楞嚴經 義疏通講The Śūraṅgama Sūtra · Exposition Throughout

Two prefaces stand at the head of this sūtra, and neither of them exists in the Korean canon. Under the title of the first, the Taishō edition notes that the Korean recension lacks it and that it is supplied from the Song recension; under the title of the second, that the Korean recension lacks it and that it is supplied from the Yuan recension. Each preface was borrowed from a different canon and the two were set side by side before the ten fascicles of scripture.

So the first thing to know in reading them is where they stand: they are not the sūtra, but words written by later people after reading it. One is by Xu Dong, a Confucian scholar of the early Song, signed “composed by Xu Dong, formerly Investigating Judge of the Xiongwu Army”; the other is by Shi Zupai, a Song monk of Quannan, signed “related by the śramaṇa Shi Zupai of Quannan under the Song of the Zhao house.” Both men leave their names in the canon only here; no biography of either can be traced. Who they were matters less than how they read this sūtra.

Xu Dong: A Confucian’s Reading

Xu Dong sets the key with his first sentence: “The Śūraṅgama Sūtra is the pivot that gathers the myriad practices of all buddhas.” A pivot is the hinge of a door, the axle of a cart; the myriad practices turn around it. He goes on to describe the sūtra’s wording and intent in a run of parallel clauses: its wording winds yet arrives; its intent is hidden yet flows through. This is the literatus’s way with scripture, praising the writing first and only then entering its meaning.

But where this preface truly comes down on the sūtra is in two sentences of its middle section: “The three realms are formed by the five desires; therefore Mātaṅgī’s open lust is made the beginning of the sūtra’s theme. Sentient beings arise through the entanglement of craving; therefore Ānanda’s breaking of delusion is made the basis of attaining the path.” Xu Dong saw why this sūtra opens as it does: not with a solemn exchange at a Dharma assembly, but with a monk drawn into a brothel by a spell. The three realms are formed by the five desires, so the sūtra opens its theme with Mātaṅgī; sentient beings arise through the entanglement of craving, so the sūtra takes Ānanda’s breaking of delusion as its basis. An awkward opening scene he read as the outline of the whole sūtra.

In the second half of the preface he first lays out four parallel pairs: “Where it discusses the existence of mind, it takes the absence of mind as what gathers it in; where it grieves over the existence of birth, it takes the unborn as its lure; where it speaks of the existence of characteristics, it takes the breaking of every object of form as its main work; where it shows the existence of doing, it takes release from every affliction as its joy.” Where the sūtra speaks of mind, it gathers it in by no-mind; where it speaks of birth, it leads by the unborn; where it speaks of characteristics, its main work is to break the objects of form; where it speaks of doing, its joy is release from affliction. Then he draws the four pairs into one sentence: “This is to awaken to the false and return to the real.” And then he turns it around with another: the reason the causes and effects of the hells and the conditions and deeds of the ghostly kinds are brought up is that “this is to be blind to the real and give rise to the false.” Awakening and blindness, returning and arising: one sentence positive, one negative, and the ten fascicles are held between them. So he continues: “Without understanding true reality there is no way to kindle the mind of bodhi; without breaking the dust of the false there is no way to awaken to the nature of sentient beings.” True reality must be understood and the dust of the false must be broken; the two sentences on awakening and blindness come to rest on this one understanding and this one breaking.

The preface’s last sentence is “I have seen him—” and there it breaks off. The base text reads so, and no collation note supplies the rest. This preface ends on an unfinished sentence; we print it as it stands and do not finish it for him.

Zupai: Walking the Whole Sūtra Through

The second preface begins with homage: “With utmost mind I take refuge and bow: namo to the Śūraṅgama King of the invisible crown.” Then it goes straight down, touching the great events of the whole sūtra almost fascicle by fascicle: the summer retreat at the Jeta Grove, the holy king’s invitation to the meal, Ānanda sunk in the house of lust, Mañjuśrī bearing the secret spell. That is the introductory section of fascicle one. Then: “Seeking the mind in seven places, it is wholly false, while the nature is pure and originally bright; revealing seeing through the eight returns, the true awakening is from the first perfect and constantly abiding.” That is the seeking of the mind and the revealing of seeing in fascicles one and two. Further on, Pūrṇa clinging to characteristics and challenging the nature, King Prasenajit mistaking the perishing for the constant: the questions of fascicles two and four. “The wondrous bright substance of awakening is neither cause nor condition nor spontaneous; the essential true origin of seeing is neither conjoined nor combined, neither apart nor immediate”: the negations by which fascicles two and three speak of the nature of seeing. Not causes and conditions, not spontaneity, not combination, and not non-combination either. “The six faculties, false as they are, are nothing but the wondrous mind of bodhi; the seven elements, pervading everywhere, are wholly the nature of the tathāgatagarbha”: the reconciliation of fascicle three. “The twenty-five sages each set out the gate by which they awakened and entered”: the perfect penetration of fascicles five and six. The three trainings without outflows, the four pure disciplines, the secret phrases, the pure sanctuary: fascicles six and seven. The three gradual steps, the five-part title, the twelve classes of beings, the wheel of the seven destinies, the five layers of turbidity: fascicles seven and eight. “The fifty demonic states appear before one”: the demons of the aggregates in fascicles nine and ten. And last, “exhausting the false source of the five aggregates”: the close of fascicle ten. At the end of the preface he urges its circulation: “A poor man gives seven coins in alms and still obtains a wheel-turning king; a practitioner with one thought of circulating this will surely ascend to buddhahood.” Taking the poor man who gives seven coins and is rewarded with the throne of a wheel-turning king as his comparison, he says that a single thought of circulating this sūtra will surely bring one to buddhahood.

This is a map. Zupai folded ten fascicles into one preface by parallel clauses; only someone who had read the whole sūtra could have written it. For a first reader, the most useful thing in this preface is not its style but its order: whichever fascicle you have reached and whatever you meet there, this preface has already arranged it for you.

The Line Between Preface and Sūtra

Both prefaces use words the sūtra does not. Xu Dong’s “pivot,” “drumming forth,” and “opening and deciding,” Zupai’s “eight returns,” “five parts,” and “five layers of turbidity”: some are names the sūtra itself uses, others are headings later readers set up in dividing the text. The prefacers raised the sūtra up in the vocabulary current in their own age; the sūtra has a way of speaking of its own. The preface is the gate; the sūtra is the house. What is said at the gate is not necessarily the language used inside. To read the sūtra carrying the prefaces’ vocabulary is allowed; to replace the sūtra’s vocabulary with the prefaces’ is not.

One more thing to remember: what fascicles one through ten relate are matters between the Buddha and Ānanda, Pūrṇa, King Prasenajit, and the others. What the two prefaces relate is how two Song readers understood those matters. Several centuries lie between. Every sentence of praise in the prefaces is sincere, but praise is not scriptural proof. The expositions in this book, fascicle by fascicle, rest on the sūtra text and on the old commentaries, not on these two prefaces.

Carrying Forward — The Prefaces Do Not Enter the Commentary

The above is the meaning of the two prefaces in themselves. What follows looks at the same thing from the commentator’s side, which is not the preface but the same matter seen from another place.

Zixuan of Changshui composed the Shoulengyan yishu zhujing in twenty fascicles, glossing the sūtra passage by passage and beginning his divisions from fascicle one’s “Thus have I heard.” The two prefaces have no place in his commentary: the commentary does not gloss the prefaces. In the commentator’s eyes the body of the sūtra begins at “Thus have I heard,” and these two prefaces stand outside the gate.

This matches the case of the prefaces to the Awakening of Faith: Fazang and Wonhyo, expounding that treatise, did not annotate Zhikai’s preface; Zixuan, expounding this sūtra, does not annotate the prefaces of Xu Dong and Zupai. That commentators do not annotate prefaces is not disdain for prefaces but a sense of where the line runs. A preface records where a book came from and how its readers saw it; a commentary explains what the book itself says. The two matters each have their own house.

Yet this is exactly where the prefaces are useful. Zixuan’s commentary divides the whole sūtra into an introductory section and a main section, and under the main section opens dozens of further headings; a first reader standing before that table of divisions often does not know where to begin. Zupai’s preface is that same table of divisions, folded up: the same order, said once over in parallel clauses. Read the preface first and know the outline; then read the sūtra and enter the text by way of the commentary. That is why the prefaces stand before the sūtra.

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra is in ten fascicles, translated under the Tang by Pramiti, taken down in writing by Fang Rong, with Meghaśikha as interpreter. This book treats one fascicle as one unit; fascicle one is the first unit, and the two Song prefaces attached at the head of the sūtra form a unit of their own. The full title reads The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Tathāgata’s Secret Cause, Cultivation and Realization of the Complete Meaning, and the Myriad Practices of All Bodhisattvas, Called Śūraṅgama, with a note under the title: “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately.” The sūtra itself records its other name and where it came from. The title at the end of the fascicle uses the short form, The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Myriad Practices, Śūraṅgama, Fascicle One.

The old commentators divide the contents of fascicle one into two parts: the introductory section and the beginning of the main section. The introductory section tells on what occasion and because of what event this sūtra was spoken. The main section begins with Ānanda asking to cultivate samādhi; the Buddha asks him in return why he first set his mind on the path, then asks where his mind is, refutes it in all seven places he names, then directly points out the two roots, and turns to disclose the true mind by way of “seeing.” What this fascicle teaches is the refutation of the false mind; the disclosure of true seeing is not said through until fascicle two. The divisions of the old commentators guide our reading; this book’s sectioning follows the divisions in Zixuan’s Shoulengyan yishu zhujing, but the boundary of the fascicle is taken from the fascicle title the sūtra text itself carries.

The origins of this sūtra have been doubted and debated through the ages. This book does not discuss its authenticity; it translates the text and follows the old commentaries. The matter is recorded in the front matter and is not judged here.

II. A Meal Offering, and a Man Carried Off by a Spell

The sūtra opens in the usual form: “Thus have I heard.” At one time the Buddha was at the Jeta Grove in the city of Śrāvastī, together with twelve hundred and fifty monks, who the sūtra says “were all great arhats without outflows,” “sons of the Buddha who uphold and abide, well transcending all existence”: people who uphold the Buddha’s Dharma and have passed beyond the three kinds of existence. Then it lists the foremost disciples, the pratyekabuddhas who have nothing further to learn, and the bodhisattvas of the ten directions: “at the time when the monks were ending their summer retreat and making their confession, the bodhisattvas of the ten directions came to resolve the doubts of their minds.” It is the day the summer retreat ends; the bodhisattvas have come to have their questions settled, and the Tathāgata “spread his seat and sat at ease, and for the whole assembly proclaimed what is deep and hidden.”

Then something entirely ordinary happens. King Prasenajit, on the anniversary of his father’s death, prepares a meal and invites the Buddha into the palace; the elders and householders of the city are feeding monks at the same time. The Buddha sends Mañjuśrī to divide the assembly and lead them to receive the offerings. Only Ānanda, who had earlier accepted a separate invitation and traveled far and not yet returned, misses his place in the order of monks and is alone on the road. He resolves to practice impartial compassion, begging from house to house in order without choosing between clean and unclean, noble and base. That thought is good. And it is on that very round of begging that he “met with the great sorcery of the woman Mātaṅgī,” was drawn by a spell onto a bed of lust, and was “about to lose the substance of his precepts.”

The Tathāgata knows, and as soon as the meal is over he returns, sends forth light from the crown of his head, and in the light, on a thousand-petaled jeweled lotus, a transformation buddha sits cross-legged and “proclaims the divine spell.” He orders Mañjuśrī to take the spell and go to protect Ānanda; the evil spell is dissolved, and Mañjuśrī brings Ānanda and Mātaṅgī back together to where the Buddha is. Before the Buddha, Ānanda “bowed his head and wept in grief, regretting that from beginningless time he had been given over to learning alone and had not perfected the strength of the path,” and asks about “the very first expedient of wondrous śamatha, samāpatti, and dhyāna” by which the tathāgatas of the ten directions attained bodhi.

In reading this passage, two things must be held together: an ordinary day in the life of one monk, and the opening of a great sūtra. Xu Dong says in his preface that the three realms are formed by the five desires, which is why the sūtra opens its theme with Mātaṅgī. This is not to shame Ānanda. What the sūtra means to say is that learning cannot stand in for the strength of concentration: a man who had been at the Buddha’s side for over twenty years and remembered every word of the teaching still fell before a single spell. That is why what he asks is not ‘what is the Dharma’ but “the very first expedient”: where to begin.

III. The Buddha Does Not Answer the Question; He Asks Why Ānanda Left Home

The Buddha does not speak of śamatha straight off. He asks first: “You and I are of one blood, and our feeling is that of close kin. When you first set your mind on the path, what excellent mark did you see in my Dharma that you at once cast off the deep and heavy love of the world?”

Ānanda answers honestly: I saw the Tathāgata’s thirty-two marks, excellent and surpassing beyond compare, and I thought such marks could not be born of desire and love, and so I longed for them and left home.

Then the Buddha says the weightiest sentence in this fascicle: all sentient beings continue in birth and death “because they do not know the constantly abiding true mind, the substance whose nature is pure and bright, and instead use false thoughts; because those thoughts are not true, there is the turning of the wheel.” And then: if you wish to bring the true nature to light, “you must answer what I ask with a straight mind”; the tathāgatas of the ten directions left birth and death “all by the straight mind.”

There is a turn here that is easy to slip past. Ānanda asked for an expedient for cultivating concentration; the Buddha answers with the very thought with which he first set his mind on the path. For that thought already carries the sickness: what was it that delighted in the Tathāgata’s excellent marks? The Buddha asks: “With what did you see? Who was it that delighted?” Ānanda says: with my mind and my eyes. The Buddha says: very well, the cause of your delight lies in the mind and the eyes, and “if you do not know where the mind and the eyes are, you will not be able to subdue the toils of the dusts.” It is like a king sending out troops against bandits: “those troops must know where the bandits are.” Since the mind and the eyes are the root of the sickness that keeps you turning, “what makes you turn is the fault of the mind and the eyes,” then I ask you: “the mind and the eyes alone, where are they now?”

With that the main line of the whole fascicle is set: find the mind. Not what the mind is, but where it is.

IV. Seven Places, and in Every One, “There Is No Such Case”

Ānanda points to one place after another, and the Buddha refutes one after another. The seven places are: inside the body; outside the body; hidden within the faculty; closing the eyes and seeing darkness is seeing within (Ānanda takes opening the eyes and seeing light as seeing outside and closing the eyes and seeing darkness as seeing within, which still comes back to inside); wherever it joins; in between; attached to nothing.

The refutation differs in each place, but the closing words are the same: “there is no such case.” The first place: if the mind were inside the body, it should first see the liver, spleen, nails, and hair within the body; since it does not know what is inside, “how could it know what is outside?” The second place: if the mind were outside the body, body and mind would be external to each other and should have nothing to do with one another; yet when the eye sees the tūla-cotton hand the mind at once discriminates, so it is not outside. The third place: if the mind were hidden within the faculty like beryl over the eyes, then when it saw mountains and rivers it should also see the eye; and if it saw the eye, the eye would become an object and could not follow in the seeing. The fourth place: closing the eyes and seeing darkness; if the darkness faces the eye, it is before the eye, so how is it within; if opening the eyes to see light cannot see one’s own face, then facing inward fails too; and if one says seeing the face is possible, then mind and eye-faculty would be out in empty space, and body and eye would each have a knowing: “there would be two knowings, and your one body would become two buddhas.” The fifth place: if the mind came into being wherever it joins, the Buddha first asks whether this mind has a substance or not. Without substance it has nothing with which to join; with substance it would come out from within or enter from without; coming out from within it should see inside the body, entering from without it should first see the face; neither holds. Ānanda says that seeing is the eye and knowing is the mind; the Buddha refutes ‘the eye can see’ in passing: “If the eye could see, then when you are in a room, can the door see? And all those who have died and still have eyes should all see things. If they see things, how are they called dead?” Then he asks whether the mind is one substance or many, pervading the body or not: if one, pressing one limb should be felt in all four; if many, you would become many persons; if pervading, pressing the head could not be told from pressing the foot; if not pervading, head and foot touched at once would make knowing and not-knowing stand side by side. None holds. The sixth place: is the middle in the body or in a place? In the body, the edge is not the middle; in a place, with a marker it is confused, without a marker it is the same as nothing. Ānanda steps back and says the middle is between faculty and object, with consciousness arising in between; the Buddha refutes again: “Does this substance of mind include both, or not include both?” If it includes both, object and mind are mixed; the object has no knowing and the mind has knowing; the two stand opposed, so where is the middle? If it does not include both, it is neither knowing nor not-knowing, “and then it has no substance; what would the middle be a characteristic of?” The seventh place: attached to nothing. That which is not attached, does it exist or not? “If it does not exist, it is the same as a tortoise’s hair or a hare’s horns; how is there any non-attachment? If there is something not attached, it cannot be called non-existent. Without characteristics it is nothing; if not nothing, it has characteristics; having characteristics, it is there; how is it attached to nothing?”

In three of the seven places, the fifth, sixth, and seventh, Ānanda builds his case on what the Buddha himself once said: “because the mind arises, all the various dharmas arise”; “the mind is neither inside nor outside”; “attached to nothing: this is called mind.” He has not misquoted the Buddha. His error is to take the Buddha’s words for his own mind. This is the point in the passage most worth attention: quoting the scriptures is not seeing the mind.

One passage among the seven must be looked at on its own. In the first inquiry, after Ānanda has answered, “In the hall I first see the Tathāgata, next I observe the assembly, and only thus, looking out, do I behold the grove and garden,” and “this great lecture hall has its doors and windows open wide, so that from within the hall I can see far,” and before the Buddha has asked his counter-question or closed the refutation, the Buddha first stretches out his arm in the midst of the assembly, lays his hand on Ānanda’s head, and proclaims: “There is a samādhi called the Great Buddha-Crown Śūraṅgama King, complete with the myriad practices, the single gate by which the tathāgatas of the ten directions go beyond, the path of wondrous adornment; listen now with care.” This is the first time the title of the whole sūtra appears in the sūtra text. It appears within the question and answer of the first place, before the refutation is closed. The refuting is not yet done, and the Buddha has already set up the samādhi he means to teach. The refutation is not for the sake of refuting; it is for the sake of disclosing.

V. “Stop, Ānanda! This Is Not Your Mind”—the Two Roots

With all seven places refuted, Ānanda petitions: I am the Tathāgata’s youngest brother, “favored by the Buddha’s love, and though now I have left home, I still lean on his indulgence, which is why I have learned much yet not attained the state without outflows”; “I could not subdue the spell of Kapila and was turned by it and sank into the house of lust, and this must be because I did not know where the true limit lies.” What he asks for is the road of śamatha. The Buddha sends forth light from his face, “all the buddha-worlds shake in the six ways,” the lands of the ten directions, numerous as motes of dust, open to view all at once, “and all the worlds are made to join into a single world,” and then he speaks the outline of the whole sūtra: sentient beings are inverted, and practitioners fail to attain bodhi and instead become followers of the two vehicles, of outside paths, or of demons, “all because they do not know the two roots and cultivate in confusion,” like one who boils sand hoping to make rice: though kalpas as many as motes of dust pass, it cannot be done.

“The first is the root of beginningless birth and death, which is that you and all sentient beings now take the grasping mind as your own nature. The second is the originally pure substance of beginningless bodhi and nirvāṇa, which is that essence of consciousness in you, originally bright, which can give rise to all conditions and is what the conditions leave behind.”

Two roots: one is the grasping mind, the other is the essence of consciousness, originally bright. The former has been taken for one’s own nature; the latter has been left behind by the conditions. All confused cultivation is taking the former for the latter.

Then the Buddha raises his fist and asks Ānanda what he takes for his mind. Ānanda says: that which can reason, search, and pursue, I take for my mind. The Buddha cries out: “Stop, Ānanda! This is not your mind!” Ānanda starts up: if this is not my mind, what is it? The Buddha says: “This is the false imagining of the characteristics of the dusts before you, deluding your true nature”; “taking a thief for your son, you have lost your original constancy, and so you suffer the turning of the wheel.”

Ānanda’s alarm is real: if this is not the mind, am I no different from earth and wood? The Buddha does not deny that Ānanda has a mind; what he denies is that the thing that can reason and imagine is the mind. Then he gives a criterion: “If apart from the dusts before you there is a nature that discriminates, that is truly your mind; if the discriminating nature has no substance apart from the dusts, then it is the shadow-matter of discriminating the dusts before you.” What remains when the object is taken away is your mind; what is gone when the object is taken away is the shadow of the object.

This criterion rests on a premise the Buddha states first: “The Tathāgata has always said that whatever arises as dharmas is manifested by mind alone. All causes and effects, worlds, and motes of dust take their substance from mind.” Any thing in the world, down to a blade of grass or a knotted thread, has a substance if you trace its root; even empty space has a name and an appearance; and is the pure, wondrous, pure and bright mind alone to have no substance? So the Buddha is not saying Ānanda has no mind; he is saying that this thing which reasons and imagines has no substance apart from the dusts. Then he pushes the point to its end: “Even if you extinguish all seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing and keep an inner stillness and seclusion, that is still the shadow-matter of discriminating mental objects.” Even the one who has stilled seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing and holds to an inner stillness is still the shadow of a mental object. Further down comes the heaviest sentence: those in the world who study and practice, “even though they now attain the nine successive concentrations, do not exhaust their outflows and become arhats, all because they hold to this false thinking of birth and death and mistake it for the real.” The nine successive concentrations are no small matter; but if what is held in the concentration is still a shadow, the exhausting of outflows does not come. This is why learning is not enough, and even concentration is not enough: what is wrong is not the effort but the thing taken for real.

Ānanda weeps and says he had always thought that “there was no need for me to cultivate; I supposed the Tathāgata would bestow samādhi on me,” “not knowing that body and mind cannot be stood in for by another.” The Buddha’s samādhi cannot stand in for his own body and mind; “though I have learned much, if I do not practice it is the same as not having heard, like a man who talks of food and is never filled.” He has come back to the question of the beginning, learning and the strength of concentration. This time he says it himself.

VI. The Fist and the Blind Man: Seeing Is the Mind, Not the Eye

The Buddha sends forth light from the svastika on his breast, pours it upon the crowns of the tathāgatas of the ten directions, turns it back upon Ānanda and the assembly, and says to Ānanda: “I now raise the great Dharma banner for you,” so that sentient beings of the ten directions may attain the mind whose nature is pure and bright and attain the pure eye. Then he begins to speak by way of “seeing.”

He asks first about the fist: whence comes the light of this fist, how does it become a fist, and with what do you see it? Ānanda answers: it is born of the golden color of the Buddha’s body; I see it with my eyes; the five fingers bent and clenched make the fist. The Buddha says: without a hand there is no fist, without an eye there is no seeing; are the two alike? Ānanda says they are alike. The Buddha says not so: “for a man without hands the fist is gone altogether; for one without eyes, seeing is not wholly absent.” Before a blind man there is only darkness, but “seeing darkness” is still seeing. The blind man’s seeing of darkness and the sighted man’s seeing of darkness in a dark room: the two darknesses do not differ. If the blind man suddenly gains eyes, or the sighted man suddenly gains a lamp, each sees color in the dusts before him; and if one said the lamp could see, the lamp would no longer be called a lamp. Therefore: “The lamp can show color, but the one that sees is the eye, not the lamp; the eye can show color, but the nature of seeing is the mind, not the eye.”

This is the hinge from mind to seeing. The seeking of the mind in seven places asked where the mind is; here the entrance changes: the “seeing” you use every day, who is it that sees? The eye is an instrument, like the lamp; what sees is the mind.

VII. Guest and Dust, Host and Space: What Is It That Moves?

Ānanda and the assembly “had fallen silent, but their minds were not yet opened.” The Buddha opens one more gate: long ago in the Deer Park he told the five monks that “all sentient beings fail to attain bodhi and arhatship because they are led astray by the afflictions of guest and dust”; at that time, by what did you awaken?

Kauṇḍinya rises and answers: by awakening to the two words “guest” and “dust.” Guest: “what does not stay is called the guest; what stays is called the host.” Dust: “what is clear and still is called space; what stirs and moves is called dust.” A traveler puts up at an inn and, once he has eaten and slept, goes on; the host does not go. Sunlight enters a crack and the dust is seen to stir, while the empty space is still.

The Buddha says: “So it is.” Then he opens and closes his hand and asks Ānanda: is it my hand that opens and closes, or your seeing? Ānanda says: the hand opens and closes; “it is not my nature of seeing that opens and closes of itself.” The Buddha asks: which moves and which is still? Ānanda says: “The Buddha’s hand does not stay, but my nature of seeing has not even any stillness; what is there that does not stay?” The Buddha then sends light to left and right, and Ānanda’s head turns with it; the Buddha asks: is it your head that moves, or your seeing? Ānanda says: “My head moves of itself, but my nature of seeing has not even any stopping; what is there that moves?”

At the end of the fascicle the Buddha tells the assembly: you see Ānanda’s head move of itself, yet “the seeing does not move”; you see my hand open and close of itself, yet “the seeing neither stretches nor curls.” “Why do you now take what moves as your body, take what moves as your surroundings?” From thought to thought arising and perishing, losing the true nature, “taking things for yourself; in the midst of this you turn in the wheel and take the flow upon yourselves.”

Fascicle one stops here. What it is that does not move, this fascicle has already pointed out: it is seeing, “the seeing does not move,” “the seeing neither stretches nor curls.” But why seeing does not move, and how the unmoving seeing stands to that “constantly abiding true mind,” is laid out layer by layer only in fascicle two, where King Prasenajit asks about arising and perishing and seeing is disclosed ten times over.

Carrying Forward — Refute First, Then Reconcile

The above is the meaning of the sūtra text in itself. What follows looks at the same thing from the commentator’s side, which is not the sūtra but the same matter seen from another place.

Zixuan’s Shoulengyan yishu zhujing divides fascicle one into the introductory section and the main section: Mañjuśrī carries the spell and brings Ānanda back, up to “the introductory section ends”; the main section follows, with “Ānanda in grief asks to cultivate samādhi” as its first heading. This agrees with our sectioning.

On the seeking of the mind in seven places Zixuan has one summary judgment: “Though the inquiries are seven, the places are only five, since the fourth and the seventh have no separate place.” The fourth (opening the eyes to see light, closing them to see darkness) and the seventh (attached to nothing) do not in fact set up another location; one is said with regard to the light and darkness of seeing, the other with regard to non-attachment. There are seven inquiries but only five places. He also says: “The seven passages above complete the refutation of what the false depends on.” Though what ordinary feeling reckons differs in ten thousand ways, the places it depends on are no more than these seven; to search out the substance of the false, one first refutes what it depends on, as when the city falls the bandits perish. This explains why the Buddha first asks where the mind is: not that there is really a place to be found, but that the places the mind depends on are dismantled one by one, and the substance of the false is left with nothing to rest on.

Why, after refuting, must there be reconciling? After the two roots Zixuan has a general discussion: this sūtra discloses the true mind by refuting the false within the gate of arising and perishing; refuting and reconciling are both found across the sūtras and treatises, differing according to whether the clinging mind is light or heavy and the faculties sharp or dull. “This sūtra refutes first and reconciles after, so that both the heavy and the light clinging are exhausted and both the sharp and the dull faculties enter.” Refuting first removes the sickness of those whose clinging is heavy and faculties dull; reconciling after lets those whose faculties are sharp and clinging light be pointed directly to the nature. Fascicle one is the refuting part; the reconciling comes later.

On the turn from mind to seeing Zixuan also has one clear sentence: “For the mind is the source of the myriad dharmas, and seeing is the first of the six faculties; the mind has true and false, and seeing has right and wrong.” Before, the false mind was refuted and the tathāgatagarbha disclosed as the object to be contemplated; the object having been spoken of, next is made clear the wisdom that contemplates; wisdom is insight, and the working of insight, distinguished, is named seeing. So in the sūtra text “to clarify the mind, it discriminates by way of seeing; to disclose seeing, it discusses in terms of the mind”: mind and seeing are one dharma with two meanings. The passage at the end of this fascicle on the fist and the blind man, on guest and dust, host and space, is exactly the first step from “mind” to “seeing,” and the tenfold disclosure of seeing in fascicle two takes it up from there.

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

Fascicle one ends with “the seeing does not move” and “the seeing neither unfolds nor rolls up”: the hand opens and closes, the head turns, and the seeing does not move with them. But that was only pointed out, not yet said through. Fascicle two takes it up: why this unmoving seeing neither arises nor perishes, and what it has to do with your body, your mind, and the mountains, rivers, and myriad things before your eyes.

Zixuan divides the fascicle into two great parts. The first, “gradually clarifying true seeing by refuting inversion,” first refutes King Prasenajit’s view of annihilation, then refutes Ānanda’s inversion. The second, “directly disclosing true seeing by way of the conditions and dusts at large,” examines and refutes layer by layer—the conditioned mind, nowhere to return, substance and function, shrinking and breaking off, apart from the body, spontaneity and causes and conditions, union and non-union—and ends by taking the five aggregates as its example and saying that the five aggregates are from the first the tathāgatagarbha, the wondrous nature of true suchness. This book divides the fascicle into fourteen sections by Zixuan’s outline; the outline is a guide for reading, and the boundary of the fascicle is taken from the fascicle title the sūtra itself sets down. The head of the fascicle still bears the full title, The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Tathāgata’s Secret Cause, Cultivation and Realization of the Complete Meaning, and the Myriad Practices of All Bodhisattvas, Called Śūraṅgama, with the same interlinear note beneath it, “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and the same attribution, “Translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of India, of the Tang,” as fascicle one.

Later readers called the passages in this fascicle in which the Buddha discloses the nature of seeing to Ānanda, layer upon layer, ‘the tenfold disclosure of seeing’; this book takes that as the title of the unit. Zixuan’s commentary does not use the name; he simply divides the text section by section. In reading, there is no need to count the ten. What matters is what each one asks and what each one refutes.

II. King Prasenajit: The Face Has Wrinkled; the Seeing Has Not

At the head of the fascicle Ānanda and the assembly, having heard the Buddha’s instruction, are at ease in body and mind. They reflect that “from beginningless time we have lost our original mind and mistaken the shadows of discrimination among conditioned dusts,” and today, awakened, they are “like an infant who has lost its milk and suddenly meets its loving mother,” and ask the Buddha to disclose the true and false, the real and empty, of body and mind, “the two natures, now present, of what arises and perishes and what does not.” Ānanda has not stated his doubt; King Prasenajit states it for him. Before this I heard the outsiders Kātyāyana and Vairāṭīputra say that “this body is annihilated after death, and that is called nirvāṇa.” Though I have met the Buddha today, I still waver. How can I come to know that this mind neither arises nor perishes?

The Buddha does not reason with him; he asks about his body. This fleshly body of yours—is it adamantine and imperishable, or will it change and decay? It will change and decay. “You have not yet perished; how do you know you will perish?” The king answers: I see the present moment pass away thought after thought, as fire turns to ash, and so I know it will come to its end. The Buddha asks again: how does your appearance now compare with your childhood? The king says: as a child my skin was moist and glossy, grown up I was full of blood and vigor, now I am old, my hair white and my face wrinkled. The Buddha asks: did this happen all at once? The king says: “The change moves in secret; I truly do not notice it; cold and heat flow on, and gradually it has come to this.” At twenty I was older than at ten, at thirty older than at twenty, and at sixty-two, looking back at fifty, I was still strong. Thinking it through, it is not only a change by decades: year by year, month by month, day by day, moment by moment, it never stays.

Then the Buddha asks the pivot of the passage. You see the changes go on without stopping, and know that you will perish. But in the perishing, do you know that there is something in your body that does not perish? The king joins his palms: “I truly do not know!”

The Buddha asks: “At what age did you see the water of the Ganges?” The king says: at three, when my mother took me to pay respects to the deva Jīva, we crossed it. The Buddha asks: you saw this water at three; at thirteen, how was the water? “Exactly as when I was three, no different,” and at sixty-two still no different. The Buddha says: you grieve that your hair is white and your face wrinkled, and your face is surely more wrinkled than in childhood. Then your seeing of the Ganges now and your seeing of the river as a child—is there young and old in it? “No, World-Honored One!”

“Though your face is wrinkled, the nature of this essence of seeing has never wrinkled!” And the sentence that follows is the conclusion of the whole passage: “What wrinkles changes; what does not wrinkle does not change. What changes undergoes perishing; what does not change has from the first no arising or perishing. How could it undergo your birth and death?”

The passage works with an old man’s body, not with philosophy. The face will wrinkle; the seeing will not. What changes perishes; what does not change has no arising and perishing. The Buddha does not bring out some separate thing called “the nature that does not arise or perish” and show it to the king. He lets the king find, inside his own sixty-two-year-old body, the seeing that has not been any different from the age of three until today. On hearing this the king “knows with faith that after the body is left one goes from this life to another,” and the assembly leaps for joy.

III. Inverted and Upright: Who Is Inverted

Ānanda at once asks: if this seeing and hearing surely do not arise or perish, why does the World-Honored One say that we have “lost our true nature and act in inversion”?

The Buddha lets his golden arm hang down, the wheel-marked hand pointing downward, and asks: “Do you see my mudrā hand now as upright or inverted?” Ānanda answers honestly: “Beings of the world take this as inverted, but I do not know which is upright and which inverted.” The Buddha asks: if the people of the world take this as inverted, what do they take as upright? Ānanda says: when the Tathāgata raises his arm and the hand points up into the sky, that is called upright. The Buddha raises his arm and says: this is what you call inversion—head and tail exchanged, no more; the people of the world look once over and know it. Compare your body with the pure Dharma body of the Tathāgatas: “the Tathāgata’s body is called Right and Universal Knowledge; your bodies are called the inverted nature.” Look carefully at your body and the Buddha’s body: the “inversion” you call inverted—where is it?

Ānanda and the assembly “stare at the Buddha with unblinking eyes,” not knowing where the inversion of body and mind lies. Then the Buddha “sends forth the sound of the ocean tide and announces to the whole assembly” the first great discourse of this fascicle. I have always said that “form, mind, all the conditions, the mental factors, and all the objects of condition are manifested by mind alone.” “Your body and your mind are both things manifested within the wondrous, bright, true, essential, wondrous mind.” Why do you lose the originally wondrous, perfect, wondrous, bright mind and take hold of delusion within awakening? Then a run of phrases lays out the order of delusion: the dim becomes emptiness; in the empty dimness darkness congeals into form; form mixes with false thought and becomes a body; conditions gather and stir within, rush outward, and that restless turmoil is taken for the nature of mind. “Once deluded into taking it as mind, one is certain that it is inside the body of form, and does not know that the body of form, and outside it the mountains, rivers, empty space, and the great earth, are all things within the wondrous bright true mind.” Then a simile: “It is as if one discarded the clear hundred thousand great seas and recognized only one floating bubble, taking it for the whole tide and for the entire ocean.”

Turned over, the hand is still a hand; what is inverted is not the hand but the one who looks. Body and mind are from the first things manifested within the true mind; to take one bubble for the whole sea—this is the inversion. The Buddha says such a person is “doubly deluded in delusion,” inverted at two levels: first taking things as oneself, then not knowing one has mistaken them.

IV. Finger and Moon, Guest and Host: The Conditioned Mind Is Not the Nature

Hearing this, Ānanda weeps. He says: though I have received the Buddha’s wondrous sound and awakened to the wondrous bright mind, originally perfect and ever-abiding, what awakens to the Buddha’s present preaching is still this conditioned mind. “I have only obtained this mind; I dare not recognize it as the original ground of mind.”

It is an honest thing to say, and a very deep question: is the mind I use to hear the Dharma the mind you are asking me to recognize? The Buddha answers: “You still hear the Dharma with a conditioned mind; then this Dharma too is a condition, and you have not obtained the nature of the Dharma.” Then two similes. One is the finger and the moon: “as when someone points at the moon with a finger to show another; that person, because of the finger, should look at the moon. If instead he looks at the finger and takes it for the moon itself, he not only loses the moon’s disk, he loses the finger as well.” Taking the finger for the moon, one loses not only the moon but the finger, and does not even know light from dark. The other is guest and host: “as when a traveler lodges at an inn, stays a while and leaves, never remaining; while the keeper of the inn goes nowhere, and is called the host.”

From this the criterion is set: “If it were truly your mind, it would go nowhere. How is it that apart from sound it has no discriminating nature?” The mind that discriminates the sound of my preaching—when the sound is gone, it is gone. The mind that discriminates my features—when the form is gone, it is gone. Even up to where all discrimination ceases, neither form nor emptiness, the state that outsiders like Gośālī mistake for the dark principle—apart from the conditions of dharmas it has no discriminating nature. “Then your nature of mind in each case has somewhere to return. How can it be the host?”

The guest leaves and the host remains: these are the words by which Kauṇḍinya awakened to guest and dust in fascicle one. Here the Buddha turns them upon Ānanda’s own mind: the discriminating mind that arises with a sound and perishes with it is a guest, not the host.

V. The Eight Returns: Whatever Can Be Returned Is Not You

Ānanda presses on: if my nature of mind in each case has somewhere to return, why does the wondrous bright original mind the Tathāgata speaks of have nowhere to return?

The Buddha first says something to be noted: “For now take the bright origin of the essence of seeing, with which you see me. Though this seeing is not the wondrous essential bright mind, it is like the second moon; it is not the moon’s reflection.” The essence of seeing he is about to point to is not yet the wondrous essential bright mind itself; it is like the second moon seen by pressing the eye, not the moon’s reflection in water. The second moon is pressed into being, and is not far from the true moon; the reflection is something else. The Buddha borrows this essence of seeing to show that it has nowhere to return. It is an expedient, not the final word.

Then the eight returns. This lecture hall opens wide to the east; when the sun rises there is light, in the dark of the moonless midnight there is darkness, through the doors and windows there is passage, between the walls there is obstruction, where there is discrimination there are conditions, in the obdurate void there is emptiness, when dust rises there is murk, when the rain clears there is clarity. Eight characteristics, each returned to its cause: “light returns to the sun’s disk,” for without the sun there is no light; “darkness returns to the dark moon,” passage to the doors and windows, obstruction to the walls, conditions to discrimination, the obdurate void to emptiness, murk to dust, clarity to the clear sky. Everything in the world falls within these eight. Then the essence of seeing that sees these eight—to whom is it returned? If it were returned to light, then when there is no light it would not see darkness. Light, dark, and all the differences: “the seeing has no difference.”

“Whatever can be returned is naturally not you; what cannot be returned by you—if it is not you, who is it?”

These two sentences are one of the pivots of the whole fascicle. Everything that can be given back is not you; what cannot be given back—if not you, then who? The eight returns are not a lesson in physics; they are a subtraction. Take away everything that can be attributed to something outside, and what remains, what cannot be taken away, is it. The Buddha concludes: “Then know that your mind is from the first wondrous, bright, and pure; you yourself are confused, lose the origin, and undergo the wheel”—and for this the Tathāgata calls you pitiable.

VI. Seeing Is Not a Thing

Ānanda says: though I know this nature of seeing has nowhere to return, “how do I know it is my true nature?”

The Buddha changes direction and begins from the range of seeing. You, not yet without outflows, by the Buddha’s power see as far as the first dhyāna; Aniruddha sees Jambudvīpa as an āmra fruit in his palm; the bodhisattvas see a hundred thousand worlds; the Tathāgatas of the ten directions see everything; “beings see through no further than an inch.” Seeing has large and small, but the Buddha asks Ānanda to do one thing: choose within his seeing—“which is my substance, and which are the images of things?” From the palaces of the sun and moon to the seven golden mountains, the clouds rising, the birds flying, the wind moving, the dust rising, the trees, mountains, rivers, grasses, men and beasts—“all are things, not you.” Near and far, the things differ, yet all are seen by your essence of seeing. “Then the kinds of things have their differences, but the nature of seeing has none. This essential wondrous brightness is truly your nature of seeing.”

Then comes a proof by contradiction, to be read slowly. “If seeing were a thing, then you could also see my seeing.” If seeing were a thing, you should be able to see my seeing. You say that when we see the same thing you are seeing my seeing—then when I am not seeing, “why do you not see the place where I am not seeing?” You cannot see where I do not see; so seeing is not a thing. One step further: if seeing were a thing, then “when you see a thing, the thing also sees you”; substance and nature would be mixed, and you, I, and the whole world could not be established.

So: when you see, it is you and not I; “the nature of seeing pervades everywhere—if it is not you, who is it?” Why doubt your own true nature, and come to me for what is real?

This section peels “seeing” away from “what is seen.” Everything seen is a thing; seeing is not a thing. Things differ; seeing does not.

VII. Shrinking and Breaking Off, and Seeing in Front of You: Two Doubts

Ānanda raises two more doubts. The first is shrinking and breaking off: with the Tathāgata in the palaces of the sun and moon I see the whole Sahā world; back in the monastery I see only the compound; in the hall I see only the eaves. This seeing originally pervaded a whole world, and now it fills one room: “has this seeing shrunk from large to small, or have the walls pinched it off?”

The Buddha answers: large and small, inside and outside, all belong to the dusts before you; “one should not say that the seeing stretches or shrinks.” “It is like seeing a square emptiness inside a square vessel.” Is the emptiness seen in the square vessel fixed as square, or not? If fixed, then set down a round vessel and the emptiness should not be round; if not fixed, there should be no square emptiness in the square vessel. You say you do not know where the meaning lies—the nature of the meaning is just this; where should it “lie”? “If you wish to enter where there is neither square nor round, simply remove the squareness of the vessel.” The substance of emptiness has no square; there is no further need to remove some square shape from empty space. If entering a room shrinks the seeing, then when you look up at the sun do you stretch your seeing to the sun’s face? If walls can pinch the seeing off, then bore a small hole—is there a mark where it joins again? The conclusion falls upon the person: “All beings, from beginningless time, have mistaken themselves for things, lost the original mind, and are turned by things,” and so they see large and small within it. “If you could turn things, you would be the same as the Tathāgata,” body and mind perfect and bright, an unmoving place of awakening, “able to contain the lands of the ten directions on the tip of a single hair.”

The second doubt is apartness from the body: if this essence of seeing is my wondrous nature, and it is now in front of me, and the seeing is my true self, then what is this body and mind of mine? “The nature of seeing is truly I, and the body is not I”—how does this differ from what the Tathāgata objected to before, that “things can see me”?

The Buddha asks very concretely. You say the seeing is in front of you. We sit in the Jeta Grove; the woods, the streams, the halls, the sun and moon, the Ganges—raise your hand and point them out to me: the shaded is the woods, the bright is the sun, the obstructing is the wall, the passable is space, down to the grasses and the finest hairs; whatever has form can be pointed to. If the seeing is in front of you, can you point out which one is the seeing? “If a thing were the seeing, since it is already the seeing, what would be the thing?” Ānanda answers: whatever my hand points to and my eye looks upon, “all that is pointed to is a thing; none is the seeing.” The Buddha says: “So it is, so it is!” Then he asks the other way: among these things, which is not the seeing? Ānanda says: if the tree is not the seeing, how do I see the tree? If the tree is the seeing, how is it a tree? “Among the myriad images, examined in fine detail, there is none that is not the seeing!” And the Buddha again says: “So it is, so it is.”

Two “so it is,” one for “none is the seeing,” one for “none is not the seeing”—and the assembly is “bewildered, not knowing where this meaning begins or ends; all at once they are alarmed and lose what they had held to.” Seeing the assembly shaken, the Buddha first comforts them: “The unsurpassed Dharma King speaks true words! He speaks as things are, neither deceiving nor false, not like Maskarin’s four kinds of equivocating argument about the deathless.” Then Mañjuśrī rises and asks on their behalf: what, after all, are these images of things and this essence of seeing, so that there is “neither is nor is not”? The Buddha answers Mañjuśrī: the Tathāgatas of the ten directions and the great bodhisattvas, dwelling in their own samādhi, see “the seeing, the conditions of seeing, and the characteristics thought of, as flowers in empty space, from the first having no existence; this seeing and its conditions are from the first the wondrous pure bright substance of bodhi.” Then he asks: “As for you, Mañjuśrī—is there another Mañjuśrī who is Mañjuśrī, or is there no Mañjuśrī?” Mañjuśrī answers: “I am the true Mañjuśrī; there is no ‘is Mañjuśrī’”—if there were an “is Mañjuśrī,” there would be two Mañjuśrīs; but it is not that there is no Mañjuśrī; in him there are in fact no two characteristics of is and is-not. The Buddha says: seeing and the dusts of emptiness are the same. From the first they are the wondrous bright unsurpassed bodhi, the pure perfect true mind, falsely becoming form and emptiness and hearing and seeing, like the second moon—which is the moon and which is not? “There is only the one true moon; in between there is of itself no ‘is the moon’ or ‘is not the moon.’”

Is-seeing, is-not-seeing: both ends of the question are wrongly put. Mañjuśrī is simply Mañjuśrī and needs no further “is Mañjuśrī” to prove that he is Mañjuśrī; seeing is simply seeing, and to look for “is” and “is not” between seeing and things is false thinking. This passage turns the earlier ‘seeing is not a thing’ over once more: neither is seeing outside things.

VIII. Not Spontaneity, Not Causes and Conditions: When Seeing Sees Seeing

Here Ānanda raises another doubt, and he cites the Buddha’s own words. The conditions of awareness pervade the ten directions, still and ever-abiding, their nature beyond arising and perishing—how does this differ from the dark principle of which the outsider Kapila spoke, or the true self pervading the ten directions of which the ash-smearers and the other outsiders speak? The Buddha on Mount Laṅkā told Mahāmati that the outsiders speak of spontaneity and I speak of causes and conditions. Now this nature of awareness, spontaneous, neither arising nor perishing, “seems not to be causes and conditions, and to be the same as their spontaneity”—how are we not to fall in with the heretics?

The Buddha first refutes spontaneity. If it were spontaneous, there would have to be a spontaneous substance: does this seeing take light as its self? darkness? emptiness? obstruction? “If light were its self, it should not see darkness.” Ānanda steps back: then it is of the nature of causes and conditions. The Buddha refutes causes and conditions: does seeing exist because of light, because of darkness, because of emptiness, because of obstruction? “If it existed because of light, it should not see darkness.” Conditioned by light, by darkness, by emptiness, by obstruction—likewise none holds. Then one sentence sums it up: this essential awareness, wondrous and bright, is “not cause, not condition, not spontaneous, not not-spontaneous; without ‘not’ and ‘not-not,’ without ‘is’ and ‘is-not’; apart from all characteristics, it is all dharmas.” How can you set your mind upon it and discriminate it with the names and forms of the world’s idle talk? “It is like trying to grasp and rub empty space with the palm of the hand—only wearing yourself out.”

Ānanda cites the Buddha again: the Buddha always says the nature of seeing has four conditions—because of space, because of light, because of mind, because of the eye; how is that? The Buddha answers: “What I say of the characteristics of causes and conditions in the world is not the foremost meaning.” Then he asks back about what the world calls seeing and not seeing: with sun, moon, or lamplight it is called seeing, and without them not seeing? Then in the dark, “not seeing light” is called not seeing, and in the light “not seeing darkness” should also be called not seeing; light and dark displace each other, and the nature of seeing is never absent for a moment—so both should be called seeing. “When seeing light, the seeing is not the light; when seeing darkness, the seeing is not the darkness”; seeing space, it is not space; seeing obstruction, it is not obstruction—four meanings established.

Then comes the deepest sentence of the fascicle: “When seeing sees seeing, the seeing is not seeing; the seeing is still apart from seeing, and seeing cannot reach it. How then can you still speak of causes and conditions, spontaneity, and the characteristics of union?”

What came before said that seeing is not light, dark, space, or obstruction: seeing is not the object seen. This sentence pushes one step higher: when seeing sees the seeing, the seeing is not seeing either. True seeing is beyond even the reach of the name “seeing.” This time Ānanda does not ask again. He says he is “still more confused,” weeps, and bows.

