華嚴經 義疏通講 · 冊25Avataṃsaka Sūtra · Exposition Throughout · Vol. 25

The Shape of the Whole Section: The Door Opens, and the Good Friend Says No More

Of the more than forty good friends before this, every one was asked, every one answered, and every one had a passage in which a Dharma gate was expounded. With Maitreya, what Sudhana asks for is not a Dharma but a door — “I only pray that the great sage will open the door of the storeyed pavilion and let me enter!” And Maitreya does not answer either; he only walks to the front of the storeyed pavilion, snaps his fingers once, and the door opens, and he calls him to come in.

A misreading must be set aside: this is not Maitreya sparing himself trouble, nor is it that Sudhana does not know how to ask. Of the six thousand two hundred and thirty-nine graphs of the scripture text of the whole section, four thousand and ninety-eight write of what was seen — the dependent recompense, the direct recompense, the companion bodhisattvas, the buddhas, the chief pavilion within the pavilion, the working of the furnishings of adornment, layer upon layer. That is to say: the way this particular good friend confers the Dharma is to let a person walk in and look for himself. When Chengguan outlines this passage he fastens it beneath “conferring the substance of the Dharma,” and says that Maitreya’s snap of the fingers is “first, with reference to the adding of power by conditions, causing him to go to the Dharma, lay words down, and meet the import — then the Dharma gate of the Buddha opens.” Before the door opens there must first be a laying down of words, and so the good friend’s not speaking is itself a part of the expounding of the Dharma.

Brought down to the ground: in reading this section, if one goes on waiting to read a dialogue, the first four thousand graphs and more will be read as stage scenery. In fact those are the main text.

Once He Had Entered, It Closed Again: Why the Door Must Shut After He Goes In

The scripture text has only four graphs — “once he had entered, it closed again” — and yet this is a place upon which three houses of the ancient worthies all set down words of their own.

Why must it shut? Chengguan glosses this, saying: “once he has realized and is joined with it, that which enters and that which is entered are both gone; the deluded is itself the true, and there is no longer any place of entering — and so it says that it closed again.” The door was opened for the sake of “entering”; once one has truly entered, the one entering and that which is entered are no longer two sides, and the matter of “entering” has no place left to rest in, and so the door of itself closes again. Fazang, in the Tanxuan ji, brings out upon the sixty-fascicle witness a further meaning, saying that “with one realization it is gained forever, without any falling back, and there is no coming out again — and so it says that it closed again”: what is shut is the way out, not the way in. Li Tongxuan then says that “knowledge has no within, no without, and no between; it has no going out and no coming in, no delusion and no realization — and this is called closing again.”

A misreading to be set aside: taking the shutting of the door to be a locking of Sudhana inside. Not one of the three houses reads it so. Brought down to the ground: at the moment when something is truly gained in practice, the feeling is usually not ‘I have come in,’ but rather that even the thought of ‘coming in’ can no longer be put to use.

Asaṃkhyeya: Why a Number Beyond Counting Is Used to Count a Whole Passage

The first passage upon entering the pavilion is the dependent recompense, and clause after clause is capped with an “asaṃkhyeya” — thirty-nine occurrences within this passage of the dependent recompense, and forty-one throughout the scripture text of this section. The ground, the palaces, the gate-towers, the windows, the stairways, the balustrades, the roads, the banners, the standards, the canopies, the necklaces, the half-moons, the silk ribbons, the jewelled nets, the jewelled bells, the censers, the jewelled mirrors, the jewelled lamps, the jewelled garments, the jewelled curtains, the jewelled seats, the images of maidens, the images of bodhisattvas, the flocks of birds, the lotuses of the four colors, the jewelled trees, the maṇi jewels — counted off one after another the whole way down.

Why write it so? Because “asaṃkhyeya” means precisely ‘beyond counting,’ and to count item by item with a number that is beyond counting is exactly to make the reader give up half way through the counting. Chengguan judges of this passage that “as for its being the same as empty space, it is because it answers to the nature of dharmas” — the pavilion is broad and vast and the same as empty space not because of its bulk, but because it appears in answer to the nature of dharmas. The nature of dharmas is without bound, and so the furnishings of adornment are without end.

A misreading to be set aside: taking this for a literary heaping-up. If it were a heaping-up, one clause of “measureless adornments” would have been enough, and there would be no need to go item by item. To go item by item and yet have every item be beyond counting is meant to make a person come to a halt within the contradiction between ‘item by item’ and “beyond counting.” Brought down to the ground: the right way to read this passage is not to remember what things there are, but to let oneself come to a stop at the place where the counting cannot be finished.

Seeing Many Within One and Seeing All Places Within One Place: The Gate of the Subtle and Minute, and the Gate of Mutual Presence

After the dependent recompense come two turning clauses. The first is “he saw further that within that storeyed pavilion there were measureless hundred-thousands of wondrous storeyed pavilions, each one of them adorned exactly as has been said above”; the second is “Sudhana the youth, within one place, saw all places, and all the many places too were seen in this same way.”

These two clauses are not the same. Chengguan distinguishes them very clearly, glossing them thus: “next, beneath ‘he saw further that within it,’ within the dependent there is a dependent. To see many within one is the gate of the subtle and minute, and also the gate of principal and companion. Afterward, beneath ‘Sudhana the youth,’ to see many within one place is the gate of mutual presence.” The former clause is pavilions within a pavilion — one small place containing measureless places, and this is the subtle and minute; the latter clause is that the one place that sees and all that is seen are present each within the other, and this is mutual presence. Fazang too, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, judges here that “this sets forth that one land is all lands, principal and companion complete.”

Brought down to the ground: these two clauses are the keyhole of the whole section. All the text that follows, of ‘seeing every sort of thing within each single thing,’ is to be read by way of what is set down here.

The Benefit Gained: Why It Is “Just as He Began to Bow His Head” That He Saw

Having seen the pavilion, Sudhana “gave rise to great gladness, exulted beyond measure, and became pliant in body and mind; he left behind all thoughts, cast off all obstructions, extinguished all confusions,” and then “he set his mind moving everywhere, saw everything everywhere, and everywhere set out his reverence; and just as he began to bow his head,” he saw his own body everywhere within all the storeyed pavilions.

Note these words, “just as he began.” Before his head has finished bowing, the pervading body has already appeared. Chengguan first divides the one gate of seeing the dependent recompense into “the seeing first and the benefit afterward”; but from “just as he began to bow his head” onward Chengguan has already assigned the text to the general heading of the second part, the seeing of the direct recompense, not to the “latter benefit” of the dependent — seeing his own body everywhere is the first matter of the seeing of the direct recompense, fastened upon “by the majestic and spiritual power of the bodhisattva Maitreya.”

A misreading to be set aside: taking this for a spiritual power that Sudhana cultivated out for himself. The scripture text says plainly that it is “by the majestic and spiritual power of the bodhisattva Maitreya.” Brought down to the ground: when a person truly sees something, he usually cannot say whether he saw it himself or was let to see it — and the two graphs “just as he began” in this passage write exactly that inability to say.

The First Layer of Seeing the Direct Recompense: What the First Bringing Forth of the Mind Looks Like in One Person

From “that is to say” onward begins the seeing of Maitreya’s former deeds. The first layer is the time of the first bringing forth of the mind: the name, the clan, the good friend, the roots of good, the life span, the kalpa, the buddha, the land, the practices, the vows, together with the assemblies of those tathāgatas, their life spans, and the length of time of drawing near and making offerings — “all of it he saw clearly and distinctly.”

Why must the former deeds be told beginning from the bringing forth of the mind? Because this is “the mark of gathering virtue and accomplishing the cause” — of the five aspects of this assembly that Chengguan judges, what Maitreya alone bears is “the gathering of virtue.” The virtue that is gathered must have a root, and the root is that first single thought. The scripture text does not write how great Maitreya’s merit and virtue are; it writes what his name was on the day he brought forth the mind, and whom he met.

Brought down to the ground: if a person’s history is told from the place of his accomplishment, one can only look up at it; told from the place of his bringing forth the mind, one can get inside it.

The Second Layer of Seeing the Direct Recompense: How the Name of the Kind One Came About

The second layer is “at times he saw Maitreya first attain the samādhi of the mind of kindness, and from then onward he was styled the Kind One.” This clause is the scripture text glossing its own name, and there is no need to seek outside for it. From the moment he realized the samādhi of the mind of kindness, this bodhisattva’s name has been kindness.

Within the same layer there are further: cultivating every sort of wondrous practice, bringing all the perfections to fullness, gaining forbearance, abiding upon a ground, accomplishing a pure land, guarding and upholding the right teaching of the tathāgatas and acting as a great master of the Dharma, gaining the forbearance of non-arising, on to “at a certain time, in a certain place, at the seat of a certain tathāgata receiving the prediction of unsurpassed awakening.” Chengguan outlines this as “seeing the time of his cultivating practice and gaining the Dharma,” while Fazang makes it “setting forth the time after the bringing forth of the mind, of cultivating practice and gaining the prediction” — the two houses differ in name and point at the same one layer.

What is listed within this one layer is not a repetition of one thing in many words; it is a sequence, and it should be read section by section — cultivating every sort of wondrous practice and bringing all the perfections to fullness is the gate of practice complete; gaining forbearance is being able to receive what is heard without going against it; abiding upon a ground is that the station he dwells in is settled; accomplishing a pure land is that beyond his own practice he is able to gather in a land; guarding and upholding the right teaching of the tathāgatas and acting as a great master of the Dharma is being able to shoulder the Dharma; gaining the forbearance of non-arising is resting unmoved in the principle that dharmas do not arise; and last comes the receiving, at a certain time, in a certain place, at the seat of a certain tathāgata receiving the prediction of unsurpassed awakening — what is recorded is a settled time, a settled place, a settled buddha, and not a word of praise. The first six are matters within the cause; the last is the term of the fruit that the Buddha foretells. Of the more than forty good friends, the former deeds of this one alone are seen section by section, and this is just because the station Maitreya bears is “the gathering of virtue” — virtue that is gathered must be seen to have been piled up one layer at a time.

Brought down to the ground: this one layer may be taken as a table of sequence — is the practice full, can one receive the Dharma, is the station settled, can one shoulder the Dharma. The sequence is not a set of names; it is the order in which to check.

A misreading to be set aside: taking “the Kind One” for an honorific, a title of address. What the scripture text says is that the name of a samādhi became the name of a person. Brought down to the ground: if a name comes from the place of what has been realized, then the name is a reminder and not a rank.

The Third Layer of Seeing the Direct Recompense: Ten Kinds of Body, One Body for One Cure

The third layer is the receiving of birth according to kind. The scripture text lists: a wheel-turning king exhorting them to abide in the ten good acts, a guardian of the world benefiting them, Śakra rebuking the five desires, a Yama deva king praising non-negligence, a Tuṣita deva king extolling the merit and virtue of a bodhisattva of one birth, a Nirmāṇarati deva king displaying the adornments of transformation, a Paranirmitavaśavartin deva king expounding the dharmas of all the buddhas, a Māra king declaring that all dharmas are impermanent, a Brahmā king declaring the joy and bliss of the meditative concentrations, an asura king entering the sea of great knowledge and penetrating that dharmas are like an illusion, and cutting off arrogance and the drunkenness of pride.

What is to be looked at is the matching. As a Māra king what he declares is “that all dharmas are impermanent”; as an asura king what he cuts off is “arrogance and the drunkenness of pride” — the body that appears answers to the sickness that is cured. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, judges this passage to be “seeing the bodies received in birth according to kind among his former births, of which there are thirteen kinds” — and those thirteen are the ten deva-king bodies listed above together with the three bodies of the three evil destinies, the realm of Yama, the hungry ghosts, and the animals. What the eighty-fascicle text lists is likewise ten bodies together with the three evil destinies, and its number is the same as the sixty’s; that this piece sets the three evil destinies apart in a passage of their own is this piece’s own division, and not a case of the parallel translation having three kinds fewer. Recorded without adjudication.

A misreading to be set aside: taking the receiving of birth according to kind to be for the sake of the convenience of expounding the Dharma. What this passage writes goes one layer further: the body that appears is itself the Dharma. Brought down to the ground: to cure a person’s arrogance, what is most effective is often not to speak of humility, but to stand in the position he honors and then to speak.

Seeing the Direct Recompense: The Three Matters Within the Three Evil Destinies

After the bodies received in birth according to kind, the scripture text brings out a separate passage upon the three evil destinies: within the realm of Yama sending forth great light and rescuing from the suffering of the hells, in the place of the hungry ghosts giving food and drink and relieving their hunger and thirst, in the destiny of the animals taming sentient beings by every sort of skillful means.

Three places and three matters, each answering to its own suffering: the suffering of the hells lies in darkness and oppression, and so light is sent forth; the suffering of the hungry ghosts lies in hunger and thirst, and so food is given; the suffering of the animals lies in stupidity and being made to labor, and so there is taming. The scripture text does not say “delivering all beings everywhere”; what it says is three concrete things.

Brought down to the ground: this passage is the plainest three clauses in the whole piece. The pavilion that is seen is beyond conceiving, and the thing that is done is giving people something to eat.

The Fourth Layer of Seeing the Direct Recompense: Sixteen Kinds of Assembly, One Passage to a Kind

The fourth layer is the expounding of the Dharma at the assemblies. The scripture text runs down in the sentence-form “at times he further saw him expound the Dharma for the assembly of …”: the deva kings who guard the world, the Trāyastriṃśa deva king, the Yama deva king, the Tuṣita deva king, the Nirmāṇarati deva king, the Paranirmitavaśavartin deva king, the great Brahmā king, the dragon kings, the yakṣa and rākṣasa kings, the gandharva and kiṃnara kings, the asura and dānava kings, the garuḍa and mahoraga kings, all the remaining humans and non-humans and the rest, the assembly of the śrāvakas, the assembly of the pratyekabuddhas, and it closes with “those bodhisattva hosts who range from the first bringing forth of the mind all the way to those bound to one more birth who have already received consecration” — sixteen passages in all (counting them one by one).

Chengguan outlines this passage as “seeing him expound the Dharma at the assemblies where he dwells, within which first is set forth the difference of the assemblies where he dwells, and afterward, beneath ‘at times he saw him praise and set forth the first ground,’ is displayed the Dharma that he declares” — first who is spoken to is written, and afterward what is spoken. This is a very clear sequence: once the capacity to be taught is settled, only then is the Dharma to be declared settled.

Brought down to the ground: one and the same bodhisattva expounds the Dharma to sixteen kinds of assembly, and the scripture text does not say what he said, only that he was there. The first thing in expounding the Dharma is to be present.

Seeing the Direct Recompense: The Ten Gates of Merit and Virtue That He Praised

The passage upon “the Dharma that he declares” lists ten gates: the merit and virtue of the first ground on to the tenth ground, bringing all the perfections to fullness, entering the gates of the forbearances, the gates of the great samādhis, the gates of the deep liberations, the realms of the meditative concentrations and samādhis and spiritual powers, the practices of the bodhisattvas, the great vows, together with bodhisattvas of the same practice praising and setting forth the matters of the crafts that sustain life in the world and of benefiting sentient beings, and together with bodhisattvas of one birth praising and setting forth the gate of the consecration of all the buddhas.

The order of the ten gates has its own reasoning, and each gate should be looked at in turn. The first, the merit and virtue of the first ground on to the tenth, is station — the station practised is set out first. The second, bringing all the perfections to fullness, is practice — what is cultivated within the station is the perfections. The third, entering the gates of forbearance, is the settled receiving of the Dharma, practice grown long and unmoved. The fourth, the gates of the great samādhis, and the fifth, the gates of the deep liberations, are concentration and release: the one a gate for settling the mind, the other a gate out of bondage. The sixth, the realms of the meditative concentrations and samādhis and spiritual powers, is the working that concentration gives rise to. The seventh, the practices of the bodhisattvas, gathers the first six into the single word practice. The eighth, the great vows, is what practice rests upon — practice without vows will in time fall back. The ninth, the crafts that sustain life in the world and the every sort of skillful means that benefits sentient beings, is the skill of making a living: the first eight gates are all dharmas that go beyond the world, and this one is a matter of the world, yet it stands side by side with the eight and is no appendage. The tenth, the gate of the consecration of all the buddhas, is the receiving of office at the station of fruit, and so the scripture says expressly that it is praised together with the bodhisattvas of one birth — those who can speak of this gate together must be of one station.

Of the ten gates, the ninth is the one most worth stopping over. It stands next to the tenth: on one side the handicraft of the marketplace, on the other the consecration of a buddha. That the scripture sets these two side by side and makes no distinction between them is one of the weightiest strokes in this section.

A misreading to be set aside: taking what the bodhisattva praises and sets forth to be only the deep dharmas. Brought down to the ground: to teach a craft clearly stands, within this list, on a level with praising and setting forth the merit and virtue of the ten grounds.

The Fifth Layer of Seeing the Direct Recompense: A Hundred Thousand Years of Walking Meditation and Recitation

The fifth layer Chengguan outlines as “seeing his practice and its working in general.” The scripture text writes it in the most ordinary way: “at times he saw Maitreya, over a hundred thousand years, walking in meditation, reciting, and copying out scripture rolls, seeking and contemplating with diligence and earnestness, expounding the Dharma for the multitude,” and only afterward comes the entering of the meditative concentrations and the four immeasurable minds, the entering of the universal bases and the liberations, the entering of samādhis and the displaying of spiritual transformations.

The sequence is worth looking at: first a hundred thousand years of walking meditation, reciting, and copying, and only afterward the meditative concentrations and the spiritual transformations. The scripture text has not put the spiritual transformations first.

Brought down to the ground: this layer is a counter-face to the whole section. After so much that is beyond conceiving has been looked at, what is written here is a person who copied out scriptures for a very long time.

Seeing the Companion Bodhisattvas: Clouds of Bodies from the Pores

The third gate is “seeing the companion bodhisattvas.” The scripture text writes that the bodhisattvas entered the samādhi of transformation and from every single pore sent forth clouds of bodies of every transformation: the deva hosts, the dragon hosts, the yakṣas on to the mahoragas, Śakra and Brahmā and the guardians of the world, wheel-turning sage kings, lesser kings, princes, great ministers, officials and their retinues, elders, householders, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas, tathāgatas, and clouds of the bodies of all sentient beings.

Chengguan outlines this as “setting forth the seeing of the clouds of bodies of the companion bodhisattvas setting forth the Dharma, that is, the measureless retinue spoken of before” — the companion bodhisattvas are just Maitreya’s retinue of the same practice. The reason a gate must be set up for this passage is that all that was seen before is the virtue of Maitreya alone, while what is seen here are those who walk together with him.

Brought down to the ground: if a person’s virtue is truly accomplished, what can be seen is not only him, but also that company who follow after him.

Sending Forth Wondrous Sounds: How Many Are the Dharma Gates That Are Praised

The companion bodhisattvas send forth wondrous sounds, and the gates that they praise the scripture text leads in with “that is to say,” opening out three great lists: the gate of the merit and virtue of the mind of awakening; the gates of the merit and virtue of the dāna-pāramitā on to the perfection of knowledge; the means of gathering, the meditative concentrations, the immeasurable minds, the samādhis, the samāpattis, the spiritual powers, the clear knowledges, retention, eloquence, the truths, the knowledges, calming and contemplating, liberation, the conditions, the supports, and the gates of the expounding of the Dharma; and then with the stations of mindfulness, the right exertions, the bases of spiritual power, the faculties, the powers, the seven limbs of awakening, and the eight members of the noble path it gathers in the thirty-seven factors of awakening, and at the end comes to the vehicle of the śrāvakas, the vehicle of the pratyekabuddhas, the vehicle of the bodhisattvas, the grounds, the forbearances, the practices, and the vows.

The order of this list is worth noticing, and each heading should be looked at in turn. The first, the gate of the merit and virtue of the mind of awakening, is the head of everything: without it nothing below has anything to belong to. The second is the gate of the merit and virtue of the perfections: the scripture says “from the dāna-pāramitā on to the pāramitā of knowledge,” and what this gathers in is the ten perfections (giving, discipline, forbearance, effort, meditation, wisdom, skillful means, vows, power, knowledge), not the six; the six are the first six, and the last four are opened out after the grounds are entered — and since the scripture says “on to knowledge,” all ten are taken in. The third heading is one long list: the means of gathering are the dharmas that gather beings in; the meditative concentrations and the immeasurable minds are concentration and the four boundless states; the samādhis and the samāpattis are the particular marks of concentration; the spiritual powers and the clear knowledges are the working that concentration sends forth; retention and eloquence are the holding of the Dharma and the speaking of it; the truths and the knowledges are what is contemplated and what contemplates; calming and contemplating, are the two wheels of cultivation; liberation, is what is realized; the conditions and the supports are what things rest upon; and the gates of the expounding of the Dharma, is the vessel for transforming others — from concentration to wisdom, from holding to speaking, from realizing to transforming, the sequence is plain. The fourth heading gathers in the thirty-seven factors of awakening: the stations of mindfulness, the right exertions, the bases of spiritual power, the faculties, the powers, the seven limbs of awakening, the eightfold noble path — the four stations of mindfulness are what contemplation is fastened to, the four right exertions the power to cut off evil and cultivate good, the four bases of spiritual power the vow and practice that concentration accomplishes, the five faculties and five powers what has been born and cannot be broken, the seven limbs of awakening the wisdom that discerns dharmas, the eightfold noble path the whole road of practice; from contemplation to exertion, to concentration, to faculty and power, to awakening, to the path, the seven groups are one road of cultivation. The fifth, the vehicles of the śrāvakas, of the pratyekabuddhas and of the bodhisattvas, is the three vehicles — the praise leans to no one vehicle, and the dharmas of all three are within it. The sixth, the grounds, the forbearances, the practices and the vows, is the stations and the practices upon them — the grounds are the stations climbed to, the forbearances the principle rested in within a station, the practices what is cultivated upon a station, the vows what guides the practices; only station and practice and vow spoken together make a station whole. From the bringing forth of the mind, by way of the ten perfections, the concentrations and wisdoms, and the factors of awakening, on to the three vehicles and the stations — what this list sets out is a full table of contents of the teaching.

