妙法蓮華經玄義 釋名·前三目與明妙通釋

Are you chasing the clods, or the person throwing them? When someone keeps throwing clods, a dog runs after one and then another. A lion does not chase the clods; it turns back and goes straight for the person throwing them. With this image, Zhiyi asks whether we are chasing “coarse,” “wondrous,” “relational,” and “absolute” through words and names, or seeing the root from which distinctions arise.

At first, the wondrous can be revealed through comparison. Half and full, small and great, what carries skillful means and what directly reveals—when set against one another, their boundaries become clear. It is like ferries of which some go only to a river island while others reach the farther shore directly: the fact that they are all on the water does not erase their differences. This is the work of the relational: it does not flatten the teachings people actually receive or the roads they actually travel.

Yet if the wondrous must forever rely on something coarse to prove itself, it remains tethered to the coarse. Since there is no other Dharma outside the Dharma realm to serve as a comparison, whom could it still await as coarse, and against what could it be called wondrous? If even the “absolute” is grasped as a final thing, it becomes a new relational term. True absolute wondrousness releases not only the coarse but also the thought, “I have transcended the coarse.”

The shared and the specific follow the same principle. Teachings differ according to capacities, yet what is taught issues from the Buddha’s mouth. Gates of practice vary, yet what they accord with is nondual. Truth has many names, yet what they indicate is not thereby fragmented. Treatment within each division lets every road keep its own place; treatment across divisions keeps skillful means from being permanently sealed off once it has been opened. Clear distinctions prevent confusion; passage across them prevents separation.

This freedom from separation finally comes to rest in sentient beings, buddhas, and mind. Every realm has the ten suchnesses, and no realm is sealed within itself. Therefore, one cannot judge oneself or another to the end from a single present appearance of good or evil. Mind is like an illusionist, producing all kinds of bodies, minds, and lands day and night. Whichever realm the present thought belongs to, it is even now making that road more familiar.

The heart of the matter is not how many numbers one remembers but whether one turns back to look at the illusionist: What is the appearance of this thought? What nature is it forming through habituation? What is it doing? What is its cause, what conditions does it draw upon, and what fruit and recompense will it receive? To see cause and effect clearly without grasping them as fixed self-natures is precisely neither to flee distinctions nor to let distinctions pronounce a final sentence.

Thus “wondrous” is not merely praise meaning “highest.” It first teaches one to discern the roads as they are, then not to abide in any road; first to see where the clods come from, then to let the hand that throws them come to rest. When the water of mind grows clear, there is no need to finish chasing every clod in the world: words and thought naturally find a place to cease.

Entering the Separate Explanation of the Five Chapters

We now enter the second major section, which explains the Five Chapters separately. The first chapter, explaining the name, is itself divided into four topics. The first distinguishes the shared name from the specific name. The second determines the order in which “wondrous” and “Dharma” are explained. The third presents explanations by earlier masters. The fourth directly explains the meaning of the present tradition.

First Topic: Distinguishing Shared and Specific through Teaching, Practice, and Principle

The title “Wondrous Dharma Lotus Blossom” differs from other scriptures and is therefore a specific name. All such works are called “sutras,” which is their shared name. To explain these two kinds of name fully, they must also be understood through teaching, practice, and principle.

Viewed from the conditions to which the teaching responds, the Buddha teaches different Dharmas because sentient beings have different capacities, and so teachings are specific. Viewed from the one who teaches, all are spoken by the Buddha with his golden mouth and brahmā-sound, and so teaching is shared. Viewed from the approaches practitioners adopt and through which they can enter into accord, gates of practice are specific. Viewed from the truth with which all gates of practice accord, the principle accorded with is shared. Viewed from names, truth has many different names and principle may therefore be called specific. Viewed from the single truth indicated by those names, the names are many but principle remains shared. This is a brief explanation of the three meanings.

Teaching is originally given in response to capacities. What capacities need differs, and therefore each scripture has its particular distinctions. Yet all are taught by the Buddha, and teaching may therefore also be called shared.

Next, consider practice. The true Dharma-treasure of nirvāṇa has more than one entrance, and sentient beings may enter through many gates. Five hundred monks each explained the cause of the body. Their accounts differed, yet the Buddha judged that not one spoke incorrectly. Thirty-two bodhisattvas each described how they entered the gate of nonduality, and Mañjuśrī praised them. Practices such as mindfulness of inhalation and exhalation, discussed in the Da zhidu lun, are all Mahāyāna when embraced by the wisdom of unobtainability. Thus, the approaches that can be practiced are specific, while the principle with which they accord is the same. Guṇavarman’s verse likewise means that although the treatises establish different points of entry, the principle accorded with in practice is not two.

Next, consider principle. Principle is not two, but it has more than one name. The meaning of the Da zhidu lun is that prajñā is one Dharma, though the Buddha teaches it under many names. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that liberation also has many names, just as Śakra, lord of the gods, has many titles. Because names differ, principle may be called specific. Because what they indicate is one, it may be called shared.

The present title, “the sutra of the Wondrous Dharma,” thus shows the shared and specific aspects of teaching. In the sutra, the elder gives each of his children equally a great cart, and the children ride the precious vehicle directly to the place of awakening. This shows that the gates entering into accord differ, while their destination is the same. The sutra also uses different names—the true mark, the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing, the Mahāyāna family estate, the real matter of the one ground, the place of treasure, the jewel sewn into the robe, and impartial great wisdom—to indicate one reality, showing the shared and specific aspects of principle. Because teaching, practice, and principle each have both sides, shared and specific names are established.

Someone asks: the teachers are not the same, and the teachings they establish also differ. How can all of them be called teaching shared through the golden-mouth brahmā-sound?

The answer is that this must be distinguished through two meanings: treatment within each division and treatment across divisions.

First, treatment within each division. The buddha of the Tripiṭaka Teaching, for example, teaches various Dharmas in response to various conditions. Because the conditions differ, teaching is specific; because the teacher is one, teaching is shared. Practice based on this teaching has differences in what enters into accord and sameness in that with which it accords. What enters and that with which it accords also have many names, but principle itself is not many.

In the sutra’s simile of the poor son, the elder removes his necklaces, puts on coarse and filthy clothing, tells the poor son to work diligently and not to go elsewhere, increases his wages, and gives him oil for his feet. This speaks within the identity presently seen and within the bounds of the body, speech, practice, and principle expressed there. One cannot leave those bounds and impose some other explanation at will. The teaching, practice, and principle of the Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect teachings are each likewise understood within their own bounds. This level is easy to understand, but integrating the principles accorded with at different divisions is difficult.

Next, treatment across divisions. Are there truly four teachers completely separate from one another, each with an independent body, speech, and teaching? The Buddha merely conceals the body adorned with immeasurable virtues and manifests a sixteen-foot body shining purple-gold. Instead of teaching the sweet taste of permanence and joy, the Buddha temporarily teaches salty and sour tastes, impermanence, and pungency. The Buddha removes royal clothing and takes up implements for clearing excrement. All of these are called skillful means.

Once the gate of skillful means is opened and the mark of reality revealed, the body that was originally manifested is itself the perfectly permanent body. The Dharma originally taught is the perfect Dharma, and the practice and principle originally entered are also revealed as real. Seen from this side, teaching is originally a single sound that displays distinctions of great and small to sentient beings. Practices that enter into accord may be long or short, while the principle accorded with is one. Immeasurable names finally return to one ultimate meaning, and the one ultimate meaning can in turn respond through many names.

When shared and specific in teaching, practice, and principle are explained within each division, phenomena are easy to distinguish and principle is harder to integrate. When they are explained across divisions, phenomena are harder to understand but principle is easier to make clear. The two accounts do not exclude one another. They answer the same question from the two sides of preserving each division and opening it to reveal reality.

Second Topic: Why the Title Puts Wondrous First, While Explanation Begins with Dharma

If the discussion unfolds according to meaning, it should first explain what Dharma is and then explain why this Dharma is called wondrous. A later passage likewise says that the dharmas of buddhas are wondrous and difficult to conceive: Dharma must first be present before it can be called wondrous.

If one follows the convenience of naming, however, wondrous should be stated before Dharma. Suppose one wishes to praise someone and calls him a “good person.” On close examination, there can be no goodness if no person exists; according to meaning, the person must come first and goodness afterward. In naming, one nevertheless says “good person,” not “person good.”

The present sutra title follows the convenience of naming and therefore places wondrous before Dharma. Its explanation follows the convenience of meaning and therefore places Dharma before wondrous. Although the sequence differs, the meanings do not conflict.

Third Topic: Four Earlier Explanations

Earlier masters offered many explanations. Four are briefly presented here.

First, Daochang Guan held that the Buddha initially taught the Three Vehicles according to what sentient beings required. The Three Vehicles are not ultimately real and finally all return to the One Vehicle. Since nothing is higher than the One Vehicle, it is called wondrous. He supported this with the sutra’s statements that the great cart is wondrous, pure, foremost, and unsurpassed in the world. He further said that words are merely supports, while what they truly indicate transcends phenomena; the substance and nature themselves are severed from fine and coarse and are therefore called wondrous. He supported this with the statements that dharmas cannot be displayed and that the marks of words are quiescent and extinct.

Second, Kuaiji Ji held that “wondrous” is a name expressing shared unity. Formerly, the three causes proceeded in different directions and the three fruits also differed from one another, and so they could not be called wondrous. Only when they are now unified may they be called wondrous.

Third, a master from the North held that the real principle is not three. The three teachings are coarse, while the purport that transcends the three teachings is wondrous. This meaning is the same as the preceding account, though its wording is weaker.

Fourth, Guangzhai held that the wondrous is the Dharma of the cause and fruit of the One Vehicle. In relation to the past, cause and fruit each had three kinds of coarseness; the present cause and fruit of the One Vehicle each have three kinds of wondrousness.