IX. Individual and Shared: The Halo Seen by a Diseased Eye

The Buddha does not answer “seeing sees, and is not seeing” directly. He first says that all beings turn in the world “through two inverted, discriminating, false seeings, arising where they are and turning with their deeds,” and then names the two: “first, the false seeing of beings’ individual action; second, the false seeing of beings’ shared portion.”

The simile for the false seeing of individual action is the red cataract: a man with a cataract on his eye, at night, sees beside the lamp a halo of five colors. Is this halo the color of the lamp, or the color of the seeing? If it were the lamp’s color, why do those without the disease not see it? If it were the seeing’s color, the seeing has already become color—then what do we call the one who sees the halo? If it existed apart from the lamp, there should be halos beside the screens and the tables too; if apart from the seeing, it should not be seen by the eye. So: “the color is truly in the lamp; the disease of seeing makes the halo. Halo and seeing are both the cataract; what sees the cataract is not diseased.” The halo is made by the diseased eye; but what sees this cataract is not the disease.

The simile for the false seeing of shared portion is a calamity upon one country: on one island with two countries, the people of one country share an evil condition and see two suns, two moons, comets and shooting stars, sun-ears and rainbows; the other country neither sees nor hears of it.

Then the Buddha brings the two similes together. What you see today with your eyes—mountains, rivers, lands, and all beings—“are all made by the beginningless disease of seeing.” Seeing and its conditions seem a present scene; from the first they are the cataract upon the conditions of my bright awareness. “The awareness that sees is the cataract; the awareness of the originally awakened bright mind, upon its conditions, is not the cataract.” The awareness that is aware of this cataract is not within the cataract, and this is what “seeing sees” means. So when you see me, see yourself, and see the ten kinds of beings of the world, it is all the cataract on seeing, not the one who sees the cataract; “that true essence of seeing, whose nature is not the cataract, is therefore not called seeing.”

This answers the previous section’s “the seeing is not seeing.” The diseased eye sees the halo; the halo is made by the disease of seeing; but what is aware that this is a disease is not in the disease. It is not called seeing, because it is not the kind of seeing that is within the halo. One man’s diseased eye is individual action; one whole country’s disease is shared portion; the three thousand continents of Jambudvīpa, the Sahā world, the lands with outflows in the ten directions, are all the same bright awareness, the undefiled wondrous mind, with seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing as the conditions of a false disease, “falsely born by union, falsely dying by union.” “If one can leave far behind all the conditions of union and non-union, one then extinguishes the causes of birth and death.”

The Buddha then goes on to refute union. Does the essence of seeing unite with light, with darkness, with passage, with obstruction? “When light is present, where is the seeing mixed in?” The characteristic of seeing can be distinguished—what form does the mixture take? Does it combine with light? When light ends, the seeing would not combine with darkness—how then does it see darkness? Ānanda turns around: then it is non-union. The Buddha refutes non-union: if it does not unite with light, then seeing and light must have a boundary—where is the light, where is the seeing? If it does not combine with light, then seeing and light are at odds in nature, like the ear and light, which do not touch at all. Union, combination, non-union, non-combination—all four sides are refuted.

The conclusion is gathered up into the nature of dharmas. All the floating dusts and illusory transformations arise where they are and vanish where they are; “illusory and false, they are called characteristics, but their nature is truly the wondrous bright substance of awakening.” The five aggregates, the six entrances, the twelve bases, the eighteen realms are falsely born by the union of causes and conditions and falsely said to perish by their separation, and one does not know that their arising and perishing, going and coming, are “from the first the tathāgatagarbha, ever-abiding, wondrously bright, unmoving, all-pervading, the wondrous nature of true suchness,” in whose true constancy going and coming, delusion and awakening, death and birth are sought and nothing at all is found.

The name tathāgatagarbha appears here for the first time in this sūtra.

X. The Five Aggregates Are from the First the tathāgatagarbha: Five Similes

“How are the five aggregates from the first the tathāgatagarbha, the wondrous nature of true suchness?” The Buddha does not theorize. He gives five similes, each an ordinary small event.

The aggregate of form is like flowers seen by a staring eye: a man looks with clear eyes at a clear sky and there is nothing there; for no reason he holds his eyes fixed, “staring until they grow strained,” and in the empty sky he sees wild flowers and disordered unreal shapes. The flowers do not come from the sky—if they came from the sky they would return into it, and whatever has coming and going is not empty space. They do not come from the eye—if they came from the eye they should see, going out as flowers and coming back to see the eye. So “the aggregate of form is false, from the first neither causes and conditions nor spontaneous in nature.”

The aggregate of feeling is like two palms rubbing: a man, hands and feet at ease, for no reason “rubs his two palms together in the air,” and in the palms arise roughness, smoothness, cold, and heat. The touch does not come from the air—if the air can touch the palms, why not the body? It does not come from the palms—if it came from the palms it would not need their joining, and going out and coming in, the arm, wrist, and marrow should know its track. So the aggregate of feeling is false.

The aggregate of perception is like speaking of plums and feeling the feet ache: “speaking of sour plums, water comes into the mouth,” and thinking of treading a cliff, the soles of the feet go sour and numb. The water does not come from the plums—the plums should speak for themselves; nor does it enter from the mouth—the mouth should hear for itself, and need not wait on the ear. So the aggregate of perception is false.

The aggregate of formation is like a torrent: “like a torrent whose waves follow one another, the ones before and the ones after never overtaking each other.” The flow does not arise from space—else all the space of the ten directions would be an endless flood; it does not exist because of water—else the flow would not be water, and would have a place and a shape present now; it is not the nature of water itself—else when the water is still there would be no water; nor is it apart from space and water—outside space there is no water, and outside water there is no flow. So the aggregate of formation is false.

The aggregate of consciousness is like carrying emptiness in a pitcher: “a man takes a kalaviṅka pitcher, stops its two openings, carries it full of emptiness, and travels a thousand li to make a gift of it to another country.” The emptiness does not come from the other place—else the home place would be short one pitcherful of emptiness; nor does it enter here—else when the openings are undone and the pitcher upended one should see emptiness come out. So the aggregate of consciousness is false.

The five similes share one structure: an event that arises for no reason; one asks it, one by one, where it comes from; nowhere is the answer; and so it is “from the first neither causes and conditions nor spontaneous in nature.” This is the fascicle’s earlier “not cause, not condition, not spontaneous,” tested one by one upon the five aggregates. The wild flowers, the illusory touch, the water in the mouth, the torrent, the emptiness in the pitcher are not nothing; they have no place they come from. And what has no place it comes from—its very substance is that unmoving wondrous nature of true suchness. Fascicle two stops here, with the closing title: The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Myriad Practices, Śūraṅgama, Fascicle Two.

Carrying Forward — Seeing the True Within the False

The above is the meaning of the sūtra text in itself. What follows looks at the same thing from the commentator’s side, which is not the sūtra but the same matter seen from another place.

Zixuan traces Ānanda’s question at the head of the fascicle to one misunderstanding: Ānanda supposes that true and false are two wholly different substances, and that there is a non-arising-and-perishing apart from arising and perishing. He says: “The Buddha’s intent is that he should see the true within the false.” Of the passage on King Prasenajit and the river he concludes: “Here the Tathāgata has him distinguish true seeing within false seeing; there is no non-arising-and-perishing apart from arising and perishing.” Not to leave arising and perishing and look elsewhere for what does not arise or perish, but to recognize, inside the body that arises and perishes, the seeing that never has. So he labels the first half of the fascicle “gradual clarification”: “By way of the hand and the viewing of the river it shows that seeing is unborn; the appearance is shallow and the meaning deep, still hidden, not yet made plain, and so not called direct disclosure—hence the heading says ‘roughly discussed, gradually clarified.’” The river is the rough statement; direct disclosure waits for the second half, by way of the conditions and dusts at large.

On “like the second moon; it is not the moon’s reflection,” Zixuan is precise: “What is seen by pressing the eye is false through and through, born of a diseased eye, and serves to illustrate that false seeing cannot in the end be found. It is only with regard to this seeing that, as an expedient, having nowhere to return is shown.” The essence of seeing the Buddha points to is the second moon, borrowed to show that there is nowhere to return; it is not the thing finally to be pointed out. The reflection in the water, which descends from the true moon, may serve to illustrate wondrous response. This explains why, after the eight returns, Ānanda still asks “how do I know it is my true nature,” and why the Buddha goes on, one disclosure after another.

On “when seeing sees seeing, the seeing is not seeing,” Zixuan speaks in terms of substance and function: taking the upper seeing as function and the lower as substance, when the function illumines the substance, “object and wisdom merge, like water poured into water, and cannot be distinguished so as to be called seeing.” He also explains why the Buddha does not answer directly but speaks at length of the two kinds of false seeing: “Without showing at length that false seeing has seeing, one cannot disclose that true seeing has no seeing.” His definition of true seeing is: “because it is still and ever illumining it is called true seeing; because it illumines and is ever still it is not seeing.” Illumining, therefore seeing; still, therefore not called seeing. The cataract simile he matches point for point: “the eye stands for true seeing, the cataract for the characteristic of action,” “the lamp stands for the nature of dharmas, seeing at night for false seeing, the halo for the five aggregates.”

Of the five aggregates at the end, he first explains the name: “Skandha means accumulation; shade means covering: accumulating the conditioned, covering the true nature.” The “seeing” of this fascicle—from the fist and the blind man of fascicle one, through the river, the eight returns, seeing is not a thing, shrinking and breaking off, apart from the body, is and is-not, spontaneity and causes and conditions, seeing sees and is not seeing, individual and shared, union and non-union—layer after layer is peeled away, not peeling away the seeing but peeling away every way of taking hold of it. The next fascicle goes on to refute the six entrances, and says the same one thing: from the first the tathāgatagarbha, the wondrous nature of true suchness.

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

At the end of Fascicle Two the Buddha uses five similes to say that the five aggregates are “from the first the wondrous nature of true suchness of the tathāgatagarbha”: the mad flowers, the illusory touch, the water in the mouth, the torrent, the emptiness in the pitcher—asking of each where it comes from, and finding nowhere. Fascicle Three carries on with the same question and walks the rest of the road: the six entrances, the twelve bases, the eighteen realms, and then the seven elements. The sentence asked is the same—“How are the six entrances from the first the wondrous nature of true suchness of the tathāgatagarbha?” “How are the twelve bases from the first the wondrous nature of true suchness of the tathāgatagarbha?” “How are the eighteen realms from the first the wondrous nature of true suchness of the tathāgatagarbha?”—and the method of answering is the same: take some small everyday matter and ask whether it comes from the faculty, from the dust, or from space; it is none of the three, and so it is “from the first neither causes and conditions nor spontaneous in nature.”

Zixuan divides the fascicle into four great sections: refuting the six entrances, refuting the twelve bases, refuting the eighteen realms, and then “bringing the characteristics together once more by way of the seven elements.” This edition follows Zixuan’s outline in twelve sections: one each for the six entrances, the twelve bases, and the eighteen realms; one for each of the seven elements; one for Ānanda’s question; and one for the assembly’s awakening and the verse of praise at the end of the fascicle. The outline is a guide for reading; the boundary of the fascicle is set by the fascicle title the sūtra gives itself. The head of the fascicle still bears the full title, with the note beneath it, “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and the attribution “Translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of India, of the Tang,” the same as the two preceding fascicles.

Later readers have called the content of this fascicle ‘the aggregates, entrances, bases, realms, and seven elements’; this edition takes that as the unit’s title. Zixuan’s commentary does not have those words; he simply outlines section after section.

II. The Six Entrances: The Eye and Its Strain Are Alike the Strained Appearance of Bodhi Staring

The six entrances begin with the eye. The Buddha says: “That eye-pupil which stares until strain arises—both the eye and the strain are alike the strained appearance of bodhi staring.” This sentence joins the simile of the aggregate of form in Fascicle Two—stare long enough and you see flowers in the air. The eye is the eye; the fatigue that staring produces is the strain; and the sūtra says that eye and strain are “alike the strained appearance of bodhi staring”: not only is the strain false, but that very eye, too, is a strained appearance stared into being within the nature of bodhi. Then it says how the nature of seeing comes to stand: “Because of the two false dusts of light and dark, seeing arises in between, draws in these dust-images, and is called the nature of seeing.” There are two dusts, light and dark; seeing arises between them and takes in the dust-images; this is called the nature of seeing. “This seeing, apart from those two dusts of light and dark, has ultimately no substance.”

What follows is the line of reasoning this fascicle uses over and over. Where does this seeing come from? If from light, then the moment dark arrives it perishes along with the light, and it ought not to see the dark; if from dark, the reverse; if it comes out of the faculty, then it has no need of light and dark—yet apart from light and dark this seeing has no substance of its own; if it comes out of space, then space is seeing things by itself—“what has that to do with your entrance?” Therefore “the eye entrance is false, from the first neither causes and conditions nor spontaneous in nature.”

Ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind: five passages of the same build, each with a different simile. The ear: stop both ears quickly with the fingers, and “because the ear-faculty is strained, there is a sound inside the head.” The nose: draw the breath in sharply through the nose, and after a while there is a cold touch inside it, by which one distinguishes open and blocked, empty and solid, fragrant and foul. The tongue: lick the lips with the tongue; lick long enough and a sick person tastes bitterness, a healthy person a faint sweetness, and “when it is not moving, the blandness is always there.” The body: one cold hand touches one hot hand; if the cold is greater the hot follows the cold, if the hot is greater the cold becomes hot. The mind: “When weary one sleeps; when sleep is done one wakes; looking upon dusts one remembers; losing memory is forgetting”—the four characteristics of arising, abiding, change, and perishing “draw in and return to the center, never overstepping one another, and are called the mind-faculty of knowing.” In all six similes the dusts come in pairs: light and dark, movement and stillness, open and blocked, sweet and bitter against bland, contact and separation, arising and perishing. Each entrance arises between a pair of dusts, and apart from that pair has no substance.

In reading the six entrances, hold on to one word: “both.” “Both the eye and the strain,” “both the ear and the strain,” “both the nose and the strain”… The sūtra is not saying that the dust is false and the faculty true; it says the faculty is in there too—the faculty, like the strain, is an appearance stared into being within the nature of bodhi. This joins the road of Fascicles One and Two, which refuted the mind and disclosed the seeing: there what was taken apart was the place where the mind was supposed to dwell and the way seeing was recognized; here it is the faculty itself.

III. The Twelve Bases: Seeing and Form Alike Have No Place

“How are the twelve bases from the first the wondrous nature of true suchness of the tathāgatagarbha?” A base is where faculty and dust stand opposite each other. The Buddha changes the question: no longer where this entrance comes from, but which of faculty and dust gives rise to the other. “Look now at this Jeta Grove and its springs and pools. What do you think: is it form that gives rise to the eye’s seeing, or the eye that gives rise to the appearance of form?” If the eye-faculty gives rise to the appearance of form, then when one sees space—space is not form—the nature of form ought to be extinguished, and with everything gone, “the appearance of form being nothing, who makes out the substance of space?” If the dust of form gives rise to the eye’s seeing, then when one looks at space the seeing ought to perish along with form, and “who makes out space and form?” Therefore “seeing, together with form and space, alike has no place.”

The base of sound is the passage with the fullest scene. In the Jeta Grove the drum is struck at mealtime and the bell is rung to gather the assembly, the sounds of bell and drum following one another. The Buddha asks: does the sound come to the ear, or does the ear go to where the sound is? If the sound came to Ānanda’s ear, it would be like my going into the city of Śrāvastī to beg—then I would not be in the Jeta Grove; the sound having arrived at Ānanda’s ear, “Maudgalyāyana and Kāśyapa ought not to hear it at the same time—how much less the twelve hundred and fifty śramaṇas among them, who on hearing the bell all come to the place of the meal?” If the ear went to where the sound is, it would be like my returning to the Jeta Grove—then I would not be in the city of Śrāvastī; your ear having gone to where the drum is struck, “when the bell sounds at the same moment, you ought not to hear both,” let alone the many sounds of elephants, horses, cattle, and sheep. Neither coming nor going holds, and without coming or going there is no hearing. Therefore “hearing and sound alike have no place.”

Scent: a single grain of sandalwood is burned in the censer, and within forty li all smell it at once. Does this scent arise from the nose? The nose is not sandalwood. From space? The nature of space is constant, and the scent ought always to be there—why burn this piece of dry wood? From the wood? The wood yields scent only once it has burned into smoke, and the smoke has not yet risen to any distance—“how is it already smelled within forty li?” Taste: holding the bowl one comes upon butter, curds, and ghee; if the taste arose from the tongue, then one tongue having already become the taste of butter, on meeting black rock-sugar “it ought not to shift”; if from the food, the food has no consciousness, “how does it know by itself?”; if from space, “when you eat space, what taste shall it have?” And if space were salty, “since it salts your tongue it would salt your face too, and the people of this world would be like fish in the sea.” Touch: in the morning one rubs the head with the hand—which is it that touches? If it is in the hand, the head has no knowing; if in the head, the hand is of no use; if each has it, “then you, Ānanda, ought to have two bodies.” Dharmas: the three natures of good, bad, and indeterminate that the mind takes as its objects—are they produced by the mind itself, or do they have some place apart from the mind? If they are the mind itself, then “the dharma is not a dust and not what the mind takes as object—how does it make a base?” If they have a place apart from the mind, then do they know or not know? If they know, they are mind; if they do not know, they are none of the characteristics of form, sound, scent, taste, contact, separation, cold, warmth, or space—“where then are they?”

The six passages of the twelve bases all end with “alike have no place.” The entrances are taken apart from the side of the faculty; the bases are taken apart where faculty and dust face each other: it is not that nothing is seen or heard, but that no place can be found to call ‘the place where seeing and form stand opposite.’

IV. The Eighteen Realms: Nothing at Any of the Three Places

“How are the eighteen realms from the first the wondrous nature of true suchness of the tathāgatagarbha?” A realm is the three together: faculty, dust, and consciousness. The Buddha asks of each: does this consciousness arise because of the faculty, with the faculty as its realm, or because of the dust, with the dust as its realm?

Eye-consciousness: if it arose because of the eye, then with no form and no space there would be nothing to distinguish—“even if you had the consciousness, what would you use it for?” If because of form, then when there is space and no form the consciousness ought to perish—how does it still recognize space? When form changes and the consciousness does not, “from what is the realm established?” If both together gave rise to it, “joined, there is a gap in the middle; apart, the two sides join—the substance and nature are in confusion.” Ear-consciousness: if because of the ear, then with movement and stillness not present the faculty does not come to know; if one takes the ear’s hearing, then without movement and stillness there is nothing for hearing to be; if because of sound, then a consciousness that exists because of sound has nothing to do with hearing, and “without hearing, the whereabouts of the sound’s appearance is lost”; and if the sound has its appearance because of hearing, then hearing ought to be able to hear the consciousness—“if the hearing is the same as the sound, the consciousness has already been heard; who knows the hearing of the consciousness?” If both together, then “the realm has no middle position, and from what would the inner and outer appearances then come to be?”—if the middle cannot stand, neither can inner and outer. Nose-consciousness is the longest passage: if because of the nose, first ask what you take to be the nose—the fleshly shape like two hanging claws, or the nature of smelling and knowing that moves? If the fleshly shape, “the flesh is body, and the body’s knowing is touch; it is called body, not nose”; if the smelling-knowing, then what do you take to be the knowing—if the flesh knows, the flesh’s knowing is touch, not nose; if space knows, “then space ought to be you, and your body would not know, and today Ānanda would be nowhere at all”; if the scent knows, the knowing belongs to the scent—what has it to do with you? If fragrant and foul odors must arise from your nose, then the two odors of fragrant and foul ought not to arise from the eraṇḍa tree and the sandalwood. Smell your own nose—is it fragrant or foul? “If both fragrant and foul can be smelled, then you, one person, ought to have two noses, and there would be two Ānandas asking me about the Way—which is your body?” If the consciousness arose because of the scent, then “as the eye has seeing but cannot look at the eye, so what exists because of the scent ought not to know the scent”—a consciousness that exists because of scent would, on the contrary, not know scent.

Tongue-consciousness: if because of the tongue, then sugar-cane, black plum, goldthread, rock salt, asarum, ginger, and cinnamon in the world would all be without taste; “taste your own tongue—is it sweet or bitter?” If the tongue is bitter, who tastes the tongue? If because of taste, then with many tastes arising the consciousness ought to have many bodies, and if the body of consciousness is one then all tastes become one taste, and “there ought to be no distinguishing!” If it arose from the joining of tongue and taste, “then within that there is from the first no self-nature—how does a realm arise?” Body-consciousness: “A thing does not know by touching; the body knows that there is touch; what knows the body is touch, what knows touch is the body; what is touch is not body, what is body is not touch—the two appearances of body and touch have from the first no place.” Joined to the body, it is the body’s own substance; apart from the body, it is space; with inner and outer not established, “how is the middle established?” Mind-consciousness: if because of the mind, there must be something thought within the mind for the mind to be brought out, and with no dharma before it the mind has nothing from which to arise; the cognizing mind and the nature of deliberating and discerning—are they the same or different? If the same, it is simply the mind, “how then is it what arises?”; if different, they are not alike, and “there ought to be nothing cognized.” If because of dharmas, the dharmas of the world do not go beyond the five dusts; form, sound, scent, taste, and touch each face their five faculties, and none belongs to the mind; apart from form and space, movement and stillness, open and blocked, contact and separation, arising and perishing, “beyond these characteristics there is in the end nothing to be found.”

The six passages all end with “nothing at any of the three places.” With this, the five aggregates, the six entrances, the twelve bases, and the eighteen realms—what the treatises call the three categories—have all been walked through. The sūtra’s way is not to overturn the names of the three categories but to ask each one where it comes from; and asked to the end, each is “from the first neither causes and conditions nor spontaneous in nature.”

V. Ānanda’s Question: Why Is the Union of the Four Elements Also Set Aside

Having heard this far, Ānanda raises a reasonable doubt: “The Tathāgata has always said that, by union and by causes and conditions, all the various changes of the world come about through the union of the four elements. Why does the Tathāgata set aside both causes and conditions and spontaneity?” The Buddha formerly spoke of causes and conditions and union; now he puts causes and conditions and spontaneity aside together. Ānanda asks the Buddha to disclose “the complete meaning of the middle way, the Dharma free of idle disputation.”

The Buddha’s answer first rebukes and then consents. You already turned away from the Lesser Vehicle and set your mind on unsurpassed bodhi, and that is why I opened the truth of the foremost meaning for you—“how is it that you again bind yourself with the idle disputations and deluded causes and conditions of the world?” For all your learning, you are “like one who can talk of medicines but, when the true medicine is before him, cannot tell it.” Then he says: listen well; I will distinguish and disclose it for you, and also let those who in the future cultivate the Great Vehicle reach the real characteristic. Ānanda was silent and received the Buddha’s holy intent.

The exposition proper begins from a general principle: if the substance of the nature of the elements were not union, it could not mingle and combine with the other elements, as space does not combine with forms; if it were union, it would be the same as change, “beginning and end bringing each other about, arising and perishing continuing, living and dying, dying and living, life after life and death after death, like a wheel of fire that never rests.” “As water becomes ice, and ice turns back to water.” This is to say: union and non-union—neither side is the answer.

In reading this passage, see why Ānanda’s question is a fair one. In Fascicle Two the Buddha told Ānanda that neither causes and conditions nor spontaneity will do; Ānanda remembers that the Buddha elsewhere spoke of the union of the four elements, so he asks: which account counts, that one or this one? The Buddha does not say which counts; he takes the four elements and looks at them one by one.

VI. The Seven Elements: Pure and Originally So, Pervading the Dharma-Realm, Manifesting in Accordance with Action

Seven passages of the same build. Each first sets up the nature of that element, then raises one matter and traces where it comes from, tracing it to ‘neither union nor combination; it cannot be that this nature comes from nowhere of itself,’ and then turns with one sentence: “You do not know that in the tathāgatagarbha the nature of form is true emptiness and the nature of emptiness is true form, pure and originally so, pervading the dharma-realm, answering to the minds of beings according to the measure of their knowing. It manifests in accordance with action, and the world, not knowing, is deluded into taking it for causes and conditions or for a spontaneous nature; all of this is the cognizing mind’s distinguishing and reckoning—there are only words, with no real meaning at all!” The closing rebuke is word for word the same in all seven passages, repeated seven times.

Earth: “Observe the nature of earth: coarse, it is the great earth; fine, it is a mote of dust; down to the dust bordering on void, which, when the most minute particle at the boundary-characteristic of form is split, is made up of seven parts; split the dust bordering on void once more, and it is the nature of emptiness itself.” Earth is split down to the dust bordering on void; split again, it is emptiness. The Buddha turns the question back: if the dust bordering on void can be split into space, then space can produce the appearance of form; you say union gives rise to change—then that one grain of dust bordering on void, “how many spaces were united to make it?” And the other way, when the dust bordering on void is split into space, “how many appearances of form were combined to make space?” Combining form gives form, not emptiness; combining emptiness gives emptiness, not form; “form may still be split, but how is emptiness combined?”

Fire: “The nature of fire has no self; it lodges in the various conditions.” The Buddha first explains what union means: as I and you and the twelve hundred and fifty bhikṣus now make one assembly—the assembly is one, yet ask after its roots and each has his own body and his own clan—Śāriputra of the Brahmin line, Uruvilvā of the Kāśyapa line, Ānanda of the Gautama line. Then he raises the matter: holding a burning-mirror up to the sun to seek fire. Does the fire come out of the mirror, out of the tinder, or from the sun? If from the sun, the sunlight ought to have burned the tinder in your hand, and all the trees along the way ought to have caught fire; if out of the mirror, why does the mirror not melt, and why is there no heat where your hand holds it; if from the tinder, why borrow the sun and the mirror? “The sun and the mirror are far apart, neither in union nor in combination; it cannot be that the light of fire comes from nowhere of itself.” Hold up a mirror in one place and fire arises in one place; hold them up throughout the dharma-realm and it springs up throughout the world—“how could it have a place?”

Water: “The nature of water is not fixed; its flowing and stilling have no constancy.” The great magicians, in the daylight of the bright half of the month, hold the fang-zhu moon-mirror in their hands to receive the water in the moon. If the water came from the moon, the trees it passed over ought all to pour forth streams; if it came out of the pearl, the pearl ought always to be running with water—why wait for midnight; if it arose from space, “from men up to the gods all would alike be drowned—how could there still be those who go by water, by land, and through the air?” Then comes the gathering-together: “Hold the pearl in one place and water comes out in one place; hold it throughout the dharma-realm and it arises throughout the dharma-realm, filling the world as it arises—how could it have a place?”

Wind: “The nature of wind has no substance; its moving and stilling are not constant.” Straightening his robe to enter the assembly, the corner of the saṃghāṭī brushes the face of someone beside him. If the wind came out of the corner of the kāṣāya, you would be wearing wind, and the robe ought to fly up and leave the body; if it arose in space, “the nature of space abides constantly, so wind ought constantly to arise,” and when there is no wind, space ought to be extinguished—“the extinguishing of wind can be seen; what would the extinguishing of space look like!”; if it arose in that person’s face, arising from his face it ought to brush you—how does it brush him instead? The gathering-together is the same: “As when you, one person, slightly stir your robe and a slight wind comes out, so if it were stirred throughout the dharma-realm the brushing would arise throughout the lands”; wind pervades the dharma-realm—how could it have a place?

Space: “The nature of space has no shape; it is made manifest because of form.” Digging a well for water, when one foot of earth comes out there is one foot of space. Does space come out because of the earth? “If the earth came out first and no space went in, how is it that space comes out because of the earth?” Because of the digging? What the digging brings out is space, so it ought not to bring out earth. Arising of itself without cause? Why, before the digging, was there no absence of obstruction—“one sees only the great earth, with no passage through it at all.” Then comes the first place in this fascicle where the name “element” is formally set up: “If the nature of this space is perfect and pervading and from the first unmoving, then know that the earth, water, fire, and wind before you are alike called the five elements—their nature true and perfectly fused, all of them the tathāgatagarbha, from the first without arising or perishing.” Space too is an element. The Buddha says to Ānanda: your mind is confused and does not awaken to the fact that the four elements are from the first the tathāgatagarbha; look at space—does it go out, does it come in, or does it neither go out nor come in? The gathering-together in the passage on space differs from the four before it: the four before say ‘the nature of X is true emptiness; the nature of emptiness is true X,’ and here it says “the nature of awakening is true emptiness; the nature of emptiness is true awakening”—the nature of space is awareness. “As the space of one well is one well’s worth of space, so it is with the space of the ten directions, filling the ten directions—how could it have a place?”

Of the seven elements, the first five are names the world already has—the Lesser Vehicle speaks of four elements, the Great Vehicle adds space. What is new in the sūtra is not the first five but the last two: seeing and consciousness are also named elements, and Zixuan says that “for faculty and consciousness to be named elements alike is not found in any sūtra”—it is this sūtra’s distinctive teaching.

VII. Seeing and Consciousness: Alike Called the Six Elements, Alike Called the Seven Elements

“Seeing-awareness has no knowing; it exists because of form and space.” Seeing in itself has no knowing; it is because of form and space that it shows. Ānanda in the Jeta Grove: bright in the morning, dim at dusk, bright under the bright half-moon, dark under the dark half-moon—light and dark are made out by seeing. Is this seeing one substance with light, dark, and space, or not one substance; the same or not the same; different or not different? If one substance, light and dark extinguish each other—“when it is dark there is no light, when it is light there is no dark”—and if one with the dark, then when it is light the seeing perishes; if not one substance, then apart from light, dark, and space, “when you analyze the origin of seeing, what shape has it?” Apart from the three, the origin of seeing is like the hair of a tortoise or the horn of a hare. Same and different are each traced as well: “Light and dark are opposed to each other—how could it be the same? Apart from the three it is from the first nothing—how could it be different? Divide space, divide seeing—from the first they have no border—how could it be not the same? Seeing the dark and seeing the light, its nature does not shift or alter—how could it be not different?” With the four alternatives exhausted, he asks again: “Light comes from the sun, dark follows the dark moon, passage belongs to space, obstruction goes back to the great earth—from what, then, does this essence of seeing come out?” Seeing is awareness and knowing; space is obdurate and dull: “seeing-awareness and obdurate space are neither in union nor in combination; it cannot be that the essence of seeing comes from nowhere of itself.” Then the name is set up: “If the nature of seeing, hearing, and knowing is perfect and pervading and from the first unmoving, then know that the boundless, unmoving space, together with the moving earth, water, fire, and wind, are alike called the six elements.” Seeing is the sixth element. “You have never known that in the tathāgatagarbha the nature of seeing is awakened brightness, and the essence of awakening is bright seeing.” One faculty pervades, and so do the rest: “As one seeing-faculty sees throughout the dharma-realm, so hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, the awareness of touch and the awareness of knowing—wondrous virtue, lustrous and clear—pervade the dharma-realm, filling the ten directions of space—how could they have a place?”

Consciousness is the last. “The nature of consciousness has no source; it comes forth falsely because of the six kinds of faculties and dusts.” Ānanda lets his eyes travel over the holy assembly, like a mirror, without distinguishing; consciousness within it points out one after another: this is Mañjuśrī, this is Pūrṇa, this is Maudgalyāyana, this is Subhūti, this is Śāriputra. Does this cognizing arise from seeing, from appearance, from space, or does it come out suddenly without cause? If from seeing, then with no light, dark, form, or space there is no seeing, and with seeing itself not there, from what would consciousness come forth; if from appearance, then without seeing light and dark there is no form or space, and with appearance itself not there, from what would consciousness come forth; if from space, which is neither appearance nor seeing, “even if your consciousness came forth, what would it distinguish?”; if it came out suddenly without cause, “why do you not, at midday, make out a bright moon?” “Consciousness moves and seeing is still; they are neither in union nor in combination; hearing, listening, awareness, and knowing are likewise; it cannot be that the conditions of consciousness come from nowhere of themselves.” Then the name is set up: “If this cognizing mind has from the first nothing it comes from, then know that discerning, seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing are perfect, full, and still, their nature not from anywhere; together with space, earth, water, fire, and wind, they are alike called the seven elements.” “You from the first do not know that in the tathāgatagarbha the nature of consciousness is bright knowing, and awakened brightness is true consciousness—wondrous awakening, profound and still, pervading the dharma-realm, holding and releasing the ten directions of space—how could it have a place?”

With this the seven elements are complete. From the six entrances to the seven elements, the method of this fascicle is throughout one: ask where it comes from; nowhere is where; and so it is not causes and conditions, not spontaneity, not union, not non-union. In the three categories—the six entrances, the twelve bases, the eighteen realms—the Buddha opens each by asking how they are “from the first the wondrous nature of true suchness of the tathāgatagarbha,” and closes each with “from the first neither causes and conditions nor spontaneous in nature”; that they are from the first the tathāgatagarbha is settled from the start. What the seven elements add is to unfold that one sentence: after each element has been traced, the Buddha says that you do not know that in the tathāgatagarbha the nature of this element is true emptiness and the nature of emptiness is this element—so for earth, fire, water, and wind; for space, “the nature of awakening is true emptiness; the nature of emptiness is true awakening”; for seeing, “the nature of seeing is awakened brightness; the essence of awakening is bright seeing”; for consciousness, “the nature of consciousness is bright knowing; awakened brightness is true consciousness”—the first six elements go on to say “pure and originally so, pervading the dharma-realm, answering to the minds of beings according to the measure of their knowing,” and consciousness says “wondrous awakening, profound and still, pervading the dharma-realm, holding and releasing the ten directions of space”; and then all of them manifest in accordance with action. The three categories say that these things do not come from causes and conditions or from spontaneity; the seven elements go further and say where they are: in the tathāgatagarbha, their nature true and perfectly fused, pervading the dharma-realm. This is the weight of this fascicle.

VIII. The Assembly Awakens; Ānanda Speaks a Verse

“At that time Ānanda and the great assembly, having received the Buddha the Tathāgata’s subtle and wondrous disclosure, were cleared in body and mind and free of all hindrance.” Each in the assembly knew for himself that his mind pervaded the ten directions, “seeing the space of the ten directions as one looks at a leaf held in the palm of the hand,” and that all the things that exist in the world “are none other than the wondrous, bright, original mind of bodhi”; looking back at the body born of father and mother, it was like a mote of dust blown up in the space of the ten directions, now there and now gone, like a single bubble on the vast sea, arising and perishing from nowhere. “Clearly they knew for themselves that they had obtained the originally wondrous mind, abiding constantly and never perishing.”

Then Ānanda speaks a verse. Nine lines. The first line, “Wondrous, profound, all-retaining, unmoving Honored One, King of Śūraṅgama, rare in the world!” is praise of the Buddha, and it also names the sūtra’s title. “You have dissolved my inverted thoughts of countless kalpas; without passing through the asaṃkhyeyas I obtain the Dharma-body,” is what has been gained. “I vow now to obtain the fruit and become a Jeweled King, and to return and deliver beings as many as the sands of the Ganges; to offer this deep mind to lands as many as dust-motes—this is called repaying the Buddha’s kindness,” is the vow. “I humbly ask the World-Honored One to bear witness: into the evil world of the five turbidities I vow to enter first; if a single being has not yet become a Buddha, I will never here take nirvāṇa,” is the request for witness. “Great Hero, Great Power, Great Compassion! I hope you will further examine and remove my subtle delusions, that I may soon ascend to unsurpassed awakening and sit in the bodhimaṇḍa in the worlds of the ten directions,” is the plea to remove the remaining delusions. The last line, “The nature of śūnyatā may be dissolved away; the vajra-firm mind will not be moved!”—the nature of space may be dissolved away; this mind will not move.

This verse is the first verse in the whole sūtra. Ānanda, from being drawn away by a spell in Fascicle One, through the seeking of the mind in seven places and the tenfold disclosure of seeing in Fascicle Two, here “obtains the originally wondrous mind” and speaks a verse of vows. Note what he asks for: “I hope you will further examine and remove my subtle delusions.” He has awakened, and the delusions are not yet exhausted—which is why seven fascicles remain. Fascicle Three stops here, with the closing title “The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Myriad Practices, Śūraṅgama, Fascicle Three.”

Carrying Forward — Gathering the Characteristics into the Nature

What came before is the meaning of the sūtra text itself. What follows looks at it from the side with a commentator’s eye—the commentary is not the sūtra; it is only the same matter seen from a different position.

Zixuan explains the word “entrance”: “In Sanskrit it is praveśa, which here means ‘entrance,’ and also ‘base’; it is the place into which objects enter, and also the place where consciousness arises. Now faculty and object are both places where consciousness arises, and here the six faculties are refuted one by one, so the faculty alone is taken as the entrance.” An entrance is the place the object enters and also the place consciousness arises; faculty and object are both places where consciousness arises, and since here the six faculties are refuted one by one, the faculty alone is taken as the entrance. He explains the word “realm”: “In Sanskrit it is dhātu, which here means ‘realm’; realm has the sense of cause, since faculty, object, and consciousness are each the cause of the others. It also has the sense of kind, since faculty, object, and consciousness are each a kind of their own.”

On the sentence “both the eye and the strain are alike the strained appearance of bodhi staring,” Zixuan’s explanation is fine-grained: “It borrows the simile from the aggregate of form before, of staring until one sees flowers. The pupil of the eye stands for the nature of awareness; staring until strain arises stands for the sudden arising of deluded thought.” He says the sūtra’s wording is brief, and that spelled out, “the clear eye stands for the nature of awareness; strain arising from staring stands for ignorance, which, failing to understand, becomes the stirring of thought; because of the strain one sees flowers in the air, which stands for the false objects and the faculties and body that appear because of the stirring of thought.” Therefore “the eye is the stirring of ignorance; the strain of the mind is the faculties and objects that appear and the seeing mind; this mind and these objects, together with the stirring of thought, are all the strained appearances of ignorance within the nature of bodhi, with no substance to be found.” This explains why the sūtra says the faculty and the strain are “alike” the strained appearance of bodhi staring: the faculty too is something that appears with one stirring of ignorance, not something originally there.

On the name of the seven elements, Zixuan has a general discussion: “The name ‘element’ rests on worldly truth; the Lesser Vehicle’s teaching on dharmas says that the forms are brought about by the union of the four elements, and further divides them into inner and outer.” That is the Buddha speaking according to others’ intent, a worldly convention; “though called ‘great,’ the sense of greatness is not established.” What is said in the truth of the ultimate is otherwise: “It means pervading and all-embracing, a substance that is nowhere absent, of which no thing is not it; not great by contrast with the small but named ‘great’ in its very substance—hence it is called an element.” The seven are all called elements because among the seven all dharmas are embraced, “every dust and every dharma pervading everywhere and containing everything.” He gathers the purport of this fascicle into one sentence: “This is to gather the characteristics into the nature; the nature pervades and the characteristics pervade, and only so is it called the great of the ultimate truth, great to the utmost.” To gather the characteristics into the nature—not to leave the characteristics and look for a nature elsewhere, but that the characteristics themselves are the nature.

On why seeing and consciousness are also called elements, Zixuan is candid: “The Lesser Vehicle mostly sets out four elements; the great teaching first has the name of space. For faculty and consciousness to be named elements alike is not found in any sūtra.” The perfect and real teachings contemplate all dharmas perfectly, and faculty, object, and consciousness pervade and do not move; though the sense is there, the name ‘element’ is not set up; “here it is specially brought out, truly as the final and ultimate model.” The element of seeing and the element of consciousness are this sūtra’s distinctive teaching; he does not go looking for other scriptural proof for them, but only says that this is the final and ultimate model.

“The nature of form is true emptiness; the nature of emptiness is true form”—Zixuan explains it by the three truths: “The tathāgatagarbha is the one dharma-realm mind, the truth of the middle way and the foremost meaning. ‘The nature of form is true emptiness’ is the true within the conventional; ‘the nature of emptiness is true form’ is the conventional within the true. Both are said of the ‘nature’ to show the true and the conventional that are the middle.” To raise one is to have all three; to speak of three is for the substance to be one; “this is the true element of earth.”

On the assembly’s awakening at the end of the fascicle, Zixuan says: “The three categories and the seven elements are characteristics that are the nature; from the first unborn, and so now unperishing; arising and perishing, going and coming, are all the tathāgatagarbha.” On the verse’s last line, “the nature of śūnyatā may be dissolved away; the vajra-firm mind will not be moved,” he explains: “Śūnyatā means emptiness. The nature of space cannot be extinguished, yet now even it may be extinguished; the mind of bodhi that seeks above and transforms below never shifts, and so it is not moved. The name of this mind means firm and indestructible, and is also rendered ‘wheel.’ A wheel crushes; it means that the mind of compassion and wisdom, benefiting oneself and others, can crush delusion, action, and suffering.” The sūtra text in the base edition writes the name with one character, the commentary with another—a difference of one character, recorded as it stands.

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

At the end of Fascicle Three the Buddha has said of each of the seven elements that it is “pure and originally so, pervading the dharma-realm”; Ānanda and the assembly enter into it and speak a verse in praise of the Buddha. Fascicle Four changes the questioner. Pūrṇa Maitrāyaṇīputra rises from his seat and first states his own position: “The World-Honored One has always put me first among those who preach the Dharma; now, hearing the Tathāgata’s subtle and wondrous Dharma-voice, I am like a deaf man straining to hear a mosquito from more than a hundred paces away—he never saw it in the first place, how much less could he hear it?” The man who is first among preachers hears this teaching the way a deaf man hears a mosquito a hundred paces off. He asks on behalf of those in the assembly who have already realized the state without outflows, and what he asks are the two difficulties the first three fascicles have left behind. The first: “If all the faculties, dusts, aggregates, bases, and realms of the world are the tathāgatagarbha, pure and originally so, how is it that mountains, rivers, and the great earth, all the conditioned appearances, suddenly arise, shifting and flowing in sequence, ending and beginning again?” If everything is originally pure, where do the mountains and rivers come from? The second: “If the nature of earth pervades everything, how can it admit water? If the nature of water pervades everywhere, fire could not arise.” Earth, water, fire, and wind each pervade the dharma-realm; how do they make room for one another?

The Buddha consents, and says for whom this teaching is given: “so that the fixed-nature śrāvakas in your assembly, and all the arhats who have not yet attained the two emptinesses yet turn toward the higher vehicle, may all obtain the ground of quiescence of the One Vehicle, the true araṇya, the place of right practice.” The śrāvakas of fixed nature, and the arhats who have not yet attained the two emptinesses yet turn toward the higher vehicle, are all to obtain by this the ground of quiescence of the One Vehicle. The Buddha’s answer takes up the first half of this fascicle. He answers the first question first: how pure and original nature suddenly gives rise—through the one thought in which “the nature-awakening is necessarily bright; falsely it is taken as a bright awakening,” the three kinds of continuity arise, of the world, of living beings, and of action and result. Then he answers the second: how earth, water, fire, and wind all pervade—using empty space, which refuses no appearance, as the simile, saying that the tathāgatagarbha “accordingly becomes form and emptiness, pervading the dharma-realm,” and then gathering a long string of ‘is not’ and ‘is’ into “apart from ‘is,’ apart from ‘is not’; it is ‘is,’ and it is not ‘is.’” Pūrṇa asks again: where does falsity come from? The Buddha answers with Yajñadatta. Ānanda then asks: what of causes and conditions? The Buddha says that causes and conditions and spontaneity are both idle disputation. The second half turns to practice: Ānanda asks for the practice, and the Buddha opens the two decisive meanings—examine the resolve at the stage of cause, examine the root of the afflictions—speaking of the five turbidities, the merits of the six faculties, the way the six faculties were knotted together, and the gate of entering the one without falsity; at the end he has a bell struck to test hearing, and says that the nature of hearing does not perish with the sound.

Zixuan outlines this fascicle in two great sections: refuting Pūrṇa’s difficulty, which clings to appearances against the nature, and so revealing the tathāgatagarbha; and resolving Ānanda’s objection about dependent arising. This edition follows Zixuan’s outline in eighteen sections: one for the request and the consent to expound; one for the answer about the nature-awakening; three for the three kinds of continuity; one for concluding the answer with similes; one for the answer about the elements all pervading; one for resolving the cause of falsity; one for resolving Ānanda’s objection about dependent arising; one for Ānanda’s request for the practice; two for the two decisive meanings; one for the merits of the six faculties; one for choosing the perfectly penetrating faculty; one for the origin of the faculties’ knots; one for Ānanda’s doubt; and two for the striking of the bell. The outline is a guide for reading; the boundary of the fascicle is set by the fascicle title the sūtra gives itself. The head of the fascicle still bears the full title, with the interlinear note “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and the translator’s line “Translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of India, of the Tang,” the same as in the first three fascicles.

This edition takes ‘the three kinds of continuity’ as the title of this fascicle. The words are the sūtra’s own: “these three kinds of inverted continuity”; “the three kinds of continuity—the world, action and result, and living beings.”

II. The Nature-Awakening Is Necessarily Bright; Falsely It Is Taken as a Bright Awakening

The Buddha first repeats Pūrṇa’s words back to him: “As you say, ‘pure and originally so—how do mountains, rivers, and the great earth suddenly arise?’ Have you not constantly heard the Tathāgata proclaim that the nature-awakening is wondrously bright, and the original awakening is brightly wondrous?” Pūrṇa says he has constantly heard it. The Buddha asks: “You speak of ‘awakened brightness.’ Is it that the nature is bright, and so is called awakening? Or is it that awakening is not bright, and is called ‘bright awakening’ because brightness is added?” The awakened brightness you speak of—is the awakening-nature bright of itself, and therefore called awakening, or is the awakening not bright of itself, so that a brightness must be added before it can be called a bright awakening? Pūrṇa answers: “If what is not bright is called awakening, then there is nothing that is brightened.” If what is not bright is also called awakening, then there is nothing for it to brighten. His meaning is: awakening must have something it brightens before it counts as awakening.

The Buddha turns on exactly this sentence. “If there is nothing that is brightened, then there is no bright awakening. Where there is something brightened, that is not awakening; where there is nothing brightened, that is not brightness; and not-bright is not the profoundly bright nature of awakening either.” You say that without something brightened there is no bright awakening—but as soon as there is something brightened, that is no longer awakening; where there is nothing brightened, that is not the brightness you speak of; and what is not bright is not the profoundly bright nature of awakening. Then comes the most important sentence of the fascicle: “The nature-awakening is necessarily bright; falsely it is taken as a bright awakening.” The awakening-nature is bright of itself; to insist on brightening it is falsity. “Awakening is not something brightened; because of brightening, an object is set up; once the object is falsely set up, your false subject is born.” Awakening is not an object to be brightened; because one sets out to brighten it, an object-to-be-brightened is set up; once the object is set up, the subject that stands over against it is born.

What follows is the unfolding once subject and object have split. “In what is neither same nor different, difference blazes up. Over against that difference, sameness is set up because of difference; as sameness and difference show each other forth, from this neither-same-nor-different is set up again.” Originally there was neither sameness nor difference; all at once there is difference; over against difference, sameness is set up; sameness and difference show each other forth, and neither-same-nor-different is set up once more. “Thus the disturbance, each waiting on the other, gives rise to strain; strain long continued gives rise to dust, which muddies itself; from this arise the toils of the dusts and the afflictions.” Fascicle Three said “the strained appearance of staring”; here it says “each waiting on the other gives rise to strain”—the word for strain is the same.

In reading this passage one must see that the Buddha does not say where ignorance comes from. What the Buddha says is: you think awakening must have something it brightens, and this very ‘thinking’ is the falsity of the bright awakening. So when Pūrṇa asks “how does it suddenly arise,” the Buddha does not answer with a time or a cause; what the Buddha answers is how you are thinking right now.

III. The Three Kinds of Continuity

“Arising becomes the world; stillness becomes empty space. Empty space is sameness; the world is difference.” What arises out of the disturbance is the world; what is still is empty space. Empty space is sameness, the world is difference; “that which is neither same nor different is the truly conditioned dharma”—that neither-same-nor-different is the truly conditioned dharma.