Brought down to the ground: the reason this list runs from the first heading to the last is to let a person know that of what is praised and set forth not one gate is left outside — the crafts that make a living, and the vows at the very end, are both within this one list.

Seeing the Buddhas: What Is Seen Is Not the Marks and Signs of the Buddhas

The fourth gate is seeing the buddhas. What the scripture text lists is not the marks and signs of the buddhas, but “the places where they had been born, their clans, the forms of their bodies, their spans of life, the kalpas of their lands, their names, the benefit of their expounding of the Dharma, the length or brevity of the abiding of their teaching,” on to the many differences among the assemblies at the place of the Way. Chengguan outlines this as “setting forth the seeing of the virtue with which the buddhas gather and transform beings.”

Why should these be looked at? Because what is being looked at is “the virtue of gathering and transforming” — where a buddha appears in the world, how long he abides, how long his teaching remains: these are the actual conditions of gathering and transforming.

Brought down to the ground: to come to know a buddha, first come to know the season he stands in and the people he transforms.

The Chief Pavilion Within the Pavilion: Within One Pavilion There Is a Most Surpassing Pavilion

The fifth gate is “seeing the chief pavilion within the pavilion.” Among the storeyed pavilions within the Adornment Treasury, one pavilion is separately seen, “high and broad and splendidly adorned, most surpassing and beyond compare,” within which are seen in full the hundred koṭis of sets of four continents of the three-thousandfold world and the hundred koṭis of Tuṣita heavens, and within each one of them Maitreya descending in spirit and being born, on to the distributing of his relics and the upholding of his teaching.

Chengguan outlines this as “seeing the chief pavilion within the pavilion, separately setting forth the one lifetime that the Kind One is to accomplish” — what this pavilion displays is not a matter of the past but the lifetime in which Maitreya is to become a buddha in time to come. All that was seen before is cause; this pavilion is fruit. The three witnesses differ in fullness here: for the surpassingness of the pavilion the eighty has “most surpassing and beyond compare,” the sixty “more excellent than those before,” and the forty takes in both senses with “high and broad and singularly fair, gathering in all the surpassing and wondrous adornments of all the pavilions, most surpassing and beyond compare with those before”; for what is contained, the eighty and the sixty raise two headings each and the forty three; and for the mark of his descending, the forty has separately the passage “within the lotus treasury,” which neither the eighty nor the sixty has.

A misreading to be set aside: taking the eight marks of accomplishing the Way to belong to Śākyamuni alone. Here the scripture text writes plainly that they are Maitreya’s. Brought down to the ground: within a pavilion at the station of cause, Sudhana sees his teacher’s station of fruit — and this looking is what is called “contemplating the fruit and knowing the cause,” which is exactly the four graphs Li Tongxuan uses to outline this whole passage.

Seeing His Own Body: The One Who Looks Is Also Within What Is Looked At

After the chief pavilion comes a turning clause: “at that time Sudhana saw his own body at the seats of all those tathāgatas; and he saw too all the assemblies there and all the buddha-deeds there, holding them in mind without forgetting and penetrating them without obstruction.”

This clause answers to the earlier “he saw his own body everywhere within all the many storeyed pavilions,” and goes one layer further: there the body pervaded the pavilions, here the body is at the seats of the buddhas, and moreover he can hold it in mind without forgetting. Chengguan outlines the benefit of this passage as “may be understood as it stands,” and brings out no separate gloss.

Brought down to the ground: what is called truly seeing is that the one who looks has also entered the picture and no longer stands outside it.

Hearing: The Near Hearing and the Far Hearing

The sixth gate is “seeing the working of the furnishings of adornment,” opened out into ten passages. The first passage is the hearing of the Dharma, and Chengguan opens it further into three: the near hearing, the far hearing, and the benefit gained.

The near hearing is that “within all the storeyed pavilions the jewelled nets, the bells and clappers, and all the musical instruments were all giving forth inconceivable subtle and wondrous sounds of Dharma,” and what is declared is seven matters: the bodhisattvas bringing forth the mind of awakening, cultivating the practice of the perfections, the vows, the grounds, reverencing and making offerings to the tathāgatas, adorning the buddha-lands, and the differences among the buddhas’ expounding of the Dharma. The far hearing is “he heard further that in a certain place there was a certain bodhisattva” — a string of “certains” one after another: a certain place, a certain Dharma gate, a certain good friend, a certain kalpa, a certain land, a certain tathāgata, a certain great assembly, a certain buddha.

Why must “certain” be used? Because this is hearing and not seeing. What is heard has structure but no settled name, and so item by item it is made “certain.” This is a manner of writing seldom seen in the whole scripture.

Brought down to the ground: what this passage writes is a state of listening to the Dharma — you have heard a complete story, and yet you cannot say whose story it is.

The Second Passage of the Far Hearing: Giving Up the Body to Seek the Dharma, and the Matters of Guarding the Dharma

Beneath the far hearing there is a further passage, and what is heard is of four kinds: a certain bodhisattva cultivating the six perfections; a certain bodhisattva who, for the sake of seeking the Dharma, cast away his royal position, precious jewels, wife and children and retinue, hands and feet and head and eyes, and spared nothing; a certain bodhisattva who guarded the right Dharma of the tathāgatas and acted as a great master of the Dharma, practised the giving of the Dharma far and wide, set up the banner of the Dharma and blew the conch of the Dharma and beat the drum of the Dharma and rained down the rain of the Dharma, built stūpas and made images, and gave all the furnishings of joy; and a certain tathāgata who within a certain kalpa accomplished right and perfect awakening, with such and such a land, assembly, and life span.

Three of the kinds are bodhisattvas and one is a tathāgata; three of the kinds are cause and one is fruit. And the second kind, “casting away hands and feet and head and eyes,” and the third kind, ‘setting up the banner of the Dharma and building stūpas and making images’ — the one gives up the body and the other sets up the work: the two faces of guarding the Dharma, and the scripture text writes both.

Brought down to the ground: upholding the right Dharma takes in both what can be laid down and what can be set up. This passage leans to neither side.

The Benefit Gained from Hearing the Dharma

After the far hearing comes the benefit gained: “he gained measureless gates of retention, gates of eloquence, meditative concentrations, forbearances, vows, perfections, spiritual powers, and clear knowledges, together with the liberations and the gates of samādhi.”

Note that what stands first among what is gained is “retention” and “eloquence.” Of a Dharma that has been heard, what is first gained lies in remembering and in speaking; only below these come the meditative concentrations, the forbearances, the vows, the perfections, the spiritual powers, the clear knowledges, the liberations, and the samādhis. This is of a piece with what was gained earlier on seeing the pavilion — “what he saw he did not forget, what he heard he could remember, what he pondered was not scattered.”

Brought down to the ground: when the Dharma comes in by the ear, the first fruit is not concentration, but being able to hold it and to say it.

The Nineteen Items That Appear Within the Jewelled Mirrors: Four Kinds of Place of the Way and Fifteen Kinds of World

The second passage is the working of the jewelled mirrors. What appears within the mirrors is first four kinds of place of the Way (of the buddhas, the bodhisattvas, the śrāvakas, the pratyekabuddhas); next the four clauses upon a world’s being pure or impure (pure, impure, pure and yet not pure, not pure and yet pure); and next with or without a buddha, small and middling and great, like the net of Indra, turned face down, turned face up, level and flat, where the three evil destinies dwell, and filled with devas and humans. And within what appears there are further numberless hosts of great bodhisattvas, some walking and some sitting, giving rise to great compassion, composing treatises, receiving and upholding and copying and reciting, asking and answering, repenting at the three times, and dedicating and directing and making vows.

What is to be looked at is the two clauses “pure and yet not pure” and “not pure and yet pure.” Worlds are not of two kinds only, pure and impure; between them there are two more, mixed in ways that run in opposite orders. That the scripture text is willing to write these two clauses out is a refusal to reduce worlds to two.

Brought down to the ground: in judging a place to be good or bad, one is usually too quick. What this mirror throws back is four kinds and not two.

Jewelled Pillars, Jewelled Images, Necklaces: Three Small Passages

The third passage is the jewelled pillars sending forth great nets of light of the maṇi kings, of nine colors (blue, yellow, red, white, crystal, rock crystal, Śakra-blue, rainbow, and the gold of Jambūnada), gathered in at the end by “making the color of all lights whatsoever.” The fourth passage is the bearing of the maidens of the gold of Jambūnada and the images made of many jewels — holding clouds of flowers, clouds of garments, standards and banners, garlands and canopies, anointing incense and powdered incense, nets of maṇi jewels; some letting golden chains hang down, hanging up necklaces, lifting their arms and holding up furnishings of adornment, lowering their heads and letting maṇi crowns hang down, “their bodies bent in reverence and gazing up, their eyes never for a moment turning away.” The fifth passage is the necklaces of true pearls constantly giving forth scented water complete with the eight virtues, and the beryl necklaces shining with a hundred thousand lights all at once.

What these three passages write is vessels and things performing reverence. The images are not what is looked at, but what is gazing up; the necklaces are not what is worn, but what is giving forth scented water.

Brought down to the ground: the shortest and most moving thing in this passage is the four graphs “their eyes never for a moment turning away” — those are the eyes of the images, not of a person.

The Forms Within the Lotus Flowers, and the Tathāgata Seated

The sixth passage is the lotus flowers appearing again. The lotuses of the four colors each give birth to measureless flowers, some as large as a hand, some as long as a forearm, some as broad across as a chariot wheel, and within each single flower are displayed the forms of men, women, boys, girls, Śakra, Brahmā, the guardians of the world, devas, dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas, who “joined their palms together and bowed their bodies in reverence.” After this there stands one clause on its own: “he also saw the Tathāgata sitting cross-legged, adorning his body with the thirty-two marks.”

Before, all the forms of sentient beings are performing reverence; the last clause is that the one who is revered is sitting there. The scripture text has not written the Tathāgata into the flowers, but has begun a separate clause.

Brought down to the ground: after a long passage of reverence, the one who is revered takes only a single sentence, and does not move.

The Jewelled Ground and the Jewelled Trees: From Whole Body to Half Body

The seventh passage is the pure ground of beryl, within the space of every single step appearing the forms of worlds, the forms of bodhisattvas, the forms of tathāgatas, and the forms of the adornments of the storeyed pavilions. The eighth passage is the “half-body forms and images” within the branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits of the jewelled trees — half-body images of buddhas, bodhisattvas, devas, dragons, and yakṣas, on to the guardians of the world, wheel-turning sage kings, lesser kings, princes, great ministers and officers, and the four assemblies; some taking up flower garlands and necklaces and furnishings of adornment, some bending their bodies and joining their palms in reverence, some praising, and some entering samādhi; their bodies adorned with the marks and signs, sending forth lights of eight colors (gold, silver, coral, tuṣāra, Śakra-blue, the Vairocana jewel, all the many jewels, and the campaka flower).

The two graphs “half-body” are the eye of this passage. What appears upon the ground is the whole image; what appears within the trees is the half body. Chengguan glosses only one term in this passage — “as for tuṣāra, it means here frost and ice” — and Li Tongxuan glosses it alike as “it is like the color of frost and ice in this land.” What the two houses gloss is the same.

Brought down to the ground: what appears is whole in some cases and half in others, according to the thing it depends upon, and no evenness is forced. That the scripture text is willing to write it so is a refusal to write the realm too tidily.

The Half-Moons and the Four Walls: The Last Two Passages Close Upon the Former Deeds

The ninth passage is the half-moon images sending forth asaṃkhyeya sorts of light of suns, moons, and constellations, shining everywhere throughout the ten directions. The tenth passage is that within each single jewel of the four walls that encircle it round about there appear the matters of Maitreya’s cultivating the bodhisattva path in kalpas past — giving his head and eyes, his hands and feet, his lips and tongue, his teeth, his ears and nose, his blood and flesh, his skin, his bones and marrow, on down to his nails and hair; his wives and concubines, his sons and daughters, his cities and towns, his villages, his lands and his royal position, given away entirely according to what was needed; those in prison caused to be released, those in bonds set free, those with sickness healed, those on a wrong path shown the right road; at times acting as a ferryman, a horse king, a great seer, a wheel-turning king, a king of physicians; at times being filial to father and mother and drawing near to good friends; at times acting as a śrāvaka, a pratyekabuddha, a bodhisattva, a tathāgata; at times acting as a master of the Dharma, carrying out the teaching of the Buddha, setting up caityas of the Buddha and making images of the Buddha. And at the end he further sees Maitreya serving the good friends, drawing near to them and making offerings and receiving and carrying out their teaching, on to abiding upon the ground of consecration.

Chengguan outlines this passage as “the walls displaying the former deeds, within which first is seen the Kind One cultivating practice and gathering beings in according to kind, and afterward, beneath ‘he saw further,’ he beholds the friends he served exhorting and instructing Sudhana.” Of the working of the ten passages of the furnishings of adornment, the last passage falls back upon the former deeds, and falls upon ‘the friends he served’ — Maitreya too learned by following good friends.

A misreading to be set aside: taking all that was seen before to be Maitreya’s virtue, while this passage is his teachers. Brought down to the ground: Sudhana has looked at adornments the whole way, and what he sees at the last is that his teacher too, in his day, was doing what he himself is doing now.

The Good Friends Admonish Him: Who Speaks This Sentence

At the end of the former deeds upon the four walls there appears the one speaker in the whole section who is not Maitreya alone by name: “then the good friends said to Sudhana: ‘Welcome, youth! You are looking upon the inconceivable deeds of this bodhisattva — do not grow weary and turn away.’”

“The good friends” is plural, and points to those good friends seen before whom Maitreya had once served. This sentence is not spoken by Maitreya.

Why must a sentence of “do not grow weary and turn away” be inserted here? Because what has been seen is by now very long: the ten passages of furnishings of adornment and the five layers of the direct recompense before them, set out one after another. It should be seen clearly that these are words of exhortation from the good friends, and not the scripture telling that Sudhana has grown weary — what the scripture records is “do not give rise to,” exhorting him not to let weariness arise, and it does not say that he has.

Brought down to the ground: this is the one homely sentence in the whole section that is spoken to Sudhana — it is normal not to be able to finish looking, and one should not stop looking because one cannot finish.

Setting Forth the Mark of the Seeing in General: Five Questions

The separate setting forth of what was seen being finished, the scripture text gathers it in generally: “because he had gained the power of mindfulness that does not forget or lose, because he had gained the pure eye that sees the ten directions, because he had gained the unobstructed knowledge that contemplates well, because he had gained the sovereign knowledge of the bodhisattvas, because he had gained the vast understanding of the bodhisattvas who have already entered the ground of knowledge.”

Chengguan reads these five clauses as the answers to five questions, saying: “that is: by what power is he able to see? with what eye does he see? with what knowledge does he see? upon what station does he see? in what place does he see? — as the scripture assigns them.” The five clauses are matched to the five questions thus: the power of mindfulness that does not forget or lose answers “what power”; the pure eye that sees the ten directions answers “what eye”; the unobstructed knowledge that contemplates well and the sovereign knowledge of the bodhisattvas together answer “what knowledge” — the one the unobstructedness of contemplating, the other the sovereignty of using; the vast understanding of those who have already entered the ground of knowledge answers “what station.” As for “in what place,” it does not stand within these five clauses ending in “because,” for the scripture brings out a separate clause after the five to answer it plainly — “within each single thing in every storeyed pavilion.”

A misreading to be set aside: taking these five clauses for a formulaic listing of merits. Chengguan’s way of reading gives them a structure — this is a ‘list of the conditions for being able to see.’ Brought down to the ground: when one cannot see, one can take these five questions and ask oneself, one by one, which of them is lacking.

The Ten Similes: Why Ten Are Needed

After the mark of the seeing come the ten similes: the dream, the mark of karma at the end of life, possession by a ghost, possession by a dragon, the Brahmā palace, a monk in the concentration of the universal bases, the city of the gandharvas in empty space, the palace of the yakṣas, the great sea, and the illusionist.

Why ten? Chengguan sets up the question himself and answers it himself: “the reason there are ten similes is that what is likened differs. Yet there are two intents: the first likens the difference of the causes and conditions of being able to see; the second likens the difference of the marks of the realms that are seen.” One simile bears two matters at once, and so ten are needed.

Following the first intent, the ten similes each display one kind of power of being able to see: the first likens in general that seeing and what is seen are both like a dream; the second likens the power of one’s own cause (because it follows one’s own karma); the third and fourth liken the power of conditions (possession by a ghost, possession by a dragon, and yet “in possession by a ghost self and other are not the same, while in possession by a dragon self and other are of one substance”); the fifth likens the power of the dependent recompense of a friend; the sixth is the power of concentration; the seventh likens the power of the emptiness of nature; the eighth likens the power of the sovereignty of the Dharma realm; the ninth likens the power of the non-duality of knowledge and concentration (“because it is the samādhi of the ocean-seal of great knowledge”); the tenth is the power of the sovereignty of illusory knowledge.

Of the third and fourth similes, the three witnesses take the possession by a dragon in different directions: the eighty has “within a short while he says of himself that days and months and years have passed,” taking the short for the long; the sixty has “seven days, half a month, a year, a hundred years, he calls a moment,” taking the long for the short; and the forty agrees with the eighty. The one simile runs both ways, and the round fusion of thought and kalpa, which the ancient worthies judge it to liken, leans to neither side. The questioning and answering around the ten similes is set differently by the three witnesses too: the sixty has Maitreya ask ‘have you seen?’ and Sudhana answer ‘I have seen’ before the ten similes; the eighty has before them only the good friends’ one sentence, ‘do not grow weary,’ and the questioning waits until he comes out of concentration; the forty has Maitreya put thirteen questions in a row after he comes out of concentration, and Sudhana answers ‘yes, I have seen,’ ascribing it to the three powers of the good friend’s sustaining, of mindfulness and of majesty.

Brought down to the ground: the ten similes are not ten ways of putting it; they are the ten conditions of one single matter.

The Second Round of the Ten Similes: The Marks of What Is Seen

The same ten similes, matched once more from another angle. Chengguan judges by the second intent: the simile of karma appearing at the end of life “likens that what is seen answers hiddenly”; the simile of possession by a non-human “likens that what is seen can be spoken”; the simile of the long stay in the dragon palace “likens the round fusion of thought and kalpa”; the simile of the Brahmā palace displaying broadly “likens that one and many are unobstructed”; the simile of the realm of the concentration of the universal bases “likens that what is seen is clear and evident”; the simile of the city of the gandharvas resting upon space “likens that phenomena and principle are unobstructed”; the simile of different seeing in one and the same place “likens the sovereignty of the hidden and the manifest”; the simile of the sea displaying the three-thousandfold world “likens the sudden appearing of far and near”; the simile of illusion displaying a multitude “likens that what is seen is unobstructed whether pure or mixed.”

Note that the simile of the dream is the “general” one in both rounds. In each round the first is general and the other nine are particular: the nine of the first round are each matched to a kind of power of being able to see, and the nine of the second to a kind of mark of what is seen, so that each of the nine has its own particular matching and does not bear only one meaning. What is singular in the dream is not that it alone bears the two meanings, but that in both rounds it stands in the place of the general — “it likens in general that seeing and what is seen are all like the matters of a dream” — and so both rounds begin with it.

A misreading to be set aside: taking the ten similes for ten parallel comparisons of which a few taken at random would be enough. The two intents are each matched to a round, and if one is missing then one meaning has nothing to be fastened to. This too is the sense of what the Yanyi chao says — that without making this gloss one would feel that “the text of the scripture is prolix and not needed.” Brought down to the ground: in reading the ten similes one should read across once and then read down once.

The Joining of the Ten Similes: Why Three of the Similes Have No Joining Clause

Of the ten similes, the first six all have the joining clause “so it is also with Sudhana the youth”; the seventh, eighth, and ninth have none, and only at the tenth, the simile of the illusionist, is there a joining of them all at once.

The Yanyi chao states this matter most clearly, glossing it thus: “yet among the ten similes, the first six have their joining, the seventh, eighth, and ninth have none. In the tenth, that of illusion, they are joined all at once, joined backward from the last.” And it is a “joining backward” — the four clauses of the last passage of the scripture text, “because of the majestic and spiritual power of the bodhisattva Maitreya” joining the illusionist, “and because of the power of inconceivable illusory knowledge” joining the great sea, “because he was able by illusory knowledge to know the dharmas” joining the yakṣas and humans not seeing one another, and “because he had gained the sovereign power of the bodhisattvas” joining the city of the gandharvas resting upon space — going back over them one by one from the last toward the first.

The three witnesses also differ as to whether the joining clause is there: for the simile of the city of the gandharvas the eighty has no joining, while the sixty and the forty both have one — the sixty reads “so it is also with Sudhana the youth: within the tower he sees all dharmas without any obstruction,” and the forty likewise carries it on with “so it is also with Sudhana the youth.” Thus “the first six have their joining, the seventh, eighth, and ninth have none” is the shape of the text in the eighty, and not the case in all three witnesses.

Brought down to the ground: read forward, this passage will feel as though three joining clauses are missing; read backward, they match. The seam of the scripture text is not upon the surface of the words but within the order.

The Second Snap of the Fingers: Wherein It Differs from the First

After the ten similes, “the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Maitreya gathered in his spiritual power, entered within the storeyed pavilion, snapped his fingers so that a sound came forth,” and told Sudhana to rise. This is the second snap of the fingers in the whole section.

What is the difference between the two? Chengguan glosses this, saying: “as for its being a snap of the fingers again — before, the import gained was what is called laying words down; here the import gained is to make him not linger in the still.” The first snap of the fingers is to make a person lay speech down and enter; the second snap is to make a person not stop within the still. The Yanyi chao says it more directly: “the former takes concentration as the gate, this takes function as the gate; the moving and the still being not two, this is truly entering the Dharma realm.”