First are Guangzhai’s three coarse aspects of the past cause. The first is narrowness of the cause’s substance: śrāvakas cultivate the Four Truths, pratyekabuddhas cultivate the twelve links of dependent arising, and bodhisattvas cultivate the six perfections. The three causes are separate and cannot include one another. The second is lowness of the cause’s stage: only the practitioner at the ninth uninterrupted path is called a bodhisattva, and this practitioner has merely subdued delusion without cutting it off and has not yet passed beyond the three realms. The third is shortness of the cause’s function: the ninth uninterrupted path subdues only the four abiding delusions and does not subdue ignorance.

Next are the three coarse aspects of the past fruit. The first is narrowness of the fruit’s substance: nirvāṇa with remainder and nirvāṇa without remainder do not possess all virtues completely. The second is lowness of the fruit’s stage: it reaches only the conjured city and has not passed beyond transformational birth-and-death. The third is shortness of the fruit’s function: the ninth path of liberation removes only the four abiding delusions and does not break ignorance. The Buddha’s lifespan is only eighty years; even if it is said to be extended before and after, it remains limited.

Next are Guangzhai’s three wondrous aspects of the present cause. The first is breadth of the cause’s substance: gathering the three into the one includes all wholesome practices. The second is height of the cause’s stage: practice does not remain only at the uninterrupted path within the three realms but continues on the bodhisattva path beyond them. The third is length of the cause’s function: the delusions subdued are not only the four abiding delusions but extend to ignorance.

Finally are the three wondrous aspects of the present fruit. The first is breadth of the fruit’s substance: it possesses all virtues, and all wholesome qualities universally converge in it. The second is height of the fruit’s stage: it reaches the place of treasure. The third is length of the fruit’s function: it cuts off the five abiding delusions and extends the lifespan through supernormal power to benefit sentient beings. Guangzhai therefore called the Dharma of the One Vehicle’s cause and fruit wondrous.

At the time, Guangzhai’s explanation was widely considered the strongest. Zhiyi observed that Mahāyāna interpreters in the South largely followed Sengzhao and Kumārajīva, whose explanations often proceeded through meanings of penetration and integration. He therefore concentrated his objections on Guangzhai; what followed for the other explanations could then be understood as well.

Challenging Guangzhai through the Four Unities: Breadth or Narrowness of the Cause’s Substance

If the past cause is said to be coarse because its substance was narrow, one must first ask what “past” means. If it refers only to limited gates such as the Tripiṭaka Teaching, the statement may stand. If every scripture and teaching before the Lotus Sutra is called past, it cannot.

The Prajñā scriptures explain extensively that all dharmas enter the Mahāyāna and can carry. The Sutra of Questions Asked by Brahmā Siye says that understanding the characteristics of dharmas is the bodhisattva’s universal practice. The Avataṃsaka reveals entry into the Dharma realm without leaving Jetavana. The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa says that knowing all dharmas in one thought is the place of awakening. These earlier causal practices leave no Dharma outside their scope; how can they be called narrow?

Conversely, if the present cause is said to have broad substance, why does Guangzhai also say that the Lotus teaches only the One Vehicle as ultimate but does not teach buddha-nature and is therefore still incomplete in meaning? Why does he say that it explains only the fulfillment of the condition-cause and not the understanding-cause and is therefore still not full? Why does he further say that the Buddha’s lifespan extends backward beyond Ganges sands and forward twice that number and yet remains an impermanent cause? How can an impermanent cause produce a permanent fruit?

If cause and fruit are both impermanent, this impermanent person cannot see buddha-nature. Because the teaching is incomplete in meaning, it cannot include all teachings. Because its wording is not full, it cannot include all practices. Because the person is not permanent, it cannot include all persons. Because buddha-nature is not seen, it cannot include all principle. According to Guangzhai’s own account, the present cause is narrower than narrow, and what is narrow is coarse; the earlier cause is broad and is therefore wondrous. This one objection is already enough to reveal the problem, but the remaining objections are still made in full by the same method.

Height or Lowness of the Cause’s Stage

Prajñā is the unsurpassed luminous spell and the unequaled luminous spell; superior persons should seek superior Dharma. The earlier causal teaching is therefore not low. The Da zhidu lun says that bodhisattvas go beyond the three realms, receive a Dharma-nature body, and practice bodhisattva practices; causal practice is therefore not low. The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa praises the bodhisattva’s virtue as near the unequaled, sovereign wisdom of a buddha and says that those who act as Māra kings throughout the ten directions are bodhisattvas abiding in inconceivable liberation; the persons of the cause are therefore not low. It further says that although they accomplish buddhahood and turn the Dharma wheel, they practice the bodhisattva path, and that there is no secret treasury of the buddhas they do not enter; the principle they see is therefore not low. Earlier teaching, practice, person, and principle are all high. How can they be judged coarse?

If the present cause’s stage is said to be high, yet this sutra is placed below a fifth teaching, its practice placed at the uninterrupted path that merely subdues ignorance, its practitioner still described as possessing a body of birth-and-death rather than a Dharma-nature body, and it is said of the principle seen that it is impermanent and that buddha-nature is not seen, then the present cause instead lacks all four unities of teaching, practice, person, and principle. Its stage is low and coarse; the earlier cause possesses the four unities and is high and wondrous.

Length or Shortness of the Cause’s Function

The Da zhidu lun speaks in many places of a samādhi that breaks ignorance, showing that the earlier teaching’s function is long. Not knowing phenomena and principle is called ignorance. If the Buddha knows all dharmas through the knowledge of all modes, illumination and ignorance have no two fixed self-natures; knowing ignorance to be unobtainable, even ignorance itself is unobtainable. This is length of function in practice.

It further says that practicing prajñā for one day is like the sun illuminating the world and surpasses the faint light of a glowworm. If someone enters a champak grove, he does not smell other fragrances; who would still delight in the virtues of the Two Vehicles? They need not yield their seats in reverence, and flowers do not adhere to their bodies; these people are among the non-retrogressing. The persons’ function is therefore long. Because form is boundless, prajñā is boundless; because feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are boundless, prajñā is likewise boundless. The function of principle is therefore long. Earlier teaching, practice, person, and principle are all long, and what is long is wondrous.

If the present cause’s function is said to be long, yet the Lotus is also called a teaching that conceals characteristics, its teaching is short. If its practice also conceals characteristics, practice is short. If it conceals characteristics and does not reveal buddha-nature, principle is short. Lacking all four unities, the present is instead short and coarse; because the earlier is long, it is wondrous.

Breadth or Narrowness of the Fruit’s Substance

Nor can one maintain that because the earlier fruits are nirvāṇa with remainder and without remainder and lack complete virtues, their substance is narrow and coarse. Prajñā is the mother of the buddhas, protected by buddhas throughout the ten directions. The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa further speaks of never having heard this profound scripture of the true mark. These show that the earlier fruit’s substance possesses the many virtues.

If the present fruit’s substance is said to be broad, it should be both full and complete in meaning. Why, then, is it also said to be both full and not full, both complete and incomplete in meaning, and even to yield an impermanent buddha-fruit lacking the virtues of self, joy, purity, and the like? If the many virtues are absent, where is breadth? If the Dharma body pervades all places, why is the lifespan said to be only eighty years, or why does one, after seven hundred asaṃkhyeyas, become ashes and enter extinction, unable to reach another place after leaving this one? If the fruit’s substance were truly broad, it should possess the five eyes and see buddha-nature. According to these earlier accounts, the present fruit instead lacks all four unities and is narrow and coarse. Compared with the present, the earlier fruit is wondrous.

Height or Lowness of the Fruit’s Stage and Length or Shortness of the Fruit’s Function

If the present fruit’s stage is high, why is its teaching still placed below a fifth teaching? Why does its practice not pass beyond impermanence? Why does its person not pass beyond transformational birth-and-death? Why does its principle not exhaust the secret treasury? If teaching, practice, person, and principle are all absent, the fruit’s stage is entirely low and coarse. If the earlier fruit’s stage possesses the four unities, it is entirely high and wondrous.

If the present fruit’s function is long, why does its teaching not reveal permanence? Why can its practice not break ignorance suddenly? Why is its person not precisely Vairocana? Why is its principle not precisely the secret treasury? On Guangzhai’s own premises, the present fruit lacks these wondrous Dharmas; how could it not be coarse?

Guangzhai further uses supernormal power that extends the lifespan to show that the fruit’s function is long. The author of the treatise therefore asks: what kind of supernormal power is this? If it is supernormal power requiring deliberate exertion, it is the same as that of non-Buddhists. If it is uncontaminated supernormal power, it is the same as that of the Two Vehicles. If it is the supernormal power of the true mark, it is not fixed as extending or not extending but can extend and not extend. If it can extend, why extend only the lifespan? Why not extend the eye faculty so that it can see buddha-nature? Why not extend the tongue faculty so that it can speak of permanence? If the eye cannot see buddha-nature, this is not the supernormal power of the true mark. If it is not of the true mark, how could it not be coarse? The first objection already establishes its coarseness; the remainder merely clarifies the same problem fully.

Guangzhai used six aspects of cause and fruit to judge coarse and wondrous and used the four unities specifically to judge wondrousness. The present objections show that what he judged coarse actually possesses the four unities, and thus the past coarse is not coarse; what he judged wondrous instead lacks all four, and thus the present wondrous is not wondrous. Each of the six aspects receives four objections based on the four unities, producing twenty-four difficulties. This takes the opponent’s own criteria and uses them against his conclusion. The number is neither more nor less: it is exactly twenty-four.

Fourth Topic: Directly Explaining the Present Meaning

The present explanation first borrows Guangzhai’s terms “broad substance,” “high stage,” and “long function” to reveal the true meaning of the wondrous.