The world begins here. “Awakened brightness and the dimness of space, waiting on each other, become shaking; so there is the wind-wheel holding up the world.” Awakened brightness and the dimness of space stand over against each other and shake; there is the wind-wheel. “Because of space, shaking arises; the hardening of brightness sets up obstruction; that metal treasure is the hardness set up by bright awakening; so there is the metal-wheel holding the lands.” There is the metal-wheel. “Hardened awakening becomes treasure; shaking brightness sends out wind; wind and metal rub against each other, so there is the light of fire as the nature of transformation”—there is fire. “The brightness of the treasure gives rise to moisture; the light of fire steams upward; so there is the water-wheel containing the realms of the ten directions”—there is water. Then water and fire act on each other: “the wet becomes the great ocean, the dry becomes continents and sandbanks.” So the light of fire constantly rises in the great ocean, and rivers constantly pour through the continents and sandbanks; where the force of water is weaker than fire, it binds into high mountains, “so stone from the mountains gives out flame when struck and becomes water when melted”; where the force of earth is weaker than water, it is drawn out into grass and trees, “so forests and thickets become earth when burned and give out water when wrung.” “Falsity crossing falsity gives rise to them; each in turn becomes the seed of the other; by these causes and conditions the world continues.” Wind, metal, fire, water—four things come out of one thought’s shaking, and each becomes the seed of the other.

Living beings arise from the same fault. “Furthermore, Pūrṇa, the falsity of brightening has no other source: the fault is awakened brightness!” The falsity of brightening has no other cause than that one thought of wanting to brighten awakening. “Once the false object is set up, the brightening cannot pass beyond its principle. By these causes and conditions, hearing does not go beyond sound, and seeing does not go past form.” Once the object is set up, the brightening is confined by the object: hearing cannot get past sound, seeing cannot get past form. The six falsities of form, scent, taste, and touch come into being, and seeing, awareness, hearing, and knowing are parted from this. “Those of the same action entangle one another; by union and separation, transformation comes about. Seeing brightness, form arises; brightened seeing, thought is formed. Different views become hatred; the same thoughts become love; flowing love becomes the seed; taking in thought becomes the embryo.” Then “coupling gives rise to them; those of the same action are drawn in; so by causes and conditions the kalala, the arbuda, and the rest are born”—the causes and conditions of taking birth begin here. Mother-born, egg-born, moisture-born, transformation-born—“egg-born arise only from thought; the mother-born exist because of feeling; moisture-born respond to union; transformation-born answer to separation.” “Feeling, thought, union, and separation change into one another; all who receive action follow them up and down; by these causes and conditions living beings continue.”

Action and result come from living beings’ standing over against one another. “Thought and love bind together; love cannot part; then in all the worlds fathers, mothers, children, and grandchildren beget one another without ceasing; these have the greed of desire as their root.” “Greed and love nourish each other; greed cannot stop; then in all the worlds the egg-born, transformation-born, moisture-born, and mother-born, according to the strength or weakness of their power, devour one another in turn; these have the greed of killing as their root.” “When men eat sheep, the sheep die and become men, the men die and become sheep; so on through the ten kinds of birth, dying and being born, they come to eat one another in turn; evil action is born along with them to the limit of the future; these have the greed of stealing as their root.” Desire, killing, stealing: three greeds. “You owe me a life; I repay you a debt; by these causes and conditions, through a hundred thousand kalpas they are constantly in birth and death. You love my heart; I pity your beauty; by these causes and conditions, through a hundred thousand kalpas they are constantly in bondage. Only killing, stealing, and lust, these three, are the root; by these causes and conditions, action and result continue.”

Then he concludes: “These three kinds of inverted continuity are all the nature of awakened brightness that would clearly know; because of knowing, appearances are sent forth; they arise from false seeing.” The three kinds of continuity are all that awakened brightness’s nature that would go and know; because of the knowing, appearances come forth. What Pūrṇa asked—“mountains, rivers, and the great earth, all the conditioned appearances, shifting and flowing in sequence”—is answered here: “because of this falsity, ending and beginning again.”

IV. Confusion Has No Root; the Flowers Vanish in the Sky

Having heard this, Pūrṇa asks a very natural question: “If this wondrous awakening, originally wondrous awakened brightness, neither increases nor decreases with the Tathāgata’s mind, and without cause it suddenly gives rise to mountains, rivers, and the great earth, all the conditioned appearances—then now that the Tathāgata has attained the wondrous, empty, bright awakening, when will the mountains, rivers, and the great earth, the conditioned habits and outflows, arise again?” If the original awakening gave rise to mountains, rivers, and the great earth for no reason, then now that the Tathāgata has realized wondrous awakening, when will mountains, rivers, and the great earth arise again?—after awakening, will falsity arise again or not?

The Buddha uses the simile of the man confused about direction. A man in a village takes south for north; does this confusion exist because of confusion, or does it come out of awakening? Pūrṇa answers well: “Confusion originally has no root; how could it be because of confusion? Awakening does not give birth to confusion; how could it be because of awakening?” Confusion has no root; how could it arise from confusion? Awakening does not give birth to confusion; how could it arise from awakening? The Buddha asks again: while this confused man is in his confusion, suddenly someone awakened points the way to him, and he understands—“even though this man was confused, would he become confused again in this village?” Would he be confused again? “No, World-Honored One!” The Buddha says: “The Tathāgatas of the ten directions are also like this. This confusion has no root; its nature is ultimately empty. Formerly there was originally no confusion; there seemed to be a confused awareness; when confusion is awakened to, confusion perishes; awakening does not give birth to confusion.” Confusion has no root; originally there was no confusion; there only seemed to be a confused awareness; once the confusion is awakened to, it perishes, and awakening will not give birth to confusion again.

Next he brings up the man with a cataract who sees flowers in the sky. If the cataract is removed, the flowers vanish in the sky. “Suppose a foolish man, at the place in the sky where those sky-flowers vanished, waits for the flowers to appear again”—is this man foolish or wise? Pūrṇa says: “The sky originally had no flowers; false seeing produced their arising and vanishing. To see the flowers vanish in the sky is already inverted; to command them to come out again is truly mad and foolish.” The sky never had flowers; only false seeing had them arise and vanish; to see the flowers vanish in the sky is already inverted; to want them to appear again is madness and folly. The Buddha says: since you understand this so well, why do you ask “when will the wondrous awakened bright emptiness of the Buddhas, the Tathāgatas, bring forth mountains, rivers, and the great earth again?” Then two similes close it: “as when gold ore is mixed with pure gold—once the gold is pure, it does not become mixed again; as when wood becomes ash, it does not become wood again.”

What this section answers is ‘whether one becomes confused again after awakening.’ The way it answers is not a guarantee but a pointing out of the inversion in the question itself: you take confusion to be something that once existed, and only so can you ask when it will come back.

V. Empty Space Refuses No Appearance; Apart from ‘Is,’ Apart from ‘Is Not’

The second question: earth, water, fire, and wind each pervade everywhere; how do they make room for one another? The Buddha’s simile is empty space. “It is like empty space, whose substance is not any of the many appearances, and yet which does not refuse those appearances their display.” Empty space itself is not any appearance, yet it does not refuse any appearance its display within it. “When the sun shines there is brightness; when clouds gather there is darkness; when the wind stirs there is movement; when the sky clears there is clarity; when the air condenses there is murk; when dust piles up there is haze; when water settles there is reflection.” Are these appearances born from the sun, the clouds, the wind, and the clearing, or does space have them of itself? If they were born from the sun, then when the sun shines the worlds of the ten directions should all turn the color of the sun—“why is a round sun still seen in the sky?” If the brightness were space’s own, then space should shine of itself—“why, at midnight when there are clouds and mist, does it not give off light?” Therefore “know that this brightness is neither the sun nor space, and yet is not different from space and the sun.” “Look at the appearances: they are originally false, and nothing can be pointed to; it is like begging sky-flowers to bear fruit of the void—how can you question the meaning of their mutually overcoming and destroying each other? Look at the nature: it is originally true, only the wondrous awakened brightness; the wondrous awakened bright mind was never water or fire in the first place; how can you still ask about their not admitting one another!” Looking at the appearances, the appearances are originally false, like asking sky-flowers to bear fruit; looking at the nature, the nature is originally true; the wondrous awakened bright mind was never water, never fire; how can you still ask whether they admit one another.

Then a sentence that sums it up: “When you brighten space, space appears; when earth, water, fire, and wind are each brought to light, each appears; if all are brought to light together, all appear together.” When you brighten space with your brightness, space appears; brighten earth, water, fire, and wind, each appears; brighten them together, they appear together. “How do they appear together?” Two men look together at the sun’s reflection in water; one walks east and one walks west, and each has a sun that follows him; “you should not object, saying, ‘This sun is one; how does it go with each? Each sun being two, how does it appear as one?’ Twisting and turning in falsity, there is nothing to rely on.”

He goes a step further, to the tathāgatagarbha. “You, with form and emptiness, push and snatch at one another within the tathāgatagarbha, and the tathāgatagarbha accordingly becomes form and emptiness, pervading the dharma-realm; so within it the wind moves, space is clear, the sun is bright, clouds are dark. Living beings, confused and troubled, turn from awakening to join the dusts, and so send forth the toils of the dusts and have the appearances of the world.” Living beings push and snatch with form and emptiness, and the tathāgatagarbha accordingly becomes form and emptiness. “I, with the wondrous brightness that neither perishes nor arises, join the tathāgatagarbha, and the tathāgatagarbha is only wondrous awakened brightness, perfectly illuminating the dharma-realm; so within it one is immeasurable and the immeasurable is one, the great appears in the small and the small in the great; the unmoving bodhimaṇḍa pervades the realms of the ten directions; the body contains the endless empty space of the ten directions; on the tip of a single hair the lands of the Jeweled Kings appear; seated within a mote of dust, one turns the great Dharma-wheel.” The same tathāgatagarbha: turning from awakening to join the dusts is the appearance of the world; extinguishing the dusts to join awakening is “one is immeasurable and the immeasurable is one.”

Next comes the longest string of sentences in the fascicle. First the ‘is not’: “The tathāgatagarbha, the originally wondrous perfect mind, is not mind, is not space, is not earth, is not water, is not wind, is not fire; is not eye, is not ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; is not form, is not sound, scent, taste, touch, dharmas; is not the realm of eye-consciousness, and so on to not the realm of mind-consciousness; is not brightness, ignorance, the end of brightness, the end of ignorance, and so on to not aging, not death, not the end of aging and death; is not suffering, is not accumulation, is not cessation, is not the path; is not wisdom, is not attainment; is not dāna, is not śīla, is not vīrya, is not kṣānti, is not dhyāna, is not prajñā, is not pāramitā; and so on to not tathāgata, not arhat, samyak-saṃbuddha; is not great nirvāṇa, is not permanence, is not bliss, is not self, is not purity—because all of these, worldly and beyond the world, it is not.” The seven elements, the six faculties, the six dusts, the eighteen realms, the twelve links, the four truths, the six pāramitās, the Tathāgata, the four virtues of nirvāṇa—worldly dharmas and dharmas beyond the world, one by one he says ‘is not.’ Then the ‘is’: the same string, one by one he says ‘is,’ “because all of these, worldly and beyond the world, it is.” Finally: “That is, the tathāgatagarbha, the source of the wondrous bright mind, apart from ‘is,’ apart from ‘is not’; it is ‘is,’ and it is not ‘is.’” Apart from ‘is,’ and apart from ‘is not’ as well; it is ‘is,’ and yet it is not ‘is.’

Then the reproach: “How can the living beings of the three existences in the world, and the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas beyond the world, use the mind of what they know to measure the Tathāgata’s unsurpassed bodhi, and use worldly language to enter the Buddha’s knowing and seeing!” The lute, the zither, the harp, and the pipa, though they hold wondrous sound, can never bring it forth without wondrous fingers. “The jeweled-awakening true mind is perfectly complete in each and every one; as when I press my finger, the ocean-seal sends forth light; when you raise your mind for a moment, the toils of the dusts arise first—because you do not diligently seek the unsurpassed path of awakening, but cherish the Lesser Vehicle and are content with a little.”

This section is the center of the fascicle. Pūrṇa asks how earth, water, fire, and wind admit one another; the Buddha goes from empty space to the tathāgatagarbha, to ‘is not’ and ‘is’ together, and at the end to why you ask this way at all: using the mind of what you know to measure, using worldly language to enter the Buddha’s knowing and seeing. The problem is not earth, water, fire, and wind; it is the one thought in which the questioner raises his mind.

VI. Yajñadatta: When the Madness Stops, That Is Bodhi; Causes and Conditions and Spontaneity Are Both Idle Disputation

Pūrṇa asks once more, and asks very sincerely: “I and the Tathāgata are perfectly complete without distinction in the jeweled-awakening, perfectly bright, truly wondrous pure mind; yet I formerly met with beginningless false thought and have long been in the wheel of rebirth, and now, having attained the holy vehicle, I am still not at the end; the World-Honored One has perfectly extinguished every falsity and is alone wondrous, true, and permanent. I venture to ask the Tathāgata: by what cause do all living beings have falsity, covering over their own wondrous brightness and suffering this drowning?” Why do living beings have falsity?

The Buddha uses Yajñadatta. In the city of Śrāvastī there was a man named Yajñadatta who, looking into a mirror one morning, loved the head in the mirror because its eyebrows and eyes could be seen, “and angrily reproached his own head for not showing its face; taking it to be a mountain-demon, he ran about madly for no reason.” Why did he run about madly for no reason? Pūrṇa says: “This man’s mind was mad; there is no other reason.” The Buddha says: “The wondrous awakening is bright and perfect, originally perfect, bright, and wondrous. Since it is called falsity, how could it have a cause? If it had a cause, how could it be called falsity?” Since it is called falsity, how could it have a cause? If it had a cause, it would not be called falsity. “From false thoughts turning upon one another as cause, piling confusion on confusion through kalpas as many as dust-motes, even when the Buddha brings it to light, they still cannot turn back. Such a cause of confusion exists of itself because of confusion. Know that confusion has no cause, and falsity has nothing to rest on; it never even arose—what would you extinguish?” Recognize that confusion has no cause, and falsity has nothing to rest on; falsity never arose in the first place—what is there to extinguish? “One who has attained bodhi is like a man awake telling of things in a dream; however keen and bright his mind, by what causes and conditions could he take hold of a thing from the dream?”

Then he returns to Yajñadatta: “Suddenly the madness stops; the head was not got from outside. And even before the madness stopped, what was lost?” The madness suddenly stops; the head is not got back from outside; and even while the madness had not yet stopped, the head was never lost. “The nature of falsity is like this; by what could it exist?” Then comes the most direct sentence of the fascicle for practice: “You need only not follow the discriminations of the three kinds of continuity—the world, action and result, and living beings; because the three conditions are cut off, the three causes do not arise; then the mad nature of the Yajñadatta in your mind stops of itself. When it stops, that is bodhi: the supreme, pure, bright mind originally pervades the dharma-realm and is not got from anyone else—why should you toil over the joints and sinews to cultivate and realize it?” Only do not follow the discriminations of the three kinds of continuity; when the three conditions are cut off and the three causes do not arise, the mad nature stops of itself; when it stops, that is bodhi, not obtained from anyone. Then he brings up the simile of the wish-fulfilling jewel tied in the clothing: a poor man has a jewel in his clothes and does not know it himself, and goes begging in other lands; “though truly poor, he never lost the jewel; suddenly a wise man shows him the jewel, and his wishes are fulfilled, and he becomes very rich, and only then realizes that the divine jewel was not got from outside.”

Hearing this, Ānanda rises and asks: the Buddha has said “because the three conditions of killing, stealing, and lust are cut off, the three causes do not arise; the mad nature of the Yajñadatta in your mind stops of itself; when it stops, that is bodhi, not got from anyone else”—this is plainly causes and conditions; how is it that the Tathāgata now abruptly casts causes and conditions aside? “It was from causes and conditions that my mind came to awakening.” In the assembly, Mahāmaudgalyāyana, Śāriputra, and Subhūti were all formerly old brahmins who came from among the outsiders, heard the Buddha speak of causes and conditions, and their minds awakened; “now you say that bodhi is not from causes and conditions; then the spontaneity taught by Gośālī and the others of Rājagṛha becomes the foremost meaning!” If it is not causes and conditions, does not the spontaneity of the non-Buddhists become the foremost meaning?

The Buddha still answers with Yajñadatta. “Yajñadatta’s mad nature—if its causes and conditions could be removed, then the nature that is not mad would come out spontaneously. Causes and conditions, spontaneity: the reasoning ends here.” If the madness is causes and conditions, then not-madness is spontaneity; causes and conditions and spontaneity—the reasoning goes this far and no further. Then he knocks down both sides: “Yajñadatta’s head was originally spontaneous; originally it was so of itself, and there was never a time when it was not so of itself; by what causes and conditions did he fear for his head and run about madly? If the head is spontaneous and he went mad because of causes and conditions, why did he not spontaneously lose it because of causes and conditions? The original head was not lost; the mad fear came forth falsely; there was never any change—what need of causes and conditions? If the madness were originally spontaneous, the mad fear originally existing, then before he went mad, where was the madness hidden? If not-being-mad is spontaneous, and the head was originally without falsity, why did he run about madly?” If the head is spontaneous, why would it go mad because of causes and conditions? If causes and conditions could make it mad, why could they not make it lost? If the madness is spontaneous and originally there, where was it hidden before he went mad? If not-being-mad is spontaneous, and the head originally had no falsity, why did he run about madly? “If one awakens to the original head and recognizes the mad running, then causes and conditions and spontaneity are both idle disputation.”

“Therefore I say, ‘When the three conditions are cut off, that is the mind of bodhi.’ The mind of bodhi arises; the arising-and-perishing mind perishes. This is still only arising and perishing; when perishing and arising are both exhausted, that is the path without effort.” I say that cutting off the three conditions is the mind of bodhi, and that is the mind of bodhi arising and the arising-and-perishing mind perishing—this is still arising and perishing; only when arising and perishing are both exhausted is it the path without effort. “If there is spontaneity, then clearly the spontaneous mind arises and the arising-and-perishing mind perishes; this too is arising and perishing; what has no arising and perishing is called spontaneous.” If you set up a spontaneity, then the spontaneous mind arising and the arising-and-perishing mind perishing is still arising and perishing; only what truly has no arising and perishing is called spontaneous. In the world, what is mixed and blended into one body is called the nature of union; what is not united is called the nature of what is originally so; “originally-so is not so; union is not union; union and so-ness both left behind, leaving-behind and union both negated—this sentence alone is called the dharma free of idle disputation.”

Then he reproaches Ānanda. “Bodhi and nirvāṇa are still far away; it is not through your toiling through kalpas to cultivate and realize them; even if you remember and hold the pure and wondrous principles of the twelve divisions of the scriptures of the Tathāgatas of the ten directions, as many as the sands of the Ganges, it only adds to idle disputation.” You can speak of causes and conditions and spontaneity with decisive clarity, and people call you first in learning, yet “with this perfuming of much learning through accumulated kalpas, you could not escape the trouble with Mātaṅgī.” Mātaṅgī was formerly a prostitute; by the power of the divine spell her lust was extinguished; she is now the bhikṣuṇī Prakṛti, and together with Rāhula’s mother Yaśodharā she awakened to the causes of her past lives; The contrast is set out directly: “Though you remember and hold the Tathāgata’s secret and wondrous adornments through kalpas, it is not equal to a single day of cultivating action without outflows, leaving far behind the two sufferings of the world, hatred and love.” Remembering through kalpas is not equal to one day of cultivating action without outflows. “Because of a single thought’s perfuming cultivation of the good without outflows, the one was freed from bondage and the other received the prediction. How can you deceive yourself and still linger in watching and listening!” The man of much learning, hearing this, is asked: are you still watching, still listening?

VII. The Two Decisive Meanings: The Mind at the Stage of Cause and the Root of the Afflictions

Ānanda, in tears of regret, bows his head and says: “Now, although I have received such a Dharma-voice and know that the tathāgatagarbha, the wondrous awakened bright mind, pervades the realms of the ten directions,” yet “the Tathāgata again rebukes my much learning as of no use, not equal to cultivation. Now I am like a traveler lodging on the road who is suddenly given a splendid house by a heavenly king. Though he has gained the great mansion, he must enter it by the door.” He knows now that the tathāgatagarbha pervades the ten directions, as if someone had been given a great house; but to enter it, there must be a door. He asks the Buddha to show “the original road of the resolve”: “so that those still learning may know from where to subdue their former clinging to conditions, obtain the dhāraṇī, and enter the Buddha’s knowing and seeing.”

The Buddha, for the pratyekabuddhas and śrāvakas in the assembly who are not yet at ease in the mind of bodhi, and for the living beings of the Dharma-ending age to come, proclaims: “You who have decisively resolved on the mind of bodhi and do not weary of the Buddha Tathāgata’s wondrous samādhi should first understand the two decisive meanings of the first resolve to awaken.” Two meanings that must first be decided.

The first meaning: “If you wish to abandon the śrāvaka path and cultivate the bodhisattva vehicle, entering the Buddha’s knowing and seeing, you should examine carefully whether the resolve at the stage of cause and the awakening at the stage of result are the same or different.” Is the cause you set out from the same as the result you would realize, or different? “If, at the stage of cause, you take the arising-and-perishing mind as the basis of your cultivation and seek the Buddha-vehicle that neither arises nor perishes, there is no such thing.” To cultivate from an arising-and-perishing mind and seek a result that neither arises nor perishes is impossible. So one must see clearly that the made things of the world “all pass away in change”—what is it that does not decay? Only of empty space has one never heard that it rots and decays, “space cannot be made; therefore from beginning to end it never decays or perishes.” In your body, the hard is earth, the moist is water, the warm is fire, the moving is wind; “by these four bindings your profound, perfect, wondrous awakened bright mind is divided into seeing, hearing, awareness, and examining; from beginning to end, five layers of turbidity.” What is turbidity? Clear water is originally clean; dust, earth, ash, and sand are originally obstructive; each has its own nature; someone throws earth into the water, and “the earth loses its obstruction, the water loses its cleanness, the appearance becomes murky, and that is called turbidity.”

The five turbidities are told in order. “You see empty space pervading the realms of the ten directions; space and seeing are not parted. There is space but no substance; there is seeing but no awareness; woven together, falsely they come to be; this is the first layer, called the turbidity of the kalpa.” Space and seeing cannot be parted; space has no substance, seeing has no awareness; woven together they form the first layer. “Your body now gathers the four elements as its substance; seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing are blocked and made obstructive; water, fire, wind, and earth are turned about and made to be aware and to know; woven together, falsely they come to be; this is the second layer, called the turbidity of views.” The four elements block seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing into obstruction, and seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing turn the four elements into awareness and knowing: the second layer. “Again, in your mind, memory, recognition, recitation, and habit—the nature sends forth knowing and seeing, its appearance shows forth the six dusts; apart from the dusts there is no appearance, apart from awareness there is no nature; woven together, falsely they come to be; this is the third layer, called the turbidity of afflictions.” “Again, from morning to night you arise and perish without stopping; your knowing and seeing always wish to remain in the world; the movement of action always shifts you to other lands; woven together, falsely they come to be; this is the fourth layer, called the turbidity of living beings.” Wanting to stay, yet shifted by action. “Your seeing and hearing are originally of no different nature; the many dusts divide them, and for no reason difference arises; in the nature they know each other, in function they turn their backs on each other; sameness and difference lose their standard; woven together, falsely they come to be; this is the fifth layer, called the turbidity of life.” Seeing and hearing are originally one nature, parted by the dusts; in the nature they know each other, in function they turn away from each other. All five layers are “woven together, falsely they come to be.”

How is the mind at the stage of cause established? “Now, if you wish to have seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing accord from afar with the Tathāgata’s permanence, bliss, self, and purity, you should first choose the root of death and birth, and relying on the perfectly profound nature that neither arises nor perishes, with the profound turn about its false perishing and arising, subdue them and return to the original awakening, and obtain the original bright awakening’s nature that neither arises nor perishes as the mind at the stage of cause; and then perfectly accomplish the cultivation and realization of the stage of result.” Relying on the perfectly profound nature that neither arises nor perishes, with the profound turn about the false arising and perishing, and return to the original awakening—take this nature that neither arises nor perishes as the mind at the stage of cause. The simile is settling turbid water: “as when turbid water is stored in a clean vessel; still, deep, and unmoving, the sand and earth settle of themselves, and clear water comes before you; this is called the first subduing of the guest-dust afflictions. Removing the mud and leaving pure water is called permanently cutting off fundamental ignorance.” The sand and earth settling is the first subduing; removing the mud and leaving only water is the permanent cutting off.

The second meaning: “If you must resolve on the mind of bodhi and bring forth great courage in the bodhisattva vehicle, decisively abandoning all conditioned appearances, you should examine in detail the root of the afflictions. From beginningless time, giving rise to action and moistening birth—who does it, and who receives it?” One must know where the root of the afflictions lies—who it is that does the action and who it is that receives. “If you do not examine the root of the afflictions, you cannot know where the false faculties and dusts are inverted. Not knowing even the place, how can you subdue them and take the Tathāgata’s position?” The simile is untying knots: if one who unties knots in the world cannot see where the knot is, how can he untie it? One has never heard of empty space being torn apart by anyone, “space has no shape or form, so there is no knotting or untying.” “Then your present eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body and mind—the six are the thieves’ go-betweens, robbing your own house of its treasure.” The six faculties are the go-betweens of the thieves, robbing one’s own house of its own treasure.

Then he speaks of the world of living beings: “‘World’ is flowing passage; ‘realm’ is direction and position.” The ten directions are the realm, the three times are the world; “directions and positions are ten; the numbers of the flow are three.” The world names only east, west, south, and north; above and below have no position, and the center has no fixed direction; “the four numbers are clearly settled and interlock with the world; three fours and four threes, turning about, make twelve; the flow changes in three layers—one, ten, a hundred, a thousand. Taking in beginning and end, within the six faculties each has twelve hundred merits.” Each faculty originally has twelve hundred merits. Then he judges their superiority and inferiority: the eye “is dark behind and bright in front; the front is wholly bright, the back wholly dark, and looking to left and right sideways it takes in two-thirds,” three parts of merit and one part without, “know that the eye has only eight hundred merits”; the ear “hears all around the ten directions without missing anything; in movement it seems near or far, in stillness it has no bounds; know that the ear faculty is perfectly complete with twelve hundred merits”; the nose has out-breath and in-breath “but lacks the meeting in between,” eight hundred; the tongue, “in speech there is a limit of direction, in principle there is no end,” twelve hundred; the body, “in contact it can be aware, in separation it does not know; separation is one and contact is two,” eight hundred; the mind “silently contains all worldly and beyond-worldly dharmas of the ten directions and the three times,” twelve hundred. Ear, tongue, and mind are complete; eye, nose, and body are not.

“Now, if you wish to go against the flow of birth and death and desire, and turning back to search out the root of the flow, reach what neither arises nor perishes, you should test these six faculties of reception and use: which is in contact, which apart? Which deep, which shallow? Which is perfectly penetrating? Which is not perfectly complete? If in this you can awaken to the perfectly penetrating faculty, going against that beginningless woven flow of false action and following perfect penetration, then compared with a faculty that is not perfectly complete, the difference is as a day to a kalpa.” To cultivate on a perfectly penetrating faculty and to cultivate on one that is not: the difference between a day and a kalpa. The Buddha does not choose for Ānanda; he says “choose carefully for yourself which can be entered, and I shall bring it to light so that you advance.” The Tathāgatas of the ten directions, cultivating on each one of the eighteen realms, all attain perfect completion; there is originally no superior or inferior; “but you are inferior and cannot yet attain the wisdom of perfect ease among them; so I proclaim and have you enter deeply by one gate only; entering the one, without falsity, those six knowing faculties are at once pure.”

The two decisive meanings of this section: one looks at the cause, one looks at the faculty. The cause must be one that neither arises nor perishes; the faculty must be chosen for perfect penetration. The tathāgatagarbha of the first half of the fascicle, the three kinds of continuity, when-it-stops-that-is-bodhi—here they come down to how one person begins to practice.

VIII. The Origin of the Faculties’ Knots; Striking the Bell to Test Hearing

Ānanda asks: how can one go against the flow and enter deeply by one gate so that the six faculties are at once pure? The Buddha first tells him where he stands: “You have now attained the fruit of the srota-āpanna and have extinguished the confusions cut off by seeing among living beings of the three realms; yet you do not know the beginningless false habits accumulated in the faculties, and those habits must be cut off by cultivation”—the confusions cut off by seeing are extinguished, the beginningless false habits accumulated in the faculties remain, and those are for cultivation to cut off. Only then does he ask: your six faculties before you now—are they one or six? “If you say one, why does the ear not see? Why does the eye not hear? Why does the head not walk? Why do the feet not speak?” If six, then as I now preach the Dharma, which faculty receives it? Ānanda says: “I hear with my ears.” The Buddha says: “Your ear hears of itself; what has that to do with body and mouth? The mouth comes to ask the meaning; the body rises in reverence.” The ear hears of itself; why does the mouth come to ask and the body rise? “Therefore know: not one, yet in the end six; not six, yet in the end one.” The great empty space is mixed with the many vessels; because the vessels differ in shape, one says the spaces differ; take away the vessels and look at the space, and one says the space is one; “that great empty space—how could it become same or not-same for you?”

Then he tells how the six faculties were knotted. Six passages of the same build. “Because of the two kinds of appearance, bright and dark, showing each other forth, within the wondrous perfect, adhering to the profound, seeing is sent forth; the essence of seeing reflects form; form is knotted into the faculty; the faculty’s origin is called the pure four elements, and so it is named the eye-substance, like a cluster of grapes; the floating faculty, four dusts, flows out and runs after form.” Bright and dark, two appearances standing over against each other, adhere to the profound nature within the wondrous perfect and send forth seeing; the essence of seeing reflects form, and form is knotted into the faculty; the faculty’s origin is the pure four elements, named the eye-substance, shaped like a cluster of grapes; the floating faculty of four dusts flows out toward form. The ear, “because of the two kinds, moving and still, striking each other,” like a newly curled leaf; the nose, “because of the two kinds, open and blocked, giving rise to each other,” like two hanging claws; the tongue, “because of the two kinds, bland and changing, mingling with each other,” like a new crescent moon; the body, “because of the two kinds, separation and contact, rubbing against each other,” like the drumhead of a waist-drum; the mind, “because of the two kinds, arising and perishing, continuing each other,” like seeing in a dark room. When Fascicle Three refuted the six entrances, it said that each entrance arises between a pair of dusts; what is said here is the origin of the same thing: the two words “adhering to the profound”—the nature that was originally profound and still, adhered to by a pair of dusts, sends forth a faculty.

“These six faculties, because that awakened brightness has a brightening of the bright awakening, lose that essential clarity and, adhering to falsity, send forth light.” The six faculties are that one thought in which awakened brightness would go and brighten; losing the essential clarity, adhering to falsity, they send forth light. So apart from dark and bright there is no substance of seeing; apart from moving and still there is no stuff of hearing; without open and blocked the nature of smelling does not arise; neither changing nor bland, tasting has nothing to come from; neither apart nor in contact, the awareness of touch is originally absent; without perishing and arising, where would clear knowing lodge? Then comes the gate of entering the one: “You need only not follow moving and still, contact and separation, bland and changing, open and blocked, arising and perishing, dark and bright, these twelve conditioned appearances; pluck out any one faculty, free it from adhesion, subdue it within, and the subdued returns to the original truth and sends forth the original bright radiance; as the radiant nature sends forth brightness, the remaining five adhesions are plucked out in response and perfectly freed, and knowing and seeing no longer arise from the dusts before you. Brightness does not follow the faculties; lodging in the faculties, brightness is sent forth; from this the six faculties function for one another.” Not following the twelve appearances, pluck out any one faculty, free it from adhesion, subdue it within, and return to the original truth; when one faculty is plucked out, the other five are freed with it. Brightness does not follow the faculties but is sent forth lodging in them, and the six faculties function for one another.

The six faculties functioning for one another has its witnesses. “Aniruddha sees without eyes; the dragon Upananda hears without ears; the goddess of the Gaṅgā smells scent without a nose; Gavāṃpati knows taste with a different tongue; the spirit Śūnyatā has touch without a body—in the Tathāgata’s light he is made to appear for a moment; being of the substance of wind, his body is originally nothing; the śrāvakas who have attained quiescence in the samādhi of cessation, like Mahākāśyapa in this assembly, have long extinguished the mind faculty and know perfectly and brightly without depending on mental thought.” Seeing without eyes, hearing without ears, touch without a body, knowing perfectly and brightly with the mind faculty extinguished. Therefore, “once your faculties are perfectly plucked out, they shine within and send forth light; then the floating dusts and all the changing appearances of the vessel-world, like hot water melting ice, are at the very thought transformed into unsurpassed knowing-awareness”—when the six faculties are perfectly plucked out, the floating dusts and the changing appearances of the vessel-world are like ice melting in hot water. Then an example close to home: a man gathers his seeing in his eyes, shuts them quickly, and the appearance of darkness comes before him; the six faculties go dark, and head and feet are alike; yet if this man follows his body about with his hands, though he does not see, he tells head from foot at a touch, “the awareness and knowing are the same.” “Seeing depends on brightness; in darkness there is no seeing; if it is sent forth of itself without brightness, then the appearances of darkness can never dim it.” If seeing depends on brightness, in darkness it does not see; if it is sent forth of itself without depending on brightness, darkness cannot dim it. “Once faculties and dusts are dissolved, how could awakened brightness fail to become perfect and wondrous?”

Ānanda doubts again. The Buddha has said that the awakened mind at the stage of cause must accord with the names of the stage of result; at the stage of result, “bodhi, nirvāṇa, suchness, buddha-nature, the amala-consciousness, the empty tathāgatagarbha, the great perfect mirror wisdom—these seven names, though their designations differ, are pure and perfectly complete, their substance and nature firm and solid, like the Vajra King, permanently abiding and indestructible.” Yet “if this seeing and hearing, apart from dark and bright, moving and still, open and blocked, ultimately have no substance”—seeing and hearing, apart from the dusts, have no substance—“how can one take this ultimate annihilation as the cause of cultivation and hope to obtain the Tathāgata’s seven permanently abiding fruits?” To take something that is annihilated apart from the dusts as the cause and seek a permanently abiding result—does this not contradict what the Buddha said earlier, “profound, essential, perfect, and permanent”?

The Buddha says: “You are learned but have not exhausted the outflows; in your mind you know only the cause of inversion; when the true inversion comes before you, you truly cannot recognize it.” You know the reasoning of inversion, but when real inversion is right in front of you, you do not recognize it. So he uses an ordinary matter. “Then the Tathāgata ordered Rāhula to strike the bell once, and asked Ānanda”: “Do you hear now?” Ānanda and the assembly say they hear. The sound of the bell dies away, and the Buddha asks again: do you hear? They say they do not hear. He strikes again, asks again, they say they hear. The Buddha asks: “How is it that you hear? How is it that you do not hear?” They answer: “When the bell is struck we hear; when, after it has been struck a while, the sound dies away, and sound and echo are both cut off, that is called not hearing.” The Buddha again has the bell struck, and changes the question: “Is there sound now?” They answer, there is sound. The sound dies away; he asks: is there sound? They answer, no sound. He strikes again; they answer, there is sound. The Buddha asks: “How is it that there is sound? How is it that there is no sound?” They answer: “When the bell is struck, that is called there being sound; when, after it has been struck a while, the sound dies away, and sound and echo are both cut off, that is called there being no sound.”

The Buddha says: “How is it that your own words now equivocate?” The assembly and Ānanda ask: how have we equivocated? The Buddha says: “I ask you about hearing, and you say hearing; I ask you again about sound, and you say sound. Only hearing and sound—your answers are not settled; how is this not called equivocation?” Asked about hearing, they answer hearing; asked about sound, they answer sound—are hearing and sound, after all, one thing or two? “When the sound dies away without echo, you say there is no hearing; if there were truly no hearing, the nature of hearing would have perished, like dry wood; when the bell is struck again, how would you know?” If the nature of hearing perished as soon as the sound died away, like dry wood, then when the bell rings again, how do you know it? “Knowing there is, knowing there is not—it is the dust of sound that is at one time absent and at another present; how could that nature of hearing be present or absent for you? If hearing were truly absent, who would know that it is absent?” Present and absent belong to the sound, not to the nature of hearing; when you say “no hearing,” who is it that knows this absence? “Therefore, Ānanda, sound within hearing has its own arising and perishing; it is not that your hearing of sound’s arising and sound’s perishing makes your nature of hearing present or absent.” Sound arises and perishes of itself within hearing; it is not that the arising and perishing of sound make your nature of hearing present or absent. “You are still inverted, mistaking sound for hearing; what wonder that you are confused, and take the permanent for the annihilated?” Taking sound for hearing, and so taking the permanent for the annihilated.

At the end is the simile of the man sound asleep. A man is fast asleep, and while he sleeps his household pounds cloth and husks rice; in his dream he hears the pounding and husking and takes it for the beating of a drum or the striking of a bell, and in the dream he even wonders why this bell sounds like wood or stone; when he wakes, he knows it was the sound of the pestle, and tells his household, “just now, while I dreamed, I mistook this husking for the sound of a drum.” “While this man was dreaming, did he remember stillness and movement, opening and closing, open and blocked? Though his body slept, his nature of hearing was not dimmed.” He was asleep; his nature of hearing was not. “Even when your body dissolves and the light of your life passes away, how could this nature dissolve and perish for you?” The body dissolves, the light of life passes—why would this nature perish with it?

The fascicle closes on practice: “Because living beings, from beginningless time, have followed forms and sounds, pursuing their thoughts, flowing on and on, they have never awakened to the nature that is pure, wondrous, and permanent. Not following what is permanent, they pursue what arises and perishes; so, life after life, they flow on in mixed defilement. If you abandon arising and perishing and keep to true permanence, the permanent light comes before you, and the dusts, the faculties, and the cognizing mind at once dissolve and fall away. The appearances of thought are dust; the feelings of consciousness are defilement; when both are left far behind, your dharma-eye at once becomes clear and bright—how could you fail to become unsurpassed knowing-awareness?” Fascicle Four stops here; the closing title of the fascicle reads “The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Myriad Practices, Śūraṅgama, Fascicle Four.”

This fascicle begins with Pūrṇa asking “how does it suddenly arise” and ends with Ānanda listening to a bell. The first half says how falsity arises and how it stops; the second half says from which faculty to begin the practice. The passage on striking the bell brings all that has been said up to the ear and tests it there: sound arises and perishes; the nature of hearing does not. Ānanda had asked earlier, “how can one take this ultimate annihilation as the cause of cultivation”; the answer is not in the Buddha’s words but in the stillness that he himself can still hear after the bell has died away.

Carrying Forward — The Two Awakenings, True and False; Apart from ‘Is’ and Not ‘Is’

What has gone before is the meaning of the sūtra text itself. What follows looks on from the side, with a commentator’s eye—the commentary is not the sūtra; it is the same matter seen from another position.

Of what Pūrṇa asks, Zixuan speaks gravely: “This is a great node of doubt and difficulty under the gate of the emptiness of dharmas, the greatest obstacle to cultivation and realization.” He says that Pūrṇa, “though in his traces a lesser saint, in this sūtra of perfect penetration tells of an awakening that is nothing but the great way, so that the difficulty he states is no different from Vajragarbha’s; let students look closely here.” The weight of the question is the same as Vajragarbha’s question in the Sūtra of Perfect Awakening, and so he urges students to look closely. On “the nature of true supreme meaning within the supreme meaning,” which the Buddha consents to expound, Zixuan says: “The Tathāgata always teaches according to the two truths, the conventional truth and the truth of supreme meaning. What is taught now differs from the usual teaching; it is the supreme-meaning truth of supreme meaning. The one true dharma-realm, the real character of the middle way, gathers in every dharma and pervades every dharma; the highest saints and the lowest common people, the sentient and the insentient, all accomplish the Buddha-way. This is the ultimate proclamation, the final bequest.”

The sentence “the nature-awakening is necessarily bright; falsely it is taken as a bright awakening” Zixuan reads as the knot of the two awakenings, true and false: “The first clause concludes the true, the second concludes the false. The nature-awakening necessarily has true brightness, hence the words ‘the nature-awakening is wondrously bright, the original awakening is brightly wondrous.’ Falsity is to take brightness as different from awakening; hence your words, ‘if there is nothing brightened there is no bright awakening,’ since only when there is something brightened can it be called awakened brightness. Here the views of understanding and of delusion can be told apart.” The true awakening originally has wondrous brightness; falsity is to take brightness as another thing outside awakening, and so one says “if there is nothing brightened there is no bright awakening.” Explaining “awakening is not something brightened; because of brightening, an object is set up”: “The substance of true awakening originally has wondrous brightness; it does not arise following conditions, nor does it come from objects; originally quiescent and illuminating, the dharma-realm one characteristic; hence ‘awakening is not something brightened.’ Because of this true brightness, ignorance fails to understand, and falsely grasps it as an object.”

On the continuity of the world, Zixuan gathers the sequence of the four wheels into a few sentences: “First from brightness and dimness, shaking, there is the wind-wheel; from the wind’s shaking and brightness’s setting up there is the metal treasure; metal and wind rubbing gives rise to the nature of fire; fire steaming and metal moistening gives rise to water; water and fire crossing, with one force stronger and the other weaker—where water is stronger and fire weaker there are ocean and continents; where fire is stronger and water weaker there are mountains.”

“Apart from ‘is,’ apart from ‘is not’; it is ‘is,’ and it is not ‘is’” Zixuan explains as the two gates not two: “This is in terms of the two gates not being two, being only the one mind. Negating both the true and the conventional, hence ‘apart from is, apart from is not’; illuminating both the true and the conventional, hence ‘it is is, and it is not is.’ The three truths are one substance; therefore all are said to be the tathāgatagarbha.” He also speaks of the order of this passage: “First it uses ‘is not’ to dismiss appearances; next it uses ‘is’ to dismiss ‘is not’; at the end it still carries names and words, and has not reached the ultimate purport of the one truth. Apart from ‘is’ and not ‘is,’ without ‘not’ and not ‘not’—the way of language is cut off, the place of mental activity extinguished; only then is the one true dharma-realm, the tathāgatagarbha mind, revealed.” First ‘is not’ dismisses appearances, then ‘is’ dismisses ‘is not,’ and at the end even ‘is’ and ‘is not’ are left behind—only then is the way of language cut off. This explains why the sūtra first says a long string of ‘is not,’ then a long string of ‘is,’ and finally ‘apart from is, apart from is not.’

Of Yajñadatta Zixuan says: “Yajñadatta means ‘given by the sacrifice.’ The original head and the mirror together stand for the nature-awakening. Looking at the face stands for the forced awakening suddenly arising and the object falsely set up. Loving stands for firmly grasping without letting go, taking the appearance for the real. Delighting in having an appearance, he turns and loathes having none, and so is angry that his own head does not show its face. The true has no shape or appearance and does not comply with false feeling, so fright arises. Grasping appearance and confused about the nature, the wheel of rebirth does not cease, hence ‘ran about madly.’ A mountain-demon is a monster of the hills and marshes.” Head and mirror both stand for the nature-awakening; looking at the face is the forced awakening suddenly arising; loving is taking the appearance for the real; reproaching his own head is loathing the absence of appearance; running about madly is the wheel of rebirth not ceasing.

The two decisive meanings Zixuan explains through the two gates of calming and contemplation: “The wondrous samādhi, the Śūraṅgama concentration, is the contemplation of suchness. One who wishes to cultivate this contemplation must first have the expedient means; when the expedient means are accomplished, true cultivation can be hoped for. Therefore the two gates of calming and contemplation are called the first resolve to awaken, that is, the very first expedient means.”

Of the merits of the six faculties, “three fours and four threes, turning about, make twelve; the flow changes in three layers,” Zixuan says: “The meaning of the three changes has been explained in many ways, ancient and modern; each follows its own text and they cannot all be set out. The explanation given here adds no other method to change the number; it simply takes the present text’s past, present, and future and advances the positions of the reckoning, and so arrives at twelve hundred merits.” He adds no other method; he reckons by advancing the positions of the three times and four directions: “Thus at the first position, three times and four directions, turning about, make twelve, forming one layer; the reckoning position is one horizontal and two vertical, already past.”

“The essence of seeing reflects form; form is knotted into the faculty,” Zixuan explains: “The essence of seeing is false awareness. Subject and object perfume each other and are woven together, and the knot of the faculty is formed; hence ‘form is knotted into the faculty.’” “The faculty’s origin is called the pure four elements”: “Since awakening and brightness are mixed together, adhering to the profound and forming a compound, this is therefore called the pure four elements, which is the faculty of supreme meaning.”

Of the striking of the bell, Zixuan explains “equivocate”: “Now you grasp only a hearing that follows sound; this hearing, not being apart from sound, should only be called sound, and should not be called hearing. You say both that it is sound and that it is hearing; since you follow the words and assent to each, it becomes equivocation.” Explaining “how could that nature of hearing be present or absent for you”: “If this hearing truly perished with the sound, then your whole body should be like wood or stone; when the bell is struck again, how would you hear its echo? The five clauses from ‘knowing there is’ explain in contrast that there is no arising: the knowing of presence and absence belongs to the object of sound and has nothing to do with hearing; hence ‘it is the dust of sound that is at one time absent and at another present.’ The nature of hearing is permanently so and has never arisen or perished; hence ‘how could that nature of hearing be present or absent for you.’”

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

At the end of Fascicle Four the Buddha has a bell struck to test hearing and says, “sound within hearing has its own arising and perishing”; Ānanda has come to know that the nature of hearing does not perish with the sound, but he does not yet know where the knot is, or from where it is untied. Fascicle Five takes up from here. Under the fascicle title stands the interlinear note “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and the translator’s line “Translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of India, of the Tang.” Ānanda says: “Though the Tathāgata has spoken of the gate of the second meaning, when I now look at those in the world who would untie a knot, if they do not know the origin of what is knotted, I believe such people can never untie it.” To untie the knot one must first know where the knot is. He says that he and the śrāvakas still in training in the assembly “from the beginningless past have perished together and been born together with ignorance; though we have gained such good roots of wide learning and are called renunciants, we are still like one with a fever that returns every other day.” A fever that returns every other day comes back once in two days; the illness has not been cut off. He asks: “Today, in body and mind, what is the knot? From where is it called untying?” And he says this question is not for himself alone, but “also so that suffering beings of the future may escape the wheel of rebirth and not fall into the three existences.”

To this question the Buddha does not first answer with his own mouth. The Buddha lays his hand on Ānanda’s crown, and “at once the Buddha-worlds of the ten directions quaked in six ways”; tathāgatas as many as motes of dust in the ten directions at the same moment send forth light that pours over the Buddha’s crown, and “with different mouths and one voice” they tell Ānanda: “You wish to know the innate ignorance that makes you turn in the knotted root of birth and death: it is nothing but your six faculties and no other thing. You wish further to know the supreme bodhi that will make you swiftly realize ease, release, stillness, the wondrous and permanent: it too is your six faculties and no other thing!” The knotted root of birth and death is the six faculties; the gate of bodhi is also the six faculties. Then the Buddha himself explains it through, and speaks verses to proclaim it again. Ānanda asks again about the order in which the six are untied and the one is gone, and the Buddha takes a flowered kerchief and ties six knots in it to show him. Ānanda awakens to the meaning of the one and the six both gone, and asks further about the root faculty of perfect penetration; the Buddha asks the sages in the assembly from which realm they first entered awakening, and twenty-four sages each tell their gate of realization, down to Mahāsthāmaprāpta. Fascicle Five stops here; the perfect penetration of Avalokiteśvara through the ear-faculty and the choice made by Mañjuśrī are in Fascicle Six.