A misreading to be set aside: taking the coming out of samādhi to mean that the realm has come to an end. The two snaps of the fingers are a pair; without the latter, the entering of the former becomes a lingering. Brought down to the ground: one who can get in but cannot get out has not yet counted as having gone in.

Such Is the Nature of Dharmas: The Mark That Appears Is from Conditions and Without Nature

The one who comes out of samādhi is Sudhana — the scripture says plainly “Sudhana heard the sound of the snapping fingers and rose from samādhi”; Maitreya is the one who gathers in his spiritual power, enters the pavilion, snaps his fingers, and speaks. The first sentence of what Maitreya speaks is upon the substance and the mark: “good man! Rise. Such is the nature of dharmas: this is the mark that appears through the gathering together of causes and conditions by the knowledge with which the bodhisattvas know the dharmas. Such a self-nature as this is like an illusion, like a dream, like a shadow, like a reflection — none of it is brought to accomplishment.”

Chengguan divides this into the setting up and the glossing, and says that the mark that is seen is “born of conditions by the knowledge of the Dharma, and being born of conditions it is without self-nature,” while “as for ‘none of it is brought to accomplishment,’ this concludes the sense above: because from conditions and without nature, phenomena are not brought to accomplishment; because without nature and from conditions, principle is not brought to accomplishment.”

The Yanyi chao goes one layer further, pointing out that here there are two pairs, belonging to the meanings of two houses: “the first pair is with reference to the other-dependent, that is, the intent of the three treatises. Being born of conditions it is without nature; being without nature it is from conditions. From ‘because it does not keep to its own nature’ onward, the second pair is distinguished with reference to the truly real nature, that is, the meaning of the Dharma-nature house, of suchness unchanging and yet following conditions.” And the clause “it is also that the nature possesses them of itself” the Chao glosses as “the virtues of the nature, as many as the sands, are complete from the very first, and are not newly made now — and so it says they are not brought to accomplishment.”

Brought down to the ground: the four graphs “none of it is brought to accomplishment” are most easily read as a denial. Read as Chengguan and the Chao read them, what they say is that these are complete from the very first, and so need not be newly made — it is not that they are not there, but that they need not be brought about.

Teacher and Student Push Toward Each Other: Both Question and Answer Push Toward the Other Side

After coming out of samādhi, Maitreya says “you abide in the inconceivable sovereign liberation of the bodhisattvas,” and Sudhana answers, “this is the majestic and spiritual power by which the good friend sustains me and holds me in mind.”

Upon this going and returning Chengguan puts his finger with the greatest deftness: “with reference to the asking, it is his own realization, and it is pushed back to the cause, and so he says he abides in the inconceivable. Within the answer there is humility and reverence, and it is pushed back to the condition, and so he says it is the power of the good friend. Teacher and student push toward each other, contrary to the ordinary feeling of people.” The teacher pushes the credit back to what the student himself has realized, and the student pushes the credit back to the teacher’s sustaining — both sides push toward the other, contrary to the ordinary feeling of people.

Brought down to the ground: this sentence needs no explaining. Whoever has truly taught a person, and truly been taught, will know it of himself on reading here.

The Name of the Dharma Gate: Fourteen Graphs to Be Read in Three Parts

Sudhana asks the name, and Maitreya answers, “the Adornment Treasury of the Knowledge of Unforgetting Mindfulness That Enters All the Realms of the Three Times.”

These fourteen graphs Chengguan glosses in three parts: “as for all the realms of the three times, that is the realm here entered and seen. As for the knowledge of unforgetting mindfulness, that is the knowledge that is able to enter and able to make appear.” The reason the realm and the knowledge are able to answer to each other is that “because the three times are one suchness, thought and kalpa are in round fusion; within any one time the realms of the three limits appear, and the knowledge enters the three times and understands that dharmas are empty and still, and being joined hiddenly with suchness, within a single thought there is nothing it does not see.”

“Adornment treasury” then has two meanings: “first, because it is adorned by the nature of dharmas, within one adornment are contained and given birth endless furnishings of adornment, as many pavilions are seen within one pavilion. Second, because unobstructed knowledge is joined with the round-fused realm, and to adorn the Tathāgata-womb is that it possesses all dharmas from the first.” The Yanyi chao remarks upon the shallowness and depth of these two meanings: “the former meaning is with reference to principle fusing phenomena, and is already the unobstructedness of phenomenon with phenomenon; the latter sets forth further the mutual fusing of mind and realm.”

After Maitreya has answered the name there is one further clause: “within this gate of liberation there are gates of liberation unspeakably unspeakable in number, which the bodhisattva of one birth is able to gain.” Within one Dharma gate are contained Dharma gates beyond the telling.

This name too differs among the three witnesses: the forty is wholly the same as the eighty, while the sixty has “the Dharma gate of the Adornment Treasury of Right Mindfulness and Reflection That Enters the Knowledge of the Three Times” — without the passages “all the realms” and “unforgetting mindfulness,” putting “right mindfulness and reflection” in their place, and adding the two graphs for “Dharma gate” at the end of the name. Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, glosses the name in three parts: “because it gathers in the earlier and later limits, it says entering the knowledge of the three times”; “as for right mindfulness and reflection, it displays that the knowledge which is able to see is clear and not upside down”; “as for the adornment treasury, it sets forth that the realm which is seen is furnished with virtue and holds all within it” — beside Chengguan’s three parts of realm, knowledge, and treasury upon the eighty, the opening and closing differ while what is pointed at meets.

Brought down to the ground: this name is itself a set of instructions — the realm that is entered, the knowledge that enters, and the treasury that is contained: three matters written into one name.

Where Have the Adornments Gone: A Question and an Answer of Only Twelve Graphs

Sudhana asks: “where have these adornments gone?” Maitreya answers: “they have gone to the place they came from.”

This is the shortest question and answer of the whole section — eight graphs asked, four graphs answered. Chengguan explains it thus: “within the answer, because they come by flowing from root to branch, and go by gathering branch back into root, the going is not other than the coming, and so he draws it to the coming and answers both at once.” What is asked is the place of going, and what is answered is the place of coming — because the place of going and the place of coming are one and the same place, one sentence answers both questions.

A misreading to be set aside: taking this for a Chan-style evasion. Chengguan’s way of reading is not an evasion but an answering of both at once. Brought down to the ground: when one asks where a thing has gone, the answer often lies in where it came from.

Where Do They Come From: Because Cut-Off and Lasting Are Both Left Behind, There Is No Arising and Ceasing

Sudhana presses further: “where do they come from?” Maitreya answers: “they come from within the wisdom and spiritual power of the bodhisattvas, and they abide in dependence upon the wisdom and spiritual power of the bodhisattvas; they have no place to go and no place to abide, they are not a gathering together and they are not lasting, being far removed from everything.”

Here Chengguan sets down the tightest piece of reasoning in the section: “because they come from conditions they are not a gathering together; because when the conditions fall away they cease, they are not lasting. If there were first a settled place of coming, one would fall into the fault of the lasting; if there were first something and now nothing, this would be cut-off annihilation. Since the cut-off and the lasting are both left behind, how could there be the marks of arising and ceasing, of identity and difference? — and so it says, far removed from everything.” If there were first one settled place of coming, one falls into the lasting; if there were first something and now nothing, one falls into the cut off. Falling to neither side, the marks of arising and ceasing and of identity and difference of themselves have nowhere to be set up.

Brought down to the ground: “far removed from everything” does not mean pushing everything away; it is the way of putting it that remains after neither the cut-off nor the lasting can stand.

The Simile of the Dragon’s Rain and the Simile of the Illusionist: Two Similes Bearing Two Matters Between Them

Within the answer two similes are set up. The first is the dragon king sending down rain — “it does not come forth from his body and does not come forth from his mind, there is no piling up of it, and yet it is not that it cannot be seen; only because of the power of the dragon king’s mindful intent does it pour down in a great flood and spread throughout the world beneath the sky.” The second is the illusionist making illusory matters — “they come from nowhere and go nowhere; and though there is no coming and going, because of the power of illusion they can be clearly seen.”

The two similes do not repeat each other. Chengguan judges: “first the simile of the dragon king sending down rain, which likens in particular the coming that is without coming,” and “afterward the simile of the illusionist displaying illusion, which likens both coming and going, so that there is neither coming nor going.” The dragon’s rain speaks only of the side of “coming,” while the illusionist speaks of both coming and going. Within the joining clause, the sentence “they do not abide within, and they do not abide without,” Chengguan also assigns to two powers: “as for not abiding within, it is because of the power of the bodhisattva. As for not abiding without, it is because of the power of one’s own good. Since the causes and conditions within and without take each other away, both within and without are gone.”

Brought down to the ground: of the seeing of that whole spread of adornment, half is the teacher’s power and half is one’s own roots of good — the two take each other away, and so it cannot be said whose it is.

Where Does the Great Sage Come From: The Three Answers Are the Three Bodies

Sudhana’s third question: “where does the great sage come from?” Maitreya’s answer has three layers.

The first layer is the ten pairs beneath “the bodhisattvas are without coming and without going, and in just this way they come”: without going forth and without abiding, without place and without attachment, neither perishing nor being born, neither abiding nor shifting, neither moving nor rising, without longing and without clinging, without karma and without recompense, without arising and without ceasing, neither cut off nor lasting. The second layer is the nine places beneath “he comes from the place of great compassion”: great compassion, great kindness, pure precepts, great vows, spiritual power, the unshaken, neither taking up nor casting away, wisdom and skillful means, and displaying transformations, all nine clauses closing with “because,” while the two graphs for “because he wishes” stand only in the first two — “because he wishes to tame sentient beings” and “because he wishes to rescue and guard sentient beings” — the seven below them each having wording of their own, as “because he receives birth according to what they delight in” and “because he is upheld by the power of his vows of old.” The third layer is “I come here from Malādi, the country where I was born.”

Chengguan judges these three layers to be the three bodies: “first, with reference to substance, the true dharma-body is the coming that is without coming, and the coming is itself without coming; the text has ten pairs, to be pondered. Second, beneath ‘good man, the bodhisattva from great compassion,’ with reference to mark, the true recompense comes from within the myriad practices, just as in the Jingming one comes from the place of the Way of the myriad practices. Third, beneath ‘you ask me,’ with reference to function, he appears in transformation and comes to where the capacities are ripe. These three are the dharma-body, the recompense body, and the transformation body; they are also substance, mark, and function; they are also principle, practice, and phenomena.” And he adds one further layer: “the first is principle alone, the last is phenomena alone, and the middle one has both principle and phenomena.”

A misreading to be set aside: taking the earlier layer to be high and the later to be low. What Chengguan speaks of is three bodies, not three grades. Brought down to the ground: asked where a person comes from, one may answer that there is no coming and no going, one may answer that he comes from kindness and compassion, and one may answer that he comes from such and such a village — and all three are true words.

Malādi and Gopāla: The Meanings of Two Names

Within the third layer there appear three proper names: the country of Malādi, the village of Fangshe, and Gopāla.

Chengguan glosses the names one by one: “as for Malādi, in full it is Malayadeśa. As for Malaya, it means here ‘garland-giving,’ and it is the name of a mountain. Deśa means ‘within,’ that is, because that mountain lies within this country”; “as for Gopāla: go is earth, and pāla means guarding, that is, because he guards the earth and the ground of the mind.” Further on there is also a “village of Kuṭa,” which Chengguan glosses as “it means here ‘storeyed pavilion,’ because within this village there are many storeyed pavilions, or because the pavilion of the Kind One is within it.” And the scripture text itself renders it as “Fangshe” — and the Yanyi chao makes this matter plain: “as for the Shu’s ‘the village of Kuṭa means here storeyed pavilion,’ this is one meaning; some say small houses, and some say many households. Hence the scripture above renders it of itself as ‘the village of Fangshe,’ and the Shu now takes one meaning only.”

A misreading to be set aside: taking the scripture text and the commentary to be at odds. The Chao says it clearly: one name has many meanings, and the commentary takes one of them. Brought down to the ground: for one and the same place-name, the one who translated the scripture took “Fangshe” and the one who made the commentary took “storeyed pavilion” — and Maitreya’s great storeyed pavilion stands within this very village, so that each of the two renderings has its own reason.

The Ten Clauses of the Bodhisattva’s Place of Birth: The Upper Clause Is Practice, the Lower Clause Is Household

Sudhana asks “what is the bodhisattva’s place of birth,” and Maitreya answers with ten kinds: the mind of awakening, the deep mind, the grounds, great vows, great compassion, contemplating as is right, the great vehicle, teaching sentient beings, wisdom and skillful means, and cultivating all dharmas.

All ten clauses are of one and the same sentence-form, and the sentence-form is itself the doctrine. Chengguan points it out: “now, in the first there are ten, and in every one the upper clause is the practice that is able to give birth, and the lower clause is the household into which one is born.” The upper clause is the practice that is cultivated and the lower clause is the household into which one is born, and the ten run thus: bring forth the mind of awakening and one is born into the household of the bodhisattvas; have the deep mind and one is born into the household of good friends; gain the grounds and one is born into the household of the perfections; bring forth great vows and one is born into the household of wondrous practice; have great compassion and one is born into the household of the four means of gathering; contemplate as is right and one is born into the household of the prajñā-pāramitā; practise the great vehicle and one is born into the household of skillfulness in means; teach sentient beings and one is born into the household of the buddhas; possess wisdom and skillful means and one is born into the household of the forbearance of the non-arising of dharmas; cultivate all dharmas and one is born into the household of all the tathāgatas of the past, the present, and the future. Of the ten, the first three are matters of one’s own cause, the middle four the dharmas relied upon, and the last three the transforming of others and the gathering up of all — the household one is born into rises step by step, and so does the practice cultivated.

In the Shu Chengguan glosses only five of the clauses, and of the rest says “the remainder may be pondered and taken as a pattern.” The Yanyi chao makes up the remainder: what the Shu glosses is what is hard to see, while the other five are easy to understand, and so it merely takes them as a pattern; and it lists the outline of the ten clauses as the cause of practice, the condition of practice, the mark of practice, supporting practice with vows, transforming others, contemplating principle, following both phenomena and principle, benefiting beings, abiding in the fruit, and complying with what is above. The Chao also makes up the reason for each: for the fourth, supporting practice with vows, “if one brings forth great vows one gives birth to wondrous practice”; for the fifth, transforming others, “if one has the mind of compassion one practises the four means of gathering”; for the sixth, contemplating principle, “if one contemplates wondrous principle one accomplishes wisdom”; for the seventh, following both phenomena and principle, “if one moves in both phenomena and principle this is called the great vehicle, that is, skillfulness in means”; for the eighth, benefiting beings, the Shu’s own “teaching sentient beings is the awakening of others”; for the ninth, abiding in the fruit, “when the expedient and the real flow together one realizes the forbearance of non-arising”; and for the tenth, complying with what is above, “cultivating the myriad practices in full and joining the household of the buddhas of the three times.”

Chengguan sets down one further turning clause: “moreover, the upper clause too runs through to that which is born” — the upper and lower clauses may be turned about, and the bringing forth of the mind of awakening may also be spoken of as the household into which one is born. But this turning about has a limit: the Yanyi chao lays it down plainly — “thus the first seven may be taken in the two ways, while the last three must follow the former gloss” — the first seven clauses may be turned upper for lower, while the last three can only be read by the former gloss (the upper clause the practice that is able to give birth, the lower the household into which one is born), and may not be read the other way. And so the Shu first sets up the upper clause as the practice that is able to give birth, and only afterward turns it about as a pattern.

Brought down to the ground: these ten clauses may be taken as a list for examining oneself. To know which household one is now born into, look at which practice one is now cultivating.

The Twenty Clauses of the Retinue: Why Wisdom Is the Mother and Skillful Means the Father

After the place of birth comes the retinue that is the condition of birth, twenty clauses: wisdom as mother, skillfulness in means as father, dāna as wet-nurse, śīla as foster-mother, kṣānti as the furnishings of adornment, vīrya as the one who rears him, dhyāna as the one who washes him, good friends as the master who instructs him, the limbs of awakening as his companions, good dharmas as his retinue, the bodhisattvas as his brothers, the mind of awakening as his household, cultivating as is right as the rule of his household, the grounds as the dwelling place of his household, the forbearances as his clan, great vows as the teaching of his household, bringing all practices to fullness as compliance with the rule of his household, exhorting others to bring forth the great vehicle as the carrying on of the family occupation, the consecrated bodhisattva bound to one more birth as the crown prince, and the accomplishing of awakening as that which is able to purify the clan.

Upon the pair of mother and father Chengguan brings out three meanings: “first, because true knowing is empty and still and is quiet together with the shade, while expedient knowledge flows and moves and ripples together with the sun. Second, because the true giving birth to the dharma-body is indeed by wisdom, and if there were no skillful means one would mostly share the lot of the two vehicles, so that the accomplishing of the seed of a bodhisattva is by skillful means. Third, because understanding within and relieving without are as father and mother.” The second meaning is the most to the point: with wisdom only and no skillful means, one mostly falls away to the two vehicles; what accomplishes the seed of a bodhisattva is skillful means. Below this Chengguan points out only two clauses — “dāna assists with merit, śīla guards and protects” — and the rest are inferred as a pattern. As to the dividing of the twenty clauses, Fazang, upon the sixty-fascicle witness, makes three passages of them — “the first seven set forth the bearing and rearing, the next four are for growth and increase, and the remaining nine are for the establishing, together with the crown prince” — and following that division each item may be looked at.

The first seven clauses are matters of bearing and rearing: wisdom as mother and skillfulness in means as father are that by which one is born; dāna as wet-nurse and śīla as foster-mother are the rearing of what has been born; kṣānti as the furnishings of adornment, vīrya as the one who rears him, dhyāna as the one who washes him — adornment is what makes a child fair to look upon, rearing is what makes him grow, washing is what makes him clean, and all three are the actual matters of bringing up a child, which the scripture borrows to match with these three perfections. Why is forbearance the adornment? One who bears patiently keeps his countenance unchanged, and that is where a practitioner is fairest to look upon; why is effort the rearer? Roots of goodness grow only by diligence; why is dhyāna the washer? Concentration clears the mind as water carries off grime. The next four clauses are the conditions of growth and increase: good friends as the master who instructs, the limbs of awakening as companions, good dharmas as retinue, the bodhisattvas as brothers — these come about through teachers and friends without, and not by one person alone. The last nine clauses are matters of establishing: the mind of awakening as household, cultivating as is right as the rule of the household, the grounds as its dwelling place (the stations in which this household dwells), the forbearances as its clan (what this household, of one blood, rests in), great vows as its teaching (the root by which this household teaches its children), bringing all practices to fullness as compliance with its rule, exhorting others to bring forth the great vehicle as the carrying on of the family occupation, the consecrated bodhisattva bound to one more birth as the crown prince, and the accomplishing of awakening as that which is able to purify the clan — first a household, then a rule, a dwelling place, a clan, a teaching for it, compliance and carrying on, and at the last a crown prince and a purified clan. A household from nothing to its full standing: the twenty clauses have set it out.

A misreading to be set aside: taking the matching of mother and father to be an ingenuity of rhetoric. Chengguan’s second meaning speaks of an actual fork in the road. Brought down to the ground: wisdom lets a person get out, skillful means lets a person come back; lacking the latter half, the road will go astray.

Passing Beyond the Ground of Ordinary Beings and Being Born into an Honored Household: Eleven Clauses of Cause and Effect

After the retinue comes the weighing that displays his surpassingness, in two layers. First the surpassingness of the household is spoken of in general — “passing beyond the ground of ordinary beings, entering the station of the bodhisattvas, being born into the household of the tathāgatas, abiding in the lineage of the buddhas, being able to cultivate all practices, not cutting off the three jewels” — on to being reverenced and praised by the devas, humans, māras, Brahmās, śramaṇas, and brahmins of every world. Afterward the surpassingness of his knowledge is set forth in particular, that is, the eleven clauses of cause and effect (six opening with ‘knows,’ the rest with ‘penetrates,’ ‘by,’ ‘gains’ and the like): because he knows that all dharmas are like a shadow-image he has no loathing or contempt for the worlds; because he knows that they are like a transformation he has no attachment to the destinies of existence; because he knows that they are without a self his mind does not grow weary in teaching sentient beings; because his very substance is great kindness and compassion he does not feel it a labor to gather sentient beings in; because he penetrates that birth-and-death is like a dream he passes through all the kalpas without dread; because he knows that the aggregates are all like an illusion he displays the receiving of birth without grief or weariness; because he knows that the elements and the sense-fields are the same as the Dharma realm there is no destroying of them within the realms of objects; because he knows that all thoughts are like a heat-haze he enters the destinies without giving rise to upside-down confusion; because he penetrates that all dharmas are like an illusion he enters the realm of the māras without giving rise to attachment; because he knows the dharma-body all afflictions cannot deceive him; because he has gained sovereign mastery he penetrates without obstruction within all the destinies.

These eleven clauses are not eleven similes. Only six are fastened to a simile — like a shadow-image, like a transformation, like a dream, the aggregates like an illusion, like a heat-haze, all dharmas like an illusion; the other five are fastened to no simile and bring out five other matters: knowing that dharmas are without a self is no-self; having great kindness and compassion for one’s very substance is substance; knowing that the elements and sense-fields are the same as the Dharma realm is their sameness with the Dharma realm; knowing the dharma-body is the dharma-body; having gained sovereign mastery is sovereignty. The opening words are likewise not of one form: six clauses begin with the graph for knowing, and the other five begin severally with “by,” “penetrating,” “knowing fully,” “reaching through,” and “gaining.”