From the perspective of cause, one Dharma realm possesses the other nine Dharma realms: this is broad substance. The nine Dharma realms do not depart from the Buddha Dharma realm: this is high stage. The ten Dharma realms are immediately empty, provisionally established, and the middle: this is long function. The three meanings are expressed within one, and the one is revealed within three. They are not three things separate from one another, are not arranged horizontally side by side, and are not blended into one. Therefore they are called wondrous.

From the perspective of fruit, the fruit’s substance pervades all places: this is broad substance. Buddhahood was accomplished long ago, remotely and still more remotely: this is high stage. From the Origin the Trace is manifested to benefit sentient beings throughout past, present, and future: this is long function. Cause and fruit each have three aspects, making six meanings that reveal a wondrousness different from other scriptural teachings.

Next, consider the five flavors. In the milk-flavor teaching, one kind of cause and fruit is broad, high, and long, while another is narrow, low, and short; it therefore contains one coarse and one wondrous. The curds flavor has only one kind of cause and fruit, narrow, low, and short; it has only the coarse and not the wondrous. Raw ghee has three kinds of cause and fruit that are narrow, low, and short and one that is broad, high, and long; it therefore has three coarse and one wondrous. Refined ghee has two kinds that are narrow, low, and short and one that is broad, high, and long; it therefore has two coarse and one wondrous. Clarified essence has only one kind of cause and fruit, broad, high, and long; it has only the wondrous and no coarse. Considered again from the standpoint of truly wondrous cause and fruit, the wondrousness of clarified essence does not differ from the wondrous cause and fruit found in earlier scriptures, and those may therefore also be called wondrous.

Next, contemplate mind. If one contemplates one’s own mind as not possessing the minds of sentient beings and buddhas, its substance is narrow; if it possesses them, its substance is broad. If one’s own mind is not equal to buddha-mind, its stage is low; if they are equal, its stage is high. If one’s own mind, sentient beings’ minds, and buddha-mind are not immediately empty, provisionally established, and the middle, function is short; if they are immediately empty, provisionally established, and the middle, function is long.

Penetrating the ten Dharma realms and the stages of the six identities within one Dharma realm is likewise broad in substance, high in stage, and long in function all at once. The first account, through the ten Dharma realms, reveals the unity of principle. The second, through the five flavors, reveals the unity of teaching. The third, through contemplation of mind, reveals the unity of practice. The fourth, through the six identities, reveals the unity of person. This is only a brief indication of the wondrous meaning.

Extensive Explanation of Dharma: The Dharmas of Sentient Beings, Buddhas, and Mind

For an extensive explanation, Dharma is explained first and wondrousness afterward. Master Nanyue raised three dharmas: the dharmas of sentient beings, the dharmas of buddhas, and the dharmas of mind.

First is the wondrousness of the dharmas of sentient beings. The Lotus Sutra says that the Buddha appears in the world to enable sentient beings to open, reveal, awaken to, and enter the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing. If sentient beings had none of the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing, what could be opened? The Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing must therefore already be contained within sentient beings.

The sutra further says that merely with the eye received from one’s parents, one can see through inner and outer Mount Meru. It is originally a physical eye. Its ability to see forms near and far is the function of the heavenly eye. Seeing forms without attachment is the function of the wisdom eye. Seeing forms without error is the function of the Dharma eye. Though one has not yet attained the uncontaminated, the eye faculty is already purified and one eye can perform the functions of all the eyes: this is the buddha-eye. Here the present sutra reveals the wondrousness of the dharmas of sentient beings.

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that one who studies the Mahāyāna, though possessing only physical eyes, is said to possess buddha-eyes; the ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind can be understood by analogy. The Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra says that the eye faculty, within the permanence of the tathāgatas, is cultivated completely and without diminution and sees distinctly; the same applies through the mind faculty. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra says that the six faculties are sovereign because their nature is pure. It further uses the form “all dharmas proceed toward form,” saying that neither that which proceeds nor that toward which it proceeds can be obtained. By analogy with the eye faculty, all dharmas proceed toward the eye without passing beyond it, and the same can be said through the mind faculty. These are instances in other scriptures that reveal the wondrousness of the dharmas of sentient beings.

Next is the wondrousness of the dharmas of buddhas. In the sutra, the Buddha stops the assembly and does not hurry to teach because the Dharma he has attained is wondrous and difficult to conceive. The dharmas of buddhas do not go beyond provisional wisdom and real wisdom. That all dharmas are extremely profound and wondrous, difficult to see and understand, and that no sentient being can know the Buddha reveals the wondrousness of real wisdom. That no one can measure the Buddha’s many other skillful Dharmas reveals the wondrousness of provisional wisdom. Only buddhas together with buddhas can exhaust the true mark of all dharmas; therefore the dharmas of buddhas are called wondrous.

Next is the wondrousness of the dharmas of mind. The “Peaceful Practices” chapter says to gather the mind and contemplate all dharmas without movement or retreat; it also teaches practices such as a single thought of rejoicing. The Sutra on Contemplating the Practice of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva says that mind is empty in itself and wrongdoing and merit have no fixed master; contemplate mind and mind cannot be obtained, while Dharma does not abide in Dharma. It also says that mind is purely Dharma. The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa says to contemplate the true mark of one’s own body and to contemplate the Buddha in the same way; the liberation of the buddhas should be sought within the mental activity of sentient beings. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra says that mind, buddhas, and sentient beings are without difference, and uses the simile of a scripture scroll the size of a great trichiliocosm hidden within a mote of dust, which is broken open to bring forth the scroll. These reveal the wondrousness of the dharmas of mind.

Explaining the Dharmas of Sentient Beings Still More Extensively: From One Dharma to the Ten Suchnesses

The three dharmas will now be explained still more extensively. Extensive explanation of the dharmas of sentient beings may encompass all causes, fruits, and dharmas. Extensive explanation of the dharmas of buddhas proceeds mainly from fruit. Extensive explanation of the dharmas of mind proceeds mainly from cause.

The dharmas of sentient beings are treated in two steps: first list enumerations of dharmas, then explain their characteristics. Some scriptures and treatises encompass all dharmas in one Dharma, saying that the three realms contain no separate Dharma and are made only by one mind. Some encompass all dharmas in two, saying that the world contains only name and form. Some encompass them in three—life, consciousness, and warmth. As the number increases, one may continue to hundreds and thousands of Dharma gates.

The present sutra uses ten dharmas to encompass all dharmas: appearance, nature, substance, capacity, activity, cause, condition, fruit, recompense, and the ultimate equality of beginning and end. When Master Nanyue read this passage, he let each phrase end on “such,” and therefore called them the ten suchnesses.

At this point, Guanding first marks the Tiantai Master’s three readings. The first reads “this appearance is such,” “this nature is such,” through “this recompense is such.” The second reads “such is this appearance,” “such is this nature,” through “such is this recompense.” The third reads “appearance such—is,” “nature such—is,” through “recompense such—is.”

When each phrase comes to rest on “such,” suchness means non-difference and reveals immediate emptiness. When the phrase is read “such is this appearance, such is this nature,” appearance and nature are pointed out within emptiness; different names are established and distinctions remain in sequence, revealing immediate provisional establishment. When it is read “appearance such—is, nature such—is,” “is” comes to rest in the true mark of the middle way, revealing the immediate middle.

Emptiness, provisional establishment, and the middle are explained separately to make them easy to understand. When the meaning is truly grasped, emptiness is immediately provisional establishment and the middle. Explaining emptiness through “such” means that when one is empty, all are empty. Pointing through “such” to the several characteristics means that when one is provisionally established, all are provisionally established. Discussing the middle through “is” means that when one is the middle, all are the middle. These are not one, two, or three separate entities, yet they can be spoken of as one, two, and three. They are neither vertically arranged in sequence nor horizontally arrayed side by side. This is called the true mark. Only buddhas together with buddhas exhaust this Dharma. In this way, the ten dharmas encompass all dharmas. According to meaning, they can be distinguished through these three intentions. If one follows only the reading of the verse, it reads “such is the great fruit and recompense, the meaning of the various natures and appearances.”

The Ten Realms, Hundred Realms, Thousand Suchnesses, and Provisional and Real

Next, provisional and real are judged. Guangzhai assigns the first five suchnesses to the provisional and to ordinary people, and the following four to the real and to sages; the ultimate equality of beginning and end then concludes provisional and real. He further treats “great fruit and recompense” in the verse as real and the various natures and appearances as provisional. The present tradition considers this untenable. “Great” can mean large, many, or superior; if only largeness is taken as real, why not multiplicity and superiority? The word “various” expressly carries the meaning of multiplicity. If the provisional belongs only to ordinary people, why would ordinary people be entirely without the real? If the real belongs only to sages, why would sages be entirely without the provisional? This way of suppressing one side cannot be followed. The master from the North assigns the first five to the provisional and the latter five to the real; this too is only a humanly constructed view.

The present tradition applies the ten suchnesses throughout the ten Dharma realms, namely the six destinies and four noble realms. They are all called Dharma realms in three senses.

First, all ten realms are established in reliance on the single Dharma realm, and no other Dharma exists outside it. The ten that rely and the Dharma realm relied upon are named together and are therefore called the ten Dharma realms. Second, the ten kinds of Dharma have different bounds; their causes and fruits are separated, and ordinary and noble differ. The word “realm” is therefore added. Third, each of the ten kinds is itself wholly the Dharma realm and encompasses all dharmas. All dharmas proceed toward the hell realm without passing beyond the hell realm, and so on through the Buddha realm. Each is itself principle, with no other basis upon which it relies.

Viewed as the number ten relying on the Dharma realm, what relies returns into what is relied upon and reveals emptiness. Viewed through the distinct boundaries of the ten realms, it reveals provisional establishment. Viewed as the number ten itself being wholly the Dharma realm, it reveals the middle. The three sides are distinguished only to make them easy to understand. When the meaning is truly grasped, emptiness is itself provisional establishment and the middle; there are not three separate things.

