; to speak of “the conditions gathered and entering the real” in reading this section is to speak following Chengguan’s outline, and is not a judgment the scripture text makes of itself.

The forty-one have been walked through, and what is seen is a mother. The whole strength of this section is spent upon making it clear that that “being a mother” is not a simile — it is counted off name by name.