Each clause should be looked at in turn: knowing dharmas to be like a shadow-image, therefore toward the worlds no loathing or contempt — a shadow-image has of itself no high or low, and so what one faces in the world has nothing to be despised. Knowing them like a transformation, therefore toward the destinies of existence no attachment — what is transformed cannot be grasped. Knowing them without a self, therefore in teaching sentient beings a mind that does not grow weary — with no self there is no reckoning of one who delivers and one delivered, and so no weariness. Having great kindness and compassion for one’s very substance, therefore in gathering beings in not feeling it a labor — this clause is fastened not to a simile but to substance: kindness and compassion being the substance, labor is no longer a question. Penetrating that birth-and-death is like a dream, therefore through all the kalpas without dread — a long kalpa within a dream cannot harm a person. Knowing fully that the aggregates are like an illusion, therefore in displaying the receiving of birth without grief or weariness — an illusory body may be taken up and laid down. Knowing that the elements and sense-fields are the same as the Dharma realm, therefore within the realms of objects no destroying — being one and the same Dharma realm, there is nothing that could be destroyed. Knowing that all thoughts are like a heat-haze, therefore entering the destinies without upside-down confusion — a heat-haze cannot be drunk, and so one is not deceived by it. Reaching through that all dharmas are like an illusion, therefore entering the realm of the māras without giving rise to attachment. Knowing the dharma-body, therefore all afflictions cannot deceive him — this clause too is fastened to no simile: the dharma-body once manifest, the deceit of the afflictions has nowhere to work. Having gained sovereign mastery, therefore within all the destinies penetrating without obstruction — this clause has neither a simile nor a dharma known, but speaks directly of the sovereignty gained. Of the eleven, six take a simile for their cause and five take a virtue for their cause; the causes differ, and the fruit in every one is a single absence of obstruction.

Brought down to the ground: these eleven clauses are not eleven states of mind; they are eleven pairs of cause and effect. If the place of obstruction is still there, what one turns back to look at is the cause in the first half of the clause — mostly a knowing, but also a substance of compassion or a mastery gained.

My Body Is Born Everywhere Throughout the Whole Dharma Realm: This Passage Is Maitreya Speaking of Himself

After the eleven clauses, Maitreya speaks of himself: “my body is born everywhere throughout the whole Dharma realm: equal to the differing forms and marks of all sentient beings, equal to the distinct words and sounds of all sentient beings, equal to the every sort of name of all sentient beings, equal to the bearing that all sentient beings delight in, according with the world in teaching and taming; equal to all pure sentient beings in displaying the receiving of birth, equal to all ordinary sentient beings in the work they do, equal to the thoughts of all sentient beings, equal to the vows of all bodhisattvas — and so my body appears filling the Dharma realm.”

Chengguan outlines this as “separately setting forth the place of birth of the Kind One,” and divides it: “the text has ten clauses, the first clause general, the next eight particular, and the last one the conclusion.” The Yanyi chao cross-reads one clause, saying that this passage is “also the same as the measureless three wheels of the chapter of Manifestation.”

Note the graph “equal” here. It is not “surpassing” all sentient beings but “equal to” all sentient beings — forms and marks, words and sounds, names, bearing, and on to the work that ordinary beings do, all of them equal.

Brought down to the ground: a bodhisattva who is to become a buddha in time to come, telling of his own body, uses the graph “equal.” That one graph is harder than any adornment.

Why He Was Born into a Brahmin Household, and Why He Is to Be Born in the Tuṣita Heaven

Below this Maitreya sets forth the causes and conditions himself, first the present birth: for the sake of teaching and delivering those who cultivated the same practices with him of old and have now lost the mind of awakening, for the sake of teaching his father and mother and kin, and for the sake of teaching the brahmins and causing them to leave behind the arrogance of clan — and so he was born in the Jambudvīpa realm, in the country of Malādi, in the village of Kuṭa, into a brahmin household.

Afterward the birth to come: because he would accord with the minds of sentient beings, because he would ripen the deva hosts of the same practice in the Tuṣita Heaven, because he would display the adornments of the transformations of the merit and knowledge of a bodhisattva and pass beyond the realm of desire, cause them to cast off the joys of desire, cause them to know that the conditioned is impermanent, cause them to know that the flourishing of the devas must surely decline, because he would display the Dharma gate of great knowledge at the time of his descending and being born, because he would talk together with the bodhisattvas of one birth, because he would gather in and teach those of the same practice, and because he would teach those sent by Śākya the Tathāgata “and cause them all to awaken as a lotus flower opens” — and so “he shall die here and be born in the Tuṣita Heaven.”

Upon the words “as a lotus flower” Chengguan brings out three meanings: “first, Śākya sows the seed, and that flower opens; second, the cause of old contains the fruit as a flower not yet open, and when the cause is gone and the fruit appears it is as when a lotus flower opens; third, the perfuming of hearing contains what is real as a lotus not yet open, and when the real is seen and words are gone it is therefore said to be awakening.” And he cites the Zhi lun as a general proof of the first meaning.

A misreading to be set aside: taking the bodhisattva’s receiving of birth to be a being dragged by karma. In this passage there are more than ten “because he would … ,” and every clause is for the sake of people. Brought down to the ground: he was born into a brahmin household because those he was to deliver were exactly that company who set most store by clan.

You and Mañjuśrī Shall Both See Me: Three Meanings

Maitreya gives the prediction: “good man! When my vows are brought to fullness, when I have accomplished all-knowledge and gained awakening, you and Mañjuśrī shall both be able to see me.”

Upon the two graphs “both see” Chengguan brings out three meanings: “first, because they will help in the transforming together; second, because Sudhana stands for practice and Mañjuśrī for faith and knowledge, and at the time of accomplishing right awakening both will realize this; third, because Mañjuśrī is an ancient buddha, Sudhana a buddha to come, and the Kind One a present buddha, and the three times are round-fused and vastly all of one measure — and so it says they both see.” The third meaning is the weightiest: Mañjuśrī is the buddha of the past, Sudhana the buddha to come, the Kind One the buddha of the present, and the three times see one another at one and the same moment. Li Tongxuan sets down words upon this same clause, and his are more direct: “the causes of the three times being brought to fullness and knowledge being without ancient or modern, the buddhas of the three times see one another at one time, of one and the same wisdom.”

Fazang, in the Huayan wujiao zhang, judges three stations — the station of seeing and hearing, the station of understanding and practice, and the station of realizing the ocean of fruit — and for the third, the “station of realizing the ocean of fruit,” he directly cites as proof the clause of the sixty-fascicle witness that he quotes, saying that “this is with reference to cause and fruit being divided into two stations, before and after. Therefore the former station is only cause. Because the round fruit lies in the latter station, it says he shall see me.”

Brought down to the ground: from one clause of prediction the ancient worthies read out the three times seated together. This is the farthest-reaching sentence in the section.

Pointing Out the Next Friend: He Has Already Seen Mañjuśrī, So Why Must He Go Back

After the prediction comes the pointing out of the next friend. Maitreya would have Sudhana go and ask Mañjuśrī seven matters: how does a bodhisattva study the practice of the bodhisattvas, how does he enter the gate of the practice of Samantabhadra, how is it accomplished, how is it made vast, how is it made to accord, how is it made pure, how is it brought to fullness.

Here a question arises: Sudhana first brought forth the mind at Mañjuśrī’s very place, and now, having visited as far as the fifty-second station (counting Mañjuśrī at the first meeting, and Śrīsaṃbhava and Śrīmatī as one station), why must he turn back? Chengguan sets up the question himself and answers it himself: “first the intent of the questioning: Mañjuśrī has already been seen, why exhort him to go? The intent of the gloss: because that one’s virtue is deep and vast, and the bond of old is weighty.” And the root meaning of the exhortation to go Chengguan breaks open in a single clause: “as for making him go to Mañjuśrī, it is because the station of cause is about to reach its utmost, and he is made to shine back upon the source of the mind.” The station of cause is nearly at its end, and so he is to turn back and shine a light upon that first single thought.

A misreading to be set aside: taking the visiting of friends to be a going straight forward, finished when the road is walked out. Brought down to the ground: what is to be done upon reaching the last step is to go back and look at the first step.

Mañjuśrī’s Virtue: The Vastness of His Practice and the Depth of the Bond

The glossing of the ground of the exhortation divides in two: first setting forth the vastness of his practice, afterward displaying the depth of the bond.

The passage setting forth the vastness of his practice runs from “Mañjuśrī the youth: his practice is vast, his vows are without bound, and he gives birth to all the merit and virtue of the bodhisattvas without ever resting” onward — constantly the mother of the buddhas, constantly the teacher of the bodhisattvas, teaching and ripening all sentient beings, his name heard everywhere throughout the ten directions, constantly the master of the expounding of the Dharma, praised by all the tathāgatas, abiding in deep knowledge, able to see all dharmas as they really are, penetrating all the realms of liberation, and having brought to the utmost all the practices that Samantabhadra practises. Chengguan fastens each clause to what it governs: “as for giving birth to the merit and virtue of the bodhisattvas, he governs the Dharma gate of faith and nourishes all that is good. As for being therefore the mother of the buddhas, he governs the gate of wisdom, abides in deep knowledge, and sees the reality of dharmas. As for being the teacher of the bodhisattvas, he possesses skillful knowledge, penetrates liberation, and brings the practice of Samantabhadra to the utmost.”

The passage displaying the depth of the bond runs from “Mañjuśrī the youth is your good friend” onward — causing you to be born into the household of the tathāgatas, to grow and nourish roots of good, to raise up the dharmas that aid the path, to meet true good friends, to cultivate every merit and virtue, to enter all the nets of vows, to abide in all the great vows, speaking for you the secret dharmas and displaying the practices hard to conceive, and closing with “of old was born together with you and practised together with you.” Chengguan outlines this as “displaying that the bond with him is deep and has already brought much benefit.”

Brought down to the ground: the vastness of the practice says how great this good friend is, and the depth of the bond says how long he has been with you. In exhorting a person to go back and see a teacher, both these matters must be spoken.

The Concluding Exhortation: All That You Have Gained Along the Road Is His Power

The last division is the concluding exhortation with its restatement, in three parts: first the concluding exhortation, “you should go on to the place of Mañjuśrī and not grow weary and turn away”; next the questioning and glossing, “why is this”; and last the concluding of his virtue as ultimate.

For the part of the questioning and glossing Chengguan frames the intent of its question and answer: “first the intent of the questioning is to say: how is it known for certain that the two meanings above are present? Afterward the intent of the gloss is to say: the benefit already accomplished is all his power, and hence it is known that his virtue is deep and the bond weighty.” How is it known that Mañjuśrī’s virtue is deep and the bond weighty? Look at what you yourself have gained along the whole road — “all the good friends you saw before, the practice of the bodhisattvas you heard, the gates of liberation you entered, the great vows you brought to fullness — all of these are the majestic and spiritual power of Mañjuśrī.”

The last clause, “and Mañjuśrī has come to the utmost in every place,” Chengguan fastens to the beginning and end of faith and knowledge: “the former seeing is the head of faith, the latter seeing is the end of knowledge — and so it says, ultimate in everything.”

Brought down to the ground: what the fifty and more teachers along the road gave, looked back upon, was given by one and the same person. Were this sentence spoken at the setting out, it could not be understood; spoken here, it carries weight.

Cherishing His Virtue and Taking Leave: This Passage Is Only One Sentence

The last passage is the taking of leave: “then Sudhana the youth bowed to his feet, circled him measureless times, gazed up at him with earnest longing, and took his leave and departed.”

Chengguan outlines this alone as “cherishing his virtue and taking leave,” and brings out no separate gloss. And here the forty-fascicle witness has four graphs more, “his heart cherishing longing,” answering exactly to the name of the outline; the sixty is the plainest, and has no clause of “gazed up at him with earnest longing.”

A misreading to be set aside: taking this for a formula. The three witnesses differ in fullness and plainness, and yet the four graphs “gazed up at him with earnest longing” are in both the eighty and the forty — at the moment of parting he is still looking. Brought down to the ground: to look back while going away — the “cherishing his virtue” of this passage lies just here, and nothing need be added to it.

Lineage

For the text of this section, three lines are opened out below it.

The first is the line of the station of realizing the fruit. Fazang, in the Huayan wujiao zhang, judges three stations, the station of seeing and hearing, the station of understanding and practice, and the station of realizing the ocean of fruit, and for the third station he directly cites as proof the clause of the sixty-fascicle witness that he quotes, “when I accomplish right awakening in time to come, you shall see me” (in the base text of this section, “good man! When my vows are brought to fullness, when I have accomplished all-knowledge and gained awakening, you and Mañjuśrī shall both be able to see me”), and judges that “this is with reference to cause and fruit being divided into two stations, before and after. Therefore the former station is only cause. Because the round fruit lies in the latter station, it says he shall see me” — and the reason this section is called “the mark of gathering virtue and accomplishing the cause,” and where the cause it accomplishes and the fruit it stands in lie, Fazang here judges most plainly.

The second is the line of the outlines of the several houses, each with its own track, recorded without adjudication. For the fourfold great outline, Chengguan makes it conferring the substance of the Dharma · displaying the name of the Dharma · tracing to its source the root of the cause of the adornment · examining the nature and marks of the direct recompense, while Fazang makes it conferring the substance of the Dharma · displaying the name of the Dharma · distinguishing the place of coming · setting forth the place of birth: the first two divisions are the same in name and the last two differ in name. For the opening and closing of what is seen, Chengguan opens six (dependent recompense · direct recompense · companion bodhisattvas · buddhas · the chief pavilion within the pavilion · the working of the furnishings of adornment), Fazang opens five (dependent recompense · direct recompense · buddhas · sounds of Dharma · giving birth), Zhiyan, beneath the three divisions of “the direct entering of concentration,” sets up the one division of “seeing the pure land” and opens it further into five (seeing the marks of adornment, that is, the realm of faith · gaining benefit and paying reverence · the appearing of his own body · the appearing of the marks of the dharmas of cause and fruit · the appearing of differences), the six Dharma gates of bell · mirror · pillar · pearl necklace · tree · half-moon standing as headings beneath “the appearing of differences” and not upon the same layer as the gates of “what is seen” in Chengguan and Fazang, and Li Tongxuan does not set up outlines division by division but matches three passages to the scripture-measures of “eight or nine sheets of scripture,” “nine and a half lines of scripture,” and “four sheets of scripture,” opening out four questions. For the number of the similes, Chengguan sets up ten similes and matches a round to each of the two intents of the causes and conditions of being able to see and the marks of the realms that are seen, while Zhiyan, beneath “likening and praising the unobstructedness of the seeing,” makes seven similes and opens the last of them into three. For what the snapping of the fingers stands for, Chengguan judges the former and latter snaps to be the difference between taking concentration as the gate and taking function as the gate, while Li Tongxuan judges the snapping of the fingers to be “the meaning of removing dust.” These divergent interpretations are all settled sayings of the ancient worthies.

Each of the four houses has besides its own closing passage, and these too should be recorded. Chengguan’s Yanyi chao, beneath the scripture’s one clause “because I would teach those sent here by Śākya the Tathāgata,” takes up the text of the Guan Mile pusa shangsheng Doushuai and the Mile xiasheng jing in Kumārajīva’s rendering, brings out the occasions of the ascent and of the descent, and closes with “this scripture makes plain precisely that Śākya sent them here” — those Maitreya transforms are the ones Śākya sent. Fazang’s Tanxuan ji, at the end of this passage, brings out one by one the five sounds of Dharma, the six gates of the giving birth, the ten similes of the questioning and answering that settles the seeing, the three-part gloss of the name of the Dharma gate, the place of coming, the place of birth, the three parts of the twenty clauses of the retinue that is the condition of birth, and the rendering of the name Kuṭāgāra; upon the clause “you and Mañjuśrī shall both be able to see me,” he brings out three meanings — first, that when Maitreya becomes a buddha he too will teach this Avataṃsaka, and then too there will be the Dharma taught by Mañjuśrī and Sudhana; second, that when Maitreya becomes a buddha, Sudhana and Mañjuśrī will both come to help him spread the teaching; third, as standing for a dharma: Sudhana in this life is a body that cultivates the cause and has not accomplished the fruit, and so does not go to the Buddha — not that he does not seek him, but the fruit is set apart from the cause, and so it is said that he shall see him; and he closes “because this is the station of fullness, there is no pushing upward and the rest. Here ends the good friend of the mark of gathering virtue and accomplishing the cause.” — Maitreya’s station being full, he does not push the seeker on to yet another friend above. Li Tongxuan’s Lun, in its closing passage, glosses the two names Malādi and Gopāla — the land Malādi is named for the virtue of the sage, standing for a sage whose knowledge and virtue rise above the world with none surpassing; Gopāla “meaning here the guarding of the white dharmas of the ground of the mind,” whom the Kind One causes to enter the Buddha’s Dharma — glosses the village of Kuṭa as “meaning here many households,” and the brahmin household as “birth within a pure lineage,” sets forth that Maitreya’s receiving of birth and displaying of it is not a case of “the buddhas being born here and perishing there,” and closes with “and so Sudhana is made to go back and see Mañjuśrī, setting forth that the fruit does not shift the cause.” Zhiyan’s Souxuan ji, in its closing passage, divides the place of birth in two — “first, distinguishing the place of birth that is the substance of the practice of the cause,” and “setting forth the place of birth in which the transformation body appears and comes” — counts the retinue as “nineteen clauses separately setting forth the practice of the retinue” (Chengguan makes it twenty), and divides the place of birth of the transformation body into three, among humans, in the heavens, and descending among humans, “all of them being the final birth.” The four houses stop at different points, and all of them close upon Maitreya’s life to come; this is recorded without adjudication.

The third is the line of the assigning of stations. The matching of the good friends of this assembly to stations — that a certain friend is assigned to a certain station — is not the scripture text judging of itself; Chengguan follows the ancient worthies in matching them. What this section is fastened to, “the mark of gathering virtue and accomplishing the cause,” is the third of these five aspects, and in reading it one should take it as an outline of the ancient worthies and not as a judgment the scripture text makes of itself.

Chengguan’s Explicit Judgment

Upon the two sayings of matching the stations and of not matching them, Chengguan judges explicitly, among the ten gates of the last assembly: “both have their reason. That is: since each single station is endowed with many Dharma gateways, how could an ordinary mind be barred from studying and seeking the dharma of good friends? — and so not to match them has its reason. Yet within the absence of sequence of stations the sequence of stations is not obstructed, and to display the stations is the ordinary rule, so that to match them is also without fault.” Both sayings he allows, and because displaying the stations is the ordinary rule, to match them is also without fault — this is Chengguan’s judgment, and not a leaving of the matter open.

Of the text of this one section, four thousand graphs and more are looking and two thousand and more are asking. Only when the looking is done can the eight graphs “where have these adornments gone” be asked — and the sequence of this section lies wholly in that one graph ‘only.’

Why This Section Is So Short

Sudhana visited more than fifty good friends, and with every one of them there was a fixed way in which the meeting went: first he sought them out in accord with what the friend before had taught him; when he saw them he paid respects and inquired; the good friend praised him and afterward conferred the Dharma; when the conferring was done the friend humbled himself and said that he knew only this one gate; then he pointed out where the next one was to be found; and at the last Sudhana cherished his virtue and took his leave. This is the ordinary rule of the units of the good friends in this assembly.

When we come to this section, of the six divisions only the one division of seeking in accord with the teaching is furnished, and the other five are not. Chengguan's outline of this unit likewise says that the text has only three — seeking in accord with the teaching, seeing, hearing and entering by witnessing, and turning to meet the surpassing conditions. In the whole unit of a little over four hundred graphs Sudhana does not ask a single word, Mañjuśrī does not manifest a body, there is no humbling of himself and pointing to the superior, no pointing out of the friend who comes next, and no taking of leave.

Ask first: is this the sūtra text being brief? Chengguan does not read it as brevity. He glosses it, because the utmost illumination is not-two and mind and object are both gone, the paying of respect and the inquiring are left out — it is not a sparing of the brush; it is that at this place the mind that could ask and the object that could be asked about are neither of them set up any longer, and so the asking cannot get started. He goes on to say: because faith and understanding are both cut off, he does not see a body manifested but illumines back upon it. The mind of faith has not shifted, and so the right hand is stretched out. Moreover, not seeing is the true seeing, for it is only understanding the empty wisdom of one's own mind. That no body is manifested does not mean that he did not come; it means that what this stretch has to display is precisely that he may not be seen by seeing a mark.

An error must be cleared away: do not read there is no question and answer as meaning that this section does not matter. Quite the reverse — the questions and answers of the fifty and more units before are all of them preparing the way for this one stretch; that here there is no need to ask is the result of all those questions and answers.

Bringing it down to the reading: when in reading a scripture you come upon a stretch of text that suddenly falls quiet, do not hurry to fill in content. Sometimes the quiet is itself what that stretch has to say.

More Than a Hundred and Ten Cities: Chengguan Sets Up Two Ways of Telling It and Lets Them Stand Together

The sūtra text says that Sudhana, in accord with what the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Maitreya had taught him, went on stage by stage in their order, and passed by more than a hundred and ten cities.

Ask first: these more than a hundred and ten cities — from where are they counted, and to where? Chengguan glosses it with two ways of telling it. The first is this: they are counted only from Maitreya to Mañjuśrī, and that one stretch of road passes of itself a hundred and ten cities, without taking in what came before. The second is this: the hundred and ten good friends already visited before are added in, and it is for that reason that the sūtra text says more than cities — this takes what came before in together, gathering all the dharmas walked through and returning them into this one illumining.

Ask again: of these two ways of telling it, which is the settled account? Chengguan does not settle it. He sets the two senses side by side, and for the difficulty that follows upon them (the friends before, and the cities here — how should the numbers happen to be exactly the same?) he likewise opens two ways: one is that a city goes with a friend, a friend having to rest upon a city; the other is that sometimes in one city he meets several friends, and sometimes for the sake of seeking one friend he walks through several cities — in short, the number of a hundred and ten has to be made up, so as to accord with the dharma it stands for.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not suppose that the ancient worthies' leaving two senses is a vagueness. The number of the cities here is from the first a number that stands for a dharma, not a record of a journey; and the two senses each have their use — one sense displays that this one stretch of road is complete in itself, the other displays that the whole road, before and after, is gathered back into a single illumining.