One Dharma realm has the ten suchnesses, and ten Dharma realms therefore have a hundred suchnesses. Each Dharma realm further possesses the other nine Dharma realms, and the mutual inclusion of the ten realms thus forms a hundred Dharma realms. Since each of the hundred realms has ten suchnesses, there are a thousand suchnesses. The ten realms can then be gathered into five classes: first evil, second good, third the Two Vehicles, fourth bodhisattvas, and fifth buddhas. In a rough judgment through two dharmas, the first four classes are provisional and the Buddha real. In fine analysis, every class contains both provisional and real. The present explanation provisionally distinguishes them through these two meanings.

This inconceivable provisional and real is the object illuminated by the provisional and real wisdoms of the buddhas of past, present, and future. As an object, it includes every Dharma. When wisdom arises from this object, every kind of wisdom can arise. The words “all dharmas” in the sutra reveal the breadth of the object illuminated. “Only buddhas together with buddhas can exhaust them” reveals the depth of the illuminating wisdom, reaching the furthest boundary and bottom. That the gate of wisdom is difficult to understand and enter praises the wondrousness of the object. That the wisdom attained by the Buddha is wondrous and foremost praises the matching of wisdom and object.

The prose of the “Skillful Means” chapter briefly teaches this Dharma. Opening, revealing, awakening to, and entering later explain it extensively. The burning house illustrates it, faith and understanding receive it, the elder entrusts it to his son, the medicinal herbs restate and accomplish it, and the conjured city leads people into it. All these contents can be understood through the provisional and real of the ten suchnesses.

The Tathāgata fully knows the bottom and boundary of the ten dharmas. He knows which sentient beings possess a seed-nature and which do not; whose wholesome roots have or have not sprouted; whose have or have not matured; and who can or cannot be liberated. He knows them as they are, without error. Although Aṅgulimāla was evil, his wholesome root of the true mark had matured and he was immediately liberated. Although the monk in the fourth dhyāna was good, erroneous nature and appearance had matured and he could not then receive liberation. The dharmas of sentient beings are inconceivable: though real they are provisional, and though provisional they are real. Provisional and real are mutually identical without obstructing one another. Sentient beings cannot be seen with the eyes of cattle and sheep, nor measured with an ordinary person’s mind. Only a tathāgata’s wisdom can measure them as they are. Therefore the dharmas of sentient beings are wondrous.

Shared Explanation of the Ten Suchnesses

The ten suchnesses are first explained in shared terms and then specifically according to categories.

Appearance is the manifestation that can be observed and distinguished outwardly. Nature is an internal, self-particular tendency that does not readily change. Principal substance and material are called substance. The function something is capable of is called capacity. Operating through the three kinds of action and constructing conduct is called activity. Repeated habituation that can continue with its own kind is cause. What assists the cause to mature is condition. What is obtained from the habitual cause is fruit. What one is drawn by action to undergo is recompense. The initial appearance is the beginning, and the final recompense is the end. Where beginning and end ultimately arrive is called the ultimate equality of beginning and end.

According to the meaning of “such,” beginning and end are both empty and are therefore equal. According to nature and appearance, the beginning already contains the later fruit, while the later fruit can reveal the preceding cause; beginning and end are present in one another and are therefore equal. According to the middle, beginning and end are both the true mark and are therefore equal. The conclusion here does not select only one of the three meanings. Ultimate means completeness in all three dharmas; the middle way is ultimate, and the true mark is equality.

The Ten Dharmas of the Four Lower Destinies

First are the four evil destinies. Appearance is an evil appearance that foretells descent into an undesirable place. Before a disaster occurs, the complexion of decline already appears; a physiognomist can see it and predict misfortune. Once an evil appearance arises, it indicates the fruit of hell from afar. Ordinary people do not know this. The Two Vehicles know it only indistinctly. Bodhisattvas know it but have not exhausted it. Only a buddha knows it to the bottom. Therefore it is called such an appearance.

Nature is the self-particular nature of black evil. Black evil that has been habituated over a long period is difficult to change, like fire within wood that emerges when conditions meet. The meaning of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra is that contaminated dharmas possess a nature of arising, and arising conditions can therefore cause them to arise. The evil dharmas of the four destinies possess a nature capable of producing those four destinies and emerge when conditions meet. Clay or wooden images may have an outward appearance but lack an inner nature of arising and therefore cannot truly be born. Evil nature is not like that, and so it is called such a nature.

Substance is the coarse and evil body and mind subjected to crushing. In the present life the mind is crushed first, and in the next life form is crushed as well. The present-life flowering recompense crushes form and mind, and the future fruit-recompense likewise crushes form and mind. The form and mind subjected to crushing are therefore taken as substance.

Capacity is the function of evil. Before an implement is used, the work it is capable of bearing already shows that it has a function. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that one building a house selects wood rather than thread, while one making cloth selects thread rather than clay and wood. Hell has the capacity to ascend mountains of knives and climb forests of swords. Hungry ghosts have the capacity to swallow copper and eat iron. Among animals, the strong subdue the weak, fish devour one another, and animals are harnessed to pull carts and carry burdens. These are evil capacities.

Activity is management and construction: moving body, speech, and mind to establish various evil deeds. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra calls one who commits evil half a person; evil conduct is therefore the activity of hell.

Cause is the cause of evil habit. Seeds of the same kind produce one another, and habituation continues without interruption. Because habit activates them, evil actions form easily. Condition is an assisting condition. Various evil attachments to self and what belongs to self, together with their supporting resources, can help evil habit become action, just as water moistens a seed. Conditions that assist in producing future recompense are here called conditions.

Fruit is habitual fruit. A person of great desire who receives a hell body sees instruments of suffering and still mistakes them for desirable objects, immediately giving rise to defiled craving again. This is fruit produced by habit. Recompense is recompense-fruit. When that person moves toward the desired object, he immediately undergoes the suffering of copper pillars and iron beds. This is the fruit of karmic recompense.

The ultimate equality of beginning and end has three meanings. First, the initial appearance and nature are empty, and the final fruit and recompense are also empty. Second, evil fruit and recompense are already contained within the initial appearance and nature, and the end is therefore equal to the beginning. The initial appearance and nature can also be traced within the later evil fruit and recompense, and the beginning is therefore equal to the end. If the later event were entirely absent at the beginning, the physiognomist could not predict it; if the earlier cause were entirely absent from the later fruit, it could not be traced. Third, the mind of the real principle of the middle way does not differ from the fruit of buddhahood. No color or fragrance is outside the middle way; in principle, beginning and end are equal. Because all three meanings are complete, this is called equality.

Humans and Gods, the Two Vehicles, and Three Kinds of Bodhisattvas

The ten dharmas of humans and gods are explained only in terms of goodness and happiness and differ from the four lower destinies. Appearance indicates upward ascent. Nature is pure, wholesome Dharma. Substance is peaceful and happy body and mind. Capacity is fitness to serve as an instrument of wholesome Dharma. Activity produces the goodness of restraint and the goodness of active practice. Cause is white action. Condition consists in wholesome attachment to self, what belongs to self, and supporting resources. Fruit naturally arises from wholesome mind, and recompense is the natural undergoing of happiness. The ultimate equality of beginning and end is as explained above.

The ten dharmas of the Two Vehicles are explained in terms of the real and uncontaminated. Appearance indicates nirvāṇa. Nature is Dharma that is neither white nor black. Substance is the fivefold Dharma body of discipline, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation. Capacity can move and emerge and is fit to serve as an instrument of the path. Activity is diligent exertion. Cause is uncontaminated right wisdom. Conditions are the various practices assisting the path. Fruit is the four fruits. Because those of the Two Vehicles no longer receive a later birth, uncontaminated recompense is usually not established.

Why is the arising of the truly uncontaminated counted as fruit but not recompense? The arising of the uncontaminated Dharma answers to the cause of cultivation and is habitual fruit. It diminishes birth-and-death and no longer draws a later birth, and is therefore not recompense. The first three fruits still have such recompenses as seven births, one return, or birth in the form realm because residual afflictions of thought have not been cut off, not because the uncontaminated itself serves as recompense.

From a Mahāyāna perspective, the uncontaminated of the Two Vehicles is still called contaminated, and the adornment of merit remains conditioned and contaminated. Śrāvaka saṅgha members have not cut off subtler delusions and still undergo transformational birth. The uncontaminated is therefore cause, ignorance condition, and birth in a transformational land the result; from this perspective, recompense may also be spoken of. At different levels, the Two Vehicles can thus be said to possess nine dharmas or ten.

Bodhisattvas and buddhas are further distinguished through three kinds of bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas of the six perfections explain appearance, nature, substance, and capacity in terms of merit. Wholesome action is cause, affliction is condition, and cutting off the bonds in thirty-four thought-moments is fruit. At the stage of buddhahood there is no further recompense, while bodhisattvas possess all ten dharmas.

Bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching explain appearance and nature in terms of the uncontaminated. Before the sixth stage, residual afflictions of thought are not exhausted and recompense is still received. Once the afflictions of thought are exhausted at the sixth stage, there is no later body; birth is manifested only because vows support residual habits, not as true karmic recompense. Nine are therefore usually taught rather than ten.

Bodhisattvas of the Distinct Teaching discuss the ten dharmas through sequential cultivation of contemplation of the middle way. Though they have cut off shared delusions, they know that they still undergo birth and therefore possess all ten dharmas.