Zixuan outlines this fascicle as: the doubt that knot and untying share one substance; the doubt about the six untied and the one gone; and citing cultivation and realization at length. This edition follows this in fourteen sections: one for Ānanda’s request; one for the one voice of the tathāgatas of the ten directions and Ānanda’s second request; one for the Buddha’s explanation; one for the verses; one for the doubt about the six untied and the one gone; one for the deed of tying the kerchief; one for directly showing the six untied and the one gone; one for discerning the order of untying the knots; one for the request about the root faculty of perfect penetration; one for the Tathāgata’s question; and four for the twenty-four sages.

This edition takes ‘the six untied, the one gone’ as the title of this fascicle. The four characters are the sūtra’s own: Ānanda asks, “my mind has still not reached the order of loosening the knots, the six untied and the one gone,” and the Buddha answers, “the six untied, the one gone—it is just so.” In the verses it reads “when the six are untied, the one too is gone,” with one more word, ‘too’; the prose reads “the six untied, the one gone,” and this edition follows the prose.

II. Nothing but Your Six Faculties, and No Other Thing

The tathāgatas of the ten directions say two sentences side by side: the knotted root of birth and death is the six faculties; bodhi and release are also the six faculties. Ānanda hears this and “his mind is still not clear”; he asks: “How is it that my turning in birth and death, and ease, the wondrous and permanent, are alike the six faculties and no other thing?” The same six faculties—how can they be both the wheel of rebirth and the wondrous and permanent?

The Buddha answers in four clauses: “Faculty and dust share one source; bondage and release are not two; the nature of consciousness is false, like flowers in the sky.” Faculty and dust have one source; bondage and release are not two things; the nature of consciousness is false, like flowers in the sky. Then he says how faculty, dust, and consciousness establish one another: “Through the dust, knowing is sent forth; through the faculty, appearance comes to be; appearance and seeing have no nature of their own, like crossed reeds.” Where there is dust, knowing is sent forth; where there is a faculty, appearance stands; appearance and seeing have no nature of their own, like two reeds standing crossed against each other—take one away and the other falls too.

Then comes the most important sentence of this fascicle: “Therefore now, for you, to set up a knowing upon knowing-and-seeing is the root of ignorance; knowing-and-seeing with no seeing set up is nirvāṇa, true purity without outflows.” To set up a further knowing upon knowing-and-seeing: this is the root of ignorance. Not to set up a further seeing upon knowing-and-seeing: this is nirvāṇa. The knot is here, and the untying is here. So the Buddha asks back: “How could there be room in this for any other thing?” Where in this is there room for anything else? Ānanda asked about “no other thing”; the Buddha answers with “room for any other thing”—it is not that one thing makes the knot and another thing makes the untying; it is just this one knowing-and-seeing: set up a knowing and there is bondage, set up no seeing and there is release.

In reading this passage one must see that the Buddha does not say the six faculties are bad. The six faculties are not the knot; to set up a knowing upon the six faculties is the knot. So later he teaches, “choose among the six faculties as your mind inclines”—not to leave the six faculties, but to pick one of the six and enter by it.

III. The Verses: Knotting and Untying Share the Same Cause; Sage and Ordinary Have No Two Roads

The Buddha speaks verses to proclaim it again. The first eight lines speak of the true and the false: “In the true nature the conditioned is empty, born of conditions, and so like illusion; the unconditioned has no arising or perishing, unreal, like flowers in the sky. Speaking of the false to show the true, false and true are alike two falsities. Since there is neither true nor not-true, how could there be seeing and what is seen?” The conditioned is empty, because it is born of conditions; the unconditioned has no arising or perishing, and like flowers in the sky it too is unreal. Speak of a falsity to show the true, and false and true both become false. Since even ‘not-true’ is not so, where is there a seeing and a seen?

The middle four lines speak of faculty and dust: “Between them there is no real nature, and so they are like crossed reeds. Knotting and untying share the same cause; sage and ordinary have no two roads.” Between faculty and dust there is no real nature, and so they are like crossed reeds. Knot and untying have one cause; sage and ordinary have no two roads. That ordinary beings are bound by action and affliction is called bondage; that the worthy and the sages cut off affliction is called release; both are confusion and awakening upon these six faculties, not two roads.

“Look at the nature where they cross: empty and existent, both are wrong. Confusion and dimness are ignorance; to bring forth brightness is release.” Look at the nature where the crossed reeds meet: to call it empty or to call it existent is alike wrong. Confused, it is ignorance; brought to light, it is release. This gathers the earlier “to set up a knowing upon knowing-and-seeing” and “knowing-and-seeing with no seeing set up” into verse.

Then the title of this fascicle comes out: “Untying the knots follows an order; when the six are untied, the one too is gone.” Untying the knots has an order; when the six knots are untied, that ‘one’ is gone as well. “Choose among the faculties the perfectly penetrating one; enter the stream and become perfectly awakened.” Pick among the six faculties the one that penetrates perfectly, enter the stream, and become perfectly awakened. These two lines lay the road for the cultivation and realization of perfect penetration that follows.

“The subtle ādāna consciousness, its habit-energy becomes a torrent; fearing confusion over true and not-true, I do not ordinarily expound it.” The ādāna consciousness is very subtle; its habit-energy is like a rushing current. To call it true, one fears people will cling to it; to call it not true, one fears they will throw it away; so the Buddha ordinarily does not speak of it.

The last eight lines speak of the method of contemplation: “The mind itself grasps the mind itself; what is not illusion becomes illusory dharmas. Not grasping, there is nothing not-illusory; when even the not-illusory does not arise, how could illusory dharmas stand?” The mind itself goes and grasps the mind itself, and what is not illusion becomes illusion too. Not grasping, even ‘not-illusory’ is gone; when the not-illusory does not even arise, from where could illusory dharmas stand? This is the use of contemplation. At the end a name is given to this gate of Dharma: “This is called the wondrous lotus, the jeweled awakening of the Vajra King, the illusion-like samādhi; in a snap of the fingers surpass those beyond training. This is the abhidharma of the bhagavāns of the ten directions, the one road, the gate of nirvāṇa.” The illusion-like samādhi, in a snap of the fingers, surpasses those beyond training. This is the one road the buddhas of the ten directions walk together.

IV. Tying the Kerchief: Six Knots, One Kerchief

When Ānanda has heard the verses, the assembly finds “the geya and gāthā mingled, refined and lustrous, the wondrous principle clear and penetrating; their minds and eyes were opened, and they praised what had never been before.” Yet Ānanda says, “my mind has still not reached the order of loosening the knots, the six untied and the one gone,” and asks the Buddha to “bestow the Dharma-voice to wash away the sunken grime.” How the six are untied, how once they are untied the ‘one’ is also gone, what the order is—this he still does not understand. The Buddha no longer answers in words. “At once the Tathāgata, on the lion seat, straightened his nivāsana, gathered his saṃghāṭī, drew the table of seven jewels toward him, reached his hand to the table, took the flowered kerchief offered by the Kapāla deva, and before the great assembly tied it into one knot.” The Buddha arranges his robes, takes a flowered kerchief from the table, ties one knot, and asks: “What is this called?” Ānanda and the assembly answer: “This is called a knot.” The Buddha ties another knot and asks again; they answer, “This too is called a knot.” So he ties six times, six knots; each time he asks, and each time they answer, “This is called a knot.”

Then the Buddha asks: “When I first tied the kerchief, you called it a knot. This folded flowered kerchief was at first truly one strip; at the second and the third, why do you again call it a knot?” The kerchief was originally one strip; the first time is called a knot—why are the second and third also called knots? Ānanda answers: “Each time the Tathāgata ties it, one knot gets its name; if he tied it a hundred times, in the end it would be called a hundred knots. How much more so this kerchief, which has only six knots, and never reaches seven, nor stops at five?” Tie once and it is one knot; tie a hundred times and it is a hundred knots; this kerchief has only six knots, not seven, and not five.

Here the Buddha turns. “This jeweled flowered kerchief—you know this kerchief was originally only one strip; when I tied it six times, it was named six knots. Look carefully: the kerchief’s substance is the same; because of the knots there is difference.” The kerchief’s substance is one; only because of the knots is there difference. The Buddha asks: can the sixth knot be called the first knot? Ānanda says it cannot: “If the six knots remain, this name ‘the sixth’ can never be ‘the first.’” With all six knots present, the sixth is the sixth. The Buddha says: “The six knots are not the same; yet looking back to their root cause, they are made of the one kerchief, and to confuse their order can never be done. Your six faculties are likewise: within what is utterly the same, what is utterly different arises.” The six faculties are like this too: within the utterly same arises the utterly different.

From the tying of the kerchief to the untying in order, the Buddha and Ānanda speak twenty-four turns in all, the Buddha thirteen and Ānanda eleven. The Buddha does not state a principle; the Buddha holds up a kerchief for people to see. The kerchief is one, the knots are six; the six knots cannot be named at random, and the six knots are alike one kerchief. This is the six faculties: the substance is one, the functions are six; the six cannot stand in for one another, and the six do not leave the one.

V. The Six Untied, the One Gone

The Buddha asks again: “If you must dislike these six knots as not being one, and wish them to become one, how would that be obtained?” You do not like the six knots and want them to become one—how? Ānanda answers: “If these knots remain, ‘this’ and ‘not this’ rise up like blades; within them there arises of itself ‘this knot is not that one, that knot is not this one.’ If the Tathāgata today undoes them all, and knots do not arise, then there is no this or that; it is not even called one—how could six come to be?” With the knots present, there is the right-and-wrong of this knot not being that and that knot not being this. With all the knots undone, there is no this or that; it cannot even be called ‘one’—where is there a six?

The Buddha confirms it: “the six untied, the one gone—it is just so.” Then he says where the knots come from: “Through the beginningless madness and disorder of your mind-nature, knowing-and-seeing is falsely sent forth; sent forth falsely and never resting, the strained seeing sends forth dust. As when the eye is strained there are mad flowers.” The mind-nature is mad and disordered, knowing-and-seeing is falsely sent forth and does not stop; strained long enough, it gives birth to dust, as an eye that has stared too long sees mad flowers. “Within the limpid, essential brightness they rise in disorder without cause; all the mountains, rivers, and great earth of the world, birth and death and nirvāṇa, are all appearances of flowers from mad toil and inversion.” Within the limpid, essential brightness they rise in disorder without cause; mountains, rivers, the great earth, birth and death and nirvāṇa, are all flowers seen by a strained eye.

What must be noticed is “the one gone.” Ānanda says “it is not even called one”; the Buddha says “the six untied, the one gone.” When the six are untied, they do not return to one; even the one is gone. This is the other face of Fascicle Four’s “when it stops, that is bodhi”: it is not going back from six to one; six and one are both names upon the knot, and when the knot is untied the names are gone too.

VI. At the Heart of the Knot

Ānanda asks: “This strain is the same as the knot; how is it undone?” The Buddha pulls the kerchief to the left and asks: “Is it untied like this?” Ānanda says no. He pulls it to the right, asks, and again Ānanda says no. The Buddha says: “I have now pulled it with my hand to left and right, and in the end cannot untie it; what means would you devise to untie it?” Ānanda answers: “It must be at the heart of the knot; untie it there and it comes apart.” The Buddha confirms it: “So it is, so it is! If you would remove the knot, it must be at the heart of the knot.”

Pulling left and right is using force on the two sides of the knot; the heart of the knot is the knot itself. Left is one side, right is one side; from the two sides it cannot be untied.

The Buddha goes on to say why he can know where the heart of the knot is: “I say the Buddha-dharma arises from causes and conditions, not grasping the coarse appearances of worldly combination. The Tathāgata has brought to light worldly and world-transcending dharmas, knowing their root cause and what arises from each condition; thus even a single drop of rain beyond worlds as many as the Ganges’ sands he knows by count, and of all the things before us—the straight pine, the bent thorn, the white crane, the black crow—he fully knows the original reason.” The Buddha speaks of causes and conditions, not the coarse appearances of worldly combination; the Buddha knows the root cause of every dharma, knows why the pine is straight and why the thorn is bent. So he can point out where the knot is. Then comes the teaching for Ānanda: “Choose among the six faculties as your mind inclines; if the knot of the faculty is removed, the appearances of dust perish of themselves; when all falsities are extinguished and gone, what else could it be but the true?” Pick one among the six faculties; once the knot of the faculty is removed, the appearances of dust perish of themselves.

VII. Untying in Order: The Emptiness of Persons, the Emptiness of Dharmas, the Emptiness of Both

The Buddha asks again: the six knots are before us—can they be untied all at once? Ānanda answers: “These knots were originally tied one after another in order; today they must be untied in order. The six knots share one substance, but the knots were not tied at the same time; then when the knots are untied, how could they be removed together?” The knots were tied in order; they must be untied in order. The Buddha says the six faculties are likewise, and then speaks of the order of untying: “When this faculty is first untied, one first attains the emptiness of persons; when the nature of emptiness is perfectly bright, one accomplishes release from dharmas; when release from dharmas is done, the emptiness of both does not arise—this is called the bodhisattva’s attaining from samādhi the acceptance of non-arising.” When one faculty is first untied, one first attains the emptiness of persons; when the nature of emptiness is perfectly bright, dharmas too are released; when dharmas are released, even the emptiness of both does not arise—this is the acceptance of non-arising.

Here one must see clearly: the order is spoken of upon one faculty. It is not that the six faculties are untied one by one; one enters by one faculty, and upon this one faculty there are three layers—the emptiness of persons, the emptiness of dharmas, and the non-arising of the emptiness of both. Ānanda hears this and says: “Today our body and mind are bright and clear; we have swiftly gained freedom from obstruction. Though we have awakened to the meaning of the one and the six both gone, we have still not reached the root faculty of perfect penetration.” He knows the meaning of the one and the six both gone, but does not yet know by which faculty to enter. He says he is “like a child who has lost its milk and suddenly meets its loving mother,” and asks the Buddha to “accomplish the Tathāgata’s final instruction.” Having spoken, “he prostrated himself with the five limbs to the ground, withdrew to hold the secret hinge within, and hoped the Buddha would bestow it in silence”—he asks no further, but steps back and waits for the Buddha to confer it unseen.

VIII. The Twenty-Four Sages Each Tell Their Gate of Realization

The Buddha does not answer directly. The Buddha asks the great bodhisattvas and the arhats whose outflows are ended in the assembly: “You bodhisattvas and arhats were born within my Dharma and have reached the stage beyond training. I now ask you: when you first set your minds on awakening, among the eighteen realms, which one was perfectly penetrating? By what means did you enter samādhi?” At the first setting of the mind, by which of the eighteen realms did you enter awakening? By what means did you enter samādhi? Twenty-four passages of realization are spoken in turn; most are one person to a passage, but Bhaiṣajyarāja and Bhaiṣajyasamudgata share one, and Kauṇḍinya rises with the five bhikṣus, Bhadrapāla with sixteen bodhisattvas, and Mahāsthāmaprāpta with fifty-two bodhisattvas.

Six for the six dusts. Kauṇḍinya and the five bhikṣus, from sound: “at the Buddha’s voice I awakened and understood the four truths,” “the wondrous sound, secret and complete,” and the closing words, “sound is supreme.” Upaniṣad, from form: “I contemplated the appearance of impurity and gave rise to great revulsion,” “from impurity, to white bones, to fine dust, returning to empty space; emptiness and form both nothing, I accomplished the way beyond training,” “the cause of form is supreme.” The youth Fragrant Adornment, from scent: seeing bhikṣus burn aloeswood incense, “I contemplated this scent: it is not wood, not space, not smoke, not fire; going, it clings nowhere; coming, it comes from nowhere. Thereby the intent dissolved, and I brought forth the state without outflows,” “fragrant adornment is supreme.” Bhaiṣajyarāja and Bhaiṣajyasamudgata, from taste: having tasted a hundred and eight thousand plants, trees, metals, and stones, “I came to know that the nature of taste is neither empty nor existent, neither identical with body and mind nor apart from body and mind,” “the cause of taste is supreme.” Bhadrapāla, from touch: while bathing, “I suddenly awakened to the cause of water: it neither washes the dust nor washes the body; in between, at ease, I attained having nothing,” “the cause of touch is supreme.” Mahākāśyapa, from dharmas: “I contemplated the six dusts of the world changing and decaying, and with emptiness and quiescence alone cultivated cessation,” “the cause of dharmas is supreme.” These six all close with “is supreme.”

Five for the five faculties. Aniruddha lost his eyes and sees: the Buddha showed him “the Vajra Samādhi of Delighting in Seeing and Illumination,” “I do not see the ten directions by means of the eye; the essential truth is thoroughly open, as if looking at a fruit in the palm,” “turning seeing back to follow the origin.” Cūḍapanthaka could not recite and retain, and the Buddha taught him to regulate the breath: “I then contemplated the breath, subtly, to the very end—arising, abiding, changing, perishing, all activities moment by moment,” “returning the breath to follow emptiness.” Gavāṃpati had the illness of a cow’s chewing, and the Buddha taught him the Dharma-gate of the one-flavored pure mind-ground: “I contemplated that the knowing of taste is neither the body nor a thing,” “returning taste, turning knowing back.” Pilindavatsa was wounded in the foot by a poisoned thorn: “I thought: there is a knowing that knows this deep pain; though the awareness is aware of pain, the aware and pure mind has no pain and no awareness of pain. And I thought further: ‘Could this one body have two awarenesses?’” “pure awareness that leaves the body behind.” Subhūti, from emptiness: “from the time in the mother’s body I already knew emptiness and quiescence,” and then “by the Tathāgata’s bringing forth the true emptiness of the nature-awakening, the nature of emptiness perfectly bright, I attained arhatship,” “all appearances enter the not; the not and what is negated both exhausted, I turned dharmas back to return to nothing.” These five lack the ear-faculty. The ear-faculty is Avalokiteśvara, in Fascicle Six. From here on the closing words all read “this is foremost.”

Six for the six consciousnesses. Śāriputra, from the eye-consciousness: on the road “I met the Kāśyapa brothers following one another, preaching causes and conditions; I awakened to the mind without bounds and left home under the Buddha,” “the mind’s seeing emits light; light at its utmost is knowing-and-seeing.” Samantabhadra, from the ear-consciousness: “I use the mind’s hearing to discern all the knowing and seeing of living beings,” and when someone gives rise to Samantabhadra’s practice, “at that time I mount the six-tusked elephant and divide my body into hundreds and thousands to reach each of them,” “the mind’s hearing brought to light, discerning with mastery.” Sundarananda, from the nose-consciousness: contemplating the white at the tip of the nose, “I saw the breath in the nose going in and out like smoke,” until “all the breaths going out and in turned into light,” “by dissolving the breath, when the breath had long brought forth light, brightness perfected and outflows extinguished.” Pūrṇa, from the tongue-consciousness: “preaching suffering and emptiness, deeply reaching the real character,” the Buddha “by the wheel of sound taught me to proclaim it,” “with the voice of Dharma I subdued the demon foes and extinguished all outflows.” Upāli, from the body-consciousness: keeping the precepts until “the three thousand modes of conduct and the eighty thousand fine points, the actions wrong by nature and wrong by prohibition, were all wholly pure,” “by holding the body, the body gained mastery; then holding the mind, the mind gained penetration; after that, body and mind were everywhere unobstructed.” Mahāmaudgalyāyana, from the mind-consciousness: on the road “I met Uruvilvā, Gayā, and Nadī, the three Kāśyapas, preaching the deep meaning of the Tathāgata’s causes and conditions,” set his mind at once, “and brought forth spiritual powers, acknowledged as unsurpassed,” “by turning back to the profound, the mind’s light sent forth and proclaimed, as a muddy stream, left to settle, in time becomes clear and lustrous.”

Seven for the seven elements. Ucchuṣma, from fire: “turning a mind of much lust into the fire of wisdom,” “by closely contemplating the warm touch of body and mind flowing without obstruction, when all outflows were extinguished I gave rise to the great jeweled flame and ascended to supreme awakening.” Earth-Holder, from earth: leveling and filling roads, the Tathāgata Viśva laid a hand on his crown and said, “level the ground of the mind, and all the ground of the world will be level,” “by closely contemplating that the two dusts of body and world are equal without difference, originally the tathāgatagarbha falsely sending forth dust; when the dust was extinguished and wisdom perfected I accomplished the supreme way.” The youth Moonlight, from water: contemplating the nature of water in the body, at first “seeing only the water, I had not yet attained having no body,” until the time of the Tathāgata King of Mastery and Penetration over Mountains and Seas, when “I at last attained the vanishing of the body,” “with all the fragrant seas of the worlds of the ten directions, its nature joined with true emptiness, without two, without difference,” “by the one taste of the nature of water flowing through.” Beryl Light, from wind: “I contemplated that this world and the bodies of living beings are all turned by the force of wind, of false conditions,” “contemplating the world in motion, the body’s moving and stopping, the mind’s stirring in thought—all motions are not two, equal and without difference,” “by contemplating that the power of wind has nothing to rest on, I awakened to the mind of bodhi.” Ākāśagarbha, from space: “holding in my hands four great jewels, illuminating buddha-lands as many as motes of dust in the ten directions and turning them into empty space,” “in my own mind there appeared a great round mirror,” “closely contemplating that the four elements have nothing to rest on, false thought arising and perishing, empty space not two, the buddha-lands originally the same,” “by contemplating the boundlessness of empty space I entered samādhi; the wondrous power perfectly bright.” Maitreya, from consciousness: “even to the Tathāgata-lands to the limit of space, pure and impure, existent and non-existent, all are what my mind manifests by transformation,” “by closely contemplating that the ten directions are consciousness only, the cognizing mind perfectly bright, I entered the perfected real, far removed from the other-dependent and pervasive discrimination and attachment.” Mahāsthāmaprāpta, from the element of the faculties, speaks of the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha: “the tathāgatas of the ten directions have compassion on living beings, as a mother remembers her child,” “if the child remembers the mother as the mother remembers, mother and child through life after life will not be far apart,” “if the minds of living beings remember the Buddha and are mindful of the Buddha, now or in the future they will surely see the Buddha and be not far from the Buddha; without borrowing any means, their minds open of themselves. As one steeped in incense carries its scent on the body, this is called the adornment of fragrance and light.” His closing words: “I make no choice; I gather in all six faculties, and with pure recollection continuing unbroken I attain samādhi. This is foremost!”

In these twenty-four passages each has a thing from the past, a point of entry, a gate. Some awakened at a word of the Buddha’s, some at an illness of the body, some on a road. The gates differ; what is realized is the same. What the Buddha asked was “which one was perfectly penetrating,” and each answers with his own gate; not one says another’s gate is wrong. This is the empty place Fascicle Five leaves for Fascicle Six: only when all twenty-five gates have been told does Mañjuśrī make the choice.

Carrying Forward — Knotting and Untying Share the Same Cause

What has gone before is the meaning of the sūtra text itself. What follows looks on from the side, with a commentator’s eye—the commentary is not the sūtra; it is the same matter seen from another position.

When Ānanda says at the start “still like one with a fever that returns every other day,” Zixuan says: “One of the first fruit, still in training, though he has not cut off the affliction of thought, is already called one who has broken the obstruction of affliction and attained realization of the emptiness of persons; yet he has not at all broken the obstruction of the knowable, and the clinging to dharmas still remains—hence ‘still like a fever that returns every other day.’” One in training has broken the obstruction of affliction; the obstruction of the knowable is not broken, and so the fever still returns every other day. This fixes Ānanda’s position: it is not that he has not awakened, but that his awakening is not complete.

On the passage “to set up a knowing upon knowing-and-seeing,” Zixuan says why the Buddha first says that faculty and dust share one source: “Therefore the Buddha first shows that faculty, object, and consciousness are all one falsity, one and the same source of nature, and that confusion and bondage, release and liberation, are truly not different tracks; from this he separately shows the answer about the knot, so that there is nothing to doubt, and from understanding one accomplishes contemplation, and the wondrous fruit may be hoped for.” Faculty, object, and consciousness are one falsity and one source of nature; confusion and awakening are not two roads. First establish this, then say where the knot is.

Of the verse “knotting and untying share the same cause; sage and ordinary have no two roads,” Zixuan says: “The ordinary beings of the six destinies, bound by action and affliction, do not gain mastery, and so it is called bondage. The worthies and sages of the three vehicles cut off affliction and realize the principle, and are not bound by action, and so it is called release. These all come from confusion or awakening upon the six faculties and are no other fork—hence ‘no two roads.’”

“Look at the nature where they cross: empty and existent, both are wrong,” Zixuan says: “Where they cross there is no nature; what existence would one dismiss so as to preserve a non-existence? Within the one nature there is no opposition.” And he cites Sengzhao: “Since existence is not existent, then non-existence is not either.” He says this line “directly shows the middle way of faculty and dust, and is also the meaning above of faculty and dust sharing one source.”

“Choose among the faculties the perfectly penetrating one; enter the stream and become perfectly awakened,” Zixuan says, “gives rise to the cultivation and realization of perfect penetration below, that is, taking Avalokiteśvara’s entering samādhi by the gate of the ear-faculty.” “The subtle ādāna consciousness,” Zixuan explains: “Ādāna means ‘holding’; it is the eighth consciousness, which can hold the seeds and give rise to their manifestation.”

When Ānanda asks about the order of loosening the knots, the six untied and the one gone, Zixuan states Ānanda’s doubt: “The text above has said that faculty and dust share one source and bondage and release are not two, that confusion and dimness are ignorance and to bring forth brightness is release; then the knots have no before and after, and untying too has no sequence. If the six faculties are gone, the one awakening should appear—how then can it further say” the six untied, the one gone. Ānanda’s doubt is: since bondage and release are not two and confusion and dimness are ignorance, the knots have no before and after, and the untying should have no order; when the six faculties are untied the one awakening should appear—how can it say that even the one is gone? This doubt has two layers, one of order and one of the one being gone. The tying of the kerchief answers both.

Of “at the heart of the knot,” pulling to the left and to the right, Zixuan says: “The meaning is clear: since the two extremes of emptiness and existence cannot untie it, one must with the right contemplation of the middle way illuminate the beginningless knotted root, neither existent nor non-existent, not different yet different, seeing the dharma-nature that is wholly ignorance and cutting off the ignorance that is wholly the dharma-nature; not cutting off yet cutting off, not realizing yet realizing—only then is the untying accomplished.” Pulling left and right is the two extremes of emptiness and existence; the heart of the knot is the right contemplation of the middle way. He says “seeing the dharma-nature that is wholly ignorance and cutting off the ignorance that is wholly the dharma-nature”—the whole of ignorance is the dharma-nature, the whole of the dharma-nature is ignorance, and so it is cut off without cutting off.

The sentence “I say the Buddha-dharma arises from causes and conditions,” Zixuan explains: “The right contemplation of the middle way, the illusion-like samādhi, can untie the beginningless knotted root of ignorance, can in a snap of the fingers leap to the realization beyond training, can give rise to inconceivable functioning without bounds; this is called the Buddha-dharma arising from causes and conditions—how could it be the same as the coarse appearances the world speaks of?” That the Buddha-dharma arises from causes and conditions means that the right contemplation of the middle way can untie the knot of the faculties; it is not the causes and conditions of worldly combination.

On “choose among the six faculties as your mind inclines,” Zixuan cites the words of Fascicle Four to explain the two characters ‘choose among’: “It is only because you are low and inferior, and cannot yet attain within them the wisdom of perfect interfusion and freedom, that I proclaim it, so that you need only enter deeply by one gate; entering the one, without falsity, those six knowing faculties are at once purified.” And he cites Fascicle Six: “Seeing and hearing are like an illusory cataract; the three realms are like flowers in the sky; when hearing returns, the cataract of the faculty is removed; when dust is extinguished, awakening is perfect and pure.” Enter deeply by one gate, and the six faculties are all at once pure.

On the passage about the emptiness of persons and of dharmas, Zixuan speaks of the order: “One enters by one faculty; it is not spoken of as the six faculties untied all at once—hence ‘in order.’ It is not the same as the gradual Dharma-gates spoken of for the dull.” This is the order of entering by one faculty, not the gradual Dharma-gate for the dull.

Of Mahāsthāmaprāpta’s “gather in all six faculties” at the end, Zixuan says: “Mindfulness belongs to the mind-faculty, and the mind-faculty is what all the faculties rest on; hence it gathers in the six. Recollection is itself no-recollection; hence ‘pure recollection.’ It is not interrupted by thought; hence ‘continuing without break.’ This is awakening and entering by the nature of the element of the faculties.” Mindfulness is the mind-faculty; the mind-faculty is what all the faculties rest on, and so it gathers in the six. Recollection that is itself no-recollection is pure recollection. He fixes Mahāsthāmaprāpta’s gate in the element of the faculties.

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

At the end of Fascicle Five, twenty-four sages each tell their gate of realization, down to Mahāsthāmaprāpta, who, “gathering in all six faculties, with pure recollection continuing unbroken, attained samādhi.” The six dusts, the six consciousnesses, and the seven elements have all been told; of the five faculties one is missing: the ear faculty. Fascicle Six takes up from here. Under the fascicle title stands the interlinear note “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and the translator’s line “Translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of India, of the Tang.” The base text writes the last character of the translator’s name differently in this fascicle from the way it writes it in Fascicle Five; both are the same name, Pramiti. The base text stands as it is, and this edition records each fascicle as it reads, without making one conform to the other.

The bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara rises from his seat and tells of his own cause, the cultivation, and its fruit, the merits: from hearing, reflection, and cultivation he entered samādhi, gained the two excellences, manifests the thirty-two responses, bestows the fourteen fearlessnesses, and attained the four inconceivables, and he closes with “this is foremost.” With this the twenty-five gates are all told. The Buddha sends forth light, the tathāgatas of the ten directions cross their lights and interlace them, and then the Buddha commands Mañjuśrī to select: “of these twenty-five practices, which suits his faculty?” Mañjuśrī speaks in verse, first praising the twin sources of true and false, then assessing the twenty-four gates one by one, then praising Avalokiteśvara’s perfect penetration through the ear faculty, and closing with “to accomplish the mind of nirvāṇa, Avalokiteśvara is supreme.” The great assembly gains the great disclosure. Ānanda then asks, on behalf of the beings of the final kalpa, how to establish the bodhimaṇḍa and keep far from the doings of Māra, and the Buddha answers with the three trainings without outflows, speaking first of the training in precept: the four decisive pure and clear instructions on lust, killing, stealing, and false speech. Fascicle Six stops here; the setting up of the bodhimaṇḍa and the divine spell are in Fascicle Seven.

Zixuan outlines this fascicle as: the true realization by turning hearing back; the celebration of what is hard to conceive; the Buddha’s command to Mañjuśrī to select; the verses of selection; the assembly’s gaining benefit; Ānanda’s request; the three trainings in general; and the separate showing of the training in precept. This edition follows this in eighteen sections: one narrating the cause and the cultivation; one for attaining the fruit and its merits; one for the thirty-two responses; one for the fourteen fearlessnesses; one for the four inconceivables; one concluding and explaining the attainment; one for the celebration of what is hard to conceive; one for the Buddha’s command to Mañjuśrī; one for the verses and the praise of the twin sources of true and false; one for the selecting among the sages; one for the praise of Avalokiteśvara’s perfect penetration; one for the assembly’s gaining benefit; one for Ānanda’s request; one for the praise, the permission to speak, and the three trainings in general; and four for the four clear instructions.

This edition takes ‘Perfect Penetration through the Ear Faculty’ as the title of this fascicle. The four characters of that title, as one phrase, do not occur in the base text; the base text has “because I attained this perfect penetration,” “because I cultivated and attained true perfect penetration,” “I, from the ear gate, by the samādhi of perfect illumination,” and “only by cultivating with this one faculty, perfect penetration surpasses the rest.” The ear gate, this one faculty, perfect penetration: all are the sūtra’s own words, and this edition joins them into one title.

II. Entering the Stream and Letting the Object Vanish: Entering Samādhi from Hearing, Reflection, and Cultivation

The bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara tells of his own past: countless kalpas as many as the sands of the Ganges ago a buddha appeared in the world, “named Avalokiteśvara. Before that buddha I gave rise to the bodhi-mind. That buddha taught me to enter samādhi from hearing, reflection, and cultivation.” The buddha was named Avalokiteśvara, and the disciple later received the same name: at the close of the account that buddha “in the great assembly predicted for me the name Avalokiteśvara.”

The method is only a few lines: “At first, within hearing, I entered the stream and let the object of hearing vanish; what was entered being still, the two appearances of motion and stillness clearly did not arise. Advancing gradually in this way, hearing and what is heard were both exhausted; not dwelling even where hearing was exhausted, awareness and what it is aware of were both empty; when emptiness and awareness reached their utmost completeness, the emptying and what is emptied were also both extinguished. Arising and ceasing having ceased, stillness-and-extinction appeared before me.” At first, within hearing, one enters the stream and lets the object vanish. The stream runs the other way: one does not flow outward after the dust of sound, but flows back along the nature of hearing. The object is the dust of sound; when the nature of hearing comes back, the dust of sound has nothing left to stand against. What was entered being still, the two appearances of motion and stillness do not arise: where there is sound, that is motion; where there is no sound, that is stillness; both are dusts that the ear takes hold of, and when the dust is gone neither of the two stands. Then layer by layer: hearing and what is heard are both exhausted, and one does not dwell even where hearing is exhausted; awareness and what it is aware of are both empty; the emptying and what is emptied are also extinguished. When one reaches “Arising and ceasing having ceased, stillness-and-extinction appeared before me,” that is the fruit.

This passage must be read together with Fascicle Five: “When this faculty is first untied, one first attains the emptiness of persons; when the nature of emptiness is perfectly bright, one accomplishes release from dharmas; having been released from dharmas, persons and dharmas are both empty, and emptiness too does not arise.” Fascicle Five says that upon one faculty there are three layers; in Fascicle Six Avalokiteśvara himself walks through those three layers. Motion and stillness not arising, hearing and what is heard exhausted: that is the emptiness of persons. Awareness and what it is aware of both empty: that is the emptiness of dharmas. The emptying and what is emptied extinguished: that is the emptiness of both, which does not arise. Fascicle Five is the teaching; Fascicle Six is the practice.

When stillness-and-extinction appears, at once “suddenly I went beyond the worldly and the world-transcending, the ten directions perfectly bright, and I gained two excellences: first, above, joining the fundamental wondrous awakened mind of all the buddhas of the ten directions, I have the same power of kindness as the buddhas, the tathāgatas; second, below, joining all beings of the six destinies in the ten directions, I have the same yearning compassion as all beings.” Joining above with the mind of the buddhas, there is kindness; joining below with beings, there is compassion. The thirty-two responses that follow are the power of kindness; the fourteen fearlessnesses are the yearning compassion. These two lines are the root of all that follows.

III. The Thirty-Two Responses

“Because I have the same power of kindness as the buddhas, the tathāgatas, my body accomplishes thirty-two kinds of response and enters all lands.” Avalokiteśvara first says where this power comes from: “that tathāgata transmitted to me the illusion-like Vajra Samādhi of hearing-permeation and hearing-cultivation.” Illusion-like, hearing-permeation and hearing-cultivation, Vajra Samādhi: all three are names for the cultivation told above. The thirty-two responses fall into four groups. First the four bodies of the sages: the body of a buddha, of a solitary awakened one, of one awakened through conditions, of a śrāvaka. For bodhisattvas who enter samādhi and “advance in cultivating what is without outflows, and their excellent understanding appears complete,” “I manifest the body of a buddha and speak the Dharma for them, so that they are liberated”; for those still at the stage of learning who are still and wondrously bright, he manifests “the body of a solitary awakened one”; for those still at the stage of learning who cut off the twelve links, “the body of one awakened through conditions”; for those still at the stage of learning who attain the emptiness of the four truths, cultivate the path, and enter extinction, “the body of a śrāvaka.” For these four bodies, together with the body of the Brahmā king that follows, the closing words are “so that they are liberated.” Then the seven bodies of the devas: for those whose minds of desire are clearly awakened and who “do not commit the dust of desire,” the body of the Brahmā king; for those who “wish to be lord of the devas, ruling over all the devas,” the body of Śakra; for those who “wish their bodies to be at ease, roaming the ten directions,” the body of the Īśvara deva; for those who “wish their bodies to be at ease, flying through space,” the body of the Maheśvara deva; for those who “love to command ghosts and spirits and to rescue and protect their lands,” the body of the great heavenly general; for those who “love to rule the world and to protect beings,” the body of the four heavenly kings; for those who “love to be born in heavenly palaces and to command ghosts and spirits,” the body of a prince of the four heavenly kings’ realms. Then the twelve bodies among humans: for those who “delight in being lords among humans,” the body of a human king; for those who “love to head a clan and to be deferred to by the world,” the body of an elder; for those who “love to discuss names, principles, and speech, and to dwell in purity,” the body of a householder; for those who “love to govern the land and to adjudicate the affairs of states and towns,” the body of a magistrate; for those who “love the various arts of numbers and divination, and dwell in guarding and protecting their own lives,” the body of a brahmin; for men who love to learn, leave home, and keep the precepts, the body of a bhikṣu; for women who love to learn, leave home, and keep the precepts, the body of a bhikṣuṇī; for men who delight in keeping the five precepts, the body of an upāsaka; for women who “dwell in the five precepts,” the body of an upāsikā; for women who “establish themselves by governing the household within, and by this cultivate and order family and state,” he manifests “the body of a sovereign lady, and the bodies of a lady of the state, a titled lady, and a great lady”; for those who “have not impaired their male faculty,” the body of a young boy; for maidens who “love to keep their maidenhood and do not seek to be violated,” the body of a young girl. Then the nine bodies of the eight classes and of humans and non-humans: devas, dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, each of whom “delight in leaving” or “delight in escaping their class,” and before each he manifests the body of their own class; for those who “delight in being human and cultivating the human way,” the body of a human; for non-humans “with form or without form, with perception or without perception” who “delight in being delivered from their class,” he manifests “their bodies in every case.” With form or without form, with perception or without perception: this gathers in every sentient being, not only those named above. From Śakra onward the closing words are all “so that they are brought to accomplishment.” In five places, the four sages and the Brahmā king, it is “so that they are liberated”; in the other twenty-seven it is “so that they are brought to accomplishment.”

The pattern of each response is the same: if beings of some kind have some wish, ‘I manifest before them such-and-such a body and speak the Dharma for them.’ To those whose minds of desire are clearly awakened, he gives the body of the Brahmā king; to those who wish to be lord of the devas, the body of Śakra; to those who love to discuss names and speech, the body of a householder; to a man who loves to learn and leave home, the body of a bhikṣu; to a maiden who “loves to keep her maidenhood and does not seek to be violated,” the body of a young girl. Whatever is sought, that body appears and speaks the Dharma. Not one response says ‘you should not seek this.’ The two closings, liberation and accomplishment, are also distinguished: to the four sages and the Brahmā king, who seek to leave the three realms, he gives liberation; to those who seek the pleasures of humans and devas, or seek to escape their own class, he gives accomplishment. He accomplishes what they seek, and the Dharma is spoken within that accomplishment. This is what the power of kindness looks like: joining with what beings seek, and placing the Dharma in the very body they seek.

The closing: “These are called the wondrous, pure thirty-two response-bodies that enter the lands; all are accomplished at ease by the wondrous power without contrivance of samādhi, of hearing-permeation and hearing-cultivation.” Without contrivance means without making; the thirty-two bodies are not made one by one, but come of themselves within samādhi.

IV. The Fourteen Fearlessnesses

“Further, by the wondrous power without contrivance of this Vajra Samādhi of hearing-permeation and hearing-cultivation, because I have the same yearning compassion as all beings of the six destinies in the ten directions and the three times, I enable beings to obtain, in my body and mind, the merit and virtue of fourteen kinds of fearlessness.” The thirty-two responses come from the same power of kindness; the fourteen fearlessnesses come from the same yearning compassion.

The fourteen fearlessnesses are also written to one pattern: first the bodhisattva’s own cultivation, on his side, then the benefit that beings obtain, on theirs. The first: “because I do not observe sound itself but observe the one who observes, I enable the suffering and afflicted beings of the ten directions, observing their voices, to be liberated at once.” I do not observe the sound that is heard, but observe the one who can observe; therefore suffering beings, the moment they observe that sound, are liberated. “I do not observe sound itself but observe the one who observes” is the root of the whole passage: not observing sound, but observing hearing. In the second to the fourth, with knowing-and-seeing turned back, fire cannot burn; with observing-and-listening turned back, water cannot drown; “with false thinking cut off and the mind free of killing and harm,” ghosts cannot harm. In the fifth to the eighth: “permeating hearing becomes the nature of hearing, the six faculties dissolved and restored, the same as hearing sound,” and the blades that come “break piece by piece,” “like cutting water, or like blowing on light”; “hearing-permeation becomes essential brightness, the brightness pervading the dharma-realm,” so that the nature of darkness cannot be whole, and evil ghosts, “though these come close beside them, their eyes cannot see them”; “the nature of sound perfectly dissolved, observing and listening turned back inward, apart from the false dusts,” and cangues and locks cannot hold; “sound extinguished, hearing perfected, the power of kindness arising everywhere,” and thieves cannot rob. These eight are outer dangers.

The ninth to the eleventh are the three poisons: “permeating hearing, apart from dust, not plundered by form,” he enables beings much given to lust to leave greed and desire far behind; “pure sound without dust, faculty and object perfectly fused, with nothing confronting and nothing confronted,” he enables beings full of resentment to leave anger; “dusts dissolved, brightness turned back, the dharma-realm and body and mind like beryl, clear through and unobstructed,” he enables the dull and obtuse icchantikas to leave the darkness of delusion forever. Where there is nothing confronting, there is no object for anger; where all is clear through and unobstructed, there is no darkness of delusion to dwell in. The twelfth and thirteenth are the wish for children: “form fused and hearing restored, not moving from the bodhimaṇḍa yet entering the world, not destroying the world,” he himself “can make offerings throughout the ten directions to buddhas, tathāgatas, as many as fine dust-motes, and at the side of each buddha be a Dharma prince,” and so can enable those who wish for a son “to give birth to a son of blessing, virtue, and wisdom”; “the six faculties perfectly penetrating, the brightness illuminating without duality, containing the worlds of the ten directions,” he establishes “the great round mirror, the empty tathāgatagarbha,” and “in accord with the secret Dharma-gates of the tathāgatas of the ten directions, as many as fine dust-motes,” receives “them without loss,” and so can enable those who wish for a daughter to give birth to “a daughter upright, blessed and virtuous, gentle and compliant, loved and respected by all, and possessed of fine marks.” The fourteenth is holding the name: in the three-thousand-great-thousand world there are sixty-two Ganges-sands of Dharma princes, each teaching and transforming beings, and he “can enable a being who receives and holds my name, compared with one who receives and holds the names of those sixty-two Ganges-sands of Dharma princes, to have blessing and virtue exactly equal, without difference.” To hold one name and to hold sixty-two Ganges-sands of names: the blessing and virtue are equal. The bodhisattva himself says why: “because I cultivated and attained true perfect penetration.”

The closing: “These are called the power of the fourteen bestowals of fearlessness, blessing and virtue provided to beings.” The base text says the power of the fourteen bestowals of fearlessness: there are fourteen powers of bestowing fearlessness, not fourteen qualities that fearlessness has.

In reading these fourteen, look at the first half of each. That fire cannot burn is not the bodhisattva putting out the fire; it is “knowing-and-seeing turned back.” That ghosts cannot harm is “false thinking cut off and the mind free of killing and harm.” Leaving greed is “permeating hearing, apart from dust, not plundered by form.” The fourteen fearlessnesses lie wholly in the cultivation on his own side; the benefit on the side of beings is the shadow of that cultivation. That is why it says they obtain “in my body and mind, the merit and virtue of fourteen kinds of fearlessness”: they are obtained in my body and mind.

V. The Four Inconceivables: In All the Lands of the Ten Directions I Am Called the Bestower of Fearlessness

“Further, because I attained this perfect penetration and cultivated and realized the unsurpassed path, I can also skillfully attain four inconceivable wondrous virtues without contrivance.” The first is manifesting forms and speaking spells: “because I first attained the wondrous, wondrous hearing-mind, the mind’s essence left hearing behind, and seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing could no longer be separated; it became one perfectly fused pure jeweled awakening. Therefore I can manifest many wondrous forms and can speak boundless secret divine spells.” The hearing-mind is so wondrous that the mind’s essence leaves even hearing behind; seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing are no longer divided into six parts, but become one perfectly fused jeweled awakening. Therefore he can manifest one head, three heads, up to eighty-four thousand cakra-heads; two arms up to eighty-four thousand mudrā-arms; two eyes up to eighty-four thousand pure jeweled eyes, “now kind, now majestic, now in concentration, now in wisdom.” The second is hearing and reflection escaping the dusts: “because by hearing and reflection I escaped the six dusts, as sound passes over a wall and the wall cannot obstruct it, I can wondrously manifest each form and recite each divine spell, and those forms and those spells can bestow fearlessness on beings. Therefore in all the lands of the ten directions, as many as fine dust-motes, I am called the bestower of fearlessness.” Sound passes over a wall and is not obstructed by it; hearing and reflection escaping the six dusts are the same; therefore every form and every spell can bestow fearlessness, and the ten directions all call him the bestower of fearlessness. The third is causing beings to give up their treasures and seek his compassion; the fourth is making offerings of treasures to the tathāgatas of the ten directions and extending them to the beings of the six destinies: “those who seek a wife obtain a wife, those who seek a child obtain a child, those who seek samādhi obtain samādhi, those who seek long life obtain long life, and so on up to those who seek great nirvāṇa obtaining great nirvāṇa.”

Then he concludes and answers what the Buddha asked: “The Buddha asks about the gate of perfect penetration; I, from the ear gate, by the samādhi of perfect illumination, the conditioning mind at ease, through the appearance of entering the stream attained samādhi and accomplished bodhi—this is foremost!” The ear gate, the samādhi of perfect illumination, the appearance of entering the stream: these three say once more what was said above in “At first, within hearing, I entered the stream and let the object of hearing vanish.” Last he speaks of the name: “World-Honored One! That buddha, the tathāgata, praised me for skillfully attaining the Dharma-gate of perfect penetration, and in the great assembly predicted for me the name Avalokiteśvara. Because my observing and listening are perfectly bright throughout the ten directions, the name Avalokiteśvara pervades the worlds of the ten directions.” The name comes from the cultivation: observing and listening perfectly bright throughout the ten directions, and so he is called the Observer of the World’s Sounds.

Here the twenty-five gates are complete. Avalokiteśvara’s account is far longer than the twenty-four before it; the thirty-two responses, the fourteen fearlessnesses, and the four inconceivables are all within it. This is not merely the proof of one gate, the ear faculty; the Buddha’s sending forth of light and Mañjuśrī’s selection both answer to this one account.

VI. The Buddhas’ Lights Cross; the Buddha Commands Mañjuśrī to Select

When Avalokiteśvara has finished, the Buddha “sent forth jeweled light together from the five parts of his body, pouring from afar upon the crowns of the tathāgatas of the ten directions, as many as fine dust-motes, and of the Dharma princes and bodhisattvas. Those tathāgatas also sent forth jeweled light together from the five parts of their bodies, coming from places as many as fine dust-motes to pour upon the Buddha’s crown.” This is not one Buddha sending forth light alone; the buddhas of the ten directions send it forth together, light coming and light going, “light and light crossing and interlacing were like a net of jeweled threads.” “Groves and trees, ponds and pools all proclaimed the sound of the Dharma”; the assembly “all universally attained the Vajra Samādhi”; the heavens rain down lotus flowers of a hundred jewels; “the great earth, mountains, and rivers of this Sahā world were for a time no longer seen; only the lands of the ten directions, as many as fine dust-motes, were seen merging into one realm, and Brahmā chanting and songs of praise arose of themselves.” When the twenty-four before him finished, nothing of this kind happened; only when Avalokiteśvara finishes does it happen.