Bringing it down to the reading: when you come to a number in a scripture, ask first whether it is keeping accounts or standing for a dharma. A number that stands for a dharma can hold two readings; a number that keeps accounts cannot.

Sumona and the Universal Gate: Two Layers of Sense Within One Place Name

The sūtra text says that what he came to was the city of Sumona in the land of Universal Gate, and that then he stood at the gate of that city.

Ask first: are these two names to be read as place names? Of course they are place names, but the ancient worthies all read a further layer out of the sense of the names. Chengguan glosses it: Sumona in this tongue is rendered Delight of Mind, and it is from the first the name of a flower; the name is taken because knowledge illumines the one nature and so the original mind is delighted. And he says that this is the city of Virtue-Born. As for the land of Universal Gate, Chengguan records it with regard to a divergent text — he says, there is a text that says he came to the land of Universal Gate, and that to make it the land of Universal Gate is to display that all the many differences are gathered in and returned to the mark of not-two, and that is why it is called the universal gate. What Fazang glosses runs together with this: he says that the universal gate is the gathering in of the particular and its return to the universal, all the stages of difference gone through before being returned into this one universal gate of Mañjuśrī. Zhiyan tells it along another road, saying that the land of Universal Gate is a place where Mañjuśrī transforms for a moment, and that it may also be said to be the universal dharma upon which knowledge rests.

Ask again: what is there to attend to in the four graphs stood at the gate of that city? Chengguan glosses it: this displays that the mind of understanding has already come to its utmost and is about to enter the gate of wisdom that is not-two. The man has come to the gate and has not yet entered it — the sūtra text writes down nothing but a way of standing, and the commentators read a stage out of that way of standing.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read the three glosses of the three houses as overthrowing one another. What the three houses fasten their glosses to is different in each case, and all of them are settled accounts of the ancient worthies, recorded without being judged.

Bringing it down to the reading: a place name in a scripture is often at one and the same time a road sign and the name of a dharma. Only when both layers are read will the Avataṃsaka not be read as a travel diary.

Stretching Out the Right Hand from Far Off: Why from Far Off, and Why the Right

The sūtra text says, just at this time, Mañjuśrī stretched out his right hand from far off, passed across a hundred and ten yojanas, and laid it on the crown of Sudhana's head.

Ask first: why must it be from far off? Chengguan glosses it, the faith of the beginning takes in the fruit of the utmost, and so it says stretched out from far off — that first single thought of faith runs right through to the ground of the fruit at the end, and the distance between is no obstruction, and so it says from far off. And why the right hand? He glosses it, practice is brought to completion by according with what comes, and so it says the right hand: the right stands for according with what comes, and it is by according with it and walking that practice is completed.

Ask again: he walked a hundred and ten cities, and here it says again that the hand passed a hundred and ten yojanas — are the two numbers a repetition? Chengguan distinguishes exactly this: yet passing the cities is taken as going beyond bounded territories, while the yojanas set forth going beyond amounts of number. Moreover, the former goes beyond the virtue of cutting off that belongs to the stages, and the latter goes beyond the ground of knowledge that belongs to the stages. The cities speak of going beyond boundaries, the yojanas of going beyond amounts; what was gone beyond before was the virtue of cutting off that belongs to the stages, and what is gone beyond here is the ground of knowledge that belongs to them. What Fazang fastens it to is put outright in terms of the stages: that the hand passed a hundred and ten yojanas is its passing right through those stages of difference before, to this place of the equal universal gate.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read from far off as a distance so great that the reach barely stretches to it. What the sūtra text writes is that the hand reached with one stretching, and this is precisely what displays that the stages before and after are here without any interval.

Bringing it down to the reading: the farthest stretch on the road of cultivation is often, when one turns and looks back, that very first thought. The sūtra text uses a single hand to join the two ends together.

The Laying On of the Hand upon the Crown: One Gesture Stands in Place of a Stretch of Teaching

Mañjuśrī did not speak first; he laid his hand on the crown of Sudhana's head first.

Ask first: what does the laying on of the hand upon the crown stand for? Chengguan glosses it, the laying on of the hand upon the crown stands for the gathering in, and also it is that the universal Dharma is set upon the crown of his mind, because faith has reached its utmost — the laying on of the hand is the mark of gathering in, and it is also the setting of the universal Dharma upon the crown of his mind, because faith has come to its utmost. What Fazang glosses is along the same road with different words: he says that the rubbing of Sudhana's crown is the pouring of the universal Dharma over his crown.

Ask again: the graphs the three versions use here are not the same — should they be made uniform? The eighty-fascicle text has laid it on the crown of Sudhana's head, and the sixty-fascicle and the forty-fascicle texts both have rubbed the crown of Sudhana's head. Each is set down word for word after its own base text, and no uniformity is made on their behalf.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read the rubbing of the crown as a gesture of comfort. After this one laying on of the hand, what the sūtra text joins straight on to is a stretch of speech made entirely of negative sentences — the gathering in and the stern admonishing are here one and the same thing.

Bringing it down to the reading: the one who truly catches a person and holds him is often not the one who speaks kindly first.

Raising the Losing so as to Display the Gaining: Not One Sentence in the Whole Stretch Is Said Outright

What Mañjuśrī says when he opens his mouth is well done, well done, son of good family, and what follows is a long string — if one were to part from the root of faith, not complete, fell away and was lost, straightway took it that this was enough, would not be able — running all the way to one would be wholly unable to do it, and not one sentence says what Sudhana has.

Ask first: he has praised him with one well done, so why does he go on to speak wholly of the reverse side? Chengguan judges the manner of it, this is to raise the losing so as to display the gaining — that is, ‘if one were to part from the root of faith’ and the rest, and ‘one would not understand the nature of dharmas’ and the rest, display in reverse that Sudhana has the root of faith and the rest, and is able to understand the nature of dharmas and the rest. This is a way of teaching that displays the right side by way of the reverse: it tells out one by one what a man would come down to if he lacked these things, and the one who hears it understands of himself what he has been furnished with all along the road. What Fazang judges is the same: he says that first the lacking of the practice to be done is raised and afterward the inability to enter the principle is displayed, and this is precisely to display that Sudhana is without these failings and so is able to obtain this Dharma.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read this stretch as a reproach. The one whom the sūtra text addresses is a man who has already walked a hundred and ten cities to the end; the same words said to him are a seal of approval, not a scolding.

Bringing it down to the reading: some words sound as though they were telling you that you cannot do it, when in fact they are pointing out, one by one, the road you have already walked. The key to telling them apart lies in who is speaking, and at what moment.

The Nine Sentences of What Is Lacking: The First Seven Are the Cause, the Last Two the Condition

Chengguan outlines this string of practices that are lacking as nine sentences. The first seven sentences are the cause that is lacking: the first is that the root of practice is lacking, because he has parted from the root of faith; the second is that seeking what is small, his mind is of a low sort, and dwelling in birth-and-death he grieves and regrets; the third is that crosswise it is not complete; the fourth is that lengthwise he does not press forward; the fifth is that he is stuck upon one root of goodness; the sixth is that he is unwilling to seek widely; the seventh is that he does not give rise to the vow of practice that abides nowhere. The last two sentences are the condition that is lacking: that he is not gathered in and guarded by good friends, and that he is not held in mind by the Tathāgata.

Ask first: why must cause and condition be told apart? The cause is the matter on one's own side, the condition the matter of whether what is outside can be joined to or not. What the first seven sentences tell of is whether one has stood up on one's own side; what the last two tell of is whether, having stood up, there is anyone to catch hold of one. Both sides are needed; lacking either side, the road cannot be walked.

Ask again: do these nine sentences agree when the base text is counted sentence by sentence? They do. The first seven sentences are if one were to part from the root of faith, the mind being of a low sort and grieved and full of regret, the practices worked at not being complete, the diligence falling away and being lost, toward some one root of goodness the mind giving rise to a stopping and a clinging, toward some little merit and virtue straightway taking it that this is enough, not being able skilfully to give rise to the vow of practice; and the last two sentences are not being gathered in and guarded by good friends, not being held in mind by the Tathāgata — nine sentences in all.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read the last two sentences as luck. The good friends' gathering in and the Tathāgata's holding in mind are set by the sūtra text after the first seven sentences, and their order tells its own tale — first there must be those seven matters on one's own side, and then those other two can come down upon one.

Bringing it down to the reading: before you ask yourself why you do not meet with a good teacher, go through the first seven sentences once.

Gathered Back into Faith: One Graph Holds Up Nine Sentences

After the nine sentences Chengguan adds a sentence that draws them together: moreover, among the nine before, the first one, the root of faith, is the cause that is lacking; the rest are all benefits that cannot be brought about. Taken by the dharma, the merit returns to faith; taken by the person, the dharmas of the friends before all come by way of Mañjuśrī.

Ask first: why must the nine sentences be gathered onto the one graph faith? Because what the first sentence lacks is the root of faith, and the remaining eight are all benefits that cannot be brought about once the root of faith has been lost. Said with regard to the dharma, all merit returns to faith; said with regard to the person, the dharmas of every good friend before all come by way of Mañjuśrī.

Ask again: why is this sentence said only here? Because it is at this section that Sudhana has walked a whole round and come back to stand before Mañjuśrī. Every good friend before him taught one Dharma gate; where those dharmas came from, and by whom they were set going, can only be seen clearly when the round has been walked to the end. In this one sentence Chengguan sets forth two things at once: on the side of the dharma the root is faith, and on the side of the person the root is Mañjuśrī.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read the merit returns to faith as meaning that faith is enough. The sūtra text plainly lists nine sentences, and every one of them is a practice; returning them to faith speaks of the root, not of wanting the root without the branches and leaves.

Bringing it down to the reading: when you turn and look back after walking a long way, if you can make out what it was that you first leaned on, only then has the journey been walked to the end.

Those Things That Cannot Be Understood and Known: The Fifteen Sentences and the Difference from a Plain Count

Below if one were to part from the root of faith, the sūtra text turns into one would not be able to understand and know a nature of dharmas such as this, a guiding principle such as this, a Dharma gate such as this, a course of practice such as this, a realm such as this, and then into a string beginning whether it be to know it universally and throughout, whether it be to know it in its every kind, whether it be to know it exhaustively down to its source and bottom, and on from there.

Ask first: how is this string divided? Chengguan outlines it, within the benefits that cannot be brought about there are fifteen sentences: the first six are taken by the principle and the events that are known, the latter nine by the measure to which the knowing is able to reach. The first half tells what it is that is known — principle and events; the latter half tells to what measure the knowing reaches — universally and throughout, in its every kind, exhaustively down to the source and bottom, understanding, proceeding into, explaining, distinguishing, knowing by witnessing, obtaining.

Ask again: can this actually be counted out? Counting the base text sentence by sentence in a plain way, the sentences of such as this are five (the nature of dharmas · the guiding principle · the Dharma gate · the course of practice · the realm) and the sentences beginning whether it be are nine, fourteen in all; Chengguan's outline makes it fifteen sentences, six before and nine after. Whether the one sentence would not be able to understand and know is counted into the first six is not separately set out in the commentary. Here the base text and the commentary's text are each set down as they stand, and no reconciling is made on their behalf.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read what is known and what is able to know as two different studies. What is known speaks of the object, what is able to know speaks of the depth; with one and the same dharma, to what measure it is known is another matter altogether. That the sūtra text lists both sides is exactly so that a man should not stop at having heard of it.

Bringing it down to the reading: when you have finished reading a stretch of a scripture, you may ask yourself once by these nine words — do I know it universally and throughout, or do I know only one corner of it; have I gone exhaustively to its source and bottom, or have I stopped at the surface?

The Concluding Benefit and the Return to the Root: One General and Eight Particular Within Ten Sentences

When Mañjuśrī had finished telling the Dharma, the sūtra text gathers it up with the four graphs showed it, taught it, made it of benefit, and gladdened him, and then comes a string of sentences beginning with causing: coming to accomplish Dharma gates as many as an asaṃkhyeya, being furnished with the great light of knowledge that is measureless, causing him to obtain dhāraṇī and vow and samādhi and spiritual power and knowledge without bound or limit, causing him to enter the place of the Way of the practice of Samantabhadra, and setting Sudhana down in the place where Mañjuśrī himself dwells; and the last sentence is Mañjuśrī drew himself back in and was not present.

Ask first: how is this stretch outlined? Chengguan glosses it, within it there are ten sentences: the first nine conclude that the benefit is very deep, the first one being general and the remaining eight particular, and he makes the last sentence a separate one, the gathering of the function back to the root. The Yanyi chao supplies a word-for-word gloss on that one graph general — the general one is precisely the four matters of showing, teaching, benefiting, and gladdening: showing is making the Dharma gate plain to see, teaching is urging him to cultivate the practice, benefiting is awakening him so that the benefit is brought about, gladdening is suiting his capacity so as to delight him.

Ask again: among the eight particular ones, which sentences do the commentators gloss? The commentary glosses the first sentence, the sixth, and the seventh and eighth, while the second, third, fourth, and fifth are not glossed at all; what the Yanyi chao does is to set out the commentary's fullness and brevity and its way of glossing. Chengguan does not gloss the middle sentences one by one, but only points out the first sentence and the sixth: the earlier, the light of knowledge, is wisdom together with skilful means; the later, knowledge without bound or limit, is the perfection of knowledge. The Yanyi chao also records of itself the reason for this fullness and brevity, saying that the commentary's text glosses as the difficulty requires — it first puts forth how the first sentence differs from the sixth, and the second, third, fourth, and fifth it does not gloss at all. Afterward it glosses the seventh and eighth sentences. The seventh and eighth that come after are the place of the Way of the practice of Samantabhadra and the place where he himself dwells, the commentary glosses each of these two, and the chao makes plain that the commentary's gloss has two senses: first, glossing them as they stand, which assigns them severally to the two persons, Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra; second, glossing them together, Mañjuśrī being the one able to dwell and the place of the Way of Samantabhadra being that in which he dwells.

Ask a third time: the five things obtained without bound or limit — what is each of them? Dhāraṇī is holding-in-all, which is able to gather in and hold in mind all the dharmas heard so that they are not lost; vow is the great vow that is set forth; samādhi is concentration, the mind settled and abiding in one place without scattering; spiritual power is the wondrous function that issues from concentration; knowledge is the wisdom that is able to illumine. That the sūtra text caps each of the five with without bound or limit says that of the enjoyment which Mañjuśrī's showing and teaching this time opened up in Sudhana, not one thing has measure or bound. Chengguan glosses only the last of these five sentences, and reads it together with the first of the eight particular ones, being furnished with the great light of knowledge that is measureless: the earlier, the light of knowledge, is wisdom together with skilful means; the later, knowledge without bound or limit, is the perfection of knowledge — the earlier is the knowledge of skilful means that is able to illumine, the later is the perfection of knowledge that reaches the other shore; of the middle four, the chao records of itself, the second, third, fourth, and fifth are not glossed at all. Fazang, outlining this stretch in the sixty-fascicle text, divides what is obtained into two layers: first the wide and many differentiated dharmas, in seven sentences; afterward the entering of the wide and great Dharma of Samantabhadra. Taking the two masters together, the reader may grasp it thus: what the five sentences obtain is the many, all of them differentiated dharmas; the entering of the place of the Way of the practice of Samantabhadra is the great, which gathers the many back into one practice. Holding-in-all holds what he has heard, vow holds where he is bound, concentration holds where he abides, spiritual power sends forth what he can do, and knowledge reaches through what he illumines — the five are the whole enjoyment of one showing and teaching in one person, not five unrelated things.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read showed it, taught it, made it of benefit, and gladdened him as a formula of courtesy at the close. That the chao takes it apart and reads it as four matters shows exactly that these four graphs are a whole order of teaching — first letting a man see, then urging him to go and do it, then letting him gain the benefit of it, and last making him rejoice.

Bringing it down to the reading: to test whether a stretch of teaching has come down upon a person, you may measure it by these four words — has he seen it, has he gone and done it, has he gained strength from it, does he rejoice?

The Place of the Way of the Practice of Samantabhadra and the Place Where He Himself Dwells: Two Places, or One?

The last two of the eight particular ones are causing him to enter the place of the Way of the practice of Samantabhadra and setting Sudhana down in the place where he himself dwells.

Ask first: what places are these two? Chengguan glosses them severally: as for the place of the Way of the practice of Samantabhadra, it is that lifting the foot and setting the foot down are alike in accord with the practice of Samantabhadra. As for the place where he himself dwells, it is precisely the Dharma realm, for it is the abiding without abiding of Mañjuśrī's great knowledge. The one place is a practice — lifting the foot and setting it down, not one step out of accord with the practice of Samantabhadra; the other is an abiding — and that dwelling place is the Dharma realm, the abiding without any abiding of Mañjuśrī's great knowledge.

Ask again: then are they two places, or one? Chengguan straightway reads them together: moreover, the place of the Way of Samantabhadra is precisely the principle of the Dharma realm, and the place where he himself dwells is precisely the knowledge of Mañjuśrī; and this too is in sense the same as pointing out the realm of the later friend Samantabhadra. The place of the Way is principle and the dwelling place is knowledge, and principle and knowledge are here not-two; moreover this one sentence already amounts to a foretelling of the realm of the good friend who comes next, Samantabhadra. The Yanyi chao adds a stroke, saying that the sūtra text has no outright pointing out, and so it only says that it is the same in sense. What Fazang fastens it to is another road: the place of the Way of Samantabhadra is from the first the very place where Mañjuśrī himself dwells, and to set Sudhana down there is to give him the same as what Mañjuśrī himself has obtained.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read setting Sudhana down in the place where he himself dwells as Mañjuśrī sending him back to where he began. That dwelling place is the Dharma realm, the abiding of no abiding; to send him there is precisely to send him to a place to which there is nowhere to send him.

Bringing it down to the reading: the last thing a teacher can give is to let you stand where he himself stands.

Drawing Himself Back In and Not Being Present: At This Point the Mark of Faith Is Gone

The last sentence is only eight graphs: Mañjuśrī drew himself back in and was not present.

Ask first: why must he not be present? Chengguan glosses it, the last sentence gathers the function back to the root, because what was to be done is finished. Faith having exhausted the realm of knowledge, the mark of faith straightway is gone, and so it says he was not present. What was to be done is over, and the function is gathered back to the substance; faith having come to the realm of knowledge, the mark of faith is of itself no longer set up, and so it says he was not present. What Fazang fastens it to is said with regard to the matter itself: what was to be done being completed, therefore he was not present.

Ask again: does not being present mean that Mañjuśrī went away? The commentators do not read it as a going away. What Mañjuśrī stands for here is the mind that is able to have faith; Sudhana's faith has been exhausted and has entered knowledge, and that one mark of faith then has nowhere left to be set up. So not being present speaks of a mark being gone, not of a person departing.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read not being present as a loss. Of the fifty and more good friends before, most of them departed with a taking of leave; only this one is a mark that simply is no longer set up. These are two different kinds of farewell.

Bringing it down to the reading: what has truly been learned does not, in the end, stay in the mind wearing the look of I have learned it.

Three Thousand Good Friends Seen All at Once: The Pure Gate and the Mixed Gate

The last stretch: Sudhana held it in thought and contemplated it, single-mindedly wishing to see Mañjuśrī, and what he saw was good friends as many as the dust motes of a great thousandfold world of three thousand realms, all of them drawn near to and waited upon and served, what they taught received and put into practice, with nothing gone against.

Ask first: the one he wished to see was one person, so why is it measureless persons that he sees? Of the three thousand friends Chengguan puts forth two senses: the first is that they complete what came before — these are still the benefit of Mañjuśrī; the second is that they accord with what comes after — this is the skilful means of entering the principle. And discussing all the good friends together he divides them into three parts: the first Mañjuśrī, one person, is the beginning of the mind of faith; coming next to the later Mañjuśrī, that is the end where knowledge is full; and last, Samantabhadra is principle and knowledge being not-two.

Ask again: how does this seeing all at once differ from the visiting of one friend after another before? Chengguan sets three layers side by side upon exactly this point: moreover, the friends before being met one by one, each in turn, is precisely the pure gate; the friends here being seen all at once and at a stroke displays the mixed gate; and Samantabhadra alone at the last being furnished with all the friends before is precisely the pure and the mixed being without obstruction. Meeting them one by one is the pure, seeing measureless persons all at once is the mixed, and when Samantabhadra alone is furnished with all the friends before, that is the pure and the mixed being without obstruction. And he explains why only three thousand are spoken of and they are not listed one by one: the Dharma gates these friends obtained, and the receiving and practising of them, are each different, and the sūtra text cannot write them all, and so the wide is concluded by following the brief, and three thousand is told in general.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read seen all at once as meaning that the walking of one friend after another before was walked in vain. The order of the three layers set side by side is quite clear — first there is the pure, and only then does the mixed show itself; only when they have been met one by one is there such a thing as seeing them all at once.

Bringing it down to the reading: the things learned one by one will one day all be present together in the same moment. That the day can come at all is because each single thing before was really learned.

The Friends Give No Pointing Out: Why from Here On No One Points the Way Any More

From this stretch on, right down to Samantabhadra at the end, not one good friend points out where the next one is to be found.

Ask first: is this something the sūtra text has left out? Chengguan does not read it as an omission. He glosses it, yet that these friends and the later Samantabhadra all give no pointing out stands for the Dharma realm that is witnessed being apart from the marks of this and that — the Dharma realm that is witnessed is apart from the marks of this and that, and so there is no need, and no way, to say any longer go to such a place and see such a person.

Ask again: then the fifty and more units before, every one of which has a pointing out of the friend to come — are they thereby of a lower order? The commentators do not judge it so. That there was a pointing out one by one before is because, at the stage of cultivating under an assigned stage, the order of stages is a road sign that may be followed; when we come here the stages are exhausted, and the road signs are of course taken in. To walk by the road signs while there are road signs, and still to be able to walk on when the road signs have been taken in — both of these are real abilities.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read no pointing out as meaning that from now on one need not ask the way. What the sūtra text writes of is what happens after Sudhana has walked a hundred and ten cities to the end; it is not that there were no road signs from the beginning.