Transformational birth further has three kinds. First is transformational birth undergone without any severance of distinct delusion. This includes those of the Two Vehicles in the Tripiṭaka Teaching and the Three Vehicles in the Shared Teaching. They are like ordinary people undergoing segmented birth-and-death who have not yet subdued delusions of view and thought. Second is transformational birth undergone after distinct delusion has been subdued. This includes practitioners in the thirty mental stages of the Distinct Teaching. They cultivate the middle way but have only subdued and not cut off those delusions, like practitioners on the preparatory path of the Lesser Vehicle. Third is transformational birth after one portion of distinct delusion has been cut off, as with those at the first ground or first abode who have severed delusion. They are like those at the first fruit, who have cut off delusion of views but still undergo seven births.

Those reborn with no severance or with only subdual take preparatory practice and the truly uncontaminated as cause and ignorance as condition. Those reborn after subdual or after cutting off one portion take attachment to Dharmas concordant with the path as cause and ignorance as condition. All three are born in transformational lands and must be distinguished according to the depth of subdual and severance.

The Ten Dharmas of the Buddha Realm and Analysis of Nine and Ten

The ten dharmas of the Buddha realm are all distinguished according to the middle way. The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra says that all sentient beings are the mark of awakening and cannot be obtained again. From the side of what sentient beings inherently possess, the condition-cause may therefore be called the Buddha’s appearance. Nature is internal: wisdom and vows remain and are not lost, and wisdom is the buddha-nature of the understanding-cause. The mind pure in its own nature is the direct cause and is the Buddha’s substance. These three are also the three tracks.

Capacity is the initial arising of the resolve for awakening, which already surpasses the Two Vehicles. Activity is the determination established by the four universal vows. Cause is the adornment of wisdom, and condition the adornment of merit. Fruit is the unsurpassed awakening in which one thought corresponds and great awakening appears brightly; this is habitual fruit. Recompense is great parinirvāṇa, complete in the virtue of severance, meditative concentration, samādhi, and all qualities; this is recompense-fruit. Equality of beginning and end means that the three truths of initial appearance and nature do not differ from the three truths at the ultimate.

From the truth of emptiness, the initial suchness of sentient beings through the suchness of buddhas are all equal. From the conventional truth, sentient beings have not yet given rise to the resolve, but a buddha already predicts that they will become buddhas; after becoming a buddha, one also teaches the events of past lives. Beginning and end are present in one another and are therefore provisionally equal. From the truth of the middle, ordinary and noble are both the true mark. The Buddha realm may thus be said to possess nine or ten.

In general terms, every ground has myriad practices. Merit is cause and ignorance condition, while habitual fruit and recompense-fruit are attained in part; all ten dharmas may therefore be complete. The sutra speaks of attaining immeasurable, uncontaminated, pure fruit and recompense; it says that having long cultivated pure conduct in the Dharma of the Dharma King, only today does one attain the fruit and recompense; it also speaks of what is attained through long-cultivated action. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra expresses the wish that the food now offered yield unsurpassed recompense. The Sutra of Humane Kings says that the three worthy stages and ten noble stages abide in fruit and recompense. The Mahāyānasaṃgraha-bhāṣya speaks of dependent-arising birth-and-death and birth-and-death with a later existence. These all discuss fruit and recompense according to successive stages.

This fruit and recompense still has arising and ceasing. Because one portion of ignorance is exhausted, there is ceasing. Because one portion of true illumination grows, there is arising. Because residual ignorance remains, there is still arising; because one portion of delusion has been removed, there is also ceasing. The Da zhidu lun uses the simile of one person able to weed and another able to sow. The myriad practices assist accomplishment like sowing, while wisdom breaks delusion like weeding. The path grows as birth-and-death diminishes; this is the meaning. Each of the forty-one stages can be discussed as possessing the ten dharmas.

Even wondrous awakening must be discussed as nine or ten from different perspectives. Wisdom of the middle way can diminish birth-and-death. While birth-and-death is not yet exhausted, the grounds have different kinds of arising and ceasing. At wondrous awakening, the diminution of birth has been completed; how could there still be a later recompense? Therefore it is said that only the Buddha alone dwells in the pure land and that when the thirty births are exhausted one equals great awakening. Afflictions are exhausted, and there is no further existence within birth-and-death. Wisdom-virtue is complete, and there is no new habitual fruit. Because no later body is received, there is no recompense-fruit. From the perspectives of present and later birth and related distinctions, however, nine and ten may again be discussed separately.

If one follows the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra passage wishing to attain unsurpassed recompense, the Buddha realm’s recompense is unsurpassed. Since buddha-recompense is unsurpassed, its other nine dharmas—appearance, nature, and so on—are all unsurpassed. The appearance and nature of the six destinies fully manifest the five abiding delusions. Those of the Two Vehicles manifest the breaking of the four abiding delusions while ignorance remains. Those of bodhisattvas manifest the sequential breaking of the five abiding delusions. Buddha appearance and nature manifest the knowledge of all modes, pure like space and undefiled by the five abiding delusions. The Buddha realm’s ten dharmas are therefore the most unsurpassed.

Viewed again through what they manifest, the appearance of the six destinies manifests the suffering of birth-and-death. The appearance of the Two Vehicles manifests the joy of nirvāṇa. The appearance of the Buddha realm manifests the permanence, joy, self, and purity of the middle way, which abides neither in birth-and-death nor in nirvāṇa; it is therefore the most unsurpassed. The four lower destinies manifest evil, humans and gods manifest good, the Two Vehicles manifest uncontaminated good, and bodhisattvas and buddhas manifest good that is neither contaminated nor uncontaminated. The Buddha realm is therefore unsurpassed. The six destinies manifest dharmas arising through causes and conditions, the Two Vehicles manifest immediate emptiness, bodhisattvas manifest immediate provisional establishment, and buddhas manifest immediate emptiness, provisional establishment, and the middle. The Buddha realm is therefore unsurpassed.

Moreover, the appearance of the four lower destinies can manifest only evil and not good. The appearance of humans and gods can manifest only good and not evil. The Two Vehicles can manifest only the uncontaminated and cannot also manifest good and evil. Buddha appearance can manifest all appearances together. Understanding Buddha appearance therefore means understanding all appearances universally, and the Buddha realm is thus the most unsurpassed. An intermediate being of hell can see only hell and cannot know the higher destinies. An intermediate being of heaven can know the heavenly destiny and those beneath it, but still cannot be called one who knows correctly and universally. Only Buddha appearance manifests correct and universal knowledge. Because Buddha-wisdom universally knows all appearances, scriptural teaching should also teach all appearances universally.

Applying the Ten Realms across the Five Flavors and Gathering Them through Three Verses

When the ten realms and ten suchnesses are applied across the five flavors, the milk flavor teaches the natures and appearances of the bodhisattva and Buddha realms. Some enter immediate provisional establishment; some enter the immediate middle. Entry into the middle is unsurpassed, yet it still carries one kind of skillful means and is therefore not entirely unsurpassed. The curds flavor teaches only the natures and appearances of the Two Vehicles. It enters only analytic emptiness, has not yet revealed immediate emptiness, and still less the rest; it is therefore not unsurpassed.

Raw ghee reveals four kinds of nature and appearance: some enter analytic emptiness, some immediate emptiness, some immediate provisional establishment, and some the immediate middle. Only the natures and appearances of the Buddha realm enter immediate emptiness, provisional establishment, and the middle, but they still carry three kinds of skillful means and are therefore not unsurpassed. Refined ghee reveals three kinds of nature and appearance: some enter immediate emptiness, some immediate provisional establishment, and some the immediate middle. Only the natures and appearances of the Buddha realm enter the three truths, but they still carry two kinds of skillful means and are therefore not unsurpassed.

The Lotus Sutra teaches that the natures and appearances of all nine realms enter immediate emptiness, provisional establishment, and the middle. Sentient beings are truly the Buddha’s children, and the Buddha is truly like their father. One color and one flavor are purely the Buddha-Dharma, with no other ultimate Dharma. If the natures and appearances of the nine realms in other scriptures have not yet entered the Buddha realm’s three truths, the present sutra opens their skillful means and enables them all to enter. Viewed in their own appearance and nature, they have always been immediately empty, provisionally established, and the middle, and do not wait to be brought in from outside. This is why the Buddha earnestly praises this sutra as the most unsurpassed.

The hundred realms and thousand dharmas are numerous vertically and horizontally. The author therefore gathers them through three verses from scriptures and treatises to make them easier to understand.

The dependent-arising verse of the Madhyamaka Treatise may be matched as follows. The natures and appearances of the six destinies are dharmas arising through causes and conditions. The natures and appearances of the Two Vehicles and bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching correspond to immediate emptiness. Those of bodhisattvas of the six perfections and the Distinct Teaching correspond to provisional naming. Those of the Buddha realm correspond to the middle way. Though brief, the verse encompasses the many preceding meanings.

The nirvāṇa verse may be matched as follows. The natures and appearances of the six destinies are conditioned activities. Those of the Two Vehicles and the Shared Teaching reveal impermanence. Those of bodhisattvas of the Distinct Teaching correspond to the cessation of arising and ceasing. Those of the Buddha realm correspond to the bliss of quiescent cessation. If “when arising and ceasing have ceased, quiescent cessation is bliss” is understood sequentially, it may also describe the natures and appearances of the Distinct Teaching. If quiescent cessation is precisely at the point of arising and ceasing and bliss does not wait until after their extinction, it reveals the natures and appearances of the Buddha realm in the Perfect Teaching.

The shared precept verse of the seven buddhas may be matched as follows. The natures and appearances of the four lower destinies are the evils one must not commit. Those of humans and gods are the many good deeds one should practice. Within purification of one’s own mind are the two kinds of purified mind—analytic and embodied—which correspond to the natures and appearances of the Two Vehicles. Purified mind that enters the provisional corresponds to the natures and appearances of bodhisattvas. Purified mind that enters the middle corresponds to the natures and appearances of the Buddha realm. If one can correlate the natures and appearances of the ten realms with scriptures, treatises, and disciplinary texts, one can penetrate the Dharmas of the Tripiṭaka, Shared, and Distinct teachings and know all dharmas without obstruction. The extensive explanation of the characteristics of the dharmas of sentient beings is complete here.