Then the Buddha speaks to Mañjuśrī: “You now observe these twenty-five great bodhisattvas and arhats beyond training: each has told the expedient means by which he first attained the path, and all say that they cultivated true perfect penetration; their practices truly have no difference of superior and inferior, or of before and after.” He first sets the twenty-five gates level: all are true perfect penetration, with no superior or inferior, no before or after. Only then does he ask: “Now I wish to cause Ānanda to awaken: of these twenty-five practices, which suits his faculty? Moreover, after my extinction, for beings of this world who enter the bodhisattva vehicle and seek the unsurpassed path, through which gate of expedient means will accomplishment be easy?” Two questions: for Ānanda’s faculty, which gate suits? For the beings of this world after the Buddha’s extinction, which gate is easy to accomplish? The question is not which gate is higher, but which gate fits this person and this world. This is the premise of the selection: gate for gate they are equal; what is selected is the one that suits the faculty and is easy to accomplish.

VII. Mañjuśrī’s Verses: The Twin Sources of True and False, and the Twenty-Four Gates Assessed One by One

Mañjuśrī, “receiving the Buddha’s compassionate command, rose from his seat, bowed his head at the Buddha’s feet, and, sustained by the Buddha’s majestic spirit, spoke verses to the Buddha.” The verses are long: one hundred and twenty-two lines.

First he praises true and false. “The nature of the sea of awakening is clear and perfect; perfect and clear, the origin of awakening is wondrous; the original brightness, illuminating, gives rise to an object; once the object is set up, the illuminating nature is lost.” The nature of awakening is originally clear and perfect; the original brightness, once it illuminates, gives rise to something illuminated; once the object stands, the nature that illuminates is hidden. “Through delusion there is empty space; relying on space, worlds are established. False thinking, settling and congealing, becomes the lands; knowing and awareness become beings.” Space comes from delusion, worlds are established relying on space, the lands are what thinking settles into, beings are knowing and awareness. “Space arises within the great awakening like one bubble rising in the sea; the lands with outflows, as many as fine dust-motes, all arise from space. When the bubble is extinguished, space is originally nonexistent—how much more so the three existences?” Space within the great awakening is like one bubble on the sea; when the bubble bursts, space never was; how much less the three existences. This gathers into verse the passage of Fascicle Four, “The nature-awakening is necessarily bright; falsely it is taken as a bright awakening.” Then two lines of general principle: “Returning to the source, the nature is not two, yet the expedient means have many gates.” The nature to which one returns is not two; the expedient means are many gates. “The sagely nature penetrates everything; with or against the grain, all are expedients; but when beginners enter samādhi, slow and fast are not the same.” For the sage, every gate penetrates; for the beginner, the gates differ, and so slow and fast differ. The selection is made for the beginner.

Then the twenty-four gates, one verse for each gate, four lines to a verse, each ending with “how could one attain perfect penetration?”; only the verse on the dust of form ends “could one here attain perfect penetration?” The six dusts: form, “the essential brightness of discerning cannot see through it”; sound, “only those names, phrases, and syllables; one cannot contain all”; scent, “apart from it, it is originally nonexistent; what is sensed of it is not constant”; taste, “it must exist only at the time of tasting; its awareness is not constantly one”; touch, “joined and parted, its nature is not fixed”; dharmas, “relying on dust, there must be an object; subject and object cannot pervade and enter everywhere.” The five faculties: seeing, “it illumines what is in front, not what is behind; of the four directions and four corners, half is lacking”; the breath of the nose, “between going out and coming in there is no connecting breath; scattered and divided, they do not enter into each other”; the tongue, “when taste is gone, awareness is gone”; the body, “having limits and measures, they cannot merge in silent accord”; the knowing faculty, “mixed with confused thoughts; profound clarity is never seen in the end.” The six consciousnesses: the consciousness of seeing, “mixed within the union of the three; traced to its root, it cannot be called an appearance; its own substance is from the first without a fixed standard”; the consciousness of hearing, “The mind’s hearing that sees through the ten directions is born of the power of a vast causal ground; beginners cannot enter it”; the consciousness of the nose, “Contemplating the tip of the nose is originally an expedient device, only to make one gather the mind and abide; abiding then becomes a mind that dwells somewhere”; the consciousness of the tongue, “Speaking the Dharma uses sound and phrases; those who awaken are those already accomplished; names and phrases are not without outflows”; the consciousness of the body, “Keeping and breaking the precepts only restrain the body; without a body there is nothing to restrain; originally it cannot pervade everything”; the consciousness of mind, “Spiritual powers are originally causes from past lives; what have they to do with the discernment of dharmas? recollection clinging to conditions cannot leave things.” The seven elements: earth, “solid obstruction does not penetrate; the conditioned is not the sagely nature”; water, “thinking is not true and real; suchness is not attained by awareness-and-contemplation”; fire, “loathing existence is not true leaving; it is not an expedient for the beginner’s mind”; wind, “motion and stillness are not without opposition; having opposition, it is not unsurpassed awakening”; space, “dullness and obtuseness are from the first not awakening; without awakening, it differs from bodhi”; consciousness, “the consciousness contemplated is not constantly abiding; to set the mind on consciousness is false”; the element of the faculties, “All formations are impermanent; the nature of recollection is originally arising and ceasing; cause and effect are now felt differently.”

The twenty-four questions, each asking how one could attain perfect penetration, do not say that these twenty-four gates cannot attain it. The Buddha has already said that their practices “truly have no difference of superior and inferior.” What Mañjuśrī selects by are three conditions: complete, penetrating, constant. That form cannot be seen through is not complete; that sound “cannot contain all” is not complete; that scent is not constant is not constant; that touch, joined and parted, is not fixed, is not constant; that the breath of the nose is scattered and does not enter is not penetrating. To these he adds one more: the beginner. Of the consciousness of hearing, “beginners cannot enter it”; of fire, “it is not an expedient for the beginner’s mind.” Every gate was told by one who has already realized it; what Mañjuśrī asks is whether a beginner can enter by this gate.

VIII. Mañjuśrī’s Verses: The True Substance of Teaching in This Land Is Pure in Sound and Hearing

Then he praises Avalokiteśvara. “I now say to the World-Honored One: the Buddha appeared in the Sahā world; the true substance of teaching in this land is pure in sound and hearing; wishing to attain samādhi, one truly should enter through hearing.” In the Sahā world the substance of the teaching lies in sound and hearing: in this world the Buddha teaches with his voice, and beings hear the Dharma with their ears. Therefore to attain samādhi, one truly enters from within hearing. Then he praises Avalokiteśvara: “Leaving suffering and attaining liberation—excellent indeed is Avalokiteśvara! Through kalpas as many as the sands of the Ganges, entering buddha-lands as many as fine dust-motes, he attained the power of great mastery and bestows fearlessness on beings. Wondrous Sound, Observer of the World’s Sounds, Brahmā Sound, the Voice like the Ocean Tide—he rescues the world, so that all attain peace; leaving the world, they attain permanence.” Four names: Wondrous Sound, Observer of the World’s Sounds, Brahmā Sound, the Voice like the Ocean Tide.

Then he says why the ear faculty is complete, penetrating, and constant. Complete: “it is like a person dwelling quietly while drums are struck at once in the ten directions; in all ten places at one time he hears them: this is what is truly complete.” Drums struck in the ten directions at once are heard in all ten places at one time; the eye cannot see the ten directions at once. Penetrating: “The eye cannot see beyond an obstruction, and mouth and nose are also like this; the body faculty knows only in contact; the mind’s thoughts are tangled without a thread; hearing sounds through a wall, one can hear both far and near; what the other five faculties cannot reach: this is what is truly penetrating.” The eye cannot see past a wall; the ear hears through a wall, and far and near alike are heard. Constant: “The nature of sound has motion and stillness; in hearing it becomes existence and nonexistence; when there is no sound it is called not hearing, but it is not that hearing truly lacks its nature. When sound is absent, hearing does not cease; when sound is present, hearing does not arise; arising and ceasing are both perfectly left behind: this is what is truly constant.” When there is no sound it is called not hearing, but the nature of hearing has not gone; when sound is gone hearing does not cease, when sound comes hearing does not arise. This is what Fascicle Four said in testing hearing with the bell, said once more. “Even in sleep and dreams, it does not cease to exist because one is not thinking; awareness-and-contemplation goes beyond thinking, where body and mind cannot reach.” In a dream, not thinking, the nature of hearing is still not absent.

Then he speaks to the people of this world: “Now in this Sahā land, the teaching is made clear through discourse in sound; beings lose their original hearing and, following sound, therefore turn in the round.” The substance of the teaching in this land is sound, and beings are lost in sound as well: they turn in the round following sound, not knowing that there is an original hearing. “Even though Ānanda has a strong memory, he does not escape falling into deviant thinking; is it not that, right where he is sinking, by turning the flow back he could attain freedom from falsity?” Ānanda, with his wide learning and strong memory, still fell into the trouble with Mātaṅgī, because he sank following sound; turn the flow back, and there is freedom from falsity.

Then he addresses Ānanda: “Ānanda, listen carefully: I, sustained by the Buddha’s majestic power, proclaim the Vajra King, illusion-like and inconceivable, the true samādhi, mother of the buddhas.” Mañjuśrī names what he is about to speak: the Vajra King, illusion-like, inconceivable, mother of the buddhas. These names are also in the verses of Fascicle Five, “the jeweled awakening of the Vajra King, the illusion-like samādhi.” Then he says: “You have heard, of buddhas as many as fine dust-motes, all the secret Dharma-gates; if the outflow of desire is not first removed, hoarding much hearing turns into an error. You use hearing to hold the Dharma-gates of buddha after buddha; why not hear for yourself the nature that hears?” One has heard the secret gates of buddhas as many as dust-motes, yet if the outflow of desire is not removed, hearing itself turns into an error. One uses hearing to hold the Dharma of the buddhas; why not use hearing to hear one’s own hearing? This question is the turning point of the whole verse. “Hearing does not arise of itself; it has its name because of sound. Turn the nature of hearing back so that it slips free of sound, and what is it that slips free—what would it be called? Once one faculty has returned to its source, the six faculties all become liberated.” Hearing has its name only because of sound; turn hearing back and hearing slips free of sound, and what name could be given to what has slipped free? When one faculty returns to its source, the six faculties are liberated together. The words of Fascicle Four, “entering the one, without falsity, those six knowing faculties are at once purified,” have here become verse.

“Seeing and hearing are like an illusory film on the eye; the three realms are like flowers in the sky. When the nature of hearing is restored, the film on the faculty is removed; the dusts dissolve and awakening is perfect and pure; purity at its utmost, the light penetrates everywhere; still yet illuminating, it contains empty space. Coming back again to look at the world, it is like things in a dream. Mātaṅgī too is in a dream; who could detain your body?” Seeing and hearing are a film on the eye, the three realms are flowers in the sky; when hearing is restored, the film is removed, the dusts dissolve, and awakening is perfect and pure. At the utmost of purity the light penetrates everywhere; still yet illuminating, it contains empty space. Looking back at the world, it is a thing in a dream. Mātaṅgī too is in the dream; who could detain your body? This line speaks directly to Ānanda’s trouble.

Then the simile of the illusionist: “It is like a skillful illusionist in the world who conjures up many men and women: although one sees their faculties moving, they depend on one mechanism pulling them. When the mechanism stops, they return to stillness, and all the illusions become without nature. The six faculties are also like this: originally relying on one essential brightness, divided into six composites; when one place is brought to rest and restored, the six functions all cease.” The illusionist conjures men and women whose hands and feet all move, yet in truth one string pulls them; when the string stops, the illusions have no nature. The six faculties are the same: originally one essential brightness, divided into six composites; when one place comes to rest, the six functions all cease. “Dust and defilement dissolve in response to the thought, accomplishing perfect brightness, pure and wondrous; those with dust and defilement remaining are still at the stage of learning; brightness at its utmost is the Tathāgata.” Where some dust remains, one is still at the stage of learning; brightness at its utmost is the Tathāgata.

Then the conclusion: “Great assembly and Ānanda! Turn back your inverted hearing-mechanism, and turn hearing back to hear the self-nature that hears; the self-nature accomplishes the unsurpassed path; perfect penetration truly is like this.” Turn the inverted mechanism of hearing around; turn hearing back; hear the self-nature. These five characters are the title of the whole fascicle: turn hearing back to hear the self-nature that hears. “This is, for buddhas as many as fine dust-motes, the one road, the gate of nirvāṇa. The tathāgatas of the past have already accomplished it through this gate; the bodhisattvas of the present now each enter perfect brightness; those who cultivate and learn in the future should rely on such a Dharma. I too realized it through this; it is not Avalokiteśvara alone.” Not Avalokiteśvara alone realized it through this gate; Mañjuśrī himself realized it through this gate, and the buddhas of the three times all do. “Truly, as the Buddha, the World-Honored One, has asked me about the various expedient means, in order to rescue, in the final kalpa, those who seek to leave the world: to accomplish the mind of nirvāṇa, Avalokiteśvara is supreme. All the other expedient means are the Buddha’s majestic spirit; those that cast off the toils of the dusts in the matter at hand are not a teaching that can be long cultivated and learned, practiced alike by the shallow and the deep.” He answers the Buddha’s question: for the people of the final kalpa, Avalokiteśvara is supreme; the other gates are sustained by the Buddha’s majestic spirit, casting off the toils of the dusts in the matter at hand, and are not a Dharma that can be long cultivated and taught alike to the shallow and the deep. At the end: “I bow my head to the tathāgatagarbha, without outflows and inconceivable; may it sustain beings of the future so that they have no doubt about this gate. This expedient is easy to accomplish and fit to be used to teach Ānanda and those sinking in the final kalpa; only by cultivating with this one faculty, perfect penetration surpasses the rest: the true and real mind is like this.” Cultivating with this one faculty alone, perfect penetration surpasses the rest.

When the verses are finished, “Ānanda and the great assembly, clear in body and mind, gained the great disclosure and saw the Buddha’s bodhi and great nirvāṇa, like a person who has traveled far on some business and has not yet been able to return, yet already clearly knows the road by which he will return home.” They have not yet reached home, but they know the road home. The assembly of ten Ganges-sands “all obtained the original mind, far from dust, apart from defilement, and gained purity of the dharma-eye”; the bhikṣuṇī Prakṛti becomes an arhat; “Immeasurable beings all gave rise to the unequaled-equal mind of anuttarā samyaksaṃbodhi.” The bhikṣuṇī Prakṛti is the daughter of Mātaṅgī; the matter of Fascicle One is gathered up here.

IX. Ānanda Asks on Behalf of the Final Kalpa; the Buddha Teaches the Three Trainings without Outflows

Ānanda, “the traces of his mind’s practice perfectly bright,” with “sorrow and joy mingling”—sorrow that he has awakened only today, joy that he has awakened—“for the benefit of all beings of the future” bows his head and speaks to the Buddha. He cites what the Buddha has often said: “One not yet delivered who first delivers others: that is the bodhisattva’s resolve; one whose own awakening is complete and who can awaken others: that is the Tathāgata’s appearing in the world.” Then he says: “Although I am not yet delivered, I vow to deliver all beings of the final kalpa.” What he asks about is the final kalpa: “These beings are gradually farther from the Buddha, and deviant teachers who speak the Dharma are as many as the sands of the Ganges; if they wish to gather in their minds and enter samādhi, how are they to establish the bodhimaṇḍa, keep far from the doings of Māra, and not fall back or shrink from the bodhi-mind?” When the Buddha is gone and deviant teachers are as many as the sands of the Ganges, how are those who would gather in the mind and enter samādhi to establish the bodhimaṇḍa, keep far from the doings of Māra, and not fall back from the bodhi-mind?

From Fascicle One to Fascicle Six, what Ānanda asked about was his own affair: where the mind is, what seeing is, where the knot is. From this question on, he asks on behalf of the people of the final kalpa. The second half of Fascicle Six and Fascicle Seven both answer this one question.

The Buddha praises him, “Excellent! Excellent!”, and then says: “You have often heard me proclaim in the vinaya the three decisive meanings of cultivation: that is, gathering in the mind is precept, from precept arises concentration, from concentration wisdom is brought forth; this is called the three trainings without outflows.” Precept, concentration, wisdom: the three trainings, spoken of from the vinaya. Then he asks only one thing: “What is gathering in the mind that I call precept?” The four clear instructions that follow answer this one question: gathering in the mind is called precept; how is it gathered in?

X. The Four Decisive Pure and Clear Instructions

The structure of the four clear instructions is exactly the same. First one line of general principle: if beings of some kind “have minds that do not lust, they do not follow the continuity of birth and death.” Then the consequence of cultivating samādhi without cutting it off: “You cultivate samādhi originally to leave the toils of the dusts; if the lustful mind is not removed, the toils of the dusts cannot be left. Even if one has much wisdom and dhyāna appears before one, if lust is not cut off one will surely fall into the way of Māra.” Then the Dharma-ending age: “After my extinction, in the Dharma-ending age there will be many of these Māra people, flourishing in the world, widely practicing greed and lust, posing as good spiritual friends, causing beings to fall into the pit of love and views and lose the road to bodhi.” The Māra people do not come looking like Māra; they come looking like good spiritual friends, widely practicing greed and lust while teaching others, and so what beings fall into is the pit of love and views, and what they lose is the road to bodhi. Then the naming: “this is called the first decisive pure and clear instruction of the Tathāgata and the former buddhas, the World-Honored Ones.” Then a simile, and then one more line, “What I say thus is called the Buddha’s word; what is not said thus is the word of Pāpīyān.” All four follow this frame.

First, lust. Cultivating dhyāna without cutting off lust, “one will surely fall into the way of Māra: the superior grade become Māra kings, the middle grade Māra people, the lower grade Māra women.” The simile: “it is like steaming sand and stones wishing them to become rice: after a hundred thousand kalpas, they can only be called hot sand. Why? Because this was never the stuff of rice; it is made of sand and stones.” Sand is not the stuff of rice; however long one steams it, it is sand. “If you seek the Buddha’s wondrous fruit with a lustful body, even if you attain wondrous awakening, all of it is the root of lust.” Therefore “You must cause the mechanism of lust to be cut off in both body and mind, and even the nature of cutting off to be gone; then the Buddha’s bodhi can be hoped for.” Cut off in both body and mind, and even the nature that cuts off gone: only then can bodhi be hoped for.

Second, killing. Not cutting off killing, “one will surely fall into the way of spirits: those of the superior grade become ghosts of great power; those of the middle grade become flying yakṣas, ghost commanders, and the like; those of the lower grade become earth-walking rākṣasas.” These spirits and ghosts of the Dharma-ending age are “claiming that eating meat can attain the road to bodhi.” In this instruction the Buddha speaks of eating meat: “I allow the bhikṣus to eat the five kinds of pure meat; this meat is all produced by transformation through my spiritual power and originally has no life-faculty.” The land of brahmins is “mostly steamy and damp, and moreover sandy and stony, so that grasses and vegetables do not grow,” and the Buddha, “sustained by my spiritual power of great compassion, and because of great kindness and compassion,” provisionally named it meat. So after the Tathāgata’s extinction, that “those who eat the flesh of beings are still called sons of the Śākya”: the Buddha asks how this can be. Meat-eaters, “even if they attain an opening of the mind that resembles samādhi, are all great rākṣasas.” The simile: “like a person who stops up his own ears and shouts loudly, hoping that others will not hear: this is called wishing to hide, all the more exposed.” Pure bhikṣus, “walking on forked paths, do not tread on living grass—how much less pull it up with their hands? How can one speak of great compassion while taking the blood and flesh of beings as one’s food?” Then he extends it to the parts of their bodies: not wearing silk floss and silk cloth, boots, shoes, furs, and down, nor eating milk, curds, and ghee; “such bhikṣus are truly liberated in the world; they repay their old debts and do not wander in the three realms. Why? To wear and use parts of their bodies all becomes a condition with them.” “It is like a person who eats the hundred grains of the earth: his feet do not leave the earth.” Eat the grain of this earth, and one’s feet cannot leave this earth; wear the parts of beings’ bodies, and one cannot leave one’s ties with beings.

Third, stealing. Not cutting off stealing, “one will surely fall into the way of the deviant: the superior grade become sprites, the middle grade bewitching spirits, the lower grade deviant people possessed by the bewitching spirits.” What this instruction describes as stealing in the Dharma-ending age is not stealing goods but stealing the Dharma: “hiding their treachery and deceit, calling themselves good spiritual friends, and each saying that he has attained the dharma of a superior person; they deceive and delude the ignorant, frighten them so that they lose their minds, and wherever they pass, those families are ruined.” The Buddha teaches the bhikṣus to beg food: “These bhikṣus do not cook for themselves; they entrust the rest of their lives to others, lodging as travelers in the three realms, showing a single going and returning: once gone, they do not come back.” But thieves “borrow my robes” and peddle the Tathāgata, “creating all kinds of actions, all the while saying it is the Buddha’s Dharma”; “Instead they disparage the bhikṣus who have left home and are fully ordained, calling theirs the way of the Lesser Vehicle. Because of this they cause immeasurable beings to doubt and err, and to fall into the Avīci hell.” They themselves peddle the Tathāgata, and turn round to call the bhikṣus who keep the precepts the Lesser Vehicle. Then he speaks of the small cause of giving up the body: one who “before an image of the Tathāgata can light a lamp with his body, burn a finger-joint, or burn one stick of incense on his body, I say that this person’s old debts from beginningless time are repaid at once.” “If one does not make this small cause of giving up the body, even if one accomplishes the unconditioned, one must still be born as a human to repay one’s old debts, just as I ate the horse-fodder barley, exactly equal, without difference.” The Buddha himself repaid the old debt of the horse-fodder barley. The simile: “it is like a person pouring water into a leaking vessel, hoping to fill it: even after kalpas as many as dust-motes, it will never be full and level.” A leaking cup cannot be filled. Bhikṣus, “apart from their robes and bowls, store up not the least thing, give what is left from their begged food to hungry beings,” “treat those who beat and abuse them as equal to those who praise them,” share “their body’s flesh, bones, and blood with beings,” and “do not take the Tathāgata’s teachings of incomplete meaning and turn them into their own understanding, misleading beginning learners.”

Fourth, great false speech. This instruction differs from the first three: “even if in body and mind they are free of killing, stealing, and lust, the three practices being complete, if they commit great false speech, their samādhi cannot be pure; they become the Māra of love and views and lose the seed of the Tathāgata.” The first three fall into the ways of Māra, of spirits, of the deviant; this one loses the seed of the Tathāgata. What great false speech is: “claiming to have attained what one has not attained, claiming to have realized what one has not realized; or, seeking to be honored as foremost in the world.” Saying to the person before one, “I have now attained the fruit of srota-āpanna, the fruit of sakṛdāgāmin, the fruit of anāgāmin, the path of the arhat, the vehicle of the pratyekabuddha, the ten grounds and the bodhisattvas of the stages before the grounds,” “seeking people’s bows and repentance, greedy for their offerings.” “It is like a person who cuts down a tāla tree with a knife: the Buddha predicts that such a person loses his roots of goodness forever”: a tāla tree, once its crown is cut, does not grow again. Then the Buddha says that after his extinction he sends bodhisattvas and arhats “to be born in response-bodies in that Dharma-ending age, taking all kinds of forms to deliver those revolving in the round,” as śramaṇas, white-robed householders, human kings, magistrates, young boys, young girls, “and so on up to prostitutes, widows, adulterers and thieves, butchers and peddlers,” working alongside them, “yet they never say of themselves, ‘I am a true bodhisattva, a true arhat,’ leaking the Buddha’s secret cause by speaking lightly to those not yet learned; except only at the end of their lives, when there is a hidden bequest.” A true bodhisattva does not say he is a bodhisattva; only at death may he quietly leave a word. So those who claim to have attained what they have not “confuse beings and commit great false speech.” The simile: “it is like carving human excrement into the form of sandalwood and hoping for fragrance: there is no such possibility.” And again: “It is like a poor man who falsely calls himself an emperor and brings execution on himself; how much less may the Dharma King be falsely usurped? When the ground of the cause is not straight, the fruit invites crookedness.” When the ground of the cause is not straight, the fruit is crooked. “If bhikṣus have minds like a straight bowstring, true in everything, they enter samādhi and are forever without the doings of Māra.”

The order of the four is lust, killing, stealing, false speech; the Buddha himself says they must “first cut off the lust of the mind,” “next they must cut off killing,” “after that they must cut off stealing,” “after that they must also cut off all great false speech.” The first three all say “minds that do not”: minds that do not lust, minds that do not kill, minds that do not steal; the fourth, carrying on from the three practices, says “even if in body and mind they are free of killing, stealing, and lust, the three practices being complete, if they commit great false speech, their samādhi cannot be pure.” It is gathering in the mind that is precept, not gathering in the body. That is why it ends with “minds like a straight bowstring.”

The first half of this fascicle teaches perfect penetration through the ear faculty; the second half teaches the four clear instructions; they look like two matters. But what Ānanda asked was how beings are to “gather in their minds and enter samādhi,” and what the Buddha answered was “gathering in the mind is precept”; Mañjuśrī said “if the outflow of desire is not first removed, hoarding much hearing turns into an error,” and the first of the four clear instructions is lust. Turning hearing back to hear the self-nature is the entrance; the four decisive pure and clear instructions are the four outflows to be cut off before the entrance. Without the second half, the first half is only “hoarding much hearing.”

Carrying Forward — The True Realization by Turning Hearing Back

What has gone before is the meaning of the sūtra text itself. What follows looks on from the side, with a commentator’s eye—the commentary is not the sūtra; it is the same matter seen from another position.

Zixuan outlines this gate as “the true realization by turning hearing back,” and says why Avalokiteśvara’s gate is placed last: “Now because the meaning of perfect penetration is broad, with the celebration following upon it and the command to select linked to it, it is spoken last, to show that it reaches the utmost of the true and real. Had it been spoken first, with the buddhas sending forth light to celebrate and praise this gate, the other sages would have had no merit. Had it not been celebrated and praised, it would not have been shown that this gate is true perfect penetration. Therefore it is now outlined as turning hearing back to the true and real.” If the ear faculty had been spoken first, and the Buddha had sent forth light to celebrate it, the other twenty-four sages would have had no merit; if it had not been celebrated, it would not have been shown that this gate is the true perfect penetration. So it is placed last.

On “entered the stream and let the object of hearing vanish,” Zixuan says: “Entering the stream is like turning the stream back. At first one contemplates the nature of hearing, turning the light back and leaving conditions, not following the flowing, arising, and ceasing of the dusts before one; therefore it says ‘entered the stream and let the object vanish.’” And on motion and stillness: “Because the appearance of sound that is the condition is no longer followed, it is still and does not arise; arising is motion, and once the appearance of motion is gone, stillness too does not arise, for the objects of motion and stillness are what the ear takes hold of.” Motion and stillness are both objects the ear takes hold of; when the object is gone neither of the two arises. He matches this passage to the three emptinesses of Fascicle Five: “Arising and ceasing having ceased: this concludes the three wisdoms above, the three emptinesses exhausted. Emptying in turn, all of it belongs to arising and ceasing; here it reaches its utmost, and therefore it says having ceased. The true principle of non-arising, the wondrous nature still and constant, appears clearly; therefore it says stillness-and-extinction appeared before me.” Hearing and what is heard exhausted, awareness and what it is aware of empty, the emptying and what is emptied extinguished: these are the three emptinesses; the three emptinesses are also arising and ceasing, and only when all have ceased is there stillness-and-extinction. He also says this is “the perfect cultivation of the threefold contemplation in one mind.”

To the two excellences Zixuan matches the three virtues: “The stillness-and-extinction appearing before him, above, is the virtue of severance; the wondrous mind of original awakening is the virtue of wisdom; the two powers of kindness and compassion are the virtue of grace. Since the cultivation is perfect, the three virtues are perfectly realized.” Of joining with the mind of the buddhas: “joining, one attains bliss, and so has the same power of kindness.” Of joining with beings: “joining, one sees that they have originally accomplished the buddha-path yet wander in vain, and so one has yearning compassion for them.” Seeing that beings have originally accomplished the buddha-path and yet wander of their own accord: that is why there is compassion. “From here on, the manifesting of responses and the pulling out of suffering all flow forth from these two.” The thirty-two responses and the fourteen fearlessnesses all flow from these two lines.

Of the fourteen fearlessnesses Zixuan fixes the substance in one line: “Where there is distress he surely aids; where there is danger he surely rescues; the frightened obtain peace; all this is called fearlessness, and great compassion is its substance.” Of the first fearlessness, “because I do not observe sound itself but observe the one who observes,” he says: “Because I do not observe the sounds heard but only observe the nature of hearing, sounds become still of themselves and the appearance of hearing does not arise; the objects of dust do not bind, and liberation comes of itself.” Of the four inconceivables he says that “their virtues and functions are surpassing, beyond the reach of words and knowledge; this discloses the marks of the merit and virtue of the substance of the great round mirror.”

Of “the samādhi of perfect illumination,” Zixuan says it “is the samādhi of one practice. That is, at first one takes the real mark as one’s condition; reaching the object is the middle, and nothing is not true and real; one binds the condition to the dharma-realm, and one thought is the dharma-realm; therefore it says the conditioning mind at ease. This is the śūraṅgama concentration that the whole sūtra takes as its ground, what Mañjuśrī praises as attaining true perfect penetration, what the buddhas crossing their lights celebrate together in this account.” Here he adds a word of exhortation: “May later students, reaching this point, take care to keep it in mind, and not treat it as a passing matter.”

Of the Buddha’s saying that the twenty-five gates “truly have no difference of superior and inferior,” Zixuan says: “The essential of cultivation is to aim at entering the real; now all have gained realization, and so there is no superior or inferior. Yet the days and kalpas multiply one another, and so there come to be differences of before and after.” Once realized, none is superior or inferior; yet in slowness and speed there is the difference of a day and a kalpa. This is Mañjuśrī’s “when beginners enter samādhi, slow and fast are not the same.” Why Mañjuśrī first praises true and false, Zixuan says: “About to select among the gates of practice, he first clarifies true and false, for if there were no delusion and awakening, how could there be cultivation?” On “Returning to the source, the nature is not two, yet the expedient means have many gates,” he cites the Sūtra of Perfect Awakening: “Unsurpassed wondrous awakening pervades the ten directions and gives birth to the tathāgatas; with all dharmas it is of one substance and equal; in all cultivation there is truly no duality, while the expedient means that accord with it are numberless.”

On “the true substance of teaching in this land is pure in sound and hearing,” Zixuan says: “In the Sahā world the ear faculty is the sharpest, and so sound is used to do the Buddha’s work. From the ear faculty consciousness arises and hears sound, drawing forth the wisdom of hearing in the sixth consciousness, which takes names, phrases, and syllables as its condition and permeates them into seeds of understanding, received as the substance of the teaching; therefore it says the substance of the teaching lies in sound and hearing.” Of the four names, “Wondrous Sound, Observer of the World’s Sounds, Brahmā Sound, the Voice like the Ocean Tide,” he says: “Wondrous Sound is the substance; Observer of the World’s Sounds is the function; they are also the two truths, real and conventional, and also benefiting oneself and benefiting others. Brahmā means pure, and explains the substance. The ocean tide never fails its time, and explains the function.”

On “Turn the nature of hearing back so that it slips free of sound, and what is it that slips free—what would it be called?” Zixuan says: “If one can leave conditions and contemplate the nature, the appearance of hearing does not arise, the objects of motion and stillness are gone, and subject and object no longer bind; this is called release. Since bondage cannot be found, release too has no name.” There is no bondage to be found, so release too has no name. On “purity at its utmost, the light penetrates everywhere; still yet illuminating, it contains empty space,” he matches the three virtues: “Purity at its utmost means that full purity, release, is complete. The light penetrating everywhere means that full awakening, prajñā, is furnished. Still yet illuminating means that the true principle, the Dharma-body, is at its utmost. The three virtues being perfect, the three obstructions are forever ended; it is like waking from a great dream, like a lotus opening; looking back at the world, what is there to detain or obstruct one?”

After Ānanda’s request, when the Buddha teaches the three trainings without outflows, Zixuan says why only precept is taught: “Because the two gates of concentration and wisdom have been taught before, this accords with the vinaya and speaks of permanence, the same as the Nirvāṇa.” Concentration and wisdom have been taught above, so here only precept is taught. On “minds that do not lust,” he cites the Sūtra of Perfect Awakening: “All beings establish their nature and life through lust and desire.” And he says: “Know that in the round of rebirth love is the root; because there are desires that assist and bring forth the nature of love, they can make birth and death continue.” On the instruction against great false speech he says: “The cause of false speech arises from greed, delusion, and conceit; if these are not cut off, love and views come to be.”

On “minds like a straight bowstring” at the end of the fascicle, Zixuan says: “At all times wholly without falsehood: one who is like this truly seeks the path, and how could he not swiftly arrive? If one displays marks and parades a form, falsely claims to have attained the path, harbors flattery and crookedness within and schemes for fame without, can that be called cultivation?” He cites the Lotus as witness: “Evil bhikṣus of the turbid age, with wrong wisdom and minds flattering and crooked, claim to have attained what they have not attained, their minds full of conceit.”

The closing line of the fascicle reads in the base text “What I say thus is called the Buddha’s word; what is not said thus is the word of Pāpīyān,” while Zixuan’s text reads “What I say is called the Buddha’s word; what is not said thus is the word of Pāpīyān.” In the base text the four closings are not written alike: the first two clear instructions use one word for ‘thus,’ the third another, and the fourth a third, three wordings in all; Zixuan’s text gives the fourth with the wording of the third. This edition follows the base text, and records the variant here.

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

At the end of Fascicle Six the Buddha answers Ānanda’s question, “how is gathering in the mind what I call the precepts?”, speaks the four decisive pure and clear instructions on lust, killing, stealing, and false speech, and closes with “minds like a straight bowstring.” Fascicle Seven takes up from here. Under the fascicle title there is again an interlinear note, “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and a single line of attribution, “Translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of India, of the Tang.” Fascicle Six writes the translator’s name with one character and this fascicle with another; the two fascicles differ, and this book records each as the base text has it, without making them uniform.

This fascicle has three matters. First, following the four instructions, the Buddha says: when the precepts are kept pure and bright as ice and frost, the doings of Māra have nowhere to arise; but habits from former lives are not what the precepts of this life can extinguish, so he teaches the recitation of the divine spell, and then the method of establishing the bodhimaṇḍa: the white ox of the Snow Mountains, the paste of ten fragrances, the eight-cornered altar, the eight mirrors and sixteen lotuses, three sevens of days of walking the path. Second, Ānanda asks for the spell; the World-Honored One emits light from his fleshy crown-knot, and within the light a transformation Tathāgata proclaims the divine spell. When the spell is spoken, the Buddha tells the merit of this spell, and the vajra beings, the devas, the ghosts and spirits, and the bodhisattvas Vajragarbha King of the ten directions each vow to protect and uphold. Third, Ānanda asks about the stages of cultivation: the ground of dry wisdom, the forty-four minds, entering the grounds, equal awakening. The Buddha does not answer the stages first. He first says, “the wondrous nature is perfectly bright, apart from all names and marks; from the beginning there are no worlds and no beings,” then speaks the two causes, the inversion of beings and the inversion of the world, and then opens the twelve classes of beings. The fascicle ends here, with the closing title “The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Myriad Practices, Śūraṅgama, Fascicle Seven.” After the closing title the Taishō appends a Dhāraṇī of the Ming recension, its phrases numbered up to four hundred and twenty-seven; this book makes it an appendix section at the end of the fascicle.

Zixuan divides this fascicle thus: leaving Māra by other-power, answering the request with a full exposition, properly speaking the divine spell, narrating the powers of the spell, protection, and showing the differences among the stages of the grounds. Following him, this book divides it into twenty-six sections: one on summing up the foregoing, one exhorting the recitation of the divine spell, one briefly showing the method of upholding, one for the question, four on the altar, one for the request for the spell, one on the transformation Buddha appearing, one on speaking the words of the spell, three on the merit of the spell, one on protection, one for Ānanda’s question, one for the praise and permission, one showing delusion and awakening in general, one exhorting recognition of the cause of falsity, one narrating the cause of inversion in general, one on the inversion of beings, one on the inversion of the world, one listing the headings, one explaining the twelve classes separately, one concluding with the names of the classes, and one appendix, the Dhāraṇī of the Ming recension.

This book takes ‘the divine spell’ as the title of this fascicle. The two characters are the base text’s own: “the unsurpassed divine spell,” “the divine spell that was spoken, one hundred and eight times,” “the Buddha-Crown divine spell,” “proclaimed the divine spell,” “write out this divine spell.” Zixuan names the central gate of this fascicle “properly speaking the divine spell,” and this book takes that for its title.

II. Precepts First, the Spell as Aid: Leaving Māra by Other-Power

The Buddha first draws Fascicle Six to a close: “Ānanda! You asked about gathering in the mind; I now first speak of the wondrous gate of entering samādhi and of cultivation and learning. Those who seek the bodhisattva path must first uphold these four rules of discipline, pure and bright as ice and frost, so that of themselves they cannot put forth any branches or leaves; then the three of mind and four of speech will certainly have no cause from which to arise.” The four rules of discipline are the four instructions. Ice and frost put forth no branches and leaves: the precepts do not press the branches down; they leave them no place to grow. Of the three of mind and four of speech the base text says only “the three of mind and four of speech will certainly have no cause from which to arise,” without opening the list of names, and this book does not open it either. Then one sentence concludes: “If these four matters are not lost or forgotten, the mind does not even climb after forms, smells, tastes, and touches; from where, then, would any of the doings of Māra arise?” The doings of Māra arise from climbing after the dusts; when the mind does not climb after the dusts, the doings of Māra have no door.

But there is one thing the precepts do not reach: “If there are habits from former lives that cannot be extinguished, teach that person to recite with a single mind my Buddha-Crown Light, the Mahā-sitātapatra, the unsurpassed divine spell.” Habits from former lives are brought from past lives; they are not what the precepts of this life can remove at a stroke. This is the place of the divine spell in this sūtra: the precepts govern what is made in this life, the spell governs what is brought from the past. The spell is not another road; it is an aid set above the precepts. The Buddha says what this spell is: “This is the heart-spell spoken by the Tathāgata’s invisible crown-mark, the unconditioned mind-buddha, sending forth radiance from the crown and seated upon a jeweled lotus flower.” The invisible crown-mark is the Buddha’s crown; the unconditioned mind-buddha is the buddha transformed out of the light sent forth from the crown; the heart-spell is what this transformation buddha speaks. The passage later in the fascicle, “Then from his fleshy crown-knot the World-Honored One welled forth a light of a hundred jewels,” is the scene this sentence describes.

The example given is Mātaṅgī: “Moreover, between you and Mātaṅgī in former lives there were causes and conditions running through kalpas and the habit-energy of love and affection, not for one life only, nor for one kalpa only; yet as soon as I proclaimed this spell, her loving mind fell away forever and she became an arhat.” This is the event of Fascicle One: Ānanda was bound by the deviant art of Mātaṅgī’s daughter, and Mañjuśrī went to rescue him bearing the spell. The habit-energy of love and affection through kalpas, and at one proclamation by the Buddha the loving mind fell away forever. Then the Buddha turns it round upon Ānanda: “She was a woman of lust, with no mind to cultivate, and yet, aided in secret by its divine power, she quickly realized the state beyond training; how much less difficult, then, for you śrāvakas in this assembly, who seek the supreme vehicle, to be certain of becoming buddhas? It is like tossing dust into a following wind; what hardship or danger is there?” A woman of lust with no mind to cultivate still reached the state beyond training by the secret aid of the spell’s power; the śrāvakas in the assembly, who do have the mind to seek the supreme vehicle, with the spell’s power to support them, are like dust tossed into a following wind: what hardship is there? This is encouragement, not a guarantee. The conditions that follow still stand: choosing a teacher, keeping the precepts, reciting the spell. The altar is the method shown for those who will sit in a bodhimaṇḍa; the merit of reciting and upholding without making an altar the sūtra states separately later.

III. Briefly Showing the Method of Upholding: Choosing a Teacher, Keeping the Precepts, Reciting the Spell, Three Sevens of Days

Whoever in the final age would sit in a bodhimaṇḍa must first have the precepts: “If in the final age there are those who wish to sit in a bodhimaṇḍa, they must first uphold the pure prohibitive precepts of a bhikṣu, and must choose as their teacher a śramaṇa foremost in the purity of the precepts. If they do not meet a truly pure monk, their precepts and rules of discipline certainly cannot be accomplished.” The precepts are received from a person, and the person who confers them must himself be pure; where no truly pure monk is met, the precepts are not accomplished. The altar section later says this once more: “If, of this bhikṣu’s original preceptor and the ten bhikṣus and others of the same assembly, even one is not pure, such a bodhimaṇḍa for the most part cannot be accomplished.” When the teacher is not pure, the disciple’s precepts have no root; when the root is not established, the altar is not accomplished.

Only after the precepts are accomplished does one come to the spell: “Once the precepts are accomplished, they put on new and clean robes, burn incense and dwell at leisure, and recite this divine spell spoken by the mind-buddha one hundred and eight times; after that they bind the boundary and establish the bodhimaṇḍa.” The order is: precepts accomplished, clean robes, incense, dwelling at leisure, the spell one hundred and eight times, binding the boundary, building the altar. Then one asks of the buddhas: “ask the unsurpassed tathāgatas now dwelling in the lands of the ten directions to emit the light of great compassion and pour it upon their crowns.”

The response: “extinguishing greed and lust in their minds and upholding the Buddha’s pure precepts, they make the bodhisattva vows in the bodhimaṇḍa, bathe whenever they go out or come in, and walk the path in the six periods of the day and night. If they go without sleep in this way through three sevens of days, I myself appear before such a person, stroke the crown, comfort, and cause the person to awaken.” Three sevens of days without sleep, walking the path in the six periods, and the Buddha himself appears and strokes the crown. This is the outline of the altar section that follows; the altar section spells out what is done in each of the three sevens.

IV. The Altar: The White Ox, the Ten Fragrances, the Eight-Cornered Altar, the Mirrors

Ānanda asks: “For those who cultivate and establish a bodhimaṇḍa in the Dharma-ending age, how should the boundary be bound so as to accord with the pure rules of the Buddha, the World-Honored One?” He asks about the rules; the Buddha answers with the making of an altar, from the ground to the images, from the first day to the hundredth.

The ground: “they first take a white ox of great strength from the Snow Mountains; it eats the rich, fragrant grasses of those mountains, this ox drinks only the clear water of the Snow Mountains, and its dung is very fine; they may take its dung, mix it with sandalwood, and use it to plaster the ground.” Where there is no white ox of the Snow Mountains, one uses the yellow earth from five feet down on level ground, mixed with ten fragrances: sandalwood, aloeswood, storax, frankincense, turmeric, white gum, costus, lingling herb, spikenard, and clove; “these ten are finely sifted into powder, combined with the earth to make a paste, and used to plaster the ground. Sixteen feet across, an eight-cornered altar is built.”

The heart of the altar: a lotus flower of gold, silver, copper, or wood, a bowl set in the flower, the bowl filled with the dew of the eighth month, flowers and leaves placed in the water. “Eight round mirrors are taken and each is set in its direction, surrounding the flower and the bowl.” Outside the mirrors, sixteen lotuses and sixteen censers, burning aloeswood alone, without letting the fire be seen. Sixteen vessels of white ox milk and the various foods, set round outside the flowers, offered to the buddhas and bodhisattvas. At each mealtime and in the middle of the night, half a sheng of honey and three ge of ghee are cast into a small brazier and burned until the smoke is gone, as an offering to the buddhas and bodhisattvas.

The walls: on the four walls are arranged the images of the tathāgatas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions; in the place facing the sun hang Locana, Śākya, Maitreya, Akṣobhya, and Amitābha, with Avalokiteśvara and Vajragarbha to left and right; Śakra, the Brahmā king, Ucchuṣma, Nīlakaṇṭha, the Kuṇḍalīs, Bhṛkuṭī, the four heavenly kings, Vina and Yaka beside the doors. Then the last thing: “Again eight mirrors are taken and hung upside down in the empty air. They face the mirrors set in the altar-ground, face to face, so that their forms and reflections interpenetrate layer upon layer.” Eight mirrors on the altar, eight mirrors in the air, face to face, forms and reflections layer upon layer. This is the eye of the whole altar. Later it says, “the tathāgatas of the ten directions appear all at once, and where the lights of the mirrors cross, they receive the Buddha’s stroking of the crown”: the buddhas appear where the lights of the mirrors cross.

The three sevens: “In the first seven days, they bow their heads with utmost sincerity to the tathāgatas of the ten directions, the great bodhisattvas, and the arhats, and constantly, in the six periods, recite the spell while circling the altar, walking the path with the whole mind. In each period they constantly walk it one hundred and eight times.” “In the second seven days, they single-mindedly make the bodhisattva vows, with no break in the mind. In my vinaya there is already earlier instruction on making vows.” “In the third seven days, through the twelve hours they single-mindedly recite and uphold the Buddha’s Ātapatra spell. On the seventh day, the tathāgatas of the ten directions appear all at once, and where the lights of the mirrors cross, they receive the Buddha’s stroking of the crown.” The first seven: bowing to the buddhas, reciting the spell, circling the altar. The second seven: making the vows. The third seven: upholding the spell single-mindedly. Three things done in three sevens, not all at once.

The fruit: “After the three sevens of days, they sit upright in retreat; when a hundred days have passed, those of sharp faculties, without rising from their seats, attain the state of srota-āpanna. Even if the sagely fruit in their body and mind is not yet accomplished, they know for certain for themselves that they will become buddhas without error.” After the three sevens there are still a hundred days of retreat. Those of sharp faculties attain the state of srota-āpanna; those who have not attained the sagely fruit still know for certain for themselves that they will become buddhas without error. “You asked about the bodhimaṇḍa; this is how it is established.” Ānanda asked about the rules; the Buddha’s answer ends here.

This whole section is concrete things: ox, earth, incense, bowl, mirrors, images, cakes, honey, banners. This book does not assign a symbolic meaning to each thing; the base text does not. In one place only the sūtra itself points out the meaning: mirror faces mirror, “their forms and reflections interpenetrate layer upon layer,” and the buddhas appear “where the lights of the mirrors cross.” The center of the altar is not the images; it is the mirrors.

V. The Request for the Spell, the Transformation Buddha Appearing, the Words of the Spell

Ānanda bows and asks for the spell, telling his own story: “Since I left the household life, relying on the Buddha’s loving care, for the sake of seeking much learning I have not yet realized the unconditioned; I was bound by the deviant art of Brahmā, and though my mind was clear, my strength was not my own to command, and fortunately I met Mañjuśrī, who brought about my release.” Then he says why he asks again: “Though I received the Tathāgata’s Buddha-Crown divine spell and secretly gained its power, I have not yet heard it with my own ears. I only hope that the Great Compassionate One will proclaim it again, in pity rescuing those in this assembly who cultivate, and those who in the final age and in the time to come are within the round, so that receiving the Buddha’s secret sounds they may be liberated in body and mind!” In Fascicle One Mañjuśrī went to the rescue bearing the spell, and Ānanda received the spell’s power, but he did not hear the spell himself. Now he asks the Buddha to proclaim it openly, for this assembly and for the time to come. Then the whole great assembly “bowed together, waiting to hear the Tathāgata’s secret phrases.”

The transformation Buddha appears: “Then from his fleshy crown-knot the World-Honored One welled forth a light of a hundred jewels; from the light welled forth a thousand-petaled jeweled lotus; the transformation Tathāgata sat within the jeweled flower, and from his crown emitted ten rays of hundred-jeweled light; in each ray there appeared everywhere Vajra Secret-Trace spirits as many as the sands of ten Ganges, bearing mountains and holding vajra-clubs, filling the whole realm of empty space.” Light from the Buddha’s crown, a lotus within the light, a transformation buddha within the flower, light again from the crown of the transformation buddha, and within that light vajra beings as many as the sands of ten Ganges. One transformation and then another. The great assembly, “holding both fear and love, seeking the Buddha as their refuge, listened with a single mind as that tathāgata of the invisible crown-mark, emitting light, proclaimed the divine spell.” It is this transformation Tathāgata who speaks the spell, not Śākya opening his own mouth; what the Buddha said at the head of the fascicle, “the heart-spell spoken by the unconditioned mind-buddha, sending forth radiance from the crown and seated upon a jeweled lotus flower,” is this scene.