Bringing it down to the reading: at the end of the learning, a good teacher will take the map away. The moment he takes it away is the moment he holds that you no longer need a map.

Wisdom's Illumination Being Not-Two: Who Set Up These Four Graphs

In Chengguan's outline this section is called the mark of wisdom's illumination being not-two, and it is the fourth of the five marks of the last assembly.

Ask first: are these four graphs in the sūtra text? They are not. The names of the five marks — the mark of cultivating under an assigned stage, the mark of the conditions being gathered and entering the real, the mark of gathering virtue and completing the cause, the mark of wisdom's illumination being not-two, the mark of displaying the vastness of the cause — are all set up by Chengguan within the ten gates of the last assembly, and he himself states that he is taking them over from the ancient worthies and matching them. Chengguan glosses this mark, the fourth, the later Mañjuśrī, is named the mark of wisdom's illumination being not-two — that is, practice being perfect and carried through to the end, a bright awakening is held in the breast, and it illumines the foregoing practice and the rest as being one perfect knowledge only, with no difference of before and after or of bright and dim — practice having come to its perfect end, a bright awakening is held in the breast, and turning to illumine everything practised before, it is one perfect knowledge only, without any difference of before and after or of bright and dim. And after the five marks he fastens a separate sentence to it: Mañjuśrī stands for the bodhisattva grounds being exhausted, with the mind having no mark of a beginning.

Ask again: which two is it that not-two is not two of? The Yanyi chao, upon the commentary's phrase cutting off object and knowledge and the rest, opens five layers: the first is that object and knowledge are not-two; the second, that beginning and end are not-two, that is, faith and knowledge are not-two; the third, that the defiled and the still are not-two; the fourth, that knowledge and cutting off are not-two; the fifth, that principle and events are not-two. And it gathers up the reason for it: because the sense of principle and events being not-two is witnessed, therefore the defiled and the pure are both gone, the nature of confusion and the nature of knowledge are of one nature and equal, beginning and end are without difference, and what is able and what is its object are fused alike. The chao also cites a passage from elsewhere in this same sūtra as a mutual witness: the mind does not weigh out the dharmas of a pair, but ever understands through and through that dharmas are not-two. Whether dharmas be two or not-two, in the midst of it there is in the end nothing clung to.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read not-two as the joining of two things into one. The sentence the chao cites has already blocked that step in advance — whether two or not two, in the midst of it there is nothing clung to; not even not-two is taken as a thing and held onto.

Bringing it down to the reading: when you come upon the two graphs not-two, do not be in a hurry to join. Look first at whether those two sides are still each standing on their own in your mind.

The Judgment of Assigned Stages: Two Tracks Among the Ancient Worthies, and Chengguan Holding the Balance

It was said above that the five marks are Chengguan's matching, taken over from the ancient worthies, and that stretch must be set out clearly here, because the whole way in which the last assembly is read hangs upon this one sentence.

Ask first: how many positions did the ancient worthies hold on whether good friends are to be matched to stages? Chengguan records two tracks: Dharma-master Yi and the treatise of the Terrace Mountain go one way — they only explain as the text runs and make no separate assignment, explaining as the sūtra text runs and not matching stages besides; masters such as Guangtong all assign the stages, matching every good friend to a stage.

Ask again: which side does Chengguan take? He denies neither. His own words are: both have their reason — that is, since each single stage is furnished with many Dharma gates, how could it be allowed that the mind of an ordinary person may not practise and seek the dharma of the good friend? Therefore not assigning them stands to reason. Yet where there is no order of stages, this does not obstruct the order of stages; to display the stages is the ordinary rule, and to assign them is no fault either. Not assigning has its reason — each single stage is from the first furnished with many Dharma gates, and how could it be said that the mind of an ordinary person may not practise and seek the dharma of the good friend? Assigning is no fault either — where there is no order of stages, there is nothing to obstruct there being an order of stages, and it displays that the stages are the ordinary rule. At the last he says that crosswise and lengthwise are without obstruction, and only then says, for the present I follow the ancient worthies and assign them as five marks. That one graph, for the present, sets out the measure of the thing quite clearly.

The error to be cleared away is this: do not read assigned to such and such a stage as the sūtra text's own judgment. The sūtra text writes only that Sudhana came to such a city, saw such a person, and obtained such a Dharma gate; the stages are matched by the commentators, and the one who matched them has said himself that it is for the present.

Bringing it down to the reading: the most important thing in reading a commentary is to tell apart which sentence is the scripture's telling, which sentence is the commentator's telling, and which sentence the commentator himself has said need not be held onto as fixed.

Lineage

The Mañjuśrī of this section is the same person as the Mañjuśrī at the head of the last assembly. In the gate of drawing together under the two stations, among the ten gates of the last assembly, Chengguan reads Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra in three layers set opposite each other — set opposite as what is able and what is its object, Samantabhadra stands for the Dharma realm relied upon and Mañjuśrī for the mind that is able to have faith; set opposite as understanding and practice, Samantabhadra stands for the ten thousand practices that are set in motion and Mañjuśrī for the understanding that is able to set them in motion; set opposite as principle and knowledge, Samantabhadra is the Dharma realm that is witnessed and Mañjuśrī is the great knowledge that is able to witness it. When we come to this section and the next unit, these three layers set opposite come down onto the written text: this section is the later Mañjuśrī, the end where knowledge is full; the next section is Samantabhadra, principle and knowledge being not-two. In his general discussion of the three thousand friends Chengguan gathers this line up in one sentence — the first Mañjuśrī, one person, is the beginning of the mind of faith; coming next to the later Mañjuśrī, that is the end where knowledge is full; and the Samantabhadra who comes after is principle and knowledge being not-two.

The outlines of the several houses each make a track of their own. Chengguan divides into three — seeking in accord with the teaching, seeing, hearing and entering by witnessing, and turning to meet the surpassing conditions; Fazang divides into five great divisions — raising the Dharma and exhorting to cultivation, entering in accord with the teaching, truly witnessing the Dharma realm, gathering the function back to the root, and completing virtue to the utmost, and under entering in accord with the teaching he opens three further passages, paying respects and taking leave, making his way to that place, and giving rise to the thought and seeking it out; Zhiyan divides into three — distinguishing the exhortation to advance to what is surpassing, choosing out in accord with the teaching, that is, proceeding to enter, and truly entering the Dharma realm, and under truly entering the Dharma realm he divides again into the first seeing and the obtaining of the benefit; Li Tongxuan does not divide by outline, and discusses this section together with the unit of Samantabhadra within the general explanation of the verses. The four houses are recorded without being judged.

It is the same with the glosses on the number of the cities. Chengguan sets up two senses and lets them stand together; Fazang takes one sense, saying that from Maitreya he turns back toward Mañjuśrī and walks a hundred and ten cities again, from which it may be known that from the first up to Maitreya he must have passed a hundred and ten; Li Tongxuan puts forth another reading, saying that passing through and travelling a hundred and ten cities sets forth that at one time it universally seals the dharmas cultivated before, and that there is no before and after. Zhiyan's Shixuan men is not glossing the number of the cities of this section; it only borrows this one sentence and sets it against the seeing of Samantabhadra in one thought, using it to establish the sense that awakening is accomplished in one thought in the one vehicle, which is a borrowing for the sake of an illustration. The glosses of the three houses are recorded without being judged.

As to the number of sentences of what is lacking and of what cannot be done, the two commentaries rest upon different versions. Chengguan outlines the eighty-fascicle text as nine sentences and fifteen sentences; Fazang outlines the sixty-fascicle text as ten sentences and twelve sentences. Reading the three versions word for word against one another makes it plain: the sixty-fascicle text makes the mind being of a low sort and grieved and full of regret into the grieving and the regret sinking the mind, and puts the fifth and sixth sentences the other way about; the forty-fascicle text opens the mind being of a low sort and grieved and full of regret into the two sentences the mind giving rise to weariness and disgust and the will of the mind being of a low sort, and combines the last two sentences into the one sentence being unable to draw near to the good friends, having no sentence of the Tathāgata's holding in mind. The numbers of the sentences of what is known and of what is able to know differ in the three versions as well. Each is set down word for word after its base text, and no uniformity is made on their behalf.

The three versions differ in structure at the close of this section. The eighty-fascicle text after the showing, teaching, benefiting and gladdening, and the sixty-fascicle text after having shown and taught and instructed him, comforted him and caused him to rejoice and leap for joy, both have the sentence of drawing back in and not being present, and so enter the stretch of turning to meet the surpassing conditions; the forty-fascicle text, after the showing, teaching, benefiting and gladdening, first inserts a long stretch of question and answer that neither the eighty- nor the sixty-fascicle text has — Sudhana asks Mañjuśrī about the ten skilful dharmas of the land where he originally dwells; only when that is said comes the sentence he drew back his spiritual power and all at once was not present, with the text of the seeing of the good friends. This is a structural enlargement of the forty-fascicle text, recorded without being judged.

The track Li Tongxuan sets up is wholly other than that of the two commentaries. He does not enter by dividing an outline, but sets up the sense outright by what the text stands for, saying that all the Buddhas of the ten directions and all beings alike make up one land of the Dharma realm with no separate substance, and that therefore passing through and travelling a hundred and ten cities is at one time the universal sealing of the dharmas cultivated before; and again, that Sudhana's single-mindedly wishing to see Mañjuśrī and seeing good friends as many as the dust motes of a great thousandfold world of three thousand realms is precisely, the Dharma-body wisdom of Mañjuśrī being equal and the same, the universal seeing that all of them are not other than the substance of Mañjuśrī, which sets forth the mark of the whole. At the last he gathers the whole stretch onto not parting from the root knowledge that is the substance of awakening within the mind of the first faith, and cultivating the knowledge of differences so as to fulfil the practice of Samantabhadra. Recorded without being judged.

Among the treatises of the Huayan house, this section is cited in only two places: the Kongmu zhang lists the name of this section in its table of the order of the assignment of the five marks to stages, and the Shixuan men borrows this section's sentence on going through a hundred and ten cities and sets it against the seeing of Samantabhadra in one thought, using it to establish the sense that awakening is accomplished in one thought. Neither of the two places is a gloss on this section; they are borrowings for the sake of an illustration. Sweeping the Zhigui, the Wujiao zhang, and the Fajie xuanjing for the two forms wisdom's illumination being not-two and a hundred and ten cities yields no hits at all; sweeping the Shidi jing lun and the Cheng weishi lun, the She dasheng lun, and the Jieshenmi jing for wisdom's illumination being not-two likewise yields no hits at all. The want is marked as it stands, and text from elsewhere is not put in its place.

This Section Is Both the Last Friend and the End of the Whole Sūtra

The fifty-one friends before this for the most part had a question and an answer (Universal Friend gives no answer, and the boy Virtue-Born and the maiden Endowed share a single question and answer): Sudhana asked how a bodhisattva is to study the bodhisattva's practice and cultivate the bodhisattva's path, and the good friend answered with one Dharma gate, humbled himself, and pointed to the next friend. With Samantabhadra that whole format is gone: Sudhana does not ask, and Samantabhadra does not point to a next one — because there is no next one. The unit runs to something over eight thousand graphs, and its thirty-three passages of prose speak of a single matter, namely Sudhana from “he then heard the name of the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Samantabhadra” to “equal to Samantabhadra and equal to all the buddhas”; and the ninety-nine stanzas that follow speak not of Sudhana at all, but of the merit and virtue of the Buddha.

One misreading to clear away: that the last friend is special because Samantabhadra's rank is the highest. The reason Chengguan gives is not rank but mark. Among the five marks he establishes for the final assembly, he judges Samantabhadra alone to be the fifth, the mark that sets forth the vastness of the cause, and explains the reason for it by saying that “initial awakening becomes the same as original awakening and perfect awakening appears before one, pervading the Dharma realm in accord with it and leaving nothing uncontained” — what this mark has to set forth is how vast the cause is, not how honored the person is.

Down on the ground: if in reading this section one watches only the spectacle — worlds inside pores, a single step passing countless lands — one has read it as a chapter about spiritual powers. It is in fact the sūtra's last answer to the one question it has been asking all along: just how vast is the bodhisattva's cause?

Why the Last Friend Is Samantabhadra and Not Mañjuśrī

Mañjuśrī has already withdrawn in the preceding unit. Chengguan says something extremely important about how the two holy ones stand over against each other: “Mañjuśrī's wisdom is the gathering of characteristics back into the essence; Samantabhadra's Dharma realm is the secret, layer upon layer” — Mañjuśrī's virtue gathers, drawing the myriad characteristics back into one essence; Samantabhadra's virtue opens, opening one Dharma realm into layer upon layer without end. He adds a further layer: if the two holy ones are set over against each other, Mañjuśrī is that which realizes; if they are set over against Sudhana, then Mañjuśrī becomes also that which is realized, because Sudhana had not before attained wisdom and now realizes it.

One misreading to clear away: that Mañjuśrī leaves the stage because he is no longer needed. Chengguan says exactly the opposite — he says that this time Mañjuśrī “points Sudhana generally toward universal contemplation, unlike the earlier text where one friend points to one friend, precisely because only by universal contemplation does one see Samantabhadra.” Every good friend before this pointed to one single successor; what Mañjuśrī points to this time is universal contemplation, and so what Sudhana sees is not a fifty-third person but everything.

Down on the ground: how large an objective realm a person finally sees depends on how large an eye he has been taught to use.

The Twenty-Six Clauses of Seeking in Accord with the Teaching: This Is Not Lyric

This section's first clause, “increasing his turning toward and seeking after all wisdom,” carries on from what precedes — at the end of the previous passage Sudhana received and practiced Mañjuśrī's teaching “without the slightest going against it,” and then comes this passage. Chengguan judges this passage to have twenty-six clauses and fixes its skeleton: “the first one marks out the seeking of the fruit of buddhahood; the last one contemplates the perfect cause as a whole,” while the clauses in the middle are “in meaning continuous with what precedes and what follows, all of them being causes of turning toward buddhahood, and all being the liberated objective realm of Samantabhadra.”

One misreading to clear away: that these twenty-six clauses are a parallel series describing how excited Sudhana felt. Chengguan will not allow that reading; he gathers the middle clauses “into ten pairs” and points out the doctrine of each pair one by one — the four kinds of equal pervasion and stillness are relinquishing, merit and knowledge with nothing outside them taking objects is knowledge, and below that: entering the right and increasing the aids, cultivating the cause and knowing the fruit, entering the dharmas and appearing in birth, realizing the vows and cultivating the practice, illumining above and increasing below, gaining the real and illumining the provisional, knowledge pervading and body pervading, crushing obstruction and entering principle. Each pair is a joint in the practice, not a figure of speech.

Two of the clauses are especially essential. “Dwelling on the ground of the equality of the Dharma realm” is tied by Chengguan to the preceding text, where he says that “his dwelling on the ground of equality is precisely the place where Mañjuśrī himself dwells”; and the last clause, “contemplating the liberated objective realm of Samantabhadra,” is exactly where Mañjuśrī had placed Sudhana in the preceding text.

Down on the ground: what is called “turning toward and seeking” is not a wanting; it is twenty-six things already being done.

The Thirteen Clauses of Hearing the Name: From Whom Did He Hear It?

Sudhana “then heard the name of the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Samantabhadra, his practices and vows, his aids to the path, his right path,” and the ten-odd items below that. Chengguan judges this to be “thirteen clauses: the first one is hearing the person's name, and the latter twelve are hearing of his practices and positions,” and points out that the words “then heard” must be carried all the way down and do not govern only the first clause.

Then the question comes: Mañjuśrī has withdrawn, so from whom was this “hearing” heard? Chengguan gives one sentence straight out: “The hearing here is not a hearing of it from one person or from many; it is simply hearing in accord with the Dharma realm.” It is not that someone told him; it is a hearing that accords with the Dharma realm.

One misreading to clear away: that this says Sudhana had a spiritual power and could awaken without a teacher. The reason Chengguan sets up lies in what precedes — because what Mañjuśrī pointed to was universal contemplation, what is heard also accords with the Dharma realm. This is cause and effect, not a paranormal talent. As for the item “his grounds,” Chengguan explains it as “the grounds of Samantabhadra's own practice within his position, together with the grounds subsumed under perfect interfusion,” and judges this clause to gather up the eight particulars below it (the skillful means of the grounds is the preparatory application, the entry into the grounds is the mind of entry, and the advance, the abiding, the cultivation, the objective realm, the majestic power, and the dwelling together each point to something of their own).

With these eight particulars Chengguan did not merely supply names. He first judges that this clause gathers up the eight particulars below it, and beneath it ties each item in turn: the third is the mind of emergence; the fourth, the mind of abiding; the fifth is the cultivation of giving, discipline, and the rest; the sixth is such things as suchness in its universal pervasion taken as the realm to be realized, which is also the realm of the measure obtained; the seventh is the functioning of spiritual powers, crushing the wrong and gathering in beings, and the rest; the eighth is abiding in the same reliance upon the Buddha's knowledge. Matching these one by one: the advance in the grounds is the mind of emergence, the abiding in the grounds is the mind of abiding, the cultivation in the grounds is the cultivation of giving, discipline, and the rest, the objective realm of the grounds is the realm to be realized such as suchness in its universal pervasion and is also the measure obtained, the majestic power of the grounds is the functioning of spiritual powers with the crushing of the wrong and the gathering in of beings, and the dwelling together in the grounds is abiding in the same reliance upon the Buddha's knowledge. Once what they point to is clear, the six items are not six terms but six things actually being done after entry into a ground; and what the last of them relies upon together with others is not another person but the Buddha's knowledge.

Down on the ground: in matters of the Dharma realm, the difference between hearing and not hearing lies less often in the ear than in the contemplating.

Raising Eleven Minds: First Raise a Mind Commensurate with What Is to Be Seen

Sudhana thirsts and looks up, wishing to see, and right at the Adamantine Treasury site of awakening, before the lion throne of the Tathāgata Vairocana, he raises eleven kinds of mind. There are two things to ask here.

First, why go back to the site of awakening? Sudhana has travelled all the way from the south to this point, and now suddenly raises contemplation at the very ground of the first assembly's accomplishing of the Way. The reason Chengguan gives is the build of the whole sūtra: he says that “the very build of this sūtra should have ten assemblies, so as to accord with the inexhaustible,” and that “set over against the earlier two assemblies of root and branch, this is precisely the sense of gathering the branch back into the root,” so that Sudhana needs no one else to point him and raises contemplation and seeking right at the place of the first assembly's first accomplishing, before the Tathāgata's throne. Li Tongxuan goes the same way but speaks more symbolically, saying that Sudhana raises the great function of Samantabhadra's Dharma realm “within the essence of awakening that is the adamantine treasury of knowledge of the Dharma realm in the first mind of faith.”

Second, why must a mind be raised first? Fazang answers most directly: “As for raising ten kinds of mind: the objects of these ten minds are all Samantabhadra's objective realm, and therefore the mind raised accords in turn with those objects, and only so can one get to see Samantabhadra.” If the object of one's mind is not Samantabhadra's objective realm, one will not see him. Chengguan, with respect to the eighty-fascicle text, judges this to be eleven clauses, and says that “all of them raise the mind in accord with Samantabhadra's objective realm, and therefore afterward he gets to see him.”

One misreading to clear away: that raising the mind is preparatory work and seeing Samantabhadra is the real business. What the sequence of the sūtra text states is something else — what is seen is exactly the measure of the mind that was raised. Down on the ground: whatever one wishes to see, look first at what mind one is raising.

The Ten Auspicious Marks: First the Pure Land, Then the Sentient Beings

After the mind is raised, Sudhana sees ten auspicious marks. The sūtra first says that the causes of his getting to see are three powers — the power of his own roots of goodness, the power of the sustaining grace of all tathāgatas, and the power of sharing the same roots of goodness with the bodhisattva Samantabhadra; Fazang, with respect to the sixty-fascicle text, judges them as “the two powers of self and other.”

The text of the ten marks has one tidy structure: every clause begins with “he saw all buddha-lands pure” (the sūtra text counts out to ten instances), and only the second half of each clause differs. Chengguan judges this to be “ten clauses in five pairs, each first the pure land relied upon and then the sentient beings dwelling in it” — within the five pairs, the first clause speaks of the land and the second of the beings dwelling in it.

One misreading to clear away: that auspicious marks are omens, forecasts that something good is about to arrive. Chengguan judges what they belong to as “the land that is Samantabhadra's dependent recompense” — these ten marks are not a forecast; they are the objective realm of Samantabhadra's dependent recompense itself. Down on the ground: a person's objective realm shows itself first in the surroundings he is in; and here those ‘surroundings’ are buddha-lands, and the purity of the buddha-lands is at the same time the purity of sentient beings.

The Ten Marks of Radiance: Looking a Second Time at the Same Thing

Next he sees ten marks of radiance, in each of which countless clouds come forth “within each single dust mote” and pervade the Dharma realm. Set beside the earlier ten auspicious marks, this set is more subtle. Chengguan compares the two, saying: “Second, beholding the radiance: the earlier auspicious marks were a direct seeing of one layer of pure land, whereas this makes clear a seeing again. Further, the earlier is coarse and this is subtle, the earlier is the essential character and this is the functioning in action.” Fazang, with respect to the sixty-fascicle text, makes the same fourfold comparison and judges the earlier to be the dependent recompense and this to be “the character of Samantabhadra's proper recompense.”

One misreading to clear away: that this is a change of scene and another look. What the two houses judge is two depths of one and the same objective realm — what was seen earlier is the essential character of one layer of pure land, and what is seen here is the functioning in action within dust mote after dust mote. So “seeing again” does not mean repetition; it means looking at the same thing a second time and seeing it more deeply.