Extensive Explanation of the Dharmas of Buddhas

Could buddhas possess some Dharma separate from the dharmas of sentient beings? The hundred realms and thousand suchnesses are the Buddha’s object, and only buddhas together with buddhas exhaust this principle. Just as a lid matches the size of its container, boundless Buddha-wisdom illuminates the vast Buddha-object and reaches its source and bottom. This is Dharma that follows the Buddha’s own intent.

Illuminating the natures and appearances, beginnings and ends of the nine realms without missing the slightest thread is Dharma that follows the intent of others. From the bases of Dharma according with the Buddha’s own intent and with the intent of others, the Buddha manifests the traces of the ten realms. The Buddha may manifest his own body or another’s body and may speak words expressing his own intent or the intent of others. His own intent and the intent of others are inconceivable; his own body and another’s body are wondrous, quiescent, and absolute. They are not fixed as provisional or real, yet they can respond to the provisional of the nine realms and the real of the Buddha realm without any diminution of the dharmas of buddhas. Their wondrousness is evident and need not be explained extensively here; it will be clarified again in the “Skillful Means” chapter.

Extensive Explanation of the Dharmas of Mind

How could any of the dharmas explained above depart from mind? The dharmas of sentient beings are simply too broad and the dharmas of buddhas too high for beginners to enter easily. Because mind, buddhas, and sentient beings are without difference, beginning with contemplation of one’s own mind is easier.

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that all sentient beings possess higher, middle, and lower concentrations, and that the higher means buddha-nature. To contemplate mind-nature is called the higher concentration. Because the higher includes the lower, it also encompasses the dharmas of sentient beings. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra says that letting the mind roam through the Dharma realm like space enables one to know the Buddha’s realm. Dharma realm reveals the middle, space reveals emptiness, and the provisional establishment of mind and buddhas as equal through causes and conditions reveals the provisional. Completeness in all three is the Buddha’s realm. Contemplation of mind therefore still possesses the dharmas of buddhas.

Next, consider letting the mind roam through the Dharma realm. When a faculty meets an object and one thought of mind arises, it necessarily belongs to one of the ten realms. Since it belongs to one realm, that realm possesses the hundred realms and thousand dharmas, all complete within a single thought. This mind is like an illusionist, continually making all kinds of sentient beings, aggregates, and lands day and night: from the sentient beings, aggregates, and lands of hell through those of the Buddha realm. Practitioners should choose for themselves which road can be followed.

Next, contemplate mind through the simile of space. If mind is said to arise from itself, it should not need conditions. If mind exists only through conditions, mind itself lacks the power to arise. Mind lacks the power to arise, and conditions lack that power as well. When neither mind nor conditions can be obtained independently, how could their combination suddenly produce arising? Combination itself cannot be obtained, and separation still less can give rise. When even one arising cannot be obtained, how could the hundred realms and thousand dharmas truly exist?

Because mind is empty, all dharmas produced from mind are empty, and this emptiness too is empty. If emptiness is not fixed as emptiness, provisional dharmas can be established within it; provisional establishment too is not fixed as provisional establishment. Neither side of emptiness and provisional establishment is inhabited, and both are ultimately pure. This is the Buddha’s realm, equal above to the dharmas of buddhas and equal below to the dharmas of sentient beings. The dharmas of mind mean that mind, buddhas, and sentient beings are without difference.

Someone asks: how can one thought contain the hundred realms and thousand dharmas? The answer is that three similes may be borrowed to explain it. Their detailed treatment is given separately in the Mohe Zhiguan.

Shared Explanation of Wondrousness: Relational and Absolute

After Dharma has been explained, wondrousness is explained next. Wondrousness is first explained in shared terms and then specifically. Its shared explanation is divided between the gates of relational and absolute wondrousness. The present sutra discusses only these two forms of wondrousness and establishes no third gate outside the absolute and relational. If another gate were invented, what delusion would it cut off and what principle would it reveal? None is established.

First is the relational. The half-word teaching is coarse and the full-word teaching wondrous. Permanent and impermanent, great and small may also await one another in judgments of coarse and wondrous. The Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra says that Dharma falls neither into being nor nonbeing and that dharmas arise through causes and conditions; this reveals the full-word teaching. It also says that at first beneath the bodhi tree the Buddha defeated Māra, attained the sweet dew of extinction, and accomplished the path. This raises the earlier half-word teaching to reveal the full-word teaching by contrast. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra says that in Jambudvīpa one sees the second turning of the Dharma wheel, taking the first turning at the Deer Park as first and awaiting the Prajñā teaching as second. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra contrasts the past first turning at Vārāṇasī with the present second turning at Kuśinagara. All these scriptures take the Deer Park as half, small, and coarse and await the later full and great as wondrous. Their meaning is the same.

The present Lotus Sutra likewise says that in the past at Vārāṇasī the Dharma wheel of the Four Truths was turned, revealing the arising and ceasing of the five aggregates, whereas now the most wondrous, unsurpassed great Dharma wheel is turned. This similarly takes the Deer Park as coarse and the Lotus as wondrous. The wondrous meanings taught by the scriptures and the coarse teaching awaited are the same. This is the textual meaning.

Someone asks: if the full principle revealed since the Vaipulya teachings is without difference, should they not all be called wondrous?

The answer is that no fixed teaching name or period has been rigidly imposed here, so why suddenly restrict the point to the Vaipulya teachings? Even if that division is provisionally accepted, there is another reason. Bodhisattvas of sharp faculties entered the wondrous in earlier teachings, with no difference from the Lotus. Bodhisattvas of dull faculties and the Two Vehicles still carried skillful means and had to be tempered through the several flavors. The Vaipulya teachings carried the skillful means of raw ghee while teaching the wondrous in relation to the coarse. Prajñā carried the skillful means of refined ghee while teaching the wondrous in relation to the coarse. The present sutra does not mingle two kinds of skillful means but teaches the wondrous in relation to the coarse through pure, true clarified essence. The wondrousness of the earlier teachings and the wondrousness of the present teaching do not differ; the distinction lies only in carrying or not carrying skillful means.

Again, the Tripiṭaka Teaching is only the half-word gate of arising and ceasing and cannot penetrate the full principle, so it is called coarse. The full-word teaching is the gate of non-arising and non-ceasing and can penetrate the full principle, so it is called wondrous. Penetrating the full principle has two kinds. The first carries skillful means while penetrating the full principle. The second directly reveals the full principle. The Vaipulya and Prajñā teachings carry skillful means while penetrating the full principle; the present sutra directly reveals it.

The Madhyamaka Treatise says that for disciples of dull faculties, the Buddha teaches the marks of the arising and ceasing of causes and conditions, while for disciples of sharp faculties, he teaches the marks of their non-arising and non-ceasing.

If one cannot see emptiness immediately within conditioned dharmas and takes only analytic entry into truth as skillful means, it is called coarse. If one sees the dharmas themselves as empty, this is skillful means that penetrates the middle way. If the skillful means that penetrates the middle still carries the two gates of immediate emptiness and provisional establishment while penetrating the middle, it may still be called coarse in relation to something else. If it does not carry a sequence of emptiness and provisional establishment but directly penetrates the middle, it is called wondrous.

Another question asks: the flavors from milk through clarified essence are all called full. How should this simile be understood?

The answer uses ferries. The state has three ferries—large, medium, and small—and there is also a private boat. All carry people from this shore toward the farther shore. The milk flavor resembles the large and medium state ferries, both of which carry people to the farther shore. The curds flavor resembles the small private boat, which carries them only to a river island. Raw ghee has four boats: the small state ferry and private boat carry people to the island, while the large and medium ferries carry them to the farther shore. Refined ghee has three state ferries: one reaches the island and two the farther shore. Clarified essence resembles the great ferry, which carries people directly to the farther shore.

Because all three state ferries belong to the state, all may be called full. The private boat does not belong to the state and is therefore called half. Among the state ferries, however, large, medium, and small still differ in capacity. The great ferry is splendid and carries twice as much, and therefore it alone is called wondrous. Zhiyi uses this simile to explain how the five flavors can all be full yet still differ. This is the simile’s meaning.

Explaining Absolute Wondrousness

Absolute wondrousness has four levels.

First, the three provisional constructs arise according to the attachments of sentient beings. If one enters truth through them, the preceding relational terms cease. Śāriputra therefore says that within the liberation he has heard there are no words. This is the meaning of the absolute in the Tripiṭaka scriptures.

Second, when the three provisional constructs are contemplated according to truth, all worldly things are like illusions and transformations. Phenomena themselves are true; there is not one phenomenon that is not true. What other thing need be awaited in order for them to be called true? Compared with the preceding level, this absolute may still be placed in a relation of before and after. Considered in itself as phenomena immediately true, however, it is the absolute of the Shared Teaching.

Third, when the Distinct Teaching arises, it looks back at the Shared Teaching’s absolute of phenomena immediately true and still judges it to be conventional truth. Because it has not reached great nirvāṇa, it remains within the conventional truth of birth-and-death, and its absolute still has something it awaits. On entering the middle way of the Distinct Teaching, what it awaits ceases.

Fourth, when the Perfect Teaching arises, it teaches the Dharma without discrimination: the boundary is itself the middle, no Dharma is outside the Buddha-Dharma, and all discrimination is extinguished and purified. How could one Buddha-Dharma still be set in relation to another Buddha-Dharma? Since this is the Tathāgata’s Dharma realm, there is no Dharma outside it available for comparison. Whom would one await as coarse? Against what would one become wondrous? Since nothing can be awaited and no graspable absolute remains, one does not know what to call it and provisionally names it “absolute.”