Then the spell. The base text first has a line of title: “the Great Buddha-Crown Tathāgata’s Emitted Light, Sitātapatra, the Chapter on the Myriad Practices of the Bodhisattvas, copied out from the Consecration Section; also called the Divine Spell of the Great Vajra Bodhimaṇḍa of the Consecration Maṇḍala of Nālandā in Central India.” The spell runs to four hundred and thirty-nine phrases; the base text numbers them by phrase, and closes with a line: “These phrases of the spell above number four hundred and thirty-nine in all.” The spell is a transcription of Sanskrit sounds and, following the example of the ancient masters, is not translated. The Plain Reading of this book does not render it word by word, and this Exposition does not explain the meaning of the phrases of the spell; it says only what the spell does in this fascicle. The reasons for not translating, as the ancient masters gave them, are in the section Carrying Forward.

VI. The Tathāgatas of the Ten Directions, by This Heart of the Spell

When the spell is spoken, the Buddha tells Ānanda the merit of this spell. First the buddhas: “These wondrous phrases of the secret gāthā of the Buddha-Crown Gathering of Light, Sitātapatra, give birth to all the buddhas of the ten directions. The tathāgatas of the ten directions, by this heart of the spell, attain unsurpassed Right and Universal Knowledge and awakening.” Then ten sentences in a row, each one “the tathāgatas of the ten directions,” doing this or that by “this heart of the spell”: holding this heart of the spell, they subdue the Māras and overcome the outside paths; riding this heart of the spell, they sit upon jeweled lotus flowers and appear in response in lands as many as fine dust motes; holding this heart of the spell within, they turn the great Dharma wheel in lands as many as fine dust motes; upholding this heart of the spell, they stroke people’s crowns and confer predictions in the ten directions, “and when their own fruit was not yet accomplished, they too received predictions from the buddhas in the ten directions”; relying on this heart of the spell, they rescue beings from the many sufferings in the ten directions; following this heart of the spell, they serve good teachers in the ten directions; practicing this heart of the spell, they gather in those with close causes in the ten directions; reciting this heart of the spell, they accomplish unsurpassed awakening, sit beneath the bodhi tree, and enter great nirvāṇa; “the tathāgatas of the ten directions transmit this heart of the spell, and after their extinction entrust the affairs of the Buddha-Dharma to be upheld to the end.” From the attaining of right awakening to the entry into nirvāṇa to the entrusting of the Dharma, the whole of a buddha’s life is tied to these two words, “heart of the spell.”

The heart of the spell is not some one phrase of the spell. By it the tathāgatas of the ten directions become buddhas, subdue the Māras, teach the Dharma, confer predictions, entrust the Dharma. This passage speaks of the buddhas relying on this heart of the spell; within it the sentence “when their own fruit was not yet accomplished, they too received predictions from the buddhas in the ten directions” takes in even those in the stage of cause whose fruit is not yet accomplished. So when the merit of upholding the spell is told later, it is told of the practitioner; first the buddhas rely on this heart of the spell, and only then does the practitioner uphold this spell.

The merit cannot be told to the end: “If I were to proclaim this Buddha-Crown Gathering of Light Ātapatra spell from morning to evening, sound following sound, with no phrase repeated in between, through kalpas as many as the Ganges’ sands, I could still never finish.” And the spell is given a name: “This spell is also called the Tathāgata’s crown.” Then one sentence turns to the fault of not upholding it: “You who are still in training, who have not yet wholly left the round, and who have set your minds with utmost sincerity on the fruit of arhatship, if you do not uphold this spell and yet sit in a bodhimaṇḍa, and wish your body and mind to be far from the doings of Māra, there is no such possibility.” For one still in training to sit in a bodhimaṇḍa without upholding this spell and expect to be far from the doings of Māra: there is no such thing. This sentence joins back to the head of the fascicle, “if there are habits from former lives that cannot be extinguished”: the head of the fascicle says that those with habits from former lives must recite the spell; here it says that all who sit in a bodhimaṇḍa must uphold the spell.

VII. The Power of Upholding the Spell, and Protection

Then the practitioner. First the lowest level: those who cannot even recite. “even if this person’s mind is dull and cannot recite or memorize it, so long as it is carried on the body or written in the house, know that in this person’s whole life no poison of any kind can harm them.” Written on birch bark or palm leaf and carried about, and no poison can harm one. Then the Buddha says, “I now speak this spell again for you: it rescues and protects the world, lets people gain great fearlessness, and accomplishes the world-transcending wisdom of beings,” and tells it item by item: fire cannot burn, water cannot drown, poisons cannot harm, evil spells cannot attach; the clans of the bodhisattva Vajragarbha King attend day and night, “Even if beings, with scattered minds and not in samādhi, recall it in the mind and recite it with the mouth, these vajra kings constantly follow those sons of good family; how much more those who have decisively set forth the bodhi-mind?” If even one who upholds the spell with a scattered mind is so attended, one of decisive bodhi-mind need not be mentioned. Beyond attending, they open up the spirit and consciousness: “this person’s mind at once can remember the events of eighty-four thousand kalpas as many as the Ganges’ sands, knowing them all everywhere, and gains freedom from doubt.” From the first kalpa to the last body they are not born in evil places; they are not born into poverty and low station; “Even if these beings themselves do no meritorious deeds, all the merit of the tathāgatas of the ten directions is given to this person,” they are always born in one place together with the buddhas, “their measureless merits gather together like a cluster of akṣa seeds, permeated and cultivated in the same place, never scattering”; the precept-roots of those who have broken the precepts become pure, those who have not received the precepts receive them; after upholding the spell, the offenses of breaking the precepts are extinguished at once, “Even if they make no altar, do not enter a bodhimaṇḍa, and do not walk the path, if they recite and uphold this spell, it is the same as the merit of entering the altar and walking the path”; the deeds of former lives are “like snow melted by hot water, and before long they will all awaken to the acceptance of non-arising”; those who seek sons and daughters gain sons and daughters, those who seek long life gain long life; where a land meets famine, pestilence, and war, the spell is written and set at the four gates of the city, and the disasters are extinguished; wind and rain come in season, the five grains are abundant; evil stars do not enter, “Twelve yojanas become a ground where the boundary is bound, which all evil disasters and ill omens can never enter.”

This long passage pushes outward layer by layer, from poison, fire, water, ghosts, offenses, deeds, birth, death, to the land, the year, the stars, and at the last draws back into one sentence: “Therefore the Tathāgata proclaims this spell to protect, in ages to come, the beginners among those who cultivate as they enter samādhi, so that their body and mind are at ease and they gain great peace and security.” To protect beginners as they enter samādhi: this is the spell’s proper place in this sūtra. What came before is reached in passing; this sentence is the main statement. Then the Buddha gives his own word as surety: “if according to the altar-ground I have described you keep the precepts as the Dharma prescribes, and the preceptor from whom you received the precepts is a pure monk, and you uphold this heart of the spell without doubt or regret; if such sons of good family do not attain penetration of the mind in this body born of father and mother, the tathāgatas of the ten directions would be speaking falsely.” The conditions are three: according to the altar, keeping the precepts as the Dharma prescribes, a pure preceptor; and then upholding the spell without doubt. With the three complete and penetration of the mind not attained, the tathāgatas of the ten directions would be speaking falsely.

The section on protection is six companies each making their vow. The vajra beings: “As the Buddha has said, we shall with sincere minds protect those who cultivate bodhi in this way.” The Brahmā king, Śakra, and the four heavenly kings: that all they do in their whole life may be as they wish. The yakṣa generals, the rākṣasa kings, the ghost kings and ghost commanders: that the bodhi-mind may quickly be complete. The devas of sun and moon, the masters of wind and rain, the lord of lightning, the retinues of the stars: that the bodhimaṇḍa be securely established and they gain fearlessness. The mountain spirits, the sea spirits, the wind-spirit kings, the devas of the formless realm: that bodhi be attained and there never be any doings of Māra. Last, and at greatest length, the bodhisattvas Vajragarbha King: “Such as we, by the merit-work we have cultivated, long ago accomplished bodhi yet do not take nirvāṇa; we constantly follow this spell, rescuing and protecting those of the final age who cultivate samādhi and practice rightly.” Long ago accomplished bodhi and not taking nirvāṇa, in order to follow this spell and protect the final age. “Even if the Māra king, the Maheśvara deva, seeks an opening on them, in the end he can find none. The lesser ghosts and spirits must all stay ten yojanas away from these good people, except those who have set their minds on delighting in the cultivation of dhyāna.” The lesser ghosts and spirits must keep ten yojanas away, unless they have set their minds on cultivating dhyāna. “I shall strike their heads to pieces with my jeweled club, like fine dust.”

Among the six companies, from the vajra beings to the ghost kings to the devas to the spirits of the land, are the very kinds that the four instructions of Fascicle Six said would come to disturb and would be subdued by the divine spell. Here they come themselves to vow protection. In the altar section the Buddha said, “the tathāgatas of the ten directions appear all at once”; in this section the ghosts and spirits of the ten directions arrive all at once too.

VIII. Ānanda Asks about the Stages; the Buddha First Speaks of the Wondrous Nature Perfectly Bright

Ānanda rises again and tells the benefit he has received: “We are dull and foolish, fond of much learning, and have never sought to leave the minds with outflows; receiving the Buddha’s compassionate instruction, we have been able to be rightly permeated and to cultivate, our body and mind are joyful, and we have gained great benefit.” Then he asks: “In cultivating and realizing the Buddha’s samādhi in this way, before reaching nirvāṇa, what is called the ground of dry wisdom? By what gradual stages do the forty-four minds come to have the names of the stages of cultivation? To what place do they come that is called entering the grounds? What is called the bodhisattva of equal awakening?” Four questions: the ground of dry wisdom, the forty-four minds, entering the grounds, equal awakening. He is asking the names of the stations along one road from cause to fruit. The Buddha praises him: “for the sake of the whole great assembly and of all beings in the final age who cultivate samādhi and seek the Great Vehicle, to have the unsurpassed path of right cultivation, from ordinary person to great nirvāṇa, shown in advance.”

But the Buddha does not answer the station names first. He first says: “Ānanda, you should know! The wondrous nature is perfectly bright, apart from all names and marks; from the beginning there are no worlds and no beings. Because of falsity there is arising; because of arising there is ceasing. Arising and ceasing are called false; the extinction of falsity is called true. These are called the two names of the transformed basis, the Tathāgata’s unsurpassed bodhi and great nirvāṇa.” The wondrous nature is perfectly bright, and from the beginning there are no worlds and no beings; with no beings there is no one to cultivate, with no world there is no place to reach, so where are the stages? The stages are set up upon falsity. Because of falsity there is arising, because of arising there is ceasing; arising and ceasing are called false, the extinction of falsity is called true; bodhi and nirvāṇa are the two names obtained by turning this false arising and ceasing round, and so they are called “the two names of the transformed basis.” These sentences are the root of all the stages to come: first it is said that from the beginning there are no stages, and only then are the stages told.

So the Buddha goes on to say that one must first recognize inversion: “You now wish to cultivate true samādhi and go straight to the Tathāgata’s great nirvāṇa; you should first recognize the two causes of inversion, of beings and of the world. When inversion does not arise, this is the Tathāgata’s true samādhi.” To go straight to great nirvāṇa, first recognize the two causes of inversion; when inversion does not arise, that is true samādhi. This sentence takes up the three kinds of continuity from Fascicle Four: Fascicle Four spoke of the three continuities of the world, of beings, and of the fruit of deeds; here it speaks of two inversions, of beings and of the world. The inversion of beings contains the fruit of deeds.

IX. The Inversion of Beings, the Inversion of the World

The inversion of beings: “Because of the mind whose nature is bright, the nature’s brightness being complete, from brightness the nature is put forth; the nature being false, seeing arises; from ultimate nonexistence comes final existence.” The nature is bright from the first; because of the brightness something to be made bright is put forth, and once there is something made bright there is a seer; and so from ultimate nonexistence comes final existence. “This that has and what is had have no real causing and caused; the marks of what abides and what is abided in are wholly without root. With this non-abiding as the basis, the world and beings are established.” What has and what is had, what causes and what is caused, what abides and what is abided in: each pair set over against the other, and none has any root. The world and beings are built upon this rootlessness. “Deluded about the original perfect brightness, falsity arises; the nature of falsity has no substance and is not something with a support.” Then a finer layer still: “Wishing to return to the true, this wishing for the true is already not the truly true suchness-nature; not being the true yet seeking to return, it plainly becomes what is not a mark.” To want to return to the true: this wanting is already not the true; seeking return by what is not true, it becomes all manner of non-marks. “So there is non-arising, non-abiding, non-mind, and non-dharma. Arising in turn, the power of arising is put forth and made manifest, and permeation becomes deeds; the same deeds call forth one another, and because there are deeds that call forth one another, there is mutual ceasing and mutual arising; from this there is the inversion of beings.” Arising, abiding, mind, dharma, put forth layer upon layer; permeation becomes deeds, the same deeds call forth one another, there is mutual ceasing and mutual arising: this is how the inversion of beings comes to be.

The inversion of the world: “This that has and what is had arise falsely in divided segments, and from this the realm is established; not being causing and caused, with no abiding and abided in, shifting and flowing without abiding, from this time is formed. The three times and the four directions combine and enter one another, transforming beings into twelve classes.” The realm is divided segments; time is shifting and flowing; the three times and the four directions enter one another, three by four is twelve, and beings become twelve classes. Then how the six dusts come: “So the world, because of movement, has sound; because of sound, form; because of form, smell; because of smell, touch; because of touch, taste; because of taste, it knows dharmas. The six kinds of confused false thinking accomplish the nature of deeds, and the twelve divisions turn on the wheel from this.” Movement, sound, form, smell, touch, taste, dharmas, each giving rise to the next; the six confused false thoughts accomplish the nature of deeds, and the twelve divisions turn on the wheel from this. “So in the world, sound, smell, taste, and touch, exhausting the twelve changes, make one full revolution.”

The two inversions speak one of beings and one of the world, yet the point of origin is the same: “from ultimate nonexistence comes final existence,” “this that has and what is had arise falsely in divided segments.” The inversion of beings speaks of the side where existence comes to be; the inversion of the world of the side where, once there is existence, it is divided and flows.

X. The Twelve Classes of Beings

The headings: “the egg-born, the mother-born, the moisture-born, and the transformation-born; those with form and those without form; those with thought and those without thought; those not with form, those not without form; those not with thought, those not without thought.” Twelve classes. Then class by class, the sentence form exactly the same: because of the world’s such-and-such turning in the round, the inversion of such-and-such, it combines with such-and-such and forms eighty-four thousand such-and-such confused thoughts; from this there is such-and-such a ghana, flowing and turning through the lands, such-and-such; their kinds fill it.

The first class: “Because of the world’s false turning in the round, the inversion of motion, it combines with breath and forms eighty-four thousand confused thoughts of flying and sinking; from this there is the kalala of the egg-born, flowing and turning through the lands; fish, birds, turtles, and snakes; their kinds fill it.” The egg-born. The false turning in the round is the cause, the inversion of motion the mark, combining with breath the condition, the confused thoughts of flying and sinking the fruit, the kalala the embryonic stage, fish, birds, turtles, and snakes the kind. Every one of the twelve classes has these six positions.

The twelve inversions of the twelve classes: motion, desire, inclination, borrowing, obstruction, delusion, shadow, stupidity, falseness, nature, deception, killing. The twelve combinings: breath, moisture, warmth, touch, attachment, darkness, recollection, obstinacy, defilement, spells, the different, the monstrous. The twelve confused thoughts: flying and sinking, horizontal and vertical, overturning, new and old, essence and radiance, hidden obscurity, hidden binding, withering, dependence, calling and summoning, mutual exchange, eating father and mother. The first eight classes answer to the egg-born, the mother-born, the moisture-born, the transformation-born, those with form, those without form, those with thought, and those without thought in the headings; the last four answer to those not with form, not without form, not with thought, not without thought. For the last four the base text gives examples: the jellyfish that take shrimps as their eyes; those born through curses and sorcery; the sphex wasp, in which a different substance becomes its own; the earth-owl that clings to a clod to make its young, and the mirror-breaker bird that broods the fruit of a poison tree as its young. The last class is the heaviest: “Because of the world’s turning in the round through enmity and harm, the inversion of killing, it combines with the monstrous and forms eighty-four thousand thoughts of eating father and mother; from this there is the ghana of those not without thought that are without thought, flowing and turning through the lands; like the earth-owl, which clings to a clod of earth to make its young, and the mirror-breaker bird, which broods the fruit of a poison tree as its young; when the young are grown, father and mother are both eaten by them; their kinds fill it.”

“These are called the twelve kinds of classes of beings.” The fascicle ends here. Of what Ānanda asked, the ground of dry wisdom, the forty-four minds, entering the grounds, equal awakening, the Buddha has answered not one. He has first said that from the beginning there are no stages, then the causes of inversion, then the twelve classes that inversion produces: first finishing where beings come from, since the stages are the road back from here. The differences among the stages are told from the next fascicle on.

The first half of this fascicle speaks of building the altar and upholding the spell, the second half of inversion and the twelve classes of beings, and they look like two matters too. But the Buddha says the spell’s proper place is “to protect the beginners among those who cultivate as they enter samādhi,” and the conclusion of his speaking of inversion is “when inversion does not arise, this is the Tathāgata’s true samādhi”: both are samādhi. The spell is what guards one as one walks; recognizing inversion is knowing where to walk.

Carrying Forward — Leaving Māra by Other-Power

The foregoing is the meaning of the sūtra’s own text. What follows looks at it from the side, through a commentator’s eye; the commentary is not the sūtra, only the same matter seen from another position.

Zixuan names the first gate of this fascicle “leaving Māra by other-power,” and says in one sentence why there is a spell: “This is to aid those heavy with obstructions by the power of the spell.” The spell is an aid, and what it aids are those heavy with obstructions. He also speaks of the order of precepts and spell: “The precepts are the root of rightly according with liberation; relying on these precepts one comes to have concentration and wisdom; so know that for samādhi the precepts lead the way.” Then he sets concentration, precepts, and spell each against one obstruction: “Earlier it was said that concentration and wisdom break the obstruction of affliction; then it was made clear that the training in the precepts only stops the deeds of offense; now it is said that the divine spell can break the misfortunes of former lives, and remove the obstruction of retribution as well. When the three obstructions are gone, what is there to wait for before realization?” Concentration and wisdom break the obstruction of affliction, the precepts stop the obstruction of deeds, the spell breaks the obstruction of retribution. The habits from former lives of the sūtra’s “if there are habits from former lives that cannot be extinguished” are, in his reading, the obstruction of retribution.

Of reciting the spell one hundred and eight times, Zixuan says: “reciting the spell to the full count of one hundred and eight signifies removing and extinguishing the one hundred and eight afflictions.” Of the response in the three sevens, he tells true from false: “If one sees other objects, contrary to what one has practiced and at odds with one’s vow, these are objects of Māra, not a true response.” What is seen that is not what one vowed to see is an object of Māra.

Of the eight-cornered altar and the mirrors, Zixuan says: “Though the altar has eight corners, with above and below they make ten, to answer to the complete number.” And of the crossing of the mirrors’ lights: “In each mirror appear the buddhas of the ten directions, signifying that one body is ten bodies and ten bodies are one body, layer upon layer without end, each manifesting the others and each containing the others. This signifies the mark of the inconceivable realm of the realized garbha-mind.” Mirror interpenetrating mirror is the mark of the realm of the tathāgatagarbha-mind.

Of the heart of the spell, Zixuan explains the spell’s name: “Sitātapatra means ‘white parasol’; it points to the garbha-mind. Because it does not accord with false defilement, it is called white. Because it covers all dharmas everywhere, it is called a parasol. Because the secret divine spells flow forth from it, it is called the heart of the spell.” The heart of the spell is the garbha-mind; white is not according with false defilement, parasol is covering all dharmas everywhere.

Why the spell is not translated, Zixuan gives five reasons: “This is the secret Śūraṅgama; since ancient times it has not been translated, for roughly five reasons. First, it is the secret speech of the buddhas, a secret Dharma that only buddhas together with buddhas understand among themselves, which other sages cannot fathom. Second, it is a gate of dhāraṇī, for every word and phrase contains many meanings, as bhagavat contains six meanings. Third, some of it may be the names of ghost and spirit kings, called upon and commanded to guard and protect practitioners. Fourth, it is the secret seal of the buddhas, like a king’s seal that passes everywhere it goes, honored by the hidden and the manifest, handed down from buddha to buddha and not to be altered. Fifth, it is sustained by inconceivable power, so that merely to recite it in secret can extinguish great faults and quickly ascend to the sagely stages, as when a king grants a great amnesty and all the condemned are pardoned, and those with merit are promoted beyond their rank and given office; so it is here. Therefore since ancient times no explanation has been permitted.” Of the differences among the texts of the spell, he says: “Its texts may differ from one another; all this is because the earlier and later Tripiṭaka masters used the languages of the central and border regions differently, and the translations differ slightly; simply recite and uphold it according to one text, and do not pick and choose.” The text of the spell that he himself records has four hundred and twenty-seven phrases, differing from the four hundred and thirty-nine within the fascicle of the base text and of the same form as the Ming recension appended at the end of the fascicle; the Apparatus of this book records both without deciding.

Of the transformed basis, Zixuan says: “Suchness is taken as the basis of delusion and awakening; transforming this basis of delusion into the basis of awakening is therefore called the transformed basis.” And: “So know that bodhi and nirvāṇa exist because of delusion, as a person, because of sleep, has the name of waking.” Bodhi and nirvāṇa are names set up against delusion, as waking is a name set up against sleep. Of the two inversions taking up Fascicle Four, he says: “Above, the three kinds of continuity were clarified; now the two kinds of inversion are clarified. For the inversion of beings includes the fruit of deeds.”

Of the twelve classes of beings, Zixuan speaks of the order of the headings: “Feelings and thoughts give rise to one another, and forms depend on one another without ceasing; the world of sentient beings does not go beyond twelve. When the stirring of thought first arises, deluded about the original perfect constancy, the shadow of brightness then appears; therefore the egg-born stand first.” And he explains the embryonic stage of the first class: “Kalala means here ‘congealed and slippery’; it is the first stage of entering the embryo, when embryo and egg are not yet distinguished.”

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

At the end of Fascicle Seven the Buddha answers Ānanda’s question about the stages, but does not speak of the stages first. He first speaks the two causes, the inversion of beings and the inversion of the world, then opens the twelve classes of beings, and closes with “these are called the twelve classes of beings.” Fascicle Eight takes up from here; its first sentence is “Ānanda! In each of these classes of beings there are likewise, in each, the twelve inversions.” Inversion is given one simile: “as when one presses the eye and disordered flowers arise.” The flowers are not in the sky; they are in the eye that is pressed. Under the fascicle title there is again the interlinear note, “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and a single line of attribution, “Translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of India, of the Tang.” Fascicle Seven writes the translator’s name with one character for its last syllable and this fascicle returns to the other; this book records each as the base text has it, without making them uniform.

This fascicle has three matters. First, the Buddha properly answers the question about the stages that Ānanda asked at the end of Fascicle Seven: he first establishes the three gradual stages, removing the auxiliary causes, cutting out the proper nature, and going against the present deeds; then, beginning from the ground of dry wisdom, he speaks the ten faiths, the ten abodes, the ten practices, the ten dedications, the four applied practices, the ten grounds, equal awakening, and wondrous awakening, and gathers them up as “the fifty-five stages of the true path of bodhi,” with the distinction of right contemplation and wrong contemplation. Second, Mañjuśrī asks the name of the sūtra; the Buddha speaks five titles and tells him to uphold them. Third, Ānanda, having heard the names of the complete meaning, asks in return: if the wondrous mind is from the beginning all-pervading and perfect, why are there again the hells, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, humans, and devas? Do these paths exist of themselves from the beginning, or do they arise from the false habits of beings? Do the hells have a fixed place, or does each being undergo its own privately? The Buddha begins from feeling and thought, the inner portion and the outer portion, speaks the ten habit-causes, the six crossed retributions, and the lighter and heavier hells, and then the ghosts, the animals, the humans, the immortals, and the six heavens of desire. The fascicle ends at the six heavens of desire, “from here downward is called the realm of desire,” with the closing title “The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Myriad Practices, Śūraṅgama, Fascicle Eight.” The realm of form, the formless realm, and the asuras are in Fascicle Nine.

Zixuan divides this fascicle into three great texts: “turning from the false back to the true, distinguishing the marks of the stages,” which opens below into “distinguishing the gradual cultivation” and “clarifying the differences of the stages” and closes with “concluding that the stages are formed by relying on practice”; “bringing out the distinct names of the holy teaching,” Mañjuśrī’s question and the Tathāgata’s answer; and “distinguishing the differing causes of birth in the destinies,” Ānanda’s question and the Tathāgata’s answer, in which the answer first “clarifies in general by way of feeling and thought” and then “distinguishes in particular by way of deeds and their retribution.” He also says that at the passage on the sūtra’s name “one period is complete; here one assembly ends,” and that Ānanda’s further question about the seven destinies is “from here onward the second assembly, in which the sūtra is spoken again”; “though the times are separated, the questions are linked,” and the compilers of the sūtra, following the questions and the meaning, joined them into one book. Following his headings this book divides the fascicle into twenty-nine sections: one summing up the foregoing and giving rise to what follows, one properly distinguishing the cultivation, three on the three gradual stages, one on the ground of dry wisdom, one each on the ten faiths, the ten abodes, the ten practices, and the ten dedications, one on the four applied practices, one on the ten grounds, one each on equal awakening and wondrous awakening, one concluding that the stages are formed by relying on practice, one each for Mañjuśrī’s question and the Tathāgata’s answer, one for Ānanda’s question, one for the praise of the question and the permission to speak, one clarifying feeling and thought in general, one on the hells summing up the foregoing and giving rise to what follows, one on the ten habit-causes, one on the six crossed retributions, one on the concluding restatement, and one each on the ghosts, the animals, the humans, the immortals, and the devas. For the section on the four applied practices Zixuan’s commentary has text but no numbered heading; this book takes its title from his phrase “the four wondrous and perfect applied practices.”

This book takes ‘the fifty-five stages’ as the title of this fascicle. The words are the base text’s own: “all these, by the three advances, are well able to accomplish the fifty-five stages of the true path of bodhi.” Zixuan explains the number: “the fifty-five stages are faith, abode, practice, dedication, and ground, which make fifty, and dry wisdom, warmth, summit, acceptance, and foremost in the world, which make five”; “bodhi is the fruit, namely the two awakenings, equal and wondrous. The fifty-five minds are called a path because by them one is able to reach the fruit of bodhi.” Elsewhere, at the head of the fascicle, he says “this sūtra has fifty-seven stages,” counting equal and wondrous awakening as well, and again that “the text below also speaks of sixty holy stages.” The openings and closings differ, each with its own intent; this book takes the number by which the base text itself concludes as the title.

II. The Three Gradual Stages: The Clean Vessel, the Poisoned Honey, the Sweet Dew

The Buddha first gives a simile: “as when, in a clean vessel, one removes the poisoned honey, washes the vessel with hot water mixed with ashes and fragrance, and afterward stores sweet dew in it.” The poisoned honey is the disordered thought that arises from the root cause; the hot water, the ashes, and the fragrance are the gradual stages; the sweet dew is the holy stages that follow. The three gradual stages are given one sentence and one name each: “First, cultivation that removes the auxiliary causes. Second, true cultivation that cuts out the proper nature. Third, advancing that goes against the present deeds.”

The auxiliary causes are food. “The twelve classes of beings in this world cannot complete themselves; they abide in dependence on the four foods, namely food in morsels, food of contact, food of intention, and food of consciousness.” Because they abide in dependence on food, “eating what is sweet, they live; eating what is poisonous, they die,” and so the five pungent plants must be cut off: “these five pungent plants, eaten cooked, arouse lust; eaten raw, they increase anger.” One who eats them, even if able to expound the twelve divisions of the scriptures, is shunned by the devas and immortals, and hungry ghosts lick his lips; “he dwells always with ghosts, his merit wanes day by day, and in the long run there is no benefit”; Māra finds his opening and “appears in the body of a buddha to come and speak the Dharma to him, disparaging the prohibitory precepts and praising lust, anger, and delusion.” This section is not about the palate. It is about the outer protection of samādhi: when the protectors do not come, Māra comes. “One who cultivates bodhi forever cuts off the five pungent plants; this is called the first gradual stage of advancing cultivation.”

The proper nature is lust and killing; it is cut out by the precepts. “One must first strictly uphold the pure rules of discipline, forever cut off the lustful mind, not eat meat or drink wine, eat food purified by fire, and eat nothing raw.” The base text sets lust and killing side by side: “if one does not cut off lust and killing and yet leaves the three realms, there is no such thing.” The method of contemplation is two similes: “one should contemplate lustful desire as a poisonous snake, as if seeing an enemy and a thief.” The upholding has two layers: “first uphold the four and the eight expulsion offenses of the śrāvakas, holding the body so that it does not move; afterward practice the pure rules of the bodhisattvas, holding the mind so that it does not arise.” The fruit of the precepts accomplished also has two layers: in the world, “there will never be the deeds of giving birth to one another and killing one another” and “one does not repay old debts”; in cultivation, “in the fleshly body born of father and mother, without needing the heavenly eye, one naturally beholds the worlds of the ten directions.” This section continues the four pure and clear instructions of Fascicle Six: Fascicle Six says “minds like a straight bowstring,” and here it says “holding the mind so that it does not arise.”

The present deeds are the faculties chasing the objects and flowing out after them; to go against it is to turn the flow back. “The mind having no lustful greed, it does not flow out much toward the six outer objects; because it does not flow out, it turns and returns of itself to its source. The objects no longer being conditioned, the faculties have nothing to pair with; the flow is turned back into one whole, and the six functions do not operate.” This is the general statement of “entering the flow and forgetting the object” in the perfect penetration of the ear-faculty of Fascicle Six: it is not that the six faculties are not used, but that the six faculties do not chase the objects. The simile is “like beryl with a bright moon hung within.” At this step “this person at once obtains the patient acceptance of the unborn,” and “from here, cultivating gradually, according to the practice he puts forth, the holy stages are established.” Zixuan notes: “this mind of dry wisdom is itself the third gradual stage, established according to its meaning within the acceptance of non-arising.” The third gradual stage and the ground of dry wisdom are two faces of one matter, one the practice and one the stage.

The order of the three gradual stages is outer, middle, inner: food is a thing outside the body, the precepts are body and speech, the six objects are the mind. This book raises only one point here: the three gradual stages are not three periods. At the end of each the base text says “gradual stage of advancing cultivation”; the advancing is one advance all the way, not finishing one and then beginning the next.

III. The Ground of Dry Wisdom and the Ten Faiths

“Ānanda! This good man’s desire and love have dried up; the faculties and their objects no longer pair; the residual substance now present does not continue to be born. Holding the mind empty and bright, he is purely wisdom. The nature of wisdom bright and perfect, it illumines the worlds of the ten directions. Having wisdom in its dryness, this is called the ground of dry wisdom.” Dry is that desire and love have dried; wisdom is that he is purely wisdom. The base text explains itself in one phrase: “having wisdom in its dryness.” This stage is before faith; Zixuan says it “is itself the third gradual stage,” and so this book sees the ground of dry wisdom as the seam between the gradual stages and the stages of the path.

The ten faiths begin from “the habit of desire having just dried, he has not yet joined with the water of the Tathāgata’s Dharma-stream.” The ground of dry wisdom is the drying; the ten faiths are “flowing in, center to center”: the habit of desire has dried, the Dharma-stream is not yet joined, and with this very mind he flows in. The ten names are: the abode of the mind of faith, the abode of the mind of mindfulness, the mind of vigor, the abode of the mind of wisdom, the abode of the mind of concentration, the mind of non-retreat, the mind of protecting the Dharma, the mind of dedication, the abode of the mind of precepts, the abode of the mind of vows. Of the ten names in the base text, six carry the word “abode” and four do not; this book records them as they are, neither adding nor cutting.

The meaning of the abode of the mind of faith is “true faith clearly understanding that all is perfectly penetrating, so that the three, the aggregates, the entrances, and the realms, cannot obstruct it.” Faith is not believing a sentence; it is that the aggregates, the entrances, and the realms cannot block it. Two similes among the ten faiths are worth pausing on. The abode of the mind of mindfulness says “in countless kalpas past and to come, all the habits of giving up bodies and taking up bodies appear before him”; this is the reverse side of the “habits from former lives” of Fascicle Seven. The former habits are not extinguished; they are all seen. The mind of dedication says “like two mirrors facing each other in their light, with wondrous reflections within entering into one another layer upon layer”; these are the eight mirrors of the altar in Fascicle Seven, “facing one another so that their forms and reflections interpenetrate layer upon layer.” Fascicle Seven is a matter on the altar; here it is a matter in the mind.

IV. The Ten Abodes, the Ten Practices, the Ten Dedications

The ten abodes take birth from the embryo as their simile. The abode of generating the mind is “the ten functions entering into one another, perfectly forming one mind”; the abode of preparing the ground is “like pure beryl with refined gold appearing within”; at the abode of noble birth, “like a being in the intermediate state seeking its parents of itself, the hidden faith penetrates in the dark and enters the seed of the Tathāgata”; at the abode of complete skillful means, “having already roamed in the embryo of the Way and personally received the lineage of awakening, like a fetus already formed with the human marks complete”; at the abodes of the right mind, of non-retreat, and of youthful truth, countenance, body and mind, and the numinous marks of the ten bodies are complete in sequence; at the abode of the Dharma prince, “the form complete, he comes forth at birth and is personally a child of the Buddha”; at the abode of consecration, “like a great king of a country who entrusts the affairs of the state to the crown prince; when the eldest son of that kṣatriya king has grown, he is set forth and consecrated.” From entering the seed to coming forth at birth to consecration, one simile runs through the ten stages.

The ten practices take benefiting others as their axis. The practice of joy is “according with the ten directions”; the practice of benefiting is “well able to benefit all beings”; the practice of no anger or resentment is “awakening oneself and awakening others without opposition or refusal”; the practice without end is “the three times equal, the ten directions penetrated”; the practice apart from stupidity and confusion is “all the gates of Dharma obtained without error”; the practice of good manifestation is “manifesting the many differences within sameness, and in each different mark seeing the same”; the practice of non-attachment is “in each mote of dust manifesting the worlds of the ten directions, the manifested dust and the manifested worlds not obstructing one another”; the practice of veneration is “all being the foremost pāramitā”; the practice of good dharmas is “able to form the pattern of the buddhas of the ten directions”; the practice of truth is “one true unconditioned, because the nature is so of itself.”

The ten dedications begin from “while delivering beings, to extinguish the mark of delivering, turning the unconditioned mind toward the path of nirvāṇa,” and end at “the virtue of the nature perfectly formed, the measure of the Dharma-realm extinguished.” In between: “fundamental awakening clear and still, awakening level with the Buddha’s awakening,” “the ground like the Buddha’s ground,” “the beings of the ten directions all being my fundamental nature,” “being all dharmas and apart from all marks, with no attachment either to being or to being apart.” The two words of dedication the base text explains itself: “turning the unconditioned mind toward the path of nirvāṇa.” To turn is to revolve; to face is to tend toward.

V. The Four Applied Practices, the Ten Grounds, Equal Awakening, Wondrous Awakening

“Ānanda! This good man has exhausted these pure forty-one minds, and next accomplishes the four wondrous and perfect applied practices.” The forty-one minds Zixuan counts as dry wisdom, one; faiths, ten; abodes, ten; practices, ten; dedications, ten. He says this sūtra “opens all the stages perfectly within the one acceptance,” “the earlier being perfectly fused, the later being gone through one by one,” and therefore treats the four applied practices only after the ten dedications. Each of the four has one simile: the ground of warmth is “like drilling for fire, when the wood is about to catch”; the ground of the summit is “like climbing a high mountain, with the body entering empty space while below there is still a slight obstruction”; the ground of acceptance is “like a person bearing a matter, neither holding it in nor letting it out”; the ground of foremost in the world is “number and measure extinguished, delusion and awakening and the middle way, neither of the two to be named.” The four similes are one process: fire about to catch but not yet caught, the body in space but the feet still obstructed, the matter in the mind but not out of the mouth, and finally even number and measure extinguished. The base text writes the first stage with the character for warmth; this book keeps the character.

The ten grounds have ten names: joy, leaving defilement, emitting light, flaming wisdom, hard to conquer, manifestation, far-going, immovability, good wisdom, Dharma-cloud. After the ninth ground the base text inserts a sentence: “Ānanda! These bodhisattvas, from here onward, have completed the work of cultivation and their merit is perfect; this ground is also called the stage of cultivation and practice.” Then it speaks the ground of the Dharma-cloud, “the wondrous cloud of the shade of compassion covering the sea of nirvāṇa.” The sentences on the ten grounds are extremely short, one sentence to a ground, without similes.

Equal awakening is one sentence: “the Tathāgata goes against the flow, and this bodhisattva, going with it, arrives; the borders of awakening enter and cross, and this is called equal awakening.” The Tathāgata going from fruit toward cause is against the flow; the bodhisattva going from cause toward fruit is with it; the borders of the two awakenings cross. The section on wondrous awakening is the hardest sentence in the whole fascicle: “From the mind of dry wisdom up to equal awakening, this awakening first obtains the initial ground of dry wisdom within the vajra mind. Thus, single and compound, layer upon layer, twelve in all, wondrous awakening is exhausted and the unsurpassed Way accomplished.” After equal awakening another ground of dry wisdom is spoken, the ground of dry wisdom within the vajra mind, facing the ground of dry wisdom at the beginning layer upon layer. Zixuan explains “single and compound, twelve”: “the single are seven, namely dry wisdom, warmth, summit, acceptance, foremost in the world, equal awakening, and wondrous awakening; the compound are five, namely faith, abode, practice, dedication, and ground,” each of which contains ten within one stage and is therefore called compound. Seven single and five compound make twelve. This book adopts his reading, noting it in the plain-language rendering, and does not set up another.

VI. Concluding That the Stages Are Formed by Relying on Practice: Vajra Contemplation, Right and Wrong Contemplation

The stages spoken, the Buddha gathers them in three sentences. The first gathers the practice: “these various grounds are all, by vajra contemplation of the ten profound similes of illusion within śamatha, cultivated and realized purely with the vipaśyanā of the tathāgatas, entering gradually and deeply.” Zixuan lists the ten similes as “illusion, mirage, the moon in water, empty space, echo, city, dream, shadow, image, transformation,” and says “it points to the foregoing fifty-seven stages, and therefore says ‘various.’” Śamatha and vipaśyanā are two of the three names Ānanda asked for in Fascicle One, and here they close with the stages: every ground is contemplation arising within stillness.

The second gathers the stages: “Ānanda! All these, by the three advances, are well able to accomplish the fifty-five stages of the true path of bodhi.” The three advances are the three gradual stages. The stages are a path, not a place; the true path of bodhi is accomplished by the three gradual stages, and so the gradual stages are not a matter before the gate but a matter of the whole course.

The third gathers wrong and right: “One who contemplates thus is called one of right contemplation; one who contemplates otherwise is called one of wrong contemplation.” Zixuan places wrong contemplation at one point: “if one says there are no stages at all and only esteems the principle, this is the same as the wrong view that denies cause and effect, and is therefore called wrong contemplation.” Pūrṇa’s question in Fascicle Four and the Buddha’s words in Fascicle Seven, “the wondrous nature is perfectly bright, apart from all names and marks; from the beginning there are no worlds and no beings,” both speak of what is from the beginning; here the stages are spoken, and the gradual stages. The two faces are raised together: not to deny the gradual with what is from the beginning, and not to doubt what is from the beginning because of the gradual. This is the meaning of establishing right and wrong contemplation in this section.

VII. The Five Titles of the Sūtra

Mañjuśrī asks: “What should this sūtra be named? How should I and all beings uphold it?” The Buddha answers with five names: “the Great Buddha-Crown, the Sitātapatra Unsurpassed Jeweled Seal, the Pure Ocean-Eye of the Tathāgatas of the Ten Directions”; “Saving and Protecting the Close Kin, Delivering Ānanda and the Bhikṣuṇī Prakṛti of This Assembly, Attaining the Bodhi-Mind and Entering the Ocean of Universal Knowledge”; “the Tathāgata’s Secret Cause, Cultivation and Realization of the Complete Meaning”; “the Great, Vast, and Extensive Wondrous Lotus-King, the Dhāraṇī Spell That Is Mother of the Buddhas of the Ten Directions”; “the Consecration Phrases, the Myriad Practices of All Bodhisattvas, Śūraṅgama.” “You should uphold it” answers the second question.

Zixuan says each of the five names is established from one side: the first “establishes the name by way of principle and wisdom,” the second “by way of function,” the third “by way of person and Dharma,” the fourth “by way of showing the benefit,” the fifth “by way of teaching and practice.” This book does not add another layer. It points out only this: the five names together make up the full text of the fascicle title, “The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Tathāgata’s Secret Cause, Cultivation and Realization of the Complete Meaning, and the Myriad Practices of All Bodhisattvas, Called Śūraṅgama,” and the fascicle title is an abridgment of the five names. The second name, “delivering Ānanda and the bhikṣuṇī Prakṛti of this assembly,” points straight to the occasion of Fascicle One; the fourth, “the dhāraṇī spell,” points straight to the divine spell of Fascicle Seven; the fifth, “the consecration phrases,” points straight to the stages of this fascicle. The five names are a table of contents of the whole sūtra up to here.

Ānanda, having heard the names, “suddenly awakened to the supreme wondrous principle of dhyāna and of advancing in cultivation through the holy stages; his mind and thought empty and settled, he cut off the six grades of subtle afflictions of cultivating the mind in the three realms.” This is Ānanda’s advance in stage within the sūtra, recorded by the base text itself. Before raising his question Ānanda first praises the Buddha: “with the voice of compassion that holds nothing back you have well opened the subtle and sunken delusions of beings, so that today my body and mind are at ease and I have gained great benefit.” The question is asked from the place of benefit gained.

VIII. Ānanda Asks about the Seven Destinies; the Buddha Speaks of Feeling and Thought

Ānanda’s question has three layers. One layer is the principle: “if this wondrous, bright, true, pure, wondrous mind is from the beginning all-pervading and perfect, so that even the great earth, the grasses and trees, and the wriggling creatures that hold spirit are in their original source true suchness, which is the true body of the Tathāgata’s buddhahood, and the Buddha’s body is real, why are there again the paths of the hells, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, humans, devas, and the rest?” One layer is the cause: “Do these paths exist of themselves from the beginning, or do they arise from the false habits of beings?” One layer is the place: “Do these hells have a fixed place, or does each being naturally produce its own deeds and each undergo its own privately?” He names three persons: the bhikṣuṇī Baolianxiang, who kept the bodhisattva precepts and secretly practiced lust, “falsely saying that practicing lust is neither killing nor stealing and has no retribution,” and fell alive into the Avīci hell; King Virūḍhaka, who slaughtered the Gautama clan; and the bhikṣu Sunakṣatra, who falsely said that all dharmas are empty. Three persons, two kinds: one kind does evil, the other denies cause and effect, exactly mirroring the wrong contemplation of the section before.

The Buddha first praises the question: “Excellent, this question! It will keep beings from entering wrong views. Listen carefully now; I shall explain it for you.” Then he first settles one sentence: “all beings are in reality fundamentally true and pure; because of their false seeing, false habits arise, and from this the inner portion and the outer portion are divided.” The inner portion is feeling: “because of the various defilements of love, false feeling arises; feeling accumulating without rest can produce the water of love.” Remembering fine food, water comes from the mouth; remembering a person of the past, tears fill the eyes; coveting treasures, the whole body gleams; fixed on practicing lust, fluid flows from the two organs. “Though the loves differ, their flowing and binding are the same. Moist and wet, it does not rise; of itself it falls.” The outer portion is thought: “because of the various longings, empty thought comes to light; thought accumulating without rest can produce the superior vapor.” Keeping the precepts, the whole body is light and clear; holding the spell, the glance is bold; wishing to be born in the heavens, one flies in dreams; keeping the buddha-lands in mind, holy realms appear in the dark; serving a good friend, one makes light of body and life. “Though the thoughts differ, their lightness and rising are the same. Flying and moving, it does not sink; of itself it rises beyond.” Feeling sinks and thought rises: that is the whole reasoning of this passage.

Then comes the end of life: “birth follows the accustomed habit; death follows the changing flow. At the moment of death, before the warm touch is given up, the good and evil of a whole life appear at once together.” The proportion of feeling and thought settles where one goes. Pure thought flies, and one is born in the heavens; if the flying mind is joined with merit, wisdom, and pure vows, one sees the buddhas of the ten directions and is born according to one’s vow in a pure land. Less feeling and more thought, one becomes a flying immortal, a ghost-king of great power, a flying yakṣa, or an earth-walking rākṣasa, and those among them who protect the Dharma “dwell personally beneath the seat of the Tathāgata.” Feeling and thought equal, one is born among humans, “bright thought makes one quick, dark feeling makes one dull.” More feeling and less thought, one flows into the births that go sideways. Seven parts feeling and three parts thought, a hungry ghost. Nine parts feeling and one part thought, the hells with interval and without interval. Pure feeling sinks, and one enters the Avīci hell; and if within the sinking mind there is slander of the Great Vehicle, breaking of the prohibitory precepts, deceitful and false preaching of the Dharma, empty coveting of the offerings of the faithful, wrongful acceptance of reverence, or the five rebellious deeds and the ten grave offenses, one “is born again in the Avīci hells of the ten directions.” The last sentence answers Ānanda’s question about a fixed place: “following the evil deeds one has made, though one brings it on oneself, within the common lot there is also a fixed ground.” Bringing it on oneself is each undergoing its own privately; the common lot is a fixed place. Both sides are answered.

IX. The Ten Habit-Causes, the Six Crossed Retributions, the Lighter and Heavier Hells

“All these are what those beings’ own deeds bring upon them: they make the ten habit-causes and undergo the six crossed retributions.” The ten habit-causes are lust, greed, arrogance, anger, deceit, fraud, enmity, views, wronging, and litigation. Each cause has one pattern of four sentences. First, what realm the crossing of habits produces: the habit of lust “arises from mutual rubbing; rubbing without rest, there is thus a great blaze of fire that moves within it”; the habit of greed “arises from mutual sucking; drawing in without stop, there is thus accumulated cold and hard ice that freezes within it.” Next, a small simile on the human body: “as when a person rubs the hands against each other, the mark of warmth appears”; “as when a person sucks in the wind with the mouth, a cold touch arises.” Next, “the two habits burning together” or “the two habits pressing on each other,” and what matters of hell there are. Last, the closing pair of sentences on the tathāgatas and the bodhisattvas: “therefore all the tathāgatas of the ten directions, looking upon the practice of lust, name it alike the fire of desire, and the bodhisattvas see desire as they would avoid a pit of fire.” Ten causes, ten closings: the fire of desire, the water of greed, drinking the water of stupidity, sharp knives and swords, slandering bandits, robbery and murder, the harming ghost, the pit of views, the slandering tiger, the hidden bandit. The instruments of hell do not come from outside; they are the shapes of the habits. Fire comes from rubbing, ice from sucking, water from relying, metal from defiance.

The six crossed retributions are the fruit that comes out of the six faculties: “all beings make deeds with the six consciousnesses, and the evil retribution they bring on comes out of the six faculties.” The retributions of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking: each first says what is seen at death. The retribution of seeing “first sees fierce fire filling the worlds of the ten directions”; of hearing, “first sees waves drowning heaven and earth”; of smelling, “first sees poisonous vapor filling far and near”; of tasting, “first sees an iron net with fierce flames blazing, covering the world”; of touching, “first sees great mountains closing in from four sides with no way out”; of thinking, “first sees an evil wind blowing the land to ruin.” Next, “two marks come to light,” one bright and one dark, one open and one closed, one passing through and one blocked, one drawing in and one spitting out, one joined and one parted, one aware and one lost. Next, it goes through the other five faculties receiving the retribution. The word “crossed” is the eye of this section: one faculty makes the deed, six faculties receive the retribution, because the six faculties are from the beginning one essential brightness.