There is a detail in the fifth and sixth items: the clouds of fragrance “praise the great ocean of merit and virtue of all Samantabhadra's practices and vows,” and the clouds of suns, moons, and constellations “all release the light of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra” — by this point what is seen has begun to name Samantabhadra outright. Down on the ground: the depth of an objective realm often lies not in the realm changing but in the one who looks changing.

That One Thought and That One Passage of Contemplation: The Key to the Whole Unit Is Here

Having seen the marks of radiance, Sudhana raises a single thought — “I must now surely see the bodhisattva Samantabhadra.” Then comes a passage of the sūtra that is extremely short and extremely dense: universally gathering in the faculties, single-mindedly seeking to see, raising great vigor, the mind not turning back; with the universal eye contemplating the objective realms seen by all the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions and forming toward all of them the thought of being able to see Samantabhadra; with the eye of wisdom contemplating Samantabhadra's path, “his mind vast as space, his great compassion firm as adamant,” vowing to the end of the future constantly to follow after Samantabhadra.

Upon this passage Chengguan sets down the weightiest judgment of the section: “This gathers up all the contemplations together; a practitioner who wishes to see should cultivate in imitation of this, and apart from this contemplating mind, even a seeing is not a surpassing one.” He lifts this passage out of the narrative and makes it a rule of practice — whoever wishes to see Samantabhadra should cultivate along these lines; apart from this contemplating mind, even a seeing does not count as surpassing.

One misreading to clear away: that this is a bit of psychological description the compilers wrote in passing. Chengguan judges its sequence clause by clause: first gathering in the scattered and abiding in concentration; next spurring on diligently without turning back; next contemplating that its essence pervades (taking the Dharma realm as body); next compassion and knowledge broad crosswise; next vow and practice exhaustive lengthwise; and last obtaining the fruit and the fullness of the cause. All six joints are present: it is a complete gate of contemplation.

Down on the ground: what is most worth taking home from the whole unit is not the worlds within the pores but these six clauses.

Seeing Samantabhadra's Body: He Sits Before the Tathāgata

Sudhana then sees Samantabhadra “within the assembly before the Tathāgata, seated upon a lion throne of treasure lotuses.” This position is significant. Fazang judges on this point that Sudhana, in accord with the first mind, sees Samantabhadra at the place of the Way before the Tathāgata, and that this “symbolizes that Samantabhadra is level with the fruit of buddhahood, and that the positions of cause and fruit are the same” — Samantabhadra seated before the Buddha symbolizes the position of the cause being level with the position of the fruit.

The sūtra then describes him in four clauses: most extraordinary; with none in the world his equal; the objective realm of his wisdom measureless and boundless, hard to fathom and hard to conceive; equal to the buddhas of the three times, and no bodhisattva able to contemplate it. One misreading to clear away: that “no bodhisattva was able to contemplate it” means Samantabhadra is cleverer than the other bodhisattvas. What this clause points to is the measure of an objective realm, not a ranking of persons; and why Sudhana is able to see it has already been accounted for above — because he first raised a mind that accorded with the object.

Down on the ground: what sort of teacher one gets to see is often not luck, but how far one has walked oneself.

The Twenty Rounds of the Pores: Why Pores?

From here on the sūtra repeats the opening clause “he saw that from every single pore” all the way down (the first instance reads “he saw that from every single pore on Samantabhadra's body,” and the nineteen below it read “he saw that from every single pore”; the sūtra text counts out to twenty rounds). What comes forth runs from light, fragrant flame, flowers, incense, robes, and jewels, upward to the bodies of the devas of the form realm, the bodies of Brahmā devas, and the bodies of the lords of the desire-realm devas, and upward again to clouds of buddha-lands of the three times, clouds of pure buddha-lands, clouds of buddha-lands pure yet not pure, clouds of buddha-lands not pure yet pure, clouds of impure buddha-lands, clouds of the bodies of sentient beings, three rounds of clouds of the bodies of bodhisattvas, clouds of Samantabhadra's practice, and clouds of the bodies of right awakening.

Chengguan gives this set two measures. The first is a measure of quantity: he says of this passage that “in truth it is layer upon layer without end; twenty rounds are set forth in abbreviation” — what the sūtra lists is only an abbreviated listing. The second is a measure of what they rest upon: he says these twenty rounds “also answer to the eleven minds that Sudhana raised earlier out of his thirsting,” and matches them back section by section (what sends forth clouds adorning the place of the Way comes from the mind that contemplates the adornment of the place of the Way and understands it clearly; the three clauses from praising the mind of awakening onward come from the mind that enters the ocean of buddha-dharmas; the last six clauses come from the mind that dwells through all kalpas and the ultimate mind that turns toward the ten powers of the Tathāgata). His closing remark is the most essential sentence in the whole unit: “From this one knows that in each case it is one's own mind that determines the measure of what is seen.”

One misreading to clear away: that what comes forth from the pores is Samantabhadra performing spiritual powers. The direction of Chengguan's judgment is precisely the reverse — the measure of what is seen is determined by the mind of the one who looks; from the same pore, minds differing, what is seen differs. Down on the ground: Chengguan judges that these twenty rounds are displayed over against the eleven minds that Sudhana raised earlier in his thirsting longing, the first five of those minds pervading all the clauses and the remaining six arising severally — so these twenty rounds are not twenty things; they are one mirror reflecting those eleven minds of the beginning.

Contemplating the Body Again: A Whole Three-Thousandfold Great-Thousand World-System Inside One Pore

Sudhana, having seen Samantabhadra's marks, is filled body and mind with joy, and thereupon “contemplates again each single part of Samantabhadra's body, each single pore, and there is within each a three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system.” The sūtra then counts out that world item by item — the wheels of wind, water, earth, and fire; the great seas and rivers; the jewel mountains, Sumeru, and the Cakravāḍa mountains; the villages and camps, walled towns, palaces, parks and gardens; the hells, hungry ghosts, animals, and the realm of King Yama; the eight classes of devas and nāgas, humans and nonhumans; the places of the three realms; the suns, moons, and constellations, the winds, clouds, thunder, and lightning; day and night, months and seasons, years and kalpas; the buddhas appearing in the world, the assemblies of bodhisattvas, and the adornment of the places of the Way.

Here one question should be asked: why count the hells and the hungry ghosts in as well? The sūtra's own wording is “things of every sort such as these he saw all of them clearly and distinctly,” and it does not pick out only the good ones. The world manifested is the whole of it, not a sample of a pure land.

One misreading to clear away: that the world within the pore is a kind of miniaturizing metaphor. The sūtra itself rules that reading out in the following line — “each and every one distinct, without confusion among them” — it is the full quantity, not a scale model. Down on the ground: in saying that a single dust mote holds the Dharma realm, the hard part is not ‘the large within the small’ but ‘without confusion among them.’

The Concluding Extension: Where the Two Words of Samantabhadra's Name Come From

From this world the sūtra extends by kind to the ten directions, from the present to the limits of past and future, from the place of Vairocana to the place of the buddha Worthy Head in the east, then to the places of all buddhas in the ten directions, and finally comes home to this: within each single dust mote there is an assembly of the buddhas of the Dharma realm, and at each single buddha's place Samantabhadra sits upon a lion throne and manifests the power of spiritual power. Chengguan says that this passage “has four rounds of extension by kind.”

And at the end of it he sets down an explanation of the two words of Samantabhadra's name that is the finest piece of judgment in the section: he says the earlier passage, “since within the body it contains the Dharma realm and is vast and boundless, sets forth the sense of ‘universal,’” and this passage, “since this whole Dharma-realm-containing body slips into the dust motes pliantly and without obstruction, makes clear the sense of ‘worthy’”; and the two together mean that “inner and outer pervade everywhere and all limitation is thereby exhausted — hence the name Samantabhadra.”

One misreading to clear away: that “Samantabhadra” is a name chosen for its auspiciousness. What Chengguan establishes is a doctrine: to be able to contain the Dharma realm is ‘universal’; to be able to slip into a single dust mote without obstruction is ‘worthy.’ Down on the ground: to be so large that nothing is outside is not the hard part; the hard part is to be at the same time so small that nothing is inside.

The Ten Perfections of Knowledge: Marked as Ten, Listed as Eleven

Seeing this power of spiritual power, Sudhana “then obtained ten perfections of knowledge.” The sūtra marks it “what are the ten?” and yet what is listed below — pervading all buddha-lands in thought after thought, going to the place of every buddha, making offerings to all tathāgatas, hearing and upholding the Dharma, pondering the wheel of Dharma, knowing the inconceivable matters of great spiritual power, speaking one phrase of Dharma with inexhaustible eloquence, contemplating all dharmas with deep wisdom, entering the ocean of the true character of the whole Dharma realm, knowing the minds of all sentient beings, and having Samantabhadra's wisdom-practice all present before one — counts out to eleven items.

The ancient worthies made no collation of the clause count at this point; Chengguan only says with respect to its meaning, “since he has obtained the perfection of knowledge, the fulfillment of the grounds is already made manifest — how much more so when ‘ten’ signifies the inexhaustible” — the perfection of knowledge having been obtained, the fulfillment of the position is already manifest, all the more so since this “ten” signifies the inexhaustible in the first place.

One misreading to clear away: that the “ten” in the sūtra is a tally. In this sūtra “ten” is mostly a number that signifies a doctrine, and Chengguan's remark here is proof of it; as for the list running one item over, the sūtra text is verbatim so, and it is recorded unchanged. Down on the ground: in reading Huayan's numbers, one must first ask whether they are tallying or signifying.

The Crown-Touching: Looking Outward and Being Touched Are Two Different Things

After Sudhana has obtained the perfection of knowledge, Samantabhadra “then stretched forth his right hand and touched the crown of his head.” What is obtained after the crown-touching is no longer the perfection of knowledge but “gates of samādhi as many as the dust motes of all buddha-lands,” each gate having for its retinue samādhis as many as the dust motes of buddha-lands.

Why should what is obtained before and after differ? Chengguan answers with the utmost brevity: “Earlier he contemplated outward, and so obtained the perfection of knowledge; here he realizes it in person by the crown-touching, and so obtains samādhi.” What can be got by looking outward is the perfection of knowledge; what is got by being touched on the crown and realizing it in person is the gate of concentration.

And the text below says that the Samantabhadras at the places of all buddhas in the ten directions also touch Sudhana's crown at the same time, and that “the Dharma gates obtained were all the same and equal.” Chengguan explains the reason, saying it is “precisely because Sudhana is equal to Samantabhadra” — it is not that the ten directions each performed a touching, but that Sudhana at this moment is already level with Samantabhadra, and therefore one touching is every touching.

One misreading to clear away: that the crown-touching is a rite of empowerment. What the crown-touching draws out here is a turn of position — from contemplation to realization. Down on the ground: however much one has seen, it is not the same thing as being touched once.

“Do You See This Power of Spiritual Power of Mine?”: The Unit's Only Question and Answer

The mahāsattva Samantabhadra says to Sudhana, “Good man! Do you see this power of spiritual power of mine?” and Sudhana answers, “Yes indeed, I have seen it. Great Sage! This inconceivable matter of great spiritual power — only a tathāgata is able to know it.” Apart from the compilers and Samantabhadra, the only speaker in the whole section is Sudhana, in this one answer; this one question and answer is the single place where Sudhana opens his mouth.

What should be asked is this: Sudhana has plainly seen it, so why does his answer hand it over to the Tathāgata? The sūtra's wording is “only a tathāgata is able to know it” — to have seen is to have seen, and to be able to know is to be able to know; being able to see it does not amount to knowing it through. Chengguan judges this passage to be “the question and answer examining what was seen,” the head of the large section on the depth and breadth of the cause; because in order to speak of the depth and breadth of the cause, one must first make sure of what was seen.

One misreading to clear away: that this answer is a polite modesty. In the earlier units the good friends' self-humbling and pointing to what surpasses each had its own form; here it is different — Samantabhadra hands it over to no one; it is Sudhana himself who yields “being able to know” to the position of the fruit. Down on the ground: the most honest sentence a practitioner ever says is often ‘I have seen it, but I dare not say I understand it.’

“In the Past I”: However Deep the Cause, So Thick the Fruit

Samantabhadra tells of what he cultivated in the past, and the sūtra sets it out with a series of “in each single kalpa”: serving the buddhas for the sake of purifying the mind of awakening; setting up vast assemblies of giving for the sake of gathering the implements of merit; giving away goods and possessions for the sake of seeking the dharma of all-knowledge; giving away walled towns, hamlets, lands, the throne of a king, wife and children and retinue, and even eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, flesh, hands, feet, and life itself for the sake of seeking the knowledge of a buddha; giving away heads for the sake of seeking the head of all-knowledge; and, at the places of the tathāgatas, paying reverence and making offerings, leaving the household life to study the Way, and guarding and upholding the right teaching, for the sake of seeking all-knowledge.

Chengguan judges this section by saying that “the cause being deep, the fruit is therefore thick,” and in one sentence points out where this passage stands in the unit: what came before spoke of the breadth of what Sudhana saw, and here it turns back to speak of where that breadth came from.

One misreading to clear away: that giving away head, eyes, marrow, and brain is embellishment. The sūtra gives the reason itself — of the six items of “in each single kalpa,” every one is tied to something it is for: four read “for the sake of seeking,” the other two read “for the sake of wishing” and “for the sake of gathering,” and the giving of the head is “for the sake of seeking the head of all-knowledge” — the merit is not in the austerity itself. Down on the ground: what one relinquishes is not the point; why one relinquishes is what makes it a “cause.”

Never a Thought Failing to Accord with the Buddha's Teaching: Proving It by What Was Absent

What Samantabhadra says next is not what he did but what he never gave rise to — never a thought failing to accord with the Buddha's teaching; never a thought giving rise to a mind of anger and harm, a mind of I and mine, a mind of difference between self and other, a mind departing from awakening; never in birth-and-death giving rise to a mind of weariness, a mind of indolence, a mind of obstruction, or a mind of confusion — dwelling only in “the unsurpassed and indestructible great mind of awakening that gathers the dharmas aiding the path toward all-knowledge.”

Chengguan judges this passage as the “concluding by leaving faults behind and accomplishing virtue” of the passage before it — earlier it spoke positively of what was practiced; here it turns around and speaks of what was absent.

One misreading to clear away: that this is self-praise. The sūtra's wording is “as I myself recall”: it is a recalling of his own record, not a proving of something to somebody. And of the eight minds listed, the first four (malice, I and mine, the difference of self and other, and distance from bodhi) are a deviation in view, and the latter four (weariness, indolence, obstruction, and confusion raised within birth-and-death) an exhaustion in practice; the clause not going along with the Buddha's teaching is the general statement. Down on the ground: in cultivation across long kalpas the hardest thing is not doing it, but not making a single exception.

“In My Ocean of Dharma There Is Not One Graph”: What a Phrase of Dharma Costs

Samantabhadra says the sharpest sentence of the section: “In my ocean of Dharma there is not one graph, not one phrase, that was not sought and obtained by relinquishing the throne of a wheel-turning king.” One graph, one phrase — every one of them was exchanged for the relinquishing of the throne of a wheel-turning king.

Chengguan pushes one layer further along this line: “If for a single graph there is nothing he does not relinquish, how much more for the whole? Because one graph is the one that is all, like a single drop of the ocean.” A single graph is got only by relinquishing everything, how much more the whole ocean of Dharma; and the reason it is so is that one graph is the one that is all, as a single drop is of the ocean.

One misreading to clear away: that this is saying the Dharma is precious and must be revered. The sūtra's next line turns the direction itself — the Dharma sought was “all for the sake of rescuing and protecting all sentient beings,” and five vows are set out beside it (may all sentient beings get to hear this Dharma; may the light of wisdom illuminate the world; may the wisdom that transcends the world be revealed; may all sentient beings gain peace and happiness; may all the merit and virtue of all buddhas be universally praised). He can afford to relinquish because what he sought was never for himself.

Down on the ground: what a phrase of Dharma is worth is measured not by who speaks it but by what the seeker relinquished, and for whom he sought it.

Ten Powers and Two Bodies

At the end of Samantabhadra's account, the sūtra lists ten powers — the power of dharmas aiding the path, the power of the roots of goodness, the power of great aspiration and delight, the power of cultivating merit and virtue, the power of pondering all dharmas as they truly are, the power of the eye of wisdom, the power of the Buddha's majestic spirit, the power of great kindness and compassion, the power of pure spiritual power, and the power of good friends — and by these he obtains “the ultimate pure dharma-body that is equal throughout the three times” and “a pure and unsurpassed form-body.”

Chengguan judges these ten clauses as two classes: “the first four are contributory causes, the next two are revealing causes, and the last four run through both contributory and revealing,” and matches them to the two bodies of the fruit, saying that “by the revealing cause he obtains the fruit that is the dharma-body, and by the contributory cause he obtains the fruit that is the form-body.” The revealing cause illumines the essence of principle, and so the dharma-body is obtained; the contributory cause supports the myriad practices, and so the form-body is obtained.

One misreading to clear away: that the dharma-body and the form-body are two things, one real and one false. The sūtra says it plainly: the form-body “takes a form for sentient beings according to what their minds delight in” — the reason for its being lies on the side of sentient beings, not in whether it exists of itself. Down on the ground: two bodies answer to two causes, and lacking either side is one fewer way of benefiting beings.

Hearing the Name and Seeing the Body Bring Non-Retrogression at Once: Why This Passage Stands Here

Samantabhadra says that those who have not planted roots of goodness cannot even hear his name, how much less see his body; and that whoever hears his name once will not turn back from unsurpassed awakening, and likewise for whoever sees him, touches him, welcomes him, sees him off, follows after him for a while, and even sees or hears him in a dream. He then lists the spans of recollecting (a day and a night; seven days and seven nights; half a month, a month; half a year, a year; a hundred years, a thousand years; a kalpa, a hundred kalpas, and even unspeakable kalpas; one lifetime, a hundred lifetimes, and even unspeakable lifetimes), together with seeing him release radiance, seeing him shake the lands, giving rise to fear, and giving rise to joy — “they all come to ripeness.”

Chengguan judges this large section as “the functioning of contemplation without shore,” within which he first sets forth the difficulty of seeing and hearing, then the benefit that seeing and hearing alike bring; and the benefit of seeing and hearing is itself divided into the two layers of non-retrogression and ripening.

One misreading to clear away: that giving rise to fear also brings ripening means that being afraid counts as practice. The sūtra's pairing is “or give rise to fear, or give rise to joy,” and both stand alike after “seeing me” — what they are tied to is the seeing, not the emotion. Down on the ground: what actually works is the encountering, not what mood you happened to be in when you encountered it.

Seeing and Hearing of My Pure Land, One Is Surely Born in My Pure Body

Samantabhadra says that “those who see and hear of my pure land will surely gain birth within this pure land” — that is easy enough; but the next line, that those who see and hear of his pure body “will surely gain birth within my pure body,” is hard — a land can be born into, but how is a body?

Chengguan here sets up the question and answers it himself, establishing two senses. First, taken with respect to the body and land of the dharma-nature: what serves as the essence of the land is named the pure land, what serves as the essence of the body is named the pure body; what relies upon them differs, but the essence relied upon is one, and therefore it speaks of being born into the body. Second, taken with respect to character and function: the pure land is the land relied upon, while the pure body is the land within the body, and “since it is wished to set forth that body and land interfuse, therefore it speaks of being born into the pure body.”

One misreading to clear away: that ‘being born within a body’ is a manner of speaking. Neither of Chengguan's two explanations takes the road of metaphor — the first says the essence is originally one, the second says there are lands within the body. Down on the ground: when Huayan says body and land interfuse, it is not likening two things to each other; it is saying that they were never apart in the first place.

Sudhana Contemplates the Body: He Sees Himself Inside It

Sudhana, following the instruction, contemplates Samantabhadra's body and sees within his marks and signs, his limbs and joints, and each single pore, unspeakable oceans of buddha-lands, with buddhas appearing and arising within each ocean of lands, surrounded by great assemblies of bodhisattvas; and he sees further the establishing, shapes, adornments, great mountains, clouds of color, and the buddhas arising and expounding the Dharma in all those oceans of lands, each and every one different; and he sees further Samantabhadra within each single ocean of worlds sending forth clouds of buddha-transformation-bodies pervading the ten directions and teaching sentient beings.

At this point the sūtra turns a corner: “At that time Sudhana the youth saw further his own body within Samantabhadra's body, teaching and transforming sentient beings throughout all the worlds of the ten directions.” What he sees is no longer only Samantabhadra; it is himself, inside Samantabhadra's body, doing the same thing.

One misreading to clear away: that this is an objective realm of visualization, a picture conjured up. Chengguan judges these three joints as seeing the three kinds of world contained within the hair, seeing Samantabhadra's body pervading all lands and producing the great function, and “seeing his own body himself as equal to Samantabhadra's transforming” — the third joint is a turn of position, not an imagining. Down on the ground: what one learns at the end is not to see the teacher clearly, but to see oneself within what the teacher is doing.

Two Weighings: A Single Step and a Single Pore

The sūtra next makes two weighings. The first weighs roots of goodness: the roots of goodness and light of wisdom that Sudhana obtained by drawing near to good friends as many as the dust motes of buddha-lands, set beside what he obtained by seeing Samantabhadra, are “not one part in a hundred” and on to being unreachable by counting and by simile. The second weighs oceans of lands: all the oceans of buddha-lands he entered between his first bringing forth of the mind and seeing Samantabhadra do not come up to what he now enters in a single thought within one pore of Samantabhadra, by times as many as the dust motes of unspeakably unspeakable buddha-lands.

Then comes the most extraordinary passage: taking a single step within the lands in the pores he passes beyond unspeakable worlds, and traveling so to the end of the kalpas of the future he “still could not know” the limit of the sequence, treasury, differences, universal entry, forming, disintegrating, or adornment of the oceans of lands within one pore, and it is the same with the oceans of buddhas and the oceans of assemblies of bodhisattvas. Chengguan judges this as: “the surpassing in a single step sets forth the breadth crosswise; to the end of the kalpas of the future makes clear the exhaustion lengthwise; still not being able to know sets forth the depth and distance.”