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that what is great is called great because it is immeasurable and inconceivable. Space is not called great because of another, smaller space, and nirvāṇa is likewise not called great nirvāṇa because of a smaller mark. The wondrous is also so: inconceivable and not dependent on the coarse for its name. If one supposes that outside the Dharma realm there is another vast and solitary absolute thing, that itself becomes something grasped. How could it be called absolute?

The Dharma realm is now pure and does not belong to seeing, hearing, awareness, or knowing; it cannot be displayed through words. In the sutra the Buddha stops the assembly and says that his Dharma is wondrous and difficult to conceive. “There is no need to speak” reveals the cessation of words, and “difficult to conceive” reveals the cessation of thought. The sutra further says that Dharma cannot be displayed and that the marks of words are quiescent and extinct, likewise praising the severance of both words and thought. It cannot be displayed through relation, nor through the name and mark “absolute.” Therefore not only relation but attachment to the absolute must be extinguished; only then is this called quiescent extinction.

The sutra further says that all dharmas constantly bear the mark of quiescent extinction and ultimately return to emptiness. When even this emptiness is emptied, neither relational nor absolute remains. The meaning of the Madhyamaka Treatise is that if a Dharma is established by awaiting another, it itself remains relational. Here there is neither a cause of awaiting nor a Dharma established thereby. The treatise then displays the title Lotus and cites the sentence: having attained the forbearance of non-arising, one does not give rise even to non-arising. Having attained the forbearance of non-arising, one still does not give rise to a graspable non-arising. When non-arising itself is not produced, it is called absolute.

If another account is invented outside this, what would it sever and what would it reveal? Words pursuing more words would wander without end and fall only into conceptual proliferation. Discriminating attachment would not cease, and the supposed absolute would never truly come to rest. One could then speak of neither absolute nor relational and set it against both relational and absolute, but names and words would continue pursuing one another and never become absolute.

This is like a foolish dog chasing the clods a person throws, running back and forth in exhaustion while clods continue without end. If one can wondrously awaken to the pivot, still the wind of initial and sustained thought, and clear the water of mind, words and thought cease together. It is like a keen lion that does not chase the clod but pursues the thrower directly. Once the root that produces the clods is removed, the clods naturally cease.

In wondrous awakening, one fully knows that there is no other Dharma outside the Dharma realm that can be severed. From the gate of being, this is the absolute. When even this absolute is severed, it is explained through the gate of emptiness. A good horse enters the correct road as soon as it sees the shadow of the whip. This is called absolute wondrousness.

Concluding through the Two Wondrousnesses, Three Dharmas, and Horizontal and Vertical Axes

Relational and absolute wondrousness separately reveal the wondrousness of the dharmas of sentient beings. The dharmas of buddhas and the dharmas of mind each likewise possess both wondrousnesses, and therefore all three dharmas are called wondrous.

When the preceding four kinds of the absolute are placed within the five-flavor teachings, the milk flavor has two absolutes, the curds flavor one, raw ghee four, refined ghee three, and the present sutra reveals only the one perfect absolute. If the earlier kinds of skillful means are opened, not one fails to enter this wondrous absolute.

Someone asks: why is “absolute” used to explain “wondrous”?

The answer has three levels. First, “absolute” is simply another name for wondrous, just as people praise someone’s ability as outstanding. Second, wondrous is what can sever, and coarse is what is severed. Wondrous has the power to cut off attachment to the coarse, and its name is therefore revealed in relation to the coarse that is severed. Third, what can sever and what is severed progress through Trace, Origin, and contemplation of mind.

When teachings of skillful means were bestowed within the Trace, the great teaching could not arise. Now the great teaching arises, and the teaching of skillful means ceases as an obstruction. What is severed is made to cease through the power of the great teaching, and the latter is therefore called wondrous. When the great teaching within the Trace had arisen, the great teaching of the Origin had not yet been revealed. When the great teaching of the Origin arises, the great teaching within the Trace is transcended as a final boundary. The power that severs the Trace comes from the Origin, and the Origin is therefore called wondrous. Even when the great teaching of the Origin has arisen, if contemplation of mind has not yet arisen, teaching remains in words. When one enters contemplation of mind, causes and conditions become quiescent and the road of language is cut off; the teaching of the Origin then ceases as external words. This cessation is accomplished through contemplation, and contemplation of mind is therefore called wondrous.

Thus the absolute wondrousness of the Trace reveals the wondrousness of the dharmas of sentient beings. The absolute wondrousness of the Origin reveals the wondrousness of the dharmas of buddhas. The absolute wondrousness of contemplation of mind reveals the wondrousness of the dharmas of mind. The preceding four absolutes are arranged horizontally according to the four teachings. Here the three absolutes advance vertically within the Perfect Teaching from Trace to Origin and then to contemplation of mind.

The sutra title contains only the four words “Wondrous Dharma Lotus Blossom,” yet Zhiyi first distinguishes the shared from the specific, determines the sequence, and presents earlier explanations; he then proceeds from the three dharmas and the ten suchnesses all the way to relational and absolute wondrousness. If “wondrous” were merely another word for “best,” why would such an extended inquiry be necessary?

The point is that praise meaning “highest” may still express only the speaker’s preference. The wondrousness this treatise seeks to reveal must instead explain how all distinctions are established, how skillful means are opened and revealed, why sentient beings cannot be judged conclusively from one present appearance, and how practitioners may enter through their own minds. Explaining the name therefore does not construct a theory outside the sutra title. It asks whether this name can truly run through what the Buddha teaches, what sentient beings practice, and where all dharmas return.

Why the Shared and the Specific Must Both Stand

“Wondrous Dharma Lotus Blossom” differs from the titles of other scriptures and is therefore specific; the work is also called a sutra, as are other scriptures, and is therefore shared. Zhiyi, however, does not allow shared and specific to remain features of the title alone. He moves the pair across three dimensions—teaching, practice, and principle. Teachings differ according to capacities but are shared insofar as the Buddha teaches them. Gates of practice differ through what enters into accord, but the principle with which they accord is shared. Truth differs according to its names, but what those names indicate is shared.

Why not simply say that principle is one and dispense with all distinctions? Because the Buddha teaches in response to capacities. When capacities differ, the gates through which people can enter cannot be forced into one gate. To flatten the approaches is to flatten the roads that sentient beings can actually follow. Conversely, why not preserve only the differences? Five hundred monks each explain the cause of the body, and thirty-two bodhisattvas each enter the gate of nonduality. Their practices differ, but this does not give each one a separate and mutually sealed truth. Treatises establish different points of entry, yet what practice accords with is nondual: there is difference without fragmentation.

These three pairs also explain why the sutra’s many similes can all indicate one Dharma. The great cart is practice; the true mark, the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing, the family estate, the place of treasure, and the jewel sewn into the robe are principle. A multiplication of names and marks does not mean that the ultimate has been cut into pieces. It reveals instead that the same reality can open through many names. The shared does not cancel the specific, nor does the specific damage the shared. Only when both stand together does the sutra title cease to be an isolated label.

Are Treatment within Each Division and Treatment across Divisions Mutually Exclusive?

Someone presses the question: if teachers differ and their teachings also differ, how can all of them be called the golden-mouth brahmā-sound? Zhiyi does not hasten to choose one side. He first distinguishes treatment within each division from treatment across divisions.

Within each division means understanding each teaching truthfully within its own bounds. The elder takes off his necklaces, puts on coarse and filthy clothing, orders the poor son to work diligently, and raises his wages. If one ignores the identity, language, and work the poor son encounters at that moment and forces the meaning of a later revelation back into it, one loses the very place where skillful means does real work. Within the division, differing conditions make teachings specific, while the single teacher makes teaching shared. What enters into accord differs, but that with which it accords is not a plurality of fixed entities. Phenomena are easy to distinguish; the principle to which the several divisions return is difficult to integrate.

Treatment across divisions looks back after the gate of skillful means has been opened. Are there really four mutually unrelated buddhas, each with a separate body, mouth, and Dharma? The text answers with clothing and taste: a body adorned with immeasurable qualities is temporarily hidden as a sixteen-foot body; the sweet taste of permanence and joy is temporarily taught as the salty and sour taste of impermanence; royal clothing is temporarily exchanged for implements used to clear away excrement. Once skillful means is opened, the body first seen is itself the body of perfect permanence, and the Dharma first heard is revealed as real. Phenomena are now difficult to explain, but principle is easy to carry through.

The two meanings therefore do not negate one another. Treatment within each division prevents the reader from skipping over the teaching that sentient beings actually receive. Treatment across divisions prevents skillful means from being permanently sealed off. The former safeguards the efficacy of distinctions; the latter reveals that distinctions do not depart from the single sound. One keeps revelation from becoming a retrospective erasure, while the other keeps doctrinal distinctions from becoming permanent divisions.

Why Does the Title Put “Wondrous” First, While Explanation Begins with “Dharma”?

The sutra title says “Wondrous Dharma,” but its explanation first treats Dharma at length and only afterward explains the wondrous. Does this reverse the order? Zhiyi answers with the utterly ordinary example “good person.” In naming, one says “good person,” naturally putting “good” before “person.” When examining the meaning, however, there can be no goodness without a person, so the person must be established before goodness is discussed.

The title follows the convenience of naming and therefore places wondrous before Dharma; the explanation follows the convenience of meaning and therefore places Dharma before wondrous. This small question of sequence foretells the method of the entire passage that follows. “Wondrous” is not an ornament that can exist apart from Dharma. Unless one first asks what the dharmas of sentient beings, the dharmas of buddhas, and the dharmas of mind are, one cannot know where the wondrousness being praised is found.

Why First State the Strongest Earlier Explanation in Full?