At the end it settles the lighter and the heavier: deeds of evil made in full, one enters Avīci; the six faculties each making deeds, together with the objects and together with the faculties, one enters the eight hells without interval; body, speech, and mind committing killing, stealing, and lust, one enters the eighteen hells; the three deeds not combined, one killing or one stealing, one enters the thirty-six hells; one faculty alone committing one deed, one enters the one hundred and eight hells. Then one sentence sums up: “Thus beings, making separately and doing separately, enter within the world a ground of the common lot. False thought gives rise to it; it does not exist from the beginning.” This answers Ānanda’s question whether it exists of itself from the beginning: it does not exist from the beginning.

X. Ghosts, Animals, Humans, Immortals, Devas

The destiny of ghosts has ten kinds, all coming out of greed: greed for things, the strange ghost; greed for sex, the drought ghost; greed for beguiling, the bewitching ghost; greed for hatred, the poison-sorcery ghost; greed for memories, the plague ghost; greed for arrogance, the hungry ghost; greed for deceiving, the nightmare ghost; greed for brightness, the wangliang ghost; greed for success, the servant ghost; greed for faction, the messenger ghost. Each ghost ‘when the offense is paid, meets such-and-such and takes form’: meeting a thing, the wind, an animal, an insect, decline, vapor, darkness, essence, brightness, a person. The closing is two sentences, one on the cause, “these persons all fell by pure feeling; when the fire of their deeds has burned dry, they come up out of it as ghosts,” and one on the nature, “if one awakens to bodhi, then in the wondrous, perfect brightness there is from the beginning nothing at all.”

The destiny of animals is the repayment of debts after the deeds of the ghost are exhausted: “the deeds of the ghost being exhausted, feeling and thought both become empty. Then in the world one meets face to face, as enemy, the one to whom one originally owed. In the body of an animal one repays the old debt.” Ten ghosts answer to ten animals: the owl kind, the ill omens, the fox kind, the poisonous kind, the worm kind, the food kind, the clothing kind, the responsive kind, the good omens, the compliant kind. The closing is again two sentences, “these too are all brought on by their own false deeds. If one awakens to bodhi, these false conditions are from the beginning nothing at all.” Then the Buddha returns to the three persons Ānanda named: “As you have said, Baolianxiang and the others, King Virūḍhaka, and the bhikṣu Sunakṣatra: such evil deeds arise of themselves from within; they do not descend from heaven, nor come up from the earth, nor are they given by others; summoned by one’s own falsity, one comes back oneself to undergo them. Within the mind of bodhi they are all the congealing of floating, empty, false thought.” This sentence is the overall answer of the passage on the seven destinies.

The destiny of humans is the recovery of form after the animal has repaid its debt. Repayment of debt has a measure: “if it was money or goods, or the use of one’s labor, when the repayment is full it stops of itself.” What is overpaid must also be returned: “if the one repaying pays more than was owed, these beings become human again and claim back the remainder.” Killing the body and eating the flesh has no measure: “thus even through kalpas as many as motes of dust they eat one another and kill one another, like a turning wheel, now high and now low, without rest. Except by śamatha or the appearance of a buddha in the world, it cannot be stopped.” The ten animals, recovering human form, mingle with ten kinds: the obstinate, the foolish, the perverse, the mediocre, the lowly, the pliant, the toiling, the cultured, the clear-sighted, the accomplished. The closing: “not meeting a tathāgata, not hearing the right Dharma, they turn in the wheel within the dust and toil, as is their nature; these are called the pitiable ones.”

The destiny of immortals is a separate cultivation among humans. “Not relying on right awakening to cultivate samādhi, they separately cultivate false thought, keeping their thought fixed and making the body firm.” The ten kinds of immortals, earth-walking, flying, roaming, sky-walking, heaven-walking, penetrating, way-walking, illuminating, essence, and those of the cut-off practice, each follow the pattern ‘firmly doing such-and-such without rest, until that way is perfectly formed.’ The closing: “these all refine the mind among humans, not following right awakening, and separately obtain a principle of life, living a thousand or ten thousand years”; “this too is the turning wheel of false thought, flowing and revolving. Not cultivating samādhi, when the retribution is exhausted they come back! and scatter into the destinies.” Between the immortals and samādhi the only difference is “right awakening.”

Of the destiny of the devas this fascicle reaches only the six heavens of desire, divided by the lightness and heaviness of lustful love: the Heaven of the Four Heavenly Kings, “in the midst of wrong lust the mind does not flow out”; the Trāyastriṃśa heaven, “with his own wife lustful love is faint”; the Suyāma heaven, “meeting desire, he joins for a moment and goes away without a thought of it”; the Tuṣita heaven, “still at all times, yet when a touch comes that must be met he cannot yet refuse it”; the Nirmāṇarati heaven, “when the body is laid out before him, the taste is like chewing wax”; the Paranirmitavaśavartin heaven, “with no worldly mind he does as the world does, and in the doing he clearly rises beyond it.” The closing: “these six heavens, though in form they have come out of movement, in the traces of the mind still cross. From here downward is called the realm of desire.” The boundary of the realm of desire is here: the traces of the mind still cross.

Of the seven destinies this fascicle speaks only six; the asuras and the realm of form and the formless realm are in Fascicle Nine. This fascicle answers all three of Ānanda’s questions: the paths do not exist of themselves from the beginning but arise from false habits; the hells both have a fixed place and are each undergone privately; the evil deeds of the three persons are “summoned by one’s own falsity, and one comes back oneself to undergo them.”

Carrying Forward — The True Path of Bodhi

The stages of this fascicle come from Ānanda’s question at the end of Fascicle Seven, “what is called the ground of dry wisdom? To what gradual stage do the forty-four minds reach, that they gain the name of cultivation? Arriving at what region is one said to enter the grounds? What is called a bodhisattva of equal awakening?” The seven destinies come from Ānanda’s question in this fascicle, “why are there again the paths of the hells, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, humans, devas, and the rest?” Both questions ask about the fruit, and the Buddha answers both from the cause: the stages from the three gradual stages, the seven destinies from feeling and thought. The cause is in the practitioner’s own person; the fruit is not a place.

Fascicle Nine continues this fascicle: when the remaining destinies, the realm of form, the formless realm, and the asuras, have been spoken, the Buddha sums up that all seven destinies are birth received through false thought, and then, without being asked, speaks the fifty demons of the aggregates. The fifty demons of the aggregates are the byways the practitioner meets on the true path of bodhi, and they continue this fascicle’s sentence, “one who contemplates otherwise is called one of wrong contemplation”: right contemplation is established in this fascicle, and wrong contemplation is counted out one by one in Fascicles Nine and Ten.

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

Fascicle Eight speaks of the seven destinies and stops at the six heavens of desire: “from here downward is called the realm of desire.” Fascicle Nine takes up from the realm of form; its first sentence is “Ānanda! All those in the world who cultivate the mind, if they do not rely on dhyāna, have no wisdom.” Under the fascicle title there is again the interlinear note, “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and a single line of attribution, “Translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of India, of the Tang,” written with the same final character as in Fascicle Eight. This book records it as the base text has it.

This fascicle has two matters. The first continues the answer to Ānanda’s question about the seven destinies: the eighteen heavens of the realm of form; the four heavens of the formless realm, with the two kinds of arhat, those who turn their minds and those who do not; the four kinds of asura; and then the summing up of the seven destinies as “all dim and heavy conditioned thoughts,” the exhortation to remove the three delusions of killing, stealing, and lust, and the close, “one who speaks thus is called one who speaks rightly; if one speaks otherwise, it is the speech of the Māra kings.” Here the seven destinies are finished and Ānanda’s question is answered. The second matter the Tathāgata speaks without being asked: “At that moment the Tathāgata, about to leave the Dharma seat, on the lion throne took hold of the seven-jeweled armrest, turned his purple-gold mountain of a body, leaned back upon it once more, and announced to the great assembly and to Ānanda.” To lean back upon the armrest when the seat was about to be left is to speak of a thing no one had asked: the “subtle doings of Māra” in cultivating śamatha and vipaśyanā. He first clarifies in general how the demons come to rise and how they are subdued, then the ten states appearing in dhyāna for each of the aggregates of form, feeling, and perception, each aggregate opening with “the marks of ended and not yet ended” and closing with “the concluding exhortation to proclaim.” The closing title is “The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Myriad Practices, Śūraṅgama, Fascicle Nine.” The aggregates of formations and consciousness are in Fascicle Ten.

Zixuan places the first matter under the seven destinies of Fascicle Eight: “second, the realm of form,” “third, the formless realm,” “seventh, the destiny of the asuras,” and then “concluding on the false cause so as to warn them to leave it.” For the second matter he sets up a separate great text: “The seventh great text, setting forth the states that appear in dhyāna: these states arise when the practitioner, by the gradual cultivation of precepts, samādhi, and wisdom, has gained strength, stirring the afflictions within and the Māra kings without; in the practice of contemplation the five aggregates are gradually extinguished, from the coarse to the fine. At the time each aggregate is extinguished there are ten states, provoked by the objects.” He says the Buddha “pitied these and spoke without being asked,” and that “though the sūtras and treatises on sitting in meditation also speak of this briefly, for a detailed and extensive account nothing surpasses this scripture.” He divides the passage on the doings of Māra into “the Tathāgata’s address,” “Ānanda waits to hear,” and “the proper discrimination”; the proper discrimination first “clarifies in general,” then “shows in particular, in five,” one for each aggregate. This fascicle reaches only the aggregate of perception; the two aggregates of formations and consciousness are in the next. Following his headings this book divides the fascicle into fifty-four sections: in the realm of form one each for the first, second, third, and fourth dhyānas and the five heavens of no return, and one for the summing up of the realm of form; one for the formless realm and one for the summing up of falsity; one for the destiny of the asuras; one each for concluding on the false cause and the exhortation to cut off; one each for the Tathāgata’s address and Ānanda’s waiting to hear; one each for clarifying the true and the false together, the rising of the demons, discerning how they are subdued, and the illustration by an instance; for each of the three aggregates of form, feeling, and perception, one section on “the marks of ended and not yet ended,” ten on the ten states, and one on “the concluding exhortation to proclaim,” thirty-six in all; and at the end one on “the renewed urging to spread it.” The titles of the thirty states are all taken from Zixuan’s headings, their serial numbers removed.

This book takes ‘the demonic states of the aggregates’ as the title of this fascicle. The words “the demons of the aggregates” are the base text’s own: “whether the demons of your aggregates, or again the Māra of the heavens, or possession by ghosts and spirits, or an encounter with mountain-demons.” Zixuan explains the sentence: “The four Māras are commonly spoken of: the Māra of the afflictions, the cause of birth and death; the Māra of the aggregates and the Māra of death, the fruit of birth and death; the Māra of the heavens, the condition of birth and death. The ghosts and spirits spoken of here belong to the Māra of the heavens.” Of the thirty states, the ten of the aggregate of form and the ten of the aggregate of feeling all arise from the practitioner’s own mind; only the ten of the aggregate of perception are the Māra of the heavens sending its essence to possess a person. Taken together, the aggregate is within and the demon without, and the demon gets its chance through the aggregate; hence the two words “aggregates” and “demons” are taken as the title. Later generations joined Fascicles Nine and Ten and spoke of fifty states of the five aggregates; this book does not use that name.

II. The Eighteen Heavens of the Realm of Form

The first sentence of the realm of form fixes the character of the whole realm: “if they do not rely on dhyāna, have no wisdom.” Everyone in these heavens is a person who cultivates dhyāna. Zixuan says: “This clarifies in general that one who cultivates the mind must rely on meditative concentration and afterward give rise to wisdom; only when concentration and wisdom are equal is it called quiet contemplation.” The three heavens of the first dhyāna begin from leaving desire: the heaven of Brahma’s Assembly, “able only to hold the body so that it does not practice lust, whether walking or sitting having no thought or recollection of it, so that defiling love does not arise and nothing holds them in the realm of desire”; the heaven of Brahma’s Ministers, “the habit of desire having been removed, the mind that has left desire appears”; the heaven of Great Brahmā, “pure prohibitions, with clear understanding added.” The three heavens of the second dhyāna are ranked by light: the heaven of Lesser Light, “the mind clear and unmoving, still and deep, giving rise to light”; the heaven of Measureless Light, “light kindling light, shining without end”; the heaven of Light-Sound, “drawing in and holding the perfect light, they accomplish the substance of teaching.” Zixuan says that in the second dhyāna “there is no speech; they only emit light from the concentrated mind, and by the strength or weakness of the light their rank is divided,” “taking light as sound, it is called the heaven of Light-Sound.” The three heavens of the third dhyāna are ranked by bliss: the heaven of Lesser Purity “penetrates to the bliss of quiescence,” the heaven of Measureless Purity “accomplishes the bliss of quiescence,” the heaven of Pervasive Purity “returns to the bliss of quiescence,” one penetrating, one accomplishing, one returning. The fourth dhyāna first speaks of relinquishing both suffering and bliss: the heaven of Merit-Born, “the two minds of suffering and bliss are relinquished together at once”; the heaven of Merit-Love, “the relinquishing mind perfectly fused”; and then “from this heaven there are two forking paths”: the heaven of Vast Fruit, “cultivating and realizing with perfect brightness of merit and virtue, they dwell there,” and the heaven of No-Thought, “exhausting to the full the way of relinquishing, body and mind both extinguished, the thinking mind congealed like ash for five hundred kalpas.” The heaven of No-Thought receives one sentence of judgment: “this person, having taken arising and ceasing as the cause, cannot bring to light the nature that neither arises nor ceases; in the first half-kalpa it ceases, in the latter half-kalpa it arises.” Zixuan explains: “Seeing the sixth consciousness momentarily not operating, like a fish held in ice, not knowing the subtle arising and ceasing, they falsely take it for nirvāṇa; it is not true nirvāṇa.”

Each of the four dhyānas has a concluding sentence, each higher than the last, and each with a “though not”: the first dhyāna, “though this is not the proper cultivation of true samādhi, in the pure mind the outflows do not move”; the second, “though this is not the proper cultivation of true samādhi, in the pure mind the coarse outflows are already subdued”; the third, “though this is not the proper attainment of true samādhi, in the mind at peace joy is complete”; the fourth, “though this is not the unconditioned true ground of non-movement, the mind that has something to attain is ripe in its function.” The four “though nots” are the bone of this passage: however high the eighteen heavens, none is true samādhi. Zixuan says: “It is only the six practices subduing the delusions; hence it says not true samādhi,” and “though they attain this pure seeming samādhi, because they do not understand they savor it and take birth.”

The five heavens of no return are set apart as their own passage. “Within this there are also the five heavens of no return. The nine grades of habit-energy of the lower realms are extinguished all at once, suffering and bliss both gone; having no dwelling below, they establish their abode within the common lot of the relinquishing mind.” Zixuan says these five heavens “are the mixed cultivation of quiet contemplation by holy ones,” and “this is extinction by the holy ones’ cutting off, hence called extinction, not like the ordinary person’s temporary subduing called extinction.” In the same relinquishing mind of the fourth dhyāna, the ordinary person subdues and the holy one cuts off, so a separate abode is established. The names of the five heavens: No-Vexation, No-Heat, Good Seeing, Good Manifestation, Ultimate Form. The heaven of Ultimate Form “exhausts the subtle springs of the many, searching out the nature of the nature of form, entering the boundless”; Zixuan says it “searches out to the point where the principle of form has not yet taken shape,” and “at the limit of this one heaven it enters the station of space.” Then one sentence: “These heavens of no return the four heavenly kings of the four dhyānas have only heard of with reverence; they cannot know or see them. Just as now in the world the wild plains and deep mountains, the holy sites of the Way, are all held and sustained by arhats, so that the coarse people of the world cannot see them.” The dwellings of the holy ones are in the same world, and the ordinary person does not see them. The summing up of the realm of form is “these eighteen heavens go alone without mingling, but have not exhausted the burden of form.” The boundary of the realm of desire was “the traces of the mind still cross”; that of the realm of form is “go alone without mingling” yet “have not exhausted the burden of form.” Mingling is passion; form is the body.

At the head of this passage Zixuan records a difference: “this realm has eighteen heavens in all,” whereas the Abhidharmakośa gives “three in each of the three dhyānas, eight in the fourth dhyāna,” which “excludes No-Thought”; “according to the Mahāsāṃghika, it is the same as the present sūtra, adding No-Thought.” The difference between seventeen and eighteen lies in whether the heaven of No-Thought counts as one. This book follows the base text’s eighteen, records Zixuan’s remark, and does not judge. Also, in numbering the five heavens of no return, after “the heaven of No-Heat” he again marks “the heaven of Good Seeing” as “second,” repeating the earlier number; this book follows the order of his headings and does not alter his text.

III. The Formless Realm and the Two Kinds of Arhat

“From this summit of existence, the border of form, there are again two forking paths.” The summit of existence is the heaven of Ultimate Form; form ends here. Two paths: one leaves the three realms, “if in the relinquishing mind one brings forth wisdom, and the light of wisdom perfectly penetrates, one at once leaves the world of dust, becomes an arhat, and enters the bodhisattva vehicle: this kind are called the great arhats who turn their minds”; the other enters the formless, “if in the relinquishing mind one accomplishes relinquishing and aversion, perceives the body as an obstruction, and dissolves the obstruction to enter space: this kind are called the station of space.” The great arhats who turn their minds are not counted among the heavens, yet are placed at the head of the formless realm: this is the eye of the passage. Going up from the heaven of Ultimate Form, one need not arrive at the four heavens of formlessness.

The order of the four heavens of formlessness is relinquishing layer by layer: the station of space relinquishes form; the station of consciousness relinquishes space, “all obstructions having dissolved, even the unobstructed is extinguished, within it there remains only the ālaya consciousness, together with the whole of manas and the subtle half-portion”; the station of nothing whatever relinquishes consciousness, “space and form having both perished, the consciousness-mind wholly extinguished, the ten directions are still, with nowhere at all to go”; the station of neither perception nor non-perception, “the nature of consciousness unmoving, searching it to the end by extinction, within the inexhaustible bringing forth and declaring the nature of exhaustion, as if existing and not existing, as if exhausted and not exhausted.” The sentence on the station of consciousness Zixuan explains closely: “‘Only the ālaya remains, together with the whole of manas’: these two, the seventh and eighth consciousnesses, depend on each other; those of fixed nature and the dull in Dharma do not know of them at all, and they remain there in the dark. ‘The subtle half-portion’ is the sixth consciousness: now one half, the portion that conditions consciousness, is retained, and the portion that conditions form and space is not retained, hence ‘half-portion.’” That the base text speaks of the ālaya consciousness and manas within the ranking of the heavens is rare in the whole sūtra; this book’s plain rendering keeps the words and does not substitute other names. Under the station of nothing whatever Zixuan also records an ailment of the people of his time: “Now those who cultivate the Great Vehicle mostly confuse it with this concentration, holding that to be without attachment to anything, with the mind resting nowhere and not a single thing at all, is itself the Great Vehicle, no different from a blank emptiness.”

When the four heavens of formlessness are done, one sentence judges them all: “These search out emptiness to the end but do not exhaust the principle of emptiness.” Then two kinds of person are distinguished: “those who come to the end from the heavens of no return by the holy path: this kind are called the dull arhats who do not turn their minds”; “if from the heaven of No-Thought and the heavens of the outsiders one searches out emptiness without returning, deluded in the outflows and without learning, one enters the turning wheel.” Both enter the four heavens of formlessness; one kind are holy ones going slowly, the other are outsiders who do not return. Of dull and sharp, Zixuan says “it is said only in contrast with the sharp faculties above; it is not that they never turn.” The base text also distinguishes the devas from the heavenly kings: “The devas in each of these heavens are ordinary people receiving the requital of the fruits of their deeds; when the requital is done they enter the wheel. Their heavenly kings are bodhisattvas roaming in samādhi, advancing gradually, on the path of practice that turns toward the ranks of the holy.” The devas are the retribution of deeds; the kings are bodhisattvas at play. In one heaven, two kinds of person. The summing up of the formless realm is “body and mind extinguished, the nature of concentration manifest, without the form of the fruit of deeds.”

The three realms done, the Buddha sums up in one sentence: “All this is from not understanding the wondrous, awakened, bright mind; falsity piled upon falsity arises, and falsely there are the three realms, and within them one falsely follows the seven destinies and sinks. The pudgalas each follow their kind.” Zixuan notes: “pudgala means ‘one who repeatedly takes up a destiny.’”

IV. The Four Kinds of Asura and the Summing Up of the Seven Destinies

The asuras do not form a realm of their own: “within these three realms there are also four kinds of asura,” assigned to four destinies by the four modes of birth. The egg-born belong to the destiny of ghosts, “by the power of protecting the Dharma they gain penetrations and enter space”; the mother-born belong to the destiny of humans, “having fallen in virtue among the devas and been demoted, their dwelling is next to the sun and moon”; the transformation-born belong to the destiny of devas, “there are asura kings who hold the world in their grip, their power piercing and fearless, able to contend for authority with the Brahmā king, with Śakra, lord of the devas, and with the four heavenly kings”; the moisture-born belong to the destiny of animals, “born in the heart of the great sea, sunk in the cave-mouths of the waters, by day they roam the sky and at dusk return to sleep in the water.” Zixuan says: “The various accounts of the asuras, as devas or as ghosts, are none of them clear; this sūtra is distinct and can be taken as the standard.”

The seven destinies done, the Buddha sums up: “Ānanda! Thus the hells, hungry ghosts, animals, humans and spirit-immortals, devas, and asuras: when the seven destinies are finely examined, they are all dim and heavy conditioned thoughts. By false thought one takes birth, by false thought one follows one’s deeds; in the wondrous, perfect, bright, unmade original mind they are all like flowers in the sky, from the beginning having nothing at all. They are but a single falsity, with no root or thread.” Zixuan divides this: “‘by false thought one takes birth’ is the fruit of the seven destinies; ‘by false thought one follows one’s deeds’ is the cause of the seven destinies.” The cause of the turning wheel is killing, stealing, and lust: “having them is called the ranks of ghosts, lacking them is called the destiny of the devas; having and lacking overturn each other, and the nature of the turning wheel arises.” Having the three deeds is the evil destinies; lacking them is the good; having and lacking overturning each other is the turning wheel itself. True samādhi is not between having and lacking: “If one attains the wondrous arising of samādhi, then it is wondrous, constant, and still. Having and lacking are both none, and the absence of the two is also extinguished; there is not even not-killing, not-stealing, not-lusting. How could one still follow the matters of killing, stealing, and lust?” That there is not even not-killing, not-stealing, not-lusting is not that one does not keep the precepts; it is that the mind that keeps them no longer stands in opposition.

At the end he answers Ānanda’s two questions of Fascicle Eight. The question of a fixed place: “if the three deeds are not cut off, each has his own private share; because each has his own private share, the common lot of the many private shares is not without a fixed place. It arises of itself from falsity, and the arising of falsity has no cause; there is nothing to search out.” The question of whether they exist of themselves from the beginning: “you yourself falsely make it; it is not the fault of bodhi.” Zixuan says: “the former sentence answers the latter question, and the latter sentence answers the former.” Then he urges cultivation: “Strive in your cultivation: if you wish to attain bodhi, you must remove the three delusions. If the three delusions are not exhausted, even should you attain the spiritual penetrations, they are all the conditioned functioning of the world; the habit-energy not extinguished, you fall into the way of Māra.” This sentence is the seam between the seven destinies and the doings of Māra: penetrations attained without the three delusions exhausted fall into the way of Māra, and the doings of Māra spoken of below begin here. “One who speaks thus is called one who speaks rightly; if one speaks otherwise, it is the speech of the Māra kings.” Fascicle Eight closes the stages with right and wrong contemplation; this fascicle closes the seven destinies with right speech and Māra’s speech. The form is one.

V. The Tathāgata Speaks Again: The Subtle Doings of Māra

“At that moment the Tathāgata, about to leave the Dharma seat, on the lion throne took hold of the seven-jeweled armrest, turned his purple-gold mountain of a body, leaned back upon it once more, and announced to the great assembly and to Ānanda.” Zixuan says: “The Buddha had finished answering Ānanda on the seven destinies; Ānanda was silent and the assembly had no more to say, so the preaching should have ended; hence ‘about to leave the Dharma seat.’ Yet the states that arise in dhyāna, who but one of all-knowing wisdom could know them? If he did not speak of them, practitioners of the last age meeting them would find them hard to withstand; hence he leaned again upon the armrest, showing the depth of his compassion.” This is the one time in the whole sūtra that the Buddha rises and sits again.

The Buddha first says why he speaks: “I have now already spoken the true method of practice. You still do not recognize the subtle doings of Māra in cultivating śamatha and vipaśyanā; when a demonic state appears before you, you cannot recognize it, your washing of the mind is not right, and you fall into wrong views. Whether the demons of your aggregates, or again the Māra of the heavens, or possession by ghosts and spirits, or an encounter with mountain-demons: with the mind unclear, you take the thief for your son.” The true method of practice has been spoken, but what one meets while practicing has not. “Taking the thief for your son” is the name of the illness for the whole passage. He also holds up one person: “like the unlearned bhikṣu of the fourth dhyāna, who falsely claimed to have realized sagehood, and when his heavenly reward was finished and the marks of decline appeared, slandered the arhats, his body meeting a further existence, and fell into the Avīci hell.” Zixuan says this bhikṣu “did not search widely in the sūtras and treatises, practiced from his own mind, lacked broad learning and wisdom, and did not recognize the dhyānas and the stages of the three realms”; reaching the fourth dhyāna he thought he had realized arhatship, and when the heavenly reward was exhausted and he saw a place of birth, he slandered the Buddha’s words on the arhats as false and fell into Avīci. This person and the practitioners of the ten, ten, and ten states below are of one kind: not that they do not practice, but that reaching a place they do not recognize the place.

Ānanda’s response is a single sentence: “Ānanda rose, together with those in the assembly who were likewise still at the stage of learning, bowed with joy, and submitted to hear the compassionate instruction.”

VI. Beings and Buddhas One in Substance; One Person Brings Forth the True

The general clarification of the doings of Māra begins from the sameness of beings and buddhas in substance: “You should know that the twelve classes of beings of the worlds with outflows, in the substance of the mind of original awakening, wondrous and bright, awakened and perfect, are not two with and not different from the buddhas of the ten directions.” Then delusion: “It is by your false thought, deluded about the principle, that the fault arises; ignorance and love arise, and arising, spread the delusion everywhere, hence there is the nature of space; the transforming of delusion not ceasing, there is the arising of worlds.” Space arises from delusion; the worlds arise from delusion that does not cease. Therefore “you should know that space arises within your mind, like a wisp of cloud dotting the great clear sky. How much more the worlds within space?” Space within the mind is like a single cloud; the worlds within space are hardly worth mention.

Then comes how the demons are stirred: “when one of you brings forth the true and returns to the source, this space of the ten directions wholly melts away; how should the lands within space not shake and split?” One person returns to the root, the space of the ten directions melts away, the lands shake and split. One who cultivates samādhi, with the bodhisattvas of the ten directions and the arhats, is “clear at heart, penetrating and joined, in that very place deep and still,” while “all the Māra kings, with the ghosts and spirits and the ordinary devas, see their palaces crumble and split for no reason, the great earth quake and crack; those of water and land take to flight, and none is not startled and afraid.” It is one and the same shaking, yet “ordinary beings, dark and dim, do not notice the shift.” The Māra kings, the ghosts and spirits, the ordinary devas “have all attained the five spiritual penetrations, lacking only the exhaustion of outflows; they cling to this toil of dust. How should they let you break and split their place?” That the demons come to trouble a person is not without cause: when one person cultivates concentration, the palaces of Māra split. Zixuan says: “Those Māra kings, lords of the realm of desire, govern these lands as their dwelling and gather all sentient beings as their people. Hence one who attains the Way must leave the realm of Māra, and the lands they share in bringing about must be shaken.” “Therefore the spirits and ghosts, the Māras of the heavens, the wangliang, and uncanny sprites all come to trouble you at the time of samādhi.” Here the base text has “spirits and ghosts,” and Zixuan, citing the sūtra, writes “ghosts and spirits”; this book follows the base text.

VII. Master and Guest

Though the demons come, they cannot of themselves do harm: “Yet those demons, though they have great rage, are within the toil of dust, and you are within wondrous awakening; like wind blowing on light, like a knife cutting water, they do not touch at all. You are like boiling water, they like hard ice; as the warmth draws near, before many days they melt away.” Wind cannot move light; a knife cannot cut water; ice near boiling water melts of itself. Where then can a demon do harm? “They rely in vain on their spiritual power, being only guests; that they accomplish their disruption is through the master of the five aggregates within your mind. If the master is deluded, the guest gets its chance.” The demon is a guest; the five aggregates are the master; the guest cannot enter the door by itself. Zixuan says: “The Śūraṅgama samādhi, the wisdom of the real mark, is like the light, like the water, like the boiling water, like the master. Wind, knife, ice, and guest, which of them can move it?” “Or if a single thought stirs, as when the master’s mind is deluded, the guest gets its chance, and then disruption is accomplished and nothing is achieved.” He also cites the Nyāyānusāra: “The five aggregates gather and hide away all unwholesome causes, as a band of robbers hides in the mountains and from time to time comes out among people to rob them of their goods.” The five aggregates are the hiding place of the demons.

So subduing the demons lies not in subduing the demons, but in awakening: “If in the dhyāna of that very place you are awake and undeluded, those doings of Māra can do nothing to you. When the aggregates melt and you enter brightness, that host of deviants all receive the dark breath. Brightness can break darkness; drawing near, they melt away of themselves. How should they dare stay to disturb your meditative concentration?” And the reverse: “If you are not clear and awake but are deluded by the aggregates, then you, Ānanda, will surely become a son of Māra and be made a person of Māra.” Then Mātaṅgī is held up for contrast: “Like Mātaṅgī, who was exceedingly puny: though she spelled you to break the Buddha’s rules, among the eighty thousand practices she only damaged one precept, and because your mind was pure you had not yet sunk. But this would ruin the whole body of your jeweled awakening, like the house of a chief minister suddenly meeting confiscation, tumbling into ruin, with no one to pity and save it.” The Mātaṅgī of Fascicle One sought only to damage one precept, and Ānanda, his mind pure, did not go so far as to sink; the demon here would ruin the whole body of jeweled awakening. Zixuan says: “Comparing demon and ghost, the demon is the stronger and the ghost the weaker. Mātaṅgī was a human being, having only the power of a spell and not the five penetrations; compared with a demon she is the puniest of the puny.” The trouble of Fascicle One was only the beginning; the real trouble is here.

VIII. The Ten States of the Aggregate of Form

Each of the three aggregates opens with its “domain” and closes with “the aggregate is ended.” The domain of the aggregate of form: “you sit in the place of practice and dissolve away all thoughts; when those thoughts are ended, then everything that is free of thought is pure and bright, unmoved by movement or stillness, remembering and forgetting as one. You should dwell in this place and enter samādhi, like a clear-eyed person in a great darkness; the pure nature is wondrous and clean, but the mind has not yet put forth light. This is called the domain of the aggregate of form.” The eyes are clear but one is in darkness: the concentrated mind is manifest, the light of wisdom not yet put forth. Zixuan explains “domain”: “A domain is a realm, as a king rules over the various lands; hence ‘region.’ Region means division. All is covered by one sky; hence ‘roof.’ Roof means covering.” A domain is a territory covered by one aggregate. The aggregate of form ended: “If the eyes become bright and clear, and the ten directions open wide with no more darkness, this is called the aggregate of form being ended, and this person is then able to go beyond the turbidity of the kalpa. Looking into its source, solidified false thought is its root.” Each of the three aggregates is matched to one turbidity and one false thought: form to the turbidity of the kalpa and solidified false thought; feeling to the turbidity of views and empty-bright false thought; perception to the turbidity of afflictions and fusing-and-penetrating false thought. Fascicle Four speaks of the five turbidities; Fascicle Nine matches each of the five to the ending of one aggregate. On the aggregate of form Zixuan asks himself: the aggregate of form is coarse and manifest, the turbidity of the kalpa the finest; how can breaking the coarse go beyond the fine? He answers: “Because at the time of arising there is no before and after, at the time of breaking the coarse and fine are both broken. The text does not repeat itself, so one sees the arising as having an order.”

The ten states of the aggregate of form have one form each. First the use of the mind: “finely searching the wondrous brightness,” “finely searching the wondrous brightness,” “finely searching within and without,” “clear and revealed, bright and penetrating,” “observing without pause, pressing down, subduing, restraining, and overleaping,” “investigating with clarity and penetration,” “perfectly entering the empty and fused,” “accomplishing purity,” “investigating deep and far,” “investigating to the finest point.” Then what appears. Then the judgment, ‘this is called’ such and such, “obtained for a time; it is not holy realization.” And the last sentence, one form: “Not taking it for a holy mind, it is called a good state; if one takes it for sagehood, one receives the host of deviants.” The ten states are: the body able to pass through obstructions; picking worms out of the body; hearing secret meanings in space; the Buddha seated on a flower terrace; space displaying jeweled colors; seeing things in the dark; the body wounded without knowing; viewing all realms; seeing distant places by night; the teacher’s body changing. The first nine are all put forth by the power of concentration; the tenth is different: “this is called the deviant mind harboring a mountain-demon, or meeting the Māra of the heavens entering one’s heart and vitals, preaching the Dharma without cause and penetrating wondrous meanings,” and its closing sentence changes a word: “not taking it for a holy mind, the doings of Māra melt away.” Zixuan says: “This one chapter is not a good state; it is purely the vexation of demons, unlike the preceding, which are all called good seeds and become demonic only when the mind takes them for realization.”

The sentence “not taking it for a holy mind, it is called a good state” Zixuan explains most plainly: “If one knows that this is the strength of the meditator’s work, there is no loss; hence ‘good state.’ If one dismisses it all as demonic, one suppresses the good work. If one calls it sagehood, the delusions are not yet cut off. Hence one is made to recognize it well and be without taking or rejecting. All below are on this model.” The state is not the demon; taking it for sagehood is the demon. On the state of the Buddha on the flower terrace he adds a distinction: “As in cultivating the samādhi of mindfulness of the Buddha, when this state appears before one and agrees with the sūtras, it is called direct realization. If one cultivates the contemplation of the tree and sees the form of a buddha, it is not right, because mind and object do not correspond. How much more in cultivating the samādhi of suchness, where the Dharma-realm is one mark: if there is anything taken hold of, is it not a demon?” The same state is judged by the contemplation one is cultivating.

The concluding exhortation on the aggregate of form: “These ten kinds of states appearing in dhyāna are all the use of the mind interacting with the aggregate of form, and hence these things appear. Beings in their stubborn delusion do not measure themselves; meeting these conditions, deluded and not recognizing them, they say they have ascended to sagehood. The great lie is formed, and they fall into the Avīci hell. You should, after the Tathāgata’s extinction, in the final Dharma proclaim this meaning; do not let the Māra of the heavens get its chance. Hold and protect them, that they may accomplish the unsurpassed Way.” The concluding exhortations of the three aggregates share one form with small differences in wording: for form, “you should”; for feeling, “you too should take the Tathāgata’s words”; for perception, “you must take the Tathāgata’s words.” Should, too should, must: each tighter than the last.

IX. The Ten States of the Aggregate of Feeling

The domain of the aggregate of feeling takes the nightmare as its simile: “one for whom the aggregate of form is ended sees the mind of the buddhas as an image displayed in a bright mirror. He seems to have attained something but cannot yet use it, like a person in a nightmare, whose hands and feet are intact and whose seeing and hearing are not confused, but whose mind, touched by an alien evil, cannot move.” One can see but cannot move. The aggregate of feeling ended: “If the fault of the nightmare ceases, and his mind leaves the body and looks back upon his own face, going and staying at will with no further hindrance, this is called the aggregate of feeling being ended, and this person is then able to go beyond the turbidity of views. Looking into its source, empty-bright false thought is its root.” Zixuan says that when the aggregate of feeling is ended “the mind loses its receiving; since there is no receiving that receives, there is no dharma received; mind and dharma both gone, freedom is fitting.”

The ten states of the aggregate of feeling all arise from feeling: grief, valor, longing, satisfaction, sorrow, joy, pride, lightness, emptiness, desire. Each state first says “seeing the aggregate of form melt and the aggregate of feeling become clear,” then what arises: “boundless grief arises,” “limitless valor arises,” “a great parching thirst arises,” “his own mind already suspects that it is Locana,” “endless sorrow arises,” “limitless joy arises,” “a great pride of self arises without cause,” “measureless lightness,” “denying cause and effect, he enters wholly into emptiness,” “limitless love arises, and at the extreme of love he goes mad.” Then the judgment of its cause: “the work of suppression and crushing gone to excess,” “the work of overbearing and rashness gone to excess,” “cultivating the mind without wisdom, he loses himself,” “the use of the mind losing its constant examination and drowning in knowledge and views,” “the practice losing its skillful means,” “lightness and ease without wisdom to restrain himself,” “seeing the superior without wisdom to save himself,” “by wisdom obtaining all this lightness and clarity,” “the state of concentration entering the mind in peace and ease, without wisdom to hold himself.” And the closing sentence, one form: “awakened, there is no fault; it is not holy realization,” “if one takes it for sagehood,” then a certain demon “enters his heart and vitals,” “losing right reception, he will fall and sink.” The closing sentence of the aggregate of form is “it is called a good state”; that of the aggregate of feeling is “awakened, there is no fault.” The ten states of form are good states in themselves; the ten states of feeling are themselves a leaning, and only when awakened is there no fault. The cause of most of these states carries the words “without wisdom”: without wisdom he loses himself, without wisdom to restrain himself, without wisdom to save himself, without wisdom to hold himself. On the fourth state Zixuan says: “If concentration and wisdom are equal, stillness and illumination are not two. Wisdom having gone to excess, he drowns in knowledge and views”; on the concluding exhortation: “The interaction with the aggregate of feeling is the inability to keep concentration and wisdom equal and to endure with skill.”

Several states deserve a pause. At the seventh, great pride of self, Zixuan counts the seven prides: “Relying on oneself to overbear others, with exaltation as its nature, is called the pride of self; measuring self against other, comparing equal virtues, is simply called pride; toward an equal, to think oneself superior is called excessive pride; toward a superior, to think oneself superior is called pride beyond excess; not having attained, to claim attainment is called overweening pride; knowing oneself inferior yet looking back and boasting is called the pride of inferiority; to slander the sūtras and images is wrong pride.” This demon “does not bow to stūpas and shrines and destroys sūtras and images,” telling the donors, ‘This is gold or copper, or clay or wood; the sūtras are tree leaves or cotton blossoms. The flesh body is true and constant, and you do not honor it; instead you honor clay and wood: truly this is inverted.’ Spoken from the mouth of a person in concentration, these words sound like words of awakening. Zixuan says: “Fools who cultivate dhyāna all fall into this view; all of them are the seed of Māra,” and “one must know that a person who destroys sūtras and images has a demon or ghost entered into his mind; this is a great wrong view.” At the ninth, the demon of emptiness “slanders the keeping of precepts as the Lesser Vehicle: a bodhisattva who has awakened to emptiness, what keeping or breaking is there for him?” and he “drinks wine, eats meat, and widely practices lustful defilement.” At the tenth, the demon of desire “speaks only of desire as the path of bodhi, teaching the white-robed to practice desire as equals, and calling those who practice lust sons who uphold the Dharma.” Emptiness and desire are the last two states of the aggregate of feeling, and they are also the two things the ten demons of the aggregate of perception most often speak.

X. The Ten States of the Aggregate of Perception

The domain of the aggregate of perception first speaks of what the ending of the aggregate of feeling achieves: “though his outflows are not yet exhausted, his mind leaves his form like a bird leaving its cage; he is already able, from this ordinary body, to accomplish the ascent through the sixty sagely stages of the bodhisattvas, obtaining the mind-made body and going wherever he will without hindrance.” Zixuan says “this is one of perfect and sudden sharp faculties, for whom, the aggregate of feeling broken, the other aggregates break in its wake, and in this ordinary body he can at once enter the stages,” while one of dull faculties “must still break the aggregates below, and wherever they are not yet ended there are still the doings of Māra.” The simile for the domain of the aggregate of perception is talking in sleep: “like a person talking in deep sleep: though this person knows nothing else, his words have already formed sounds in sequence, so that those not asleep all understand what he says.” The words have sequence; the speaker does not know it himself. The aggregate of perception ended: “If moving thoughts are ended and floating perceptions melted away, in the awakened and bright mind it is as if dust and dirt were removed; the whole cycle of death and birth is illuminated from beginning to end. This is called the aggregate of perception being ended, and this person is then able to go beyond the turbidity of afflictions. Looking into its source, fusing-and-penetrating false thought is its root.” Zixuan explains “fusing and penetrating”: “Perception can fuse and transform; the body follows the mind. The mind thinking of sour plums, water flows in the mouth: it fuses and penetrates what is solid and obstructive; hence ‘fusing and penetrating.’”

The ten states of the aggregate of perception differ at the root from the preceding twenty: those arose from one’s own mind; these are outer demons possessing a person. Each state has one form, much longer than those of the two preceding aggregates. First the practitioner, “the aggregate of feeling empty and wondrous, not meeting with wrong thoughts, the perfect concentration brought to light”; then ‘in samādhi the mind loves’ something, ‘craving’ something: perfect brightness, roaming, close joining, the root, distant response, deep entry, knowledge and views, spiritual penetrations, entering extinction, long life; craving skill, travel, union, analysis, hidden response, quietude, knowledge of past lives, spiritual power, deep emptiness, lasting years. Then “at that time the Māra of the heavens, watching, gets its chance; it sends its essence to possess a person, who speaks sūtras and Dharma from his mouth. That person is unaware that it is the demon possessing him, and says of himself that he has attained unsurpassed nirvāṇa”; he comes to where the practitioner is and “spreads a seat and preaches the Dharma,” manifesting various strange marks; the practitioner, “foolish and deluded, takes him for a bodhisattva,” “breaks the Buddha’s rules, and secretly practices craving and desire.” Then “from his mouth he likes to speak” of a certain thing; then ‘this is called’ a certain ghost, “grown old and become a demon, which troubles this person. When its satiety arises, it leaves that person’s body; disciple and teacher alike fall into the troubles of the king”; and the last sentence, “You should be aware beforehand, and not enter the turning wheel; deluded and unknowing, you fall into the Avīci hell.” Zixuan divides each state into two parts: “the love in the mind suddenly arises and the demon gets its chance,” and “it speaks heterodoxies from its mouth, leaves the body, and leaves trouble behind.” This book’s plain rendering gives each state two paragraphs, following him.

The hinge of the ten states is the two words “the mind loves.” One for whom the aggregate of feeling is ended “does not meet with wrong thoughts”; the feelings of the ten states of feeling no longer arise, yet in concentration a love arises: love of perfect brightness, love of roaming, love of knowledge and views, love of long life. Once love arises, there is “craving”; once there is craving, the demon “watching, gets its chance.” On the fifth state Zixuan says: “When the work is deep and the practice is firm, response comes of itself in the dark; to stir a thought and seek it falsely is for the demon’s essence to enter in the dark.” On the seventh: “Penetrations such as knowledge of past lives the meditator has of himself; leaving desire and in quiet contemplation, they appear of themselves. If one stirs a thought and seeks them first, forcibly taking them without the work, not only does one lose the root, one also becomes a demon.” Of the ten things sought, not one is bad: skill, union, knowledge of past lives, spiritual penetrations, deep emptiness, long life are all things a practitioner would want. The illness is not in what is sought, but in the seeking.

The demon does not come of itself; it “sends its essence to possess a person,” attaching itself to another person who comes to the practitioner and preaches. So in each state there are two persons: the practitioner in whom love arises in concentration, and the person possessed by the demon who preaches, whom the practitioner “takes for a bodhisattva.” The names of the ten demons: the strange ghost; the drought ghost; the bewitching ghost; the poisoning, nightmare-overpowering evil ghost; the pestilence ghost; the ghost of great power; the ghosts and spirits of the mountain forests, the land, the city walls and moats, the rivers and peaks; the sprites of the mountains, seas, winds, rivers, and earth, of great power in heaven and earth, and the sprites and goblins of all grasses and trees accumulated over kalpas; the essences of the eclipsing of sun and moon, the gold, jade, and magic fungus, the unicorn, phoenix, tortoise, and crane that have passed a thousand or ten thousand years without dying and become numinous; and the Māra of the heavens, sovereign and dwelling in the world. The first nine have all “grown old and become demons”; only the tenth is the Māra of the heavens itself, which “sends its retinue, such as the cāmuṇḍās and the piśāca youths of the four heavenly kings who have not yet brought forth the resolve, to profit from his empty brightness and feed on his vital essence.” From ghost to sprite to numinous being to the Māra of the heavens, each state is larger than the last.

What the ten demons speak from their mouths is also worth setting side by side: the strange ghost “likes to speak of calamities and omens, of strange changes”; the drought ghost “likes to speak of buddhas responding to the world, that such a person in such a place must be such a buddha in transformation body”; the bewitching ghost “likes to speak of buddhas great and small, this buddha earlier and that buddha later, among them true buddhas and false buddhas, male buddhas and female buddhas”; the poisoning ghost “likes to say that the eyes, ears, nose, and tongue are all pure lands, and that the male and female organs are the true place of bodhi and nirvāṇa”; the pestilence ghost tells of causes from former lives and of ‘a separate heaven of great light where the Buddha dwells’; the ghost of great power “likes to speak of fortune and misfortune not yet come, and when the time arrives there is not a hair’s breadth of error”; the ghosts and spirits of the mountain forests “like to speak of treasuries in other places, the hidden dwellings of the sages of the ten directions”; the sprites and goblins “constantly speak of the freedom of spiritual penetrations” and “praise the practice of lust, do not condemn coarse conduct, and take all obscenities as the transmission of the Dharma”; the numinous beings “constantly say there is no cause and no effect, that with one death all is extinguished forever, with no further body and no ordinary or holy”; the Māra of the heavens “constantly says that the beings of the ten directions are all his children, that he gave birth to the buddhas, that he brought forth the world, that he is the original buddha, who came forth into the world of himself and not through cultivation.” Each sentence is a kind of Dharma, and each kind has those who believe it. “Because that person sees this, his mind gives rise to a longing thirst; wrong views secretly flourish, and the wisdom of all modes melts away.” To see a strange mark and believe the teaching is the road shared by all ten states.

After the demon departs, “disciple and teacher alike fall into the troubles of the king.” The teacher is the person possessed, the disciple the practitioner in whom love arose; when the demon leaves the body, the two fall into trouble together. The tenth state is worse still: “before a year has passed, liver and brain are dried up,” “the people around him not having discerned it, he mostly falls into the troubles of the king, and before he meets with punishment he has already withered and died.”

The concluding exhortation on the aggregate of perception adds a passage of entrustment: “These ten kinds of demons, in the last age, leave home and cultivate the Way within my Dharma, whether possessing a person’s body or manifesting their own form, all saying that they have accomplished Right and Universal Knowledge and awakening; they praise lustful desire and break the Buddha’s rules. The earlier evil demon teachers and the demon disciples transmit lust from lust to lust.” The retinue of Māra is not for one lifetime only: “at the nearest nine births, at most beyond a hundred ages, they make true cultivators all into the retinue of Māra. After the end of life they will surely become Māra people, losing Right and Universal Knowledge, and fall into the Avīci hell.” In the final Dharma, the demons are within the Buddha’s Dharma. So the Buddha charges Ānanda: “You need not now take quiescence first; even should you attain the stage beyond training, keep your vow to enter that final Dharma, give rise to great compassion, and save and deliver the beings of right mind and deep faith, so that they do not become possessed by demons but attain right knowledge and views. I have now delivered you out of birth and death; to follow the Buddha’s words is called repaying the Buddha’s kindness.” Zixuan says: “The great sage in his deep compassion urges him not to take extinction, and earnestly entrusts him, precisely for the present age.” In Fascicle Three Ānanda vowed that so long as a single being had not become a buddha he would not take nirvāṇa; here the Buddha returns that vow to him.