One misreading to clear away: that “still could not know” means Sudhana was not yet qualified. The crosswise has already been made utterly broad and the lengthwise utterly exhaustive, and still he cannot know: what is set forth is the depth and distance of the objective realm, not any insufficiency in the person. Down on the ground: only on reaching the farthest point does one learn that there is no edge — and the weight of that sentence is on ‘does one learn.’

There is one qualifying line that must not be passed over. After that traveling the sūtra goes on to say nor does he vanish from this land and appear in that land; in thought after thought he pervades the boundless oceans of lands — the pervading is thought after thought, and yet there is no act of disappearing from this land and then appearing in that one. Chengguan explains why: as for his not vanishing here and appearing there, it is because the character of vanishing and appearing is as the dharma-nature is, and because the character of this and that are mutually identical. The Yanyi chao divides these two reasons into two levels: the first is in terms of the nonobstruction of principle and phenomena — thus there is vanishing with no vanishing and appearing with no appearing, for within the true dharma-nature there is no emerging or vanishing; the second is in terms of the nonobstruction of phenomena with phenomena — the first is in terms of lands: this land is that land, for one land is many lands. Down on the ground: pervading is not traveling fast; it is that this land is that land, and so there is no need to travel.

The Position Fulfilled and Level with the Buddhas: Why Only “Equal” and Not “Becomes a Buddha”

At the end of the prose the sūtra says that Sudhana “then obtained in sequence the ocean of the practices and vows of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, equal to Samantabhadra and equal to all the buddhas,” and beneath it twelve clauses of “equal” — equal in lands, in practice, in right awakening, in spiritual power, in the wheel of Dharma, in eloquence, in speech, in voice, in powers and fearlessnesses, in the dwelling of the buddhas, in great kindness and compassion, and wholly the same in the inconceivable sovereign liberation.

Here Chengguan sets down the weightiest judgment of position in the section. He says the first clause is equal in the fullness of the cause and the next equal in the fulfillment of the fruit, and judges the position as a whole to be “what in meaning corresponds to equal awakening: the position of the cause being already fulfilled, there is nothing further to cultivate, and therefore it only says ‘equal’ and does not treat of further seeking”; and he adds a judgment of time: “This is accomplishment all at once in a single lifetime, and the graded array is also sufficient — it is not merely a matter of first and last being perfectly interfused in the contemplation of principle.”

What should be asked is this: since he is equal to all the buddhas, why does the sūtra not say that he becomes a buddha? Chengguan gives the answer himself in the section on the verses — “since the ocean of the fruit is apart from words, it is not said that he becomes a buddha.” It is not that the ocean of the fruit is not reached; it is that it cannot be spoken.

One misreading to clear away: that “equal to the buddhas” is an adjective. What Chengguan judges is a position, and he says outright that the sequence of the graded array is also sufficient, not merely an interfusion in the contemplation of principle. And the judgment of the lodged position is itself something Chengguan takes over from the ancient worthies — in his outline of the five marks of the final assembly he says of himself that “we shall for now follow the ancient worthies and assign them as five marks,” and records the balance of two views held side by side: “both have their reason,” and “yet within the absence of successive positions the successive positions are not obstructed, and to set forth the positions is the standing rule, so that to assign them is likewise no error.” This is an outline of the ancient worthies, not something the sūtra marks out for itself.

Down on the ground: when Huayan says it may be reached in a single lifetime, what it says is that the position of the cause is fulfilled; as for the fruit, it chooses not to speak.

Why the Verses Are Not Repeating Verses

The ninety-nine stanzas of the latter half of this section have always been the easiest thing to read as repeating verses of the prose. Chengguan rules that reading out in his very first sentence: “The prose above only set forth the fullness of the cause; these verses now set forth the functioning of the fruit, and are not a restatement in verse of the preceding text.”

He gives two reasons. With respect to Samantabhadra: what was seen above of his inconceivability is still the position of the cause, and now he shows you the fruit, which is deeper still. With respect to Sudhana: Sudhana's being equal to the buddhas is only fullness of the cause, and since the ocean of the fruit is apart from words it is not said that he becomes a buddha, so now the virtue of the buddha now manifest is borrowed to set forth the character of Sudhana's fruit. And so he concludes in one sentence: “the prose and the verses are cause and fruit interwoven like patterned silk” — the prose speaks the cause and the verses the fruit, woven together into one body.

One misreading to clear away: that the verses restate what was said before so that it can be memorized. Were that so, the verses ought not to omit Sudhana entirely. Down on the ground: when the protagonist suddenly changes at the verses, that is not a digression — it is the whole sūtra having finished speaking the cause here, and beginning to speak the fruit.

The Short Verses, Four Stanzas: First the Admonition to Listen, Then the Consent to Speak

Samantabhadra first speaks four stanzas (eight lines of sūtra text). The first stanza admonishes them to listen — “You should remove the stains of every delusion and listen attentively with an unscattered mind”; the second praises the Buddha's mind as pure as space, constantly releasing the sun of wisdom; the third says the Tathāgata is hard to encounter, “just as the udumbara flower appears but once in an age”; the fourth says the Buddha goes along with all the world does and yet “never has he discriminated or given rise to a thought.” Li Tongxuan judges this to be the first of the three sections of the verses, saying it is “the part where the bodhisattva Samantabhadra charges the assembly to listen attentively, wishing himself to speak of the merit and virtue of the Buddha.”

One misreading to clear away: that the admonition to listen is a formula. The fourth stanza has already put the key to all the extended verses in place beforehand — the ninety-five stanzas below are going to speak of the Buddha manifesting bodies of every sort, lands of every sort, dharmas of every sort, and yet the Buddha “never has discriminated or given rise to a thought.” Because this line is said first, the “some see” below will not be read as the Buddha transforming himself.

Down on the ground: one removes the stains of delusion before listening to the Dharma not out of reverence, but because what is heard will be deformed by how clean or stained the mind is.

The Bodhisattvas Thirst: What This Middle Passage of Prose Is For

After the four stanzas, the sūtra inserts a passage of prose: the bodhisattvas, having heard, thirst single-mindedly and think of Samantabhadra as one who has “fully cultivated all the practices, whose essential nature is pure, and none of whose words is false”; whereupon Samantabhadra, “adorned complete with merit, virtue, and wisdom, like a lotus flower unstained by any of the dust and defilement of the three realms,” says to the bodhisattvas, “Listen attentively, all of you: I shall now speak of the character of a single drop of the ocean of the Buddha's merit and virtue.” Li Tongxuan judges this to be the second of the three sections within the verses, “the part where the assembly delights in hearing.”

One misreading to clear away: that this passage is a transition. It does three things: it changes the audience from Sudhana to the bodhisattvas; it makes plain the qualification of the speaker (his words are not false, and all tathāgatas alike praise him); and it announces beforehand the quantity of what is about to be said — not the ocean of the Buddha's merit and virtue, but a single drop of that ocean.

Down on the ground: the vastness of the ninety-five stanzas that follow is “one drop.” That sentence should be kept in hand throughout the reading of the verses.

The Measure of the Extended Verses: Why Chengguan Uses a Treatise to Section a Sūtra

Chengguan divides the ninety-five stanzas into two: the first ninety-three praise the Buddha's virtue in particular, and the last two conclude that his virtue is inexhaustible and exhort to faith and against doubt; and within the ninety-three, the first eighty expound by dharma and the latter thirteen make it clear by simile. But the measure by which he sections them is not taken from the sūtra's own thread of language; it is taken straight from the twenty-one kinds of surpassing merit of the fullness of the ten bodies established in the She dasheng lun, judged as twenty-one sections.

What should be asked is this: does taking a treatise as the outline for a sūtra lose the sūtra's meaning? Chengguan leaves a long argument in the fourth section as proof — with reference to the names of the buddhas Worthy Head, Measureless Life, Akṣobhya, Moon Awakening, Sun Treasury, and Vajra Great Flame that the verses run through, he judges that “these buddhas are all the body of Vairocana,” and raises four reasons (Akṣobhya is originally in the east yet is said here to be here; Measureless Life and Moon Awakening both pervade the ten directions; all of them say “some see,” so one knows it is one buddha differing according to the seeing; and if other buddhas were being separately praised, simply saying that Akṣobhya is here would not constitute a praising of virtue), concluding at last that “hence one knows that the buddha Worthy Head and the rest are all the original teacher.” This is drawn out from the sūtra's own language, not given by the treatise.

One misreading to clear away: that the Huayan school reads the sūtra only through the ten mysteries and the six characteristics. Here Chengguan and Fazang alike take the measure of the She dasheng lun, and Fazang too says of the six stanzas on the dharma-body that “in the former, since in the She dasheng lun the dharma-body has five kinds, here it is the same as there” — for the ancient worthies to take a treatise as a measure in reading a sūtra is a common thing. Down on the ground: the ruler may be borrowed, but what it measures still has to be checked back against the sūtra.

The Exposition by Dharma in the Extended Verses: From the Buddha's Unobstructed Knowledge to One Voice Heard by Each Kind

The eighty stanzas of exposition by dharma can be followed along one line. The opening two stanzas say the Buddha's knowledge is vast as space and pervades the minds of beings without giving rise to differing discrimination, which Chengguan ties to “the merit of turning wholly without obstruction with respect to the knowable”; the next single stanza says that in accord with the various practices of beings' minds “the Buddha from the first has no stirring of thought,” tied to the most pure ability to enter the nonduality of suchness; the three stanzas after that say that some see and some do not, some hear and some do not, tied to “the merit of the Buddha's work not resting though without exertion.”

The fifteen stanzas below that are the densest passage of the whole set of verses — eight stanzas running through the buddha-lands with their hosts and companions, four stanzas on hair-tips, pores, and dust motes complete with oceans of lands, and three stanzas gathering many gates together. Then in order come three stanzas on cultivating the counteragents to every obstruction, three on subduing the outsider paths, sixteen on being born in the world yet unhindered by worldly dharmas, eighteen on establishing the right Dharma, three on bestowing predictions, four on manifesting the enjoyment and transformation bodies, two on cutting off every doubt, nine on causing beings to enter practices of every sort, and one on the wondrous knowledge born in the future.

In the first four stanzas on establishing the right Dharma the sūtra itself sets out the dharmas it establishes. Complete in wisdom and without obstruction, he turns the Dharma wheel of twelve aspects states the wheel that is turned; knowing suffering and its arising, and cessation and the path, he distinguishes the dharma of the twelve links of dependent arising states the dharma the wheel carries — the four truths raising suffering, arising, cessation, and the path, and dependent arising raising the twelve links; unobstructed in dharma, in meaning, in delight in speech, and in phrasing, with these four discriminations he expounds them widely states the discrimination by which they are spoken — being unobstructed in all four, in dharma, in meaning, in delight in speech, and in phrasing, he can expound them widely. Chengguan gives only the heading of the section: the first four stanzas establish the Dharma wheel of the three vehicles and set forth its functioning as well; as for the number of the ‘twelve aspects,’ the chao gives no separate explanation within this section, but elsewhere, explaining the Dharma wheel, it speaks of three turnings — showing the marks, urging cultivation, bearing witness — each giving rise to the four aspects of eye, knowledge, understanding, and awakening, twelve in all; these are the aspects of the three turnings of the four truths, and not the same matter as the twelve of dependent arising in the next line. Down on the ground: the sūtra arranges the sequence itself — first the wheel, then the dharma carried on it, then the mouth that speaks it.

The third of these first four stanzas turns to the substance of dharmas, one line negating and one line not: dharmas have no self and have no characteristic; the nature of action does not arise, and neither is it lost. The upper line says that dharmas have no self and no characteristic; the lower line says that although the nature of action does not arise, neither does it perish. That the two lines stand together is just the point of this stanza — no self and no characteristic does not say that there is no action, and the nature of action not arising does not say that the fruit of action comes to nothing. So the next lines continue: utterly apart from all, like space; the Buddha by skillful means makes distinctions — being utterly apart from all and like space is said of the substance of dharmas, while the various distinctions among dharmas are what the Buddha speaks by skillful means. Chengguan for these four stanzas judges only that they set forth its functioning as well, and gives no separate explanation of these two lines within this section. Down on the ground: the line that says “no” is not there to cancel the other line.

In the last four of the eighteen stanzas the sūtra first sets up a pair. The stillness of nirvāṇa has never differed; it is in knowledge and practice that there is the difference of better and worse — what is realized, that stillness, has never differed, and what differs is the knowledge and practice of the one who realizes it; it is like space, whose substance and nature are one, while birds fly far or near, each not the same — the substance and nature of space is one, and the birds that fly through it each go far or near. The simile once set up, the sūtra itself joins it to the Buddha: the Buddha's substance and voice are likewise so, pervading the whole realm of space, and as the minds and knowledge of beings differ, what each hears and sees is different. Chengguan ties these four stanzas to the last four clarify the equality of the verbal act, which answers to all. Down on the ground: the difference lies in the birds and not in space, in the hearers and not in the Buddha's voice; it is just because the verbal act is equal that what is heard comes to each according to their measure.

One misreading to clear away: that this long string of “some see” is one sentence said over and over in different words. Within it, the eight aspects of accomplishing the Way, the dwelling in the palaces of the devas, the skillful transforming in accord with the world, the one voice heard by each kind, and on to the expounding of one, two, three, four, and five vehicles according to faculties — each passage answers to a different capacity. Down on the ground: the reason the Buddha has so many aspects is not that there are many buddhas, but that there are many capacities.

The Clarification by Simile in the Extended Verses: Five Similes in Thirteen Stanzas

The latter thirteen stanzas turn to exposition by simile. The illusionist simile speaks of the taking of form that is the action of body; the pure-moon simile speaks of one essence manifesting waxing and waning, of rivers and pools manifesting its reflection while the constellations are robbed of their color, and joins it to the dharma by saying that “the moon of the Tathāgata's knowledge comes forth in the world,” with the reflection appearing in the water of the bodhisattvas' minds while the constellations of the śrāvakas are without light; the great-ocean simile speaks of its being filled with jewels and manifesting the images of beings, joined to the dharma as the ocean of the merit and virtue of the Buddha's body, without stain and without cloudiness; the pure-sun simile speaks of illuminating the ten directions without moving from its own place, removing the darkness of the world; the nāga-rain simile speaks of a rain that comes neither from the body nor from the mind and yet is able to moisten and pervade everywhere, joined to the dharma by saying that the Tathāgata's Dharma rain likewise comes forth neither from the Buddha's body nor from his mind and yet is able to extinguish the fire of the three poisons.

Fazang, with respect to the sixty-fascicle text, assigns this group to the three kinds of action: the first five stanzas are the simile for the action of body (the illusionist, the moon manifesting four virtues, the ocean manifesting two capacities), the next single stanza the simile for the action of mind (the sun of knowledge extinguishing darkness), and the last two and a half the simile for the action of speech (the Dharma rain that comes from nowhere).

One misreading to clear away: that similes are only there to make things easy to grasp. Here each of the five similes fastens onto a “not”: the illusionist is not real; the pure moon has no mind about waxing and waning; the great ocean makes no choice among the images it manifests; the pure sun neither goes nor comes; the nāga's rain comes forth from nowhere. Down on the ground: what this group of similes has to say is not what the Buddha does, but that when he does these things there is no ‘I am doing’ anywhere in them.

The Conclusion of the Extended Verses: What Can Be Spoken and What Cannot Be Spoken to the End

Two stanzas on the dharma-body say that “the Tathāgata's pure and exquisite dharma-body — in all the three realms there is nothing that can match it,” and take a painting in the air and something seen in a dream as similes; the next stanza says that no dharma of existence or nonexistence in the three realms can serve as a simile for the Buddha, as mountain forests, birds, and beasts do not dwell relying upon space; the next takes the maṇi of the great ocean with its measureless colors as a simile for the differences in the Buddha's body, and cuts it off by saying that “the Tathāgata is neither form nor not-form”; the next says that only such dharmas as space, suchness, the true limit, nirvāṇa, the dharma-nature, and stillness “can serve to reveal the Tathāgata.”

Chengguan judges these two stanzas to agree with the Compendium of the Great Vehicle, in which the dharma-body has five characteristics, the five running from the characteristic of being formed of pure dharmas to permanent abiding, while for the two similes of the last line the painting in the air is a simile for being without support, and the dream is a simile for the characteristic of nonduality in being neither existent nor nonexistent. What is most easily read backwards is the first line: because it lies beyond the path of the world's words, its nature is neither existent nor nonexistent does not say that the Buddha uses some one kind of speech; the subcommentary explains it as because it lies beyond the path of the world's words, it is not what discursive thought ranges over — that is, it lies beyond what worldly speech ranges over. For though without support, there is nowhere it does not abide; though there is nowhere it does not reach, it does not go, the subcommentary matches two senses of permanent abiding: the self-nature body is permanent and does not go, which is unchanging permanence; there is nowhere it does not reach, which is the permanence of an unbroken continuity. Down on the ground: the dharma-body is not an invisible thing; it is the one thing on which neither existence nor nonexistence can be settled.

The last two stanzas are the end of the whole sūtra: the motes of dust in the lands and the thoughts of the mind may be counted, the water of the great ocean may be drunk dry, space may be measured, the wind may be bound — and yet the Buddha's merit and virtue cannot be spoken to the end; and if there are those who hear this ocean of merit and virtue and give rise to a mind of joy, faith, and understanding, “they shall obtain all that has been extolled — do not, on any account, harbor doubt about this.”

One misreading to clear away: that saying earlier that nothing “can serve as a simile for the Buddha” and then setting up four similes afterward is a self-contradiction. What the former rules out is likening the Buddha's essence to dharmas of the three realms; what the latter sets up is using things that cannot be done to set forth virtue that cannot be exhausted — one says the essence cannot be likened, the other says the quantity cannot be exhausted. Down on the ground: the whole sūtra closes with the two words “no doubt,” which is not telling anyone to stop thinking, but telling them not to stop here.

Lineage

The text of this section opens four lines flowing onward.

The first is the line of position. Chengguan judges Sudhana's position being fulfilled and level with the buddhas as “in meaning corresponding to equal awakening” and “accomplished all at once in a single lifetime”; Zhiyan, in the Huayan jing kongmu zhang, takes “the good friend of the mark of the vastness of the cause” with respect to the distinct teaching of the one vehicle, and produces the sense of “Sudhana obtains it all in a single lifetime,” of five kinds of swiftly accomplishing buddhahood, under the first of which, relying on a surpassing body and obtaining it in a single lifetime, the third of four kinds of surpassing body takes Sudhana as its instance, saying that relying on the body of surpassing merit and virtue in Jambudvīpa one brings Samantabhadra's practice to its end in the present body and in the next birth then sees the Buddha. The Huayan jing shixuan men, transmitted as Zhiyan's composition, takes Sudhana's passing through the cities and finally seeing Samantabhadra as an instance of the one vehicle's “becoming a buddha in a single thought,” saying that passing through a hundred and ten cities is still not equal to getting to see Samantabhadra in a single thought, and that hence one knows that, gaining entry into this great ocean of dependent arising, how should one not become a buddha in a single thought. The three houses share one mechanism and word it differently.

The second is the line of root and branch. Chengguan, at the head of the ten gates of the final assembly, judges of himself that this final assembly “is also the circulation section of the whole sūtra,” and his gate on the general setting forth of the assembly's intent concludes with “root and branch, unobstructed, alike enter the Dharma realm”; and Sudhana, without needing anyone to point him, raises contemplation right at the place of the first assembly's first accomplishing, which Chengguan explains as “the sense of gathering the branch back into the root.” Li Tongxuan likewise runs his phrase about Sudhana “turning back to meet within the first mind of faith” through the head of his long outline in ten sections. What this line ties together is that the beginning of the whole sūtra and its end were one place all along.

The third is the divergence in the outlines of the verses. Chengguan, following the twenty-one kinds of surpassing merit of the She dasheng lun, judges the ninety-five stanzas as twenty-one sections; Fazang, with respect to the sixty-fascicle text, judges them as the three kinds of action of body, speech, and mind, and separately brings out six stanzas on the virtue of the dharma-body; Zhiyan judges five for the recompense body, three for the transformation body, and three for the dharma-body, tying a stanza count to each; Li Tongxuan makes only three sections and does not subdivide. To what the last two stanzas belong also differs: Chengguan records the ancient worthies' view of “taking these two stanzas as the circulation section of the whole sūtra” without judging it himself, Zhiyan judges outright that “this is the circulation section,” and Fazang judges them as “concluding the exposition and exhorting to upholding it,” using them further to exhort to faith, saying that one who has faith in this sovereign dharma of Samantabhadra must in the end come to be level with the fruit of buddhahood, just as Sudhana was equal to all the buddhas. The four houses stand side by side, recorded without judgment.

The fourth is the line of the parallel translations. The verses of this passage in the sixty-fascicle text are in five-graph lines and cannot be matched stanza for stanza against the seven-graph lines of the eighty-fascicle text; the forty-fascicle text is nearly the same as the eighty-fascicle here except for four graph-differences in the last stanza, and after it there is separately a passage of ten vast practices and vows, which neither the eighty-fascicle nor the sixty-fascicle text has. The names of the items of the grounds in the three texts, and the number of minds raised (eleven each in the eighty- and sixty-fascicle texts, sixteen in the forty-fascicle), are likewise not level. All of this is difference among the translations, recorded without judgment.

Chengguan judges this final assembly to be “also the circulation section of the whole sūtra,” and closes its assembly-intent with “root and branch, unobstructed, alike enter the Dharma realm.” Of the last two stanzas of the eighty-fascicle sūtra, Chengguan judges that the former concludes the virtue and the latter exhorts to faith; the stanza that concludes the virtue runs —

“The motes of dust in the lands and the thoughts of the mind may still be counted and known, the water within the great ocean may still be drunk dry, space may still be measured and the wind still be bound — yet none is able to speak to the end of the merit and virtue of the Buddha.”