Carrying Forward — The Master of the Five Aggregates

The two matters of this fascicle look like two things and are at bottom one. When the seven destinies are done the Buddha says, “if the three delusions are not exhausted, even should you attain the spiritual penetrations, they are all the conditioned functioning of the world; the habit-energy not extinguished, you fall into the way of Māra”; at the opening of the doings of Māra he says, “if the master is deluded, the guest gets its chance.” The seven destinies are being deluded and taking birth; the doings of Māra are cultivating and being deluded on the way. Both are matters of “not understanding the wondrous, awakened, bright mind.”

Set out in a row, the thirty states follow one line: the ten of the aggregate of form are put forth by the work of concentration and are good states in themselves; the ten of the aggregate of feeling are the leaning of feeling, without fault when awakened; the ten of the aggregate of perception are love arising and inviting the demon, avoided only by awareness beforehand. From work to feeling to love, from what one’s own mind puts forth to what an outer demon possesses, each aggregate is finer than the last and each state harder to recognize. Each of the three aggregates is matched to one turbidity: the aggregate of form ended goes beyond the turbidity of the kalpa, feeling beyond the turbidity of views, perception beyond the turbidity of afflictions. The five turbidities spoken of in Fascicle Four are here shed layer by layer.

Fascicle Ten carries this one forward: the ten states of the aggregate of formations and the ten of the aggregate of consciousness, and then the Buddha speaks in general of the root of the five aggregates and whether their extinction is sudden or gradual; Ānanda asks whether the five aggregates melt away together or are ended in order, and the Buddha answers that in principle there is sudden awakening, in fact gradual removal. The form of this fascicle, “domain,” “the aggregate is ended,” “looking into its source,” is completed in Fascicle Ten with the two aggregates of formations and consciousness.

I. Where This Fascicle Stands in the Whole Sūtra

Fascicle Nine speaks of the doings of Māra as far as the ten states of the aggregate of perception, and closes with the exhortation, “you must take the Tathāgata’s words and, after my extinction, transmit and show them in the final Dharma.” Fascicle Ten takes up from the aggregate of formation; its first sentence is “Ānanda! For that good man who cultivates samādhi and whose aggregate of perception is ended, dreaming and thinking are ordinarily extinguished, and waking and sleeping are constantly one.” Under the fascicle title there is again the interlinear note, “also called the Great Bodhimaṇḍa Sūtra of Nālandā in Central India, copied out from the Consecration Section to circulate separately,” and then three lines of attribution: “In the first year of Shenlong of the Great Tang, the year yisi, on the twenty-third day, xinchou, of the fifth month whose first day was jimao, translated by the śramaṇa Pramiti of Central India at the Zhizhi Monastery in Guangzhou”; “Taken down in writing by the bodhisattva-precept disciple Fang Rong of Qinghe, formerly Grand Master of Remonstrance and Joint Manager of Affairs with the Secretariat-Chancellery”; “Rendered into Chinese by the śramaṇa Meghaśikha of the kingdom of Uḍḍiyāna.” The first nine fascicles carry a single line of attribution; only in the last fascicle are the year, month, and day of translation, the place, the scribe, and the interpreter all written out. This book records it as the base text has it.

This fascicle has three matters. The first continues the doings of Māra from Fascicle Nine: the domain and the ending of the aggregate of formation, and its ten states; the domain and the ending of the aggregate of consciousness, and its ten states; then the summing up of the demonic states of the five aggregates, the exhortation to hold the spell, and “you should reverently honor this final model, handed down by the Tathāgatas of the ten directions, for cultivation and advance to the very end.” The fifty layers of demonic states named in Fascicle One are here told to the end. The second matter is Ānanda’s question: if the five aggregates are false thought, what are the five kinds of false thought? Are the five aggregates dissolved all at once, or exhausted in sequence? Where are the boundaries of the five layers? The Buddha answers with the five false thoughts, the five boundaries, and sudden in principle but gradual in fact. The third matter is the circulation of the sūtra: to fill all of space with the seven jewels and offer them to Buddhas as many as motes of dust is not equal to a single thought of opening this Dharma-door to those who have not yet learned; the assembly rejoices, bows, and withdraws, and the sūtra ends. The closing title of the fascicle reads The Great Buddha-Crown Sūtra of the Myriad Practices, Śūraṅgama, Fascicle Ten.

Zixuan places the first matter under “the separate display, in five” of Fascicle Nine: “fourth, breaking the aggregate of formation” and “fifth, breaking the aggregate of consciousness,” each divided into the marks of ended and not yet ended, the proper showing of the states that appear, and the concluding exhortation to proclaim; then “third, the concluding exhortation, in four: first, pointing in sum to the doings of Māra.” For the second matter he sets up “second, Ānanda, on hearing this, asks for further benefit” and “second, the Tathāgata answers”; within the answer, “first, the direct answer to what was asked, in three: first, answering on false thought,” answering on the boundaries, answering on sudden and gradual, and at the end “third, the concluding exhortation to proclaim.” The third matter is “third, the section on circulation, in two: first, the Tathāgata shows by comparison what the sūtra can do” and “second, the assembly hears with reverence, bows, and withdraws.” Following his headings, this book divides the fascicle into thirty-eight sections: one for the marks of the aggregate of formation ended and not yet ended, ten for the ten states, one for the concluding exhortation; the same for the aggregate of consciousness, twelve sections; one for the summing-up exhortation; one for Ānanda’s question; one for the general statement on false thought, five for the five false thoughts, one for the answer on the boundaries, one for the answer on sudden and gradual, one for the concluding exhortation to proclaim; and one each for setting forth the merit of giving, showing the benefit of the sūtra, and the assembly bowing and withdrawing. The titles of the twenty states are all taken from Zixuan’s outline, with the numbering removed.

This book takes ‘the five false thoughts’ as the title of this fascicle. The words “the five false thoughts” are the base text’s own: “Ānanda! These five aggregates of appropriation are formed by the five false thoughts.” Each of the ten states of the aggregate of formation and of the ten of the aggregate of consciousness ends with “is confused about the nature of bodhi” or “is deluded about the Buddha’s bodhi,” and when the Buddha answers Ānanda he says of the root cause of the five aggregates that they are “all alike false thought.” The fifty states are what false thought looks like in concentration; the five false thoughts are their root. To take ‘the five false thoughts’ as the title is to take the root and not the branches.

II. The Domain of the Aggregate of Formation

What it looks like when the aggregate of perception is ended is told first through dreams: “dreaming and thinking are ordinarily extinguished, and waking and sleeping are constantly one.” Zixuan says: “While the aggregate of perception remains, waking is imagining and sleeping becomes dreaming. Now that the aggregate of perception is ended there are no dreams, because the aggregate of perception is the source of dreams.” In Fascicle Nine the domain of the aggregate of perception was likened to “talking in deep sleep”; with perception ended there is no dream left to talk in. Then “the bright awareness is empty and still like a clear sky, with no more coarse and heavy shadow-affairs of former objects; looking upon the great earth, mountains, and rivers of the world, it is like a mirror reflecting brightly: what comes finds nothing to stick to, what passes leaves no trace. Receiving in emptiness and answering in reflection, the old habits are wholly gone, and there is only the one essential truth.”

Once perception is ended, what lies beneath is exposed: “the root source of arising and ceasing is from here laid bare. One sees the twelve kinds of beings in the ten directions, exhausting their classes to the end. Though one has not yet penetrated the thread of each one’s life, one sees the common basis of their arising, like a mirage, flickering and glimmering, limpid and stirring, the ultimate pivot of the floating sense faculties and their objects; this is called the domain of the aggregate of formation.” The mirage is the drifting light of dust stirred by the warm air; Zixuan says, “‘like a mirage’: dust joined with warm air, stirred up into it,” and “‘flickering and glimmering’ is light rising and flashing, a figure for arising and ceasing.” Seeing the common basis of arising yet not having penetrated the thread of each life: one sees the place from which beings arise in common, and does not yet see the origin of each one’s receiving of life. This sentence is the boundary between the aggregate of formation and the aggregate of consciousness, for the domain of the aggregate of consciousness is precisely “to penetrate deeply to the source of how the twelve kinds of beings in the ten directions receive life.” The aggregate of formation ended: “if this limpid, stirring, flickering and glimmering original nature enters into its original clarity, the original habit-energy settled in a single clearing, like waves subsiding into still water, this is called the aggregate of formation ended, and such a person can then surpass the turbidity of living beings. Observe what it comes from: its root is the hidden-and-obscure false thought.” The pattern of the three aggregates in Fascicle Nine, domain, aggregate ended, the turbidity surpassed, the false thought at the root, here reaches the fourth aggregate. Zixuan says, “because formation is the nature of beings’ flowing and changing deeds, when it is ended one surpasses the turbidity of living beings,” and “the arising and ceasing of the aggregate of formation is subtle and hard to perceive, hence the name hidden-and-obscure.”

III. The Ten States of the Aggregate of Formation: Calculation

The ten states of the aggregate of formation differ from those of the first three aggregates, and two words have to be looked at first. The first thirty states arose from the working of one’s own mind, or from a leaning of feeling, or from the Māra of the heavens possessing a person; the ten states of the aggregate of formation are all ‘theories’: theories of no cause, of pervasive permanence, of partial permanence, of limits, of confused evasion, of existence, of nonexistence, of neither, of annihilation, of present nirvāṇa. From the third state on, the eight states open with the same formula: “Further, the good men in samādhi, with firm and settled right mind, whom Māra cannot get at, who have exhausted the root of the classes of beings and observe that hidden, limpid, constantly stirring source”; the first and second states have “with settled and bright right mind,” and the first says further that “the ten classes of Māras of the heavens cannot get at them”; then ‘one who gives rise to calculation within such-and-such’: within the perfect source, within perfect permanence, within self and other, within divisions and positions, within knowing and seeing, within the endless flow, within form, feeling, and perception already removed, within formation remaining, within what comes after and after being nothing, within what comes after and after being something. The closings all come to one place: “falls into the non-Buddhist paths, and is confused about the nature of bodhi” stands in all ten; the first two states read “by this calculation one loses Right and Universal Knowledge, falls into the non-Buddhist paths, and is confused about the nature of bodhi” and “by this reckoning of permanence one loses Right and Universal Knowledge, falls into the non-Buddhist paths, and is confused about the nature of bodhi,” and from the third state on they say only ‘by this calculation of such-and-such, one falls into the non-Buddhist paths and is confused about the nature of bodhi’; then ‘this is called the such-and-such non-Buddhist path.’ The sickness of all ten states lies in the one word “calculation.” Zixuan says: “That is, the theories of the non-Buddhist paths come into being from this; all of them, having cultivated to this point, suddenly give rise to a wrong wisdom, which is called the arising of views; it is not that there are non-Buddhist paths that exist separately from the start.” The non-Buddhist paths are not people outside; they are those who have cultivated as far as the aggregate of formation, seen the root source of arising and ceasing, and reasoned from what they saw.

The first state is the two theories of no cause. Seeing no cause at the beginning: “riding on the eight hundred merits of the eye faculty, one sees all the beings of eighty thousand kalpas, the stream of their deeds winding round, dying here and being born there; one sees only beings turning in the wheel in their places. Beyond eighty thousand kalpas it is dark and nothing is seen, and so one forms this understanding: ‘These beings of the ten directions in this world have existed without cause of themselves for eighty thousand kalpas.’” Seeing no cause at the end: “knowing that humans beget humans and realizing that birds beget birds; crows have been black from the beginning and swans white from the beginning,” and so one says, “know that all things and forms of today are originally without cause.” He carries it over to himself as well: “Now, when this body is done, it will be just the same. And since I have never from the start seen bodhi, how could there be any further matter of attaining bodhi!” What was seen was real; the births and deaths within eighty thousand kalpas were truly seen. The error lies in taking the edge of what was seen for the edge of what is and is not.

The second state is the four theories of pervasive permanence: searching to the end mind and objects, the four elements, the six faculties and manas, the source of perception, one sees in each case the beings of twenty thousand, forty thousand, eighty thousand kalpas “circling round and never scattering or lost, and reckons this to be permanence.” Zixuan says: “‘Perfect permanence’: the arising and ceasing of the aggregate of formation continue without being lost, hence the name permanence; because one reckons the four kinds to pervade all things, it is called perfect.” The third state, the four theories of partial permanence, starts from “self and other”: “this person observes the wondrous bright mind pervading the realms of the ten directions, and takes its limpidity for the ultimate divine self,” and so “the nature of my mind is called permanent, while those that arise and cease are truly of impermanent nature”; or one sees the places where the kalpa is destroyed as impermanent and those not destroyed as permanent; or my nature as permanent and death and birth as impermanent; or “knowing that the aggregate of perception is ended, seeing the flow of the aggregate of formation, one reckons the constant flow of the aggregate of formation to be of permanent nature, and form, feeling, perception, and the rest, now already ended, to be called impermanent.” Zixuan says, “either one holds that I can produce others, I permanent and they impermanent, or one holds that I am born from others, they permanent and I impermanent.” The fourth state, the four theories of limits, starts from “divisions and positions”: past and future have limits, continuity has none; within eighty thousand kalpas there are limits, before the kalpas none; I am without limits, others have limits; the fourth view “reckons, by the mental path of what one has seen, that within the single body of every being all are half arising and half ceasing,” and so “one half has limits, one half has none.”

The fifth state, the four theories of deathless confusion, is the longest. “One who gives rise to calculation within knowing and seeing”: the first four states were reckonings; this one is the inability to decide. Seeing the eight meanings of change, constancy, arising, ceasing, increase, decrease, existence, and nonexistence, “one observes them all by reason and sees them each with a separate mind. When someone seeking the Dharma comes to ask the meaning, one answers, ‘I now both arise and cease, both exist and do not exist, both increase and decrease,’ and at all times confuses one’s speech.” Or one answers only “no,” or only “yes,” or “both-existing is itself both-not-existing, and within both-not-existing there is no both-existing.” Zixuan cites the Vibhāṣā: “The non-Buddhist paths reckon that the heavens abide permanently and call this deathless; they reckon that one who does not answer confusedly is born in those heavens. If one does not truly know yet answers rashly, one fears committing confused evasion. Therefore when asked, one answers that it is secret and should not all be told, or gives no fixed answer. The Buddha’s Dharma rebukes this: this is true confused evasion.” Confused evasion is not feigning muddle; it is truly believing that not answering is being right.

IV. The Last Five States of the Aggregate of Formation, and the Exhortation

The sixth state is the sixteen marks of existence: form is self, self has form, form belongs to self, self is in form; four propositions for one aggregate, sixteen for four. “From this one confusedly reckons that afflictions are ultimate and bodhi is ultimate, the two natures running side by side and never touching.” Zixuan says, “first, with the aggregate of form, the four propositions are fully set out, each saying there is existence after death; and circling in this way, the other three aggregates are modeled with twelve propositions.” The seventh state is the eight nonexistences, reckoned from “form, feeling, and perception already removed”: “seeing that form has ceased and the body has nothing to rest on, observing that perception has ceased and the mind has nothing to tie to, knowing that feeling has ceased and there is no further linking, the nature of the aggregates dissolves and scatters. Even if there is a principle of life, without feeling and perception it is the same as grass and trees.” That the first three aggregates have ceased is real; to infer from it that “the causes and fruits of nirvāṇa are all empty, having only names, and are ultimately annihilated” is calculation. The eighth state is the eight neithers, reckoning existence and nonexistence together: “within form, feeling, and perception one sees existence that is not existence; within the flowing of formation one observes nonexistence that is not nonexistence,” and “of the later limit, dim and obscure, nothing can be said.” Zixuan says, “‘nothing can be said’: to say existence is not existence, to say nonexistence is not nonexistence; neither road, existence or nonexistence, can be spoken.” The ninth state is the seven annihilations: “either one reckons the body ceases, or desire is exhausted and ceases, or suffering is exhausted and ceases, or utmost bliss ceases, or utmost relinquishment ceases. Circling in this way, searching the seven limits to the end: present extinction, and after extinction nothing more.” The tenth state is the five present nirvāṇas: taking the realm of desire and the first, second, third, and fourth dhyānas as five ultimate places, “deluded about the heavens with outflows, one takes them for the unconditioned, and the five places of peace for the supreme pure refuge.” Zixuan says, “not knowing the forms of the teaching, on gaining these four dhyānas and a small share of the peace and bliss of the concentration of the realm of desire, one reckons them nirvāṇa.” In Fascicle Nine each dhyāna of the realm of form carried the sentence “though this is not the proper cultivation of true samādhi”; in the ten states of the aggregate of formation, the people who take the four dhyānas for nirvāṇa have appeared.

Set in a row, the sixth to the tenth states are one line: existence, nonexistence, neither, annihilation, present nirvāṇa. Existence after death; nonexistence after death; after death neither existence nor nonexistence; annihilation after death; and, without waiting for death, nirvāṇa right now. All look out from the one place, “within formation remaining, with feeling and perception ceased”: three aggregates already ceased, one aggregate still flowing. Those who look at the place of ceasing say nonexistence; those who look at the place of flowing say existence; those who look at both say neither.

The exhortation: “Ānanda! These ten kinds of mad interpretation in dhyāna are all the aggregate of formation interacting with the working mind, and so these awakenings appear.” The exhortation to the three aggregates in Fascicle Nine said “states appearing in dhyāna”; here it says “mad interpretations in dhyāna.” The first thirty states were states; these ten are interpretations. Zixuan says: “These ten states are the causes of wrong views; one cultivates right concentration and they suddenly arise, hence ‘mad interpretations.’” The sickness is in “taking delusion for understanding and declaring oneself to have ascended to sagehood, the great false speech is formed, and one falls into the Avīci hell.” It is not that seeing these states makes one fall; it is taking delusion for understanding and declaring oneself a sage that makes one fall. The charge is tighter again than for the first three aggregates: “Do not let the demon of the mind raise up its deep calamity of itself; keep and protect them, dissolve their wrong views, teach their body and mind to open and awaken to the true meaning, so that on the unsurpassed Way they meet no forking path. Do not let their minds pray for a little and take it as enough; be the pure guiding mark of the great King of Awakening.” Fascicle Nine said “do not let the Māra of the heavens get its chance”; here it says “do not let the demon of the mind raise up its deep calamity of itself.” In the ten states of the aggregate of formation there is no demon from outside; the demon is one’s own mind.

V. The Domain of the Aggregate of Consciousness

What it looks like when the aggregate of formation is ended: “the hidden, limpid, stirring common life-mechanism of the nature of the worlds suddenly falls apart and splits; the deep vein of the pudgala’s requital of deeds, the fine hidden cord and knot, has its responses cut off.” Zixuan says, “‘the nature of the worlds’: the aggregate of formation is itself the substance and nature of the worlds.” The life-mechanism falls apart, the deep vein is cut off: the aggregate of formation is the pivot and cord by which beings receive birth, and that pivot has snapped. Then “in the heaven of nirvāṇa one is about to greatly and brightly awaken, like the cock’s later crowing; looking toward the east, there is already a fine light.” Zixuan says, “‘like the cock’s later crowing’: at the cock’s second crowing the sky is about to dawn,” and “nirvāṇa is called the heaven of the first meaning; to gain the acceptance of non-arising is called greatly and brightly awakening.” About to dawn, not yet dawned. “The six faculties are empty and still, no longer racing and scattering; within and without limpid and bright, one enters where there is nothing to enter, and penetrates deeply to the source of how the twelve kinds of beings in the ten directions receive life. Observing the source and holding to the origin, the classes are no longer summoned; in the realms of the ten directions one has gained what is common to them, and the fine light does not sink but brings out the hidden and secret; this is called the domain of the aggregate of consciousness.” The domain of the aggregate of formation was “though one has not yet penetrated the thread of each one’s life”; the domain of the aggregate of consciousness is “to penetrate deeply to the source of how the twelve kinds of beings in the ten directions receive life.” Here the origin of how each class receives life is all seen, and what is seen there is consciousness. Zixuan says: “Having known that consciousness is the source of the classes of beings, one knows that in the realms of the ten directions both the supporting world and the beings supported are transformations of consciousness, of one and the same substance of consciousness; and this is ‘the three realms are mind alone, the myriad things are consciousness alone.’”

The aggregate of consciousness ended: “if, within what is common to the classes summoned, already gained, one grinds away the six gates and accomplishes their joining and opening, so that seeing and hearing communicate with one another and their functioning for one another is pure; and the worlds of the ten directions, together with body and mind, are like cat’s-eye beryl, bright and clear within and without, this is called the aggregate of consciousness ended, and such a person can then surpass the turbidity of life. Observe what it comes from: its root is the inverted false thought of shadowy emptiness.” What the aggregate of consciousness ended looks like is the six faculties functioning for one another; what Fascicle Four said, “knowing and seeing that do not arise from former objects,” here finds its place. What is surpassed is the turbidity of life; Zixuan says, “the substance of life is the aggregate of consciousness itself. Because life, warmth, and consciousness turn together at the same time, once consciousness has departed, life and warmth perish with it, and so one surpasses the turbidity of life.” Here the five turbidities are each matched to one of the five aggregates: kalpa, views, afflictions, living beings, life. The false thought at the root is “shadowy emptiness”; Zixuan says, “‘shadowy emptiness’ is the mark of the shadow-image when bright awareness first stirs.” The fifth false thought is not named until the thirty-second section; here it is set up in advance.

VI. The Ten Graspings of the Aggregate of Consciousness: Superior Understanding

The opening formula of the ten states of the aggregate of consciousness: “Further, a good man who has exhausted the emptiness of all formations, who has already ceased arising and ceasing, yet is not yet perfect in the fine and wondrous quiescence.” Formation is already emptied, arising and ceasing already ceased, but quiescence is not yet perfect; the place where it is not yet perfect is the aggregate of consciousness. Then ‘if, in such-and-such, one gives rise to a superior understanding,’ ‘this person falls into such-and-such grasping,’ and with such-and-such people “becomes their companion,” “deluded about the Buddha’s bodhi, losing knowing and seeing”; ‘this is called the such-and-such,’ establishing such-and-such a mind and forming such-and-such a fruit; “turns away from perfect penetration and turns its back on the city of nirvāṇa”; ‘gives birth to the seed of such-and-such.’ The ten states of the aggregate of formation are “calculation”; the ten of the aggregate of consciousness are “superior understanding.” The ten of formation are “theories”; the ten of consciousness are “graspings.” Calculation is still reasoning; superior understanding is already a settled conviction. A theory is something said; a grasping is something lived upon.

The first eight graspings all arise at the place one returns to. The first, the grasping at what is caused as the cause: “if, at the place one returns to, one establishes a true and permanent cause,” taking the aggregate of consciousness for the true and permanent cause of all things, companion to Kapila’s obscure principle. Zixuan says: “This is to reckon the dim beginning, before the ālaya consciousness has taken form or sign, as the obscure principle.” At the very start of Fascicle One, where Ānanda’s question arises, there is already “Kapila’s spell of the former Brahmā heaven”; at the end of the sūtra, the place Kapila returns to is the first of the ten graspings of the aggregate of consciousness. The second, the grasping at the incapable as capable: “if, at the place one returns to, one surveys it as one’s own substance, and all the beings of the twelve kinds throughout the realm of space are of one class, flowing out from within my body,” companion to Maheśvara manifesting a boundless body. It is not that consciousness produces all things; it is that I produce all things. The third, the grasping at the impermanent as permanent, is the reverse: “one suspects that one’s own body and mind flow out from there, and that all of space in the ten directions arises from it,” companion to those who reckon the Īśvara deva. Zixuan says, “before, one reckoned that others are born from me; now one holds that I arise from others.” The fourth, the grasping at the unknowing as knowing: “the grasses and trees of the ten directions are all called sentient, no different from humans; grasses and trees become humans, and humans at death become again the grasses and trees of the ten directions,” companion to “Vasiṣṭha and Senika, who hold that all things are aware.” Because knowing is pervasive and perfect, one says that everything knows. The fifth, the grasping at the unproductive as productive: “one seeks the brightness of fire, delights in the purity of water, loves the circulation of wind, observes the formation of dust, and reveres and serves each of them. Taking this host of dusts as the root cause of what brings forth, one sets up the understanding that they abide permanently,” companion to Kāśyapa and the brahmins who serve fire and revere water. To revere and serve the four elements is still a deed; to set up the four elements as the permanently abiding root cause is the grasping.

The sixth, the grasping at no refuge as refuge: “if, within the perfect brightness, one reckons an emptiness within the brightness, denies the transformations of the many, and takes the support of eternal extinction as the refuge one returns to,” companion to the Śūnyatā devas of the heaven of No-Thought. In Fascicle Nine the heaven of No-Thought “in the first half-kalpa ceases, in the latter half-kalpa arises”; here that ceasing is taken for the place of return. The seventh, the grasping with craving at what is not to be craved: “if, within perfect permanence, one makes the body firm and permanently abiding, the same as the essential perfection, long and never declining,” companion to the Asitas, who seek long life. The eighth, the grasping at the untrue as true: “observing that life communicates throughout, one holds back the dusty toil, fearing it will be exhausted, and at this juncture sits in a lotus palace, broadly conjures the seven treasures, multiplies jeweled maidens, and gives free rein to the mind,” companion to Zhazhi-jialuo, “giving birth to the seed of the Māra of the heavens.” The last of the ten states of the aggregate of perception in Fascicle Nine was the self-existent Māra of the heavens, dwelling in the world, possessing a person; here the practitioner himself becomes the seed of the Māra of the heavens. Those states were Māra coming; this grasping is turning into Māra. Zixuan says, “raising delusion and indulging desire, one truly has not realized the true, yet reckons that this very thing can realize the true and bring forth its function; hence ‘the grasping at the untrue as true.’”

The last two graspings are not the non-Buddhist paths but the two vehicles. The ninth, the fixed-nature śrāvakas: “within the brightness of life, one distinguishes fine and coarse, sorts true from false, and, cause and fruit requiting each other, seeks only the response, turning one’s back on the pure Way: the so-called seeing of suffering, cutting off of its arising, realizing of cessation, and cultivating of the path. Dwelling in cessation one stops and advances no further,” companion to “the unlearned bhikṣus of overweening pride,” “giving birth to the seed bound in emptiness.” The tenth, the fixed-nature pratyekabuddhas: “if, within the perfectly fused, pure, awakened brightness, one brings forth and investigates the deep and wondrous, and then establishes nirvāṇa and advances no further,” companion to “the kind of the solitary awakened by conditions who do not turn their minds,” “giving birth to the seed of perfection in which awakening is perfect and bright yet does not transform.” The four truths were spoken by the Buddha; the awakened brightness is real. The sickness is in “dwelling in cessation one stops” and “advances no further.” Zixuan says of the fixed nature that “it is judged fixed only with respect to one period of inclining toward quiescence without change; in fact there are a number of kalpas, and in the end they turn toward the higher vehicle,” and of the unlearned bhikṣus that they “do not understand the aggregate of consciousness and mistake it for nirvāṇa.” The unlearned bhikṣu of Fascicle Nine, who reached the fourth dhyāna and said he had realized sagehood, and the unlearned bhikṣus here, who reach the aggregate of consciousness and call it nirvāṇa, are one kind of person. Among the ten graspings there are non-Buddhist paths, there is the Māra of the heavens, there are the two vehicles, and the one sentence covers them all: “turns away from perfect penetration and turns its back on the city of nirvāṇa.”

Each of the ten graspings has the mind it sets up, the fruit it forms, and the seed it gives birth to, and the base text gives one sentence to each: the first “sets up the mind of something gained and forms the fruit of a place returned to,” giving birth to the seed of the non-Buddhist paths; the second “sets up the mind of being capable and forms the fruit of capable deeds,” giving birth to the seed of the great pride deva whose self pervades and is perfect; the third “sets up the mind of a cause depended upon and forms the fruit of false reckoning,” giving birth to the seed of inverted perfection; the fourth “reckons a mind of perfect knowing and forms the fruit of empty error,” giving birth to the seed of inverted knowing; the fifth “reckons attachment to reverence and service, a mind deluded and following things, sets up a cause of false seeking, and seeks a falsely hoped-for fruit,” giving birth to the seed of inverted transformation; the sixth “makes a mind of perfect emptiness and forms the fruit of emptiness and loss,” giving birth to the seed of annihilation; the seventh “clings to the source of life, sets up a cause of fixing the false, and inclines to the fruit of long toil,” giving birth to the seed of false prolongation; the eighth “brings forth a cause of wrong thinking and sets up the fruit of blazing dust,” giving birth to the seed of the Māra of the heavens; the ninth “makes a mind of perfect essence responding and forms the fruit of inclining to quiescence,” giving birth to the seed bound in emptiness; the tenth “makes a mind of perfect awakening joined with the limpid and forms the fruit of limpid brightness,” giving birth to the seed of perfection in which awakening is perfect and bright yet does not transform. The mind is what is set up, the fruit is what is inclined to, the seed is the kind one becomes. Set in a row, the ten sentences return to different places, and what they lose is the same: “deluded about the Buddha’s bodhi, losing knowing and seeing.”

VII. The Exhortation on the Aggregate of Consciousness, and the Leap over the Stages

“Ānanda! These ten kinds of dhyāna go mad midway; depending on delusion, they give rise, within what is not yet enough, to the realization of fullness; all are the aggregate of consciousness interacting with the working mind, and so these positions arise.” The exhortation on the aggregate of formation said “mad interpretations”; here it says “go mad midway” and “these positions arise.” The ten graspings are all positions, places where something is gained and something is dwelt in. “Beings, obstinate and deluded, do not measure themselves; meeting these as they appear, each, with the mind deluded by the habits he previously loved, comes to rest of his own accord, takes it for the ultimate place of return and peace, and declares himself fulfilled in unsurpassed bodhi.” The habits previously loved: the place each grasping returns to is the shape of what each person loved before. The places of fall are of two grades: “those drawn by the non-Buddhist paths and the deviant Māras, when their deeds are done, fall into the Avīci hell. Śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas do not achieve further advance.” The charge: “Do not let the demon of views make its own sinking calamity; keep them safe, pity and rescue them, dissolve their wrong conditions, and let their body and mind enter the Buddha’s knowing and seeing, so that from the beginning to accomplishment they meet no forking road.” For the aggregate of formation it was the demon of the mind; for the aggregate of consciousness, the demon of views.

The Buddha first says, “Such a Dharma-door as this: in the past, through kalpas as many as the sands of the Ganges, Tathāgatas as many as motes of dust rode upon this opening of the mind and attained the unsurpassed Way.” This is no new road. Then come the stages after the aggregate of consciousness is ended: “If the aggregate of consciousness is ended, then the faculties now before you function for one another. From this functioning for one another one can enter the bodhisattva’s vajra dry wisdom. The perfectly bright essential mind brings forth its transformations within, like pure beryl holding a jeweled moon within it. Thus one leaps over the ten faiths, the ten abodes, the ten practices, the ten dedications, the four minds of added effort, the vajra ten grounds walked by bodhisattvas, and the perfect brightness of equal awakening, and enters the Tathāgata’s sea of wondrous adornment; bodhi perfectly fulfilled, one returns to where nothing is gained!” Fascicle Eight told the stages from the ground of dry wisdom, one stage after another up to wondrous awakening; here, once the aggregate of consciousness is ended, one “leaps over” the stages. Zixuan says, “‘from their functioning for one another one enters dry wisdom’: this functioning for one another is itself already entry into the ground of dry wisdom, because functioning for one another is the stage of mastery,” and he also offers another reading, “or perhaps this is said with respect to those of sharp faculties,” and lets the two stand side by side. He also rebukes the ancients who “after equal awakening set up a further stage of vajra dry wisdom”: “this truly misleads later students; neither in principle nor by precedent is there any ground for it, and I dare not accept the instruction.” The base text’s words “vajra dry wisdom” stand here, and Zixuan does not allow them to be taken as a stage after equal awakening. In Fascicle Nine, where the aggregate of feeling is ended, it was already said that one “ascends through the sixty holy stages of the bodhisattva”; it is the same road as here: when the aggregate breaks, the stages are leapt.

VIII. The Summing-Up Exhortation and Ānanda’s Question

“These are the subtle doings of Māra, analyzed by the awakened brightness of the past Buddhas, the World-Honored Ones, in śamatha and vipaśyanā.” When the fifty states are told, one sentence sums them up: this is not what Śākyamuni alone has said, but what the former Buddhas analyzed in concentration with awakened brightness. “When the demonic states appear, if you can recognize them, the grime of the mind is washed away and you do not fall into wrong views. The demons of the aggregates are extinguished, the Māra of the heavens is shattered, the mighty ghosts and spirits lose their souls and flee, and mountain-demons and the wangliang arise no more.” Fascicle Nine began with “whether the demons of your aggregates, or again the Māra of the heavens, or possession by ghosts and spirits, or an encounter with mountain-demons”; here each is gathered up: the demons of the aggregates extinguished, the Māra of the heavens shattered, the ghosts and spirits fled, the mountain-demons arising no more. “Straight through to bodhi, with nothing lacking. The lowly advance, and toward the great nirvāṇa their minds are not confused or oppressed.” Then another door is opened for the people of the last age: “If dull and stupid beings in the last age, who have not come to know dhyāna and do not know how to speak the Dharma, yet delight in cultivating samādhi, and you fear they will fall in with the deviant, then with one mind urge them to hold my Buddha-Crown dhāraṇī spell. If they cannot yet recite it, let them write it in the meditation hall or carry it on their bodies, and none of the Māras will be able to move them.” Those who cannot recognize the demonic states hold the spell; those who cannot recite it write it out and carry it. The spell of Fascicle Seven here becomes the road left for those who cannot recognize Māra. Zixuan says, “one should urge them to hold the spell, to settle their right understanding and guard against wrong thoughts, and then they will not fall to Māra.” “You should reverently honor this final model, handed down by the Tathāgatas of the ten directions, for cultivation and advance to the very end!” Zixuan says, “it is the Tathāgatas’ ultimate and complete teaching, and it is spoken at the very last time of their appearance in the world; hence ‘the final model handed down.’”

“Ānanda then rose from his seat; having heard the Buddha’s instruction, he bowed his head, received it with reverence, and kept it in memory without loss,” and then he asks. He first cites the Buddha’s words: “As the Buddha has said, ‘among the marks of the five aggregates, five kinds of falsity are the mind of thought at their root,’ and we ordinarily have not received the Tathāgata’s detailed instruction.” In Fascicles Nine and Ten, at the ending of each aggregate, one sentence names the false thought at its root: solidified, empty-bright, fusing-and-penetrating, hidden-and-obscure, shadowy emptiness. What Ānanda asks about is these five sentences. Then two questions: “Further, are these five aggregates dissolved and removed together, or exhausted in sequence? What are the boundaries of these five layers?” Together or in sequence, and where the boundaries lie. Zixuan divides it into three questions: “asking about false thought,” “asking about removal and cutting off, sudden or gradual,” and “asking about the boundaries.” The last sentence, “to be the eyes of the future for all beings of the last age”: in Fascicles Nine and Ten every exhortation of the Buddha speaks of the final Dharma, and Ānanda’s question too is asked for the last age.

IX. The Five False Thoughts

The Buddha answers on false thought by first telling where the false comes from: “The essential truth, wondrous brightness, original awakening, perfectly pure, does not retain death and birth or any dust and grime; even space arises through false thought. This original awakening, wondrous brightness, true essence, falsely brings forth the vessel-worlds, like Yajñadatta mistaking his head and recognizing a reflection.” Zixuan says: “‘Essential truth’ is the Dharma-body. ‘Wondrous brightness’ is prajñā. ‘Perfectly pure’ is liberation. The three virtues perfectly fused are the one original awakening.” Yajñadatta is the simile of Fascicle Four; the base text here writes his name in a shorter form, and this book records it as it stands. “The false is originally without cause; within false thought the nature of causes and conditions is set up; those deluded about causes and conditions call it spontaneity.” Fascicles Two and Three refuted causes and conditions and spontaneity; here one sentence gathers it up: “Causes and conditions, spontaneity, are all the calculation of beings’ false minds.” Then one sentence fixes the root of the five aggregates: “Therefore the Tathāgata makes it clear to you: the root cause of the five aggregates is all alike false thought.”

For each of the five false thoughts one present fact is given as proof. For the aggregate of form the Buddha first says that the body comes from thought: “Your body first came into being through the thought of your father and mother; had your mind not been thought, it could not have come to transmit life within thought.” Then he gives the present fact: “As I said before, ‘when the mind thinks of the taste of vinegar, saliva arises in the mouth; when the mind thinks of climbing to a height, the soles of the feet grow sore.’ The cliff is not there and the vinegar has not come; if your body were not of the same kind as the falsely penetrating, how could water come into the mouth because vinegar is spoken of?” The body moves with the thought; so the body is formed of thought: “your present body of form is called the solidified first false thought.” The aggregate of feeling follows directly on this example: “This very thought of being on a height that I have spoken of can make your body truly feel sore and bitter. Because feeling arises, it can move the body of form. Now before you, the beneficial and the harmful, these two appearances driving you on, are called the empty-bright second false thought.” The aggregate of perception: “The mind arises and the body takes it up, responding to the thought: awake, it is the thinking mind; asleep, it is the dreams. So your thoughts and ideas, shaking and stirring false feelings, are called the fusing-and-penetrating third false thought.” Zixuan explains fusing-and-penetrating: “it fuses the substance of form, penetrates the thoughts of the mind, transforms the images of objects, and forms the dreams of sleep; hence ‘fusing-and-penetrating false thought.’” The aggregate of formation: “The principle of change does not stay; moving on and on, shifting in secret, nails grow and hair sprouts, vigor wastes and the face wrinkles, day and night succeeding one another, and you have never once been aware of it. Ānanda! If this is not you, how does your body change? If it must be the true you, how is it you are not aware? So all your formations, never stopping from thought to thought, are called the hidden-and-obscure fourth false thought.” The nails grow, the hair sprouts: if it is not you, how does the body change? If it is you, how is it you do not notice?

The aggregate of consciousness is the hardest, and the Buddha speaks of it at greatest length. The practitioner at this point “calls the place where the essential brightness is limpid and unmoving the constant and permanent,” taking what does not move for the truly permanent. The Buddha asks: “If it were truly the essential truth, it would not admit the habits of the false; why then is it that you once, in years gone by, saw a strange thing, and through the passing years neither remembered nor forgot it, and later, suddenly seeing the former oddity again, remember it exactly, having never lost it?” Something seen many years ago, in the meantime neither remembered nor forgotten, is on being seen again remembered exactly. Where was this memory stored? In that “limpid and unmoving” place. “Then within this essential clarity, limpid and unmoving, thought after thought receives the impress; how could it be reckoned?” What receives the impress is not the truly permanent. “Ānanda, you should know: this limpidity is not the true; it is like swiftly flowing water, which from afar looks still: the flow is swift and unseen, but it is not that there is no flow.” Zixuan says: “The aggregate of consciousness is apart from formation, hence called limpid. It is not permanently abiding, hence ‘not the true.’” The swift stream looks like still water; it is not that it does not flow, but that it flows too swiftly. “Were it not for your six faculties functioning for one another, their joining and opening, this false thought would never come to cease.” What the aggregate of consciousness ended looks like is the six faculties functioning for one another, and the ceasing of the fifth false thought too requires the six faculties to function for one another; the mark of its ending is the very look of its ceasing. “So within your present seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, the thread of habit is fine, and within the limpid clarity it is shadowy emptiness, the fifth inverted, subtle, essential thought.” The base text says “is called” for each of the first four false thoughts; for the fifth it does not say “is called,” and it says “essential thought” rather than “false thought.” It is so fine that it hardly looks like false thought. Zixuan says: “Existing yet as if not, hence ‘shadowy.’ ‘Shadowy’ means nothing; ‘shadow’ means seeming. Having no form or substance, it is called ‘emptiness.’”

X. The Boundaries, Sudden and Gradual, and the Circulation

“Ānanda! These five aggregates of appropriation are formed by the five false thoughts.” One sentence gathers up the five false thoughts. Then the answer on the boundaries: “You now wish to know the shallow and deep of the causal realms: only form and space are the boundary of form; only contact and separation are the boundary of feeling; only remembering and forgetting are the boundary of perception; only ceasing and arising are the boundary of formation; the limpid entering and merging with the limpid returns to the boundary of consciousness.” The boundary of each aggregate is a pair: form and space, contact and separation, remembering and forgetting, ceasing and arising; where there is this pair, one is within this aggregate. The boundary of consciousness is not a pair but “the limpid entering and merging with the limpid”; Zixuan says, “the limpid before, the aggregate of formation, merges and returns into the aggregate of consciousness. Seeing that consciousness does not move, one takes it for the true limpidity. Up to here is called the boundary of the aggregate of consciousness.” When the aggregate of formation is ended and enters the limpid, and the limpid merges with the limpid, that is the edge of the aggregate of consciousness; beyond it there are no more aggregates.

The answer on sudden and gradual: “The source of these five aggregates arises layer upon layer: arising comes about through consciousness, ceasing is removed starting from form.” Arising begins from consciousness, ceasing is removed starting from form: the orders of arising and ceasing run opposite. “In principle, sudden awakening: riding the awakening, all is dissolved together. In fact, not sudden removal: by sequence it is exhausted.” Ānanda asked, “dissolved and removed together, or exhausted in sequence?” and the Buddha answers that both hold: in principle dissolved together, in fact in sequence. Zixuan says: “Therefore it must be principle first and fact after, sudden awakening and gradual removal; only then is the meaning of cultivation and realization understood.” He cites the Perfect Enlightenment, “to know the illusion is to leave it, and to leave the illusion is to awaken; nor is there any gradation,” and says, “though understanding and practice are sudden, cutting off has its own order; the sun rising and the child being born are both figures for this.” Then the Buddha reproves Ānanda: “I have already shown you the knots of the kerchief of the Kapāla deva; what is it you do not understand, that you ask again here?” The six knots of the kerchief of the Kapāla deva in Fascicle Five were untied one knot at a time, and when untying reached the end the six were gone and the one was gone too; it had long since been answered. This whole sūtra runs from Ānanda’s question about śamatha in Fascicle One to the Buddha’s “what is it you do not understand, that you ask again here?” in the last fascicle. Ānanda asked for ten fascicles, and the Buddha answered for ten fascicles. The concluding exhortation to proclaim: “You should take this root source of false thought, which your mind has opened and penetrated, and transmit and show it to the practitioners of the coming final Dharma, so that they recognize the false, and a deep loathing arises of itself, and, knowing that there is nirvāṇa, they do not cling to the three realms.”

The section on circulation asks first about merit. “If there were a person who filled all of space in the ten directions with the seven jewels and offered them up to Buddhas as many as motes of dust, serving and making offerings with a mind that never passes an empty moment, what do you think: would this person, through this cause and condition of giving to the Buddhas, gain much merit?” Ānanda answers that giving seven coins to a Buddha gained the rank of a wheel-turning king, “how much more when space itself is now used up before you, and the Buddha-lands are filled everywhere with offerings of jewels? Thinking and reckoning for kalpas on end could not reach it; how could this merit have any boundary at all!” The Buddha then says: “If there were a person whose body bore the four grave and the ten pārājika offenses, and who in an instant would pass through the Avīci hells of this region and others, even to the end of all the hells without interval in the ten directions, none left unvisited, and who could with a single thought open and show this Dharma-door to those not yet learned in the final kalpa, that person’s obstacles of offense would be extinguished with that thought. The causes of the hell-sufferings he was to receive would be changed into the Land of Peace and Bliss, and the merit he gained would surpass the previous giver’s a hundredfold, a thousandfold, a thousand-myriad-millionfold.” A person whose body bears the four grave and the ten pārājika offenses, with a single thought of opening this Dharma-door, turns hell into the Land of Peace and Bliss. Fascicle Eight told the ten causes and six retributions of the hells; Fascicle Ten says that a single thought can overturn them. Zixuan says, “when a person of grave offenses with one thought spreads the sūtra, that power can overturn the most grievous retribution of suffering into the retribution of utmost bliss.” At the end the sūtra and the spell are set side by side: “If there are beings who can recite this sūtra and can hold this spell, were I to speak of them at length through kalpas on end I should not come to the end of it. Relying on my teaching, practicing the Way as taught, they go straight to the accomplishment of bodhi, with no more deeds of Māra.” The whole sūtra closes on the doings of Māra, and its closing sentence is “no more deeds of Māra.”

“When the Buddha had finished speaking this sūtra, the bhikṣus, bhikṣuṇīs, upāsakas, and upāsikās, all the world’s devas, humans, and asuras, and the bodhisattvas from other regions, the two vehicles, the holy immortal youths, and the mighty ghosts and spirits who had first set their minds on the Way, all greatly rejoiced, bowed, and withdrew.” Among the hearers are “the mighty ghosts and spirits who had first set their minds on the Way.” The mighty ghosts and spirits spoken of in Fascicles Nine and Ten are Māra’s retinue; here there are those among them who have first set their minds, and they too are among those who rejoice. Zixuan speaks of three meanings of their rejoicing: “first, the one who speaks is pure; second, the Dharma spoken is pure; third, the fruit gained is pure.”

Carrying Forward — False Thought, Sudden and Gradual

When the fifty states are set in a row, there is one line running through to the end. The ten states of the aggregate of form arise from the working of the mind; those of the aggregate of feeling from a leaning of feeling; those of the aggregate of perception from love arising and inviting Māra; those of the aggregate of formation from seeing the root source of arising and ceasing and calculating; those of the aggregate of consciousness from seeing the source of receiving life and forming a superior understanding. From working to feeling to love to calculation to superior understanding, each aggregate is finer than the last; from arising in one’s own mind, to an outside Māra possessing one, to becoming a non-Buddhist path oneself, becoming the seed of the Māra of the heavens oneself, becoming one of the two vehicles oneself, each state is deeper than the last. Fascicle Nine said, “if the master is deluded, the guest gets its chance”; by the aggregates of formation and consciousness there is no guest left, and the charge turns from “do not let the Māra of the heavens” to “do not let the demon of the mind” and “do not let the demon of views.” In the last twenty states the demons are all oneself.

The fifty states are the branches; the five false thoughts are the root. At the ending of each aggregate the Buddha says one sentence, ‘observe what it comes from: its root is such-and-such false thought’; what Ānanda asks about is these five sentences, and what the Buddha answers is what these five sentences look like: thinking of vinegar and saliva arising, being on a height and feeling sore, thinking when awake and dreaming when asleep, nails growing and hair sprouting, seeing a thing and remembering it exactly. The five false thoughts are all in the present body, not in concentration. Then the five boundaries, and sudden in principle, gradual in fact. This whole sūtra runs from “the path of wondrous cultivation of samādhi” in Fascicle One, through the knots of the kerchief in Fascicle Five that speak of sudden and gradual, the stages in Fascicle Eight, the demons on the way in Fascicles Nine and Ten, to the sentence at the very end, “in principle, sudden awakening: riding the awakening, all is dissolved together; in fact, not sudden removal: by sequence it is exhausted.” In principle, one awakening dissolves all; in fact, one aggregate after another is exhausted. The fifty states are what “not sudden removal in fact” looks like; the five false thoughts are what is awakened to in “sudden awakening in principle.”

In Fascicle One Ānanda asks for “the first expedient means by which the Tathāgatas of the ten directions attained bodhi: the wondrous śamatha, samāpatti, and dhyāna”; in Fascicle Ten the Buddha speaks of “this final model, handed down by the Tathāgatas of the ten directions, for cultivation and advance to the very end.” The first expedient means and the final model handed down are the head and the tail of this sūtra.