The four earlier explanations each approach the wondrous from one side. One takes the gathering of the three into the one, which has nothing above it, as wondrous. Another takes freedom from fine and coarse and the severance of words as wondrous. Another understands the past as divided in cause and fruit and the present as their unification. Another takes the principle that is not three to transcend the three teachings. The explanation of Guangzhai is the most extensive: past cause and past fruit each have a narrow substance, low stage, and short function, while present cause and present fruit each have a broad substance, high stage, and long function; the cause and fruit of the One Vehicle are therefore called wondrous.

The treatise does not reduce this account to one sentence and then dismiss it. It restates all six components in full. Can the substance of the cause include the wholesome practices of the Three Vehicles? Does its stage pass beyond the realm? Does its function subdue ignorance? Does the substance of the fruit possess the myriad virtues? Does its stage reach the place of treasure? Does its function cut off delusion and extend the lifespan? Each component has an explicit criterion. The more complete the earlier explanation, the more clearly the subsequent objections show that this is not a clash of positions but a test of whether the other side’s criteria can be carried through consistently.

The first problem lies in the word “past.” If it refers only to limited gates of teaching, describing them as narrow may stand. If every Mahāyāna scripture and teaching before the present sutra is declared narrow, where is one to place the bodhisattva practices that include everything, the Dharma-nature body, the gate of nonduality, and the profound meaning of the true mark found in those scriptures? Conversely, if the present sutra is declared broad, high, and long while the same earlier account also calls it incomplete, not full, and impermanent, and says that buddha-nature is not seen, then its proposed wondrousness lacks all four aspects—teaching, practice, person, and principle.

The Twenty-Four Difficulties Challenge a Single Contradiction

The substance, stage, and function of the cause together with the substance, stage, and function of the fruit make six items. Each item is then questioned from four sides—teaching, practice, person, and principle—producing twenty-four difficulties. The number looks large, but its force is concentrated at one point: one cannot take the four unities as the criterion for wondrousness while calling past teachings that possess those four coarse and the present teaching that lacks them wondrous.

The sharpest difficulty concerns supernormal power and extension of the lifespan. If supernormal power requires deliberate exertion, it cannot reveal the wondrousness of the true mark. If it is merely uncontaminated, it does not surpass the Two Vehicles. If it truly is the supernormal power of the true mark, it is not fixed as able only to extend or only not to extend: according to conditions it can extend or not extend. If it can extend, why extend only the lifespan? Why not enable the eye to see buddha-nature and the tongue to teach permanence? This adds no new demand; it simply presses “long function” to the endpoint of its own meaning.

Zhiyi therefore says that he uses his opponent’s spear against his opponent’s shield. The objections do not replace the earlier terms with new ones; they continue to use broad, high, and long. What changes is where the criteria are applied. This also allows the fourth topic to move from refutation to establishment: the earlier terms need not be entirely wrong; what is wrong is their narrow placement.

How Broad, High, and Long Become Meanings of the Wondrous

When the present meaning is stated positively, the broad substance of the cause does not mean that many unrelated things have been put into a large container. It means that one Dharma realm inherently includes the other nine. Its high stage does not mean climbing above the nine realms to establish the Buddha realm somewhere else, but that the nine realms do not depart from the Buddha realm. Its long function does not mean merely lasting for more time, but that the ten realms are immediately empty, provisionally established, and the middle. The three meanings may be discussed as three within one or as one within three. They are neither three objects placed side by side nor a shapeless fusion.

The broad substance of the fruit is its pervasion of every place; its high stage is the immeasurably remote past of buddhahood; its long function is the manifestation of the Trace from the Origin to benefit sentient beings throughout past, present, and future. Cause and fruit each have three aspects. The language remains familiar from the earlier masters, but wondrousness is no longer founded on a simple claim that the present is superior and the past inferior.

The interpretation through the five flavors develops this point. Some teachings contain one coarse and one wondrous cause and fruit; some contain only the coarse; some contain three coarse and one wondrous, or two coarse and one wondrous; clarified essence alone contains the wondrous without the coarse. Yet the wondrous causes and fruits already revealed in earlier scriptures are not a different reality from the wondrous meaning of the present sutra. The difference lies in whether skillful means accompanies them, not in truth suddenly changing into something else.

Finally, broad, high, and long are turned back toward contemplation of mind. To think that one’s own mind does not include the minds of sentient beings and buddhas is narrow in substance. To think that one’s mind is permanently lower than buddha-mind is low in stage. If mind, buddhas, and sentient beings cannot be penetrated immediately as empty, provisionally established, and the middle, function is short. The ten realms, five flavors, contemplation of mind, and six identities respectively bring together the four unities of principle, teaching, practice, and person. The criteria used earlier to refute the old account now become measures by which practitioners turn back and examine themselves.

Why the Three Dharmas Begin with Sentient Beings and Take Mind as the Entrance

Nanyue raises the dharmas of sentient beings, the dharmas of buddhas, and the dharmas of mind, and Zhiyi follows this by explaining them extensively. If sentient beings had none of the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing, the sutra could not speak of opening, revealing, awakening to, and entering it. The dharmas of sentient beings therefore do not wait for a wholly new knowledge and vision to be inserted from outside by the Buddha. Even the single eye received from one’s parents can reveal the functions of the physical eye, heavenly eye, wisdom eye, Dharma eye, and buddha-eye. Its inability to be confined is displayed in the sense faculty used by sentient beings every day.

The dharmas of buddhas are explained through provisional and real wisdom. That all dharmas are extremely profound and can be exhausted only by buddhas together with buddhas is real wisdom. The Buddha’s ability to establish all the other dharmas so that sentient beings may enter is provisional wisdom. If there were only the real without responsive activity, sentient beings would have no road to reality. If there were only the provisional with nowhere to return, skillful means would lose its direction. The wondrousness of the dharmas of buddhas lies in the simultaneous immeasurability of both wisdoms.

The dharmas of mind bring the overly broad dharmas of sentient beings and the overly high dharmas of buddhas back to a place that can be contemplated. Contemplating all dharmas without movement or retreat, contemplating mind as empty in itself with neither wrongdoing nor merit possessing a fixed master, and contemplating the true mark of one’s own body just as one contemplates the Buddha all enter the lack of difference among the three through one’s own mind. This does not mean that the present functioning of an ordinary person already equals the fruit of buddhahood. It means that if mind and buddhas were forever severed in principle, practice would be impossible.

Are the Three Readings of the Ten Suchnesses Wordplay?

The sutra uses ten dharmas—appearance, nature, substance, capacity, activity, cause, condition, fruit, recompense, and the ultimate equality of beginning and end—to encompass all dharmas. Nanyue reads each phrase through to “such,” hence “the ten suchnesses.” At the point of the three transformed readings, Guanding’s record distinctly introduces the words “The Tiantai Master says.” The recorder here identifies the transmission he received; the three readings that follow unfold the current of meaning taught by Zhiyi. Speaker and recorder need not be flattened into one layer, nor is the transmission broken by distinguishing them.

The first reading comes to rest on “such”: this appearance is such, this nature is such, through this recompense is such. “Such” is without difference and reveals all dharmas as empty. The second reading uses “such” to point out appearance and nature: such is the appearance, such is the nature. Names are established and distinctions remain fully present, revealing provisional establishment. The third reading places “is” in the true mark: appearance such—is; nature such—is, revealing the middle. How can merely shifting the reading bear three meanings? The words themselves say that all dharmas are such. The transformed readings do not force an external meaning into the sutra; they unfold the same statement through non-difference, distinction, and the true mark.

The text immediately prevents the three sides from being arranged as three levels. When one is empty and all are empty, emptiness is not outside provisional establishment and the middle. When one is provisionally established and all are provisionally established, provisional establishment is not outside emptiness and the middle. When one is the middle and all are the middle, the middle is not a final layer laid over the first two. They are explained separately only for ease of understanding. Once the meaning is grasped, they are neither one, two, and three nor other than one, two, and three; they are neither vertical nor horizontal. The three transformations lead the reader from wording into meaning; they do not ask one to select one reading and reject the other two.

The Hundred Realms and Thousand Suchnesses Do Not Turn the World into Arithmetic

Earlier masters divide the first five suchnesses as provisional and the next four as real, or cut the first five from the latter five. Zhiyi asks directly: why should ordinary people be entirely without the real, and why should sages be entirely without the provisional? If provisional and real are merely two groups at the front and back of the ten suchnesses, sentient beings and sages are each sealed within half of the characteristics of dharmas.

The present explanation begins with three meanings of “Dharma realm.” All ten realms rest upon the Dharma realm, and there is no other Dharma outside it. The ten realms have distinct bounds, causes and fruits, and ordinary or noble status, and therefore each has its boundary. Each realm is also in its own substance the Dharma realm and encompasses all dharmas. From their common basis one can see emptiness; from their separate boundaries one can see provisional establishment; from each one’s being the Dharma realm in its own substance one can see the middle. These three meanings let “realm” both distinguish and connect.

One realm has the ten suchnesses, and the ten realms have a hundred suchnesses. Each realm also includes the other nine, producing the hundred realms and thousand suchnesses. This does not stack a thousand components inside the mind. It means that no realm can be judged from one present appearance as pure, self-sufficient, and permanently incapable of change. A rough grouping makes evil, good, the Two Vehicles, bodhisattvas, and buddhas; for the moment the first four may be called provisional and the Buddha real. In finer analysis, every realm contains both provisional and real. Arithmetic only traces the net of mutual inclusion. What it truly protects is the impossibility of measuring sentient beings to the end with the mind of an ordinary person.

The text therefore draws the similes of the burning house, the poor son, the medicinal herbs, and the conjured city back into the provisional and real of the ten suchnesses. A buddha can know whose seed has or has not been planted, whose sprout has or has not emerged, whose nature has or has not ripened, and who can or cannot be liberated at a given time. An evil person may have the nature of the true mark ripen and be liberated immediately; a good person may have an evil nature ripen first and for the moment be unable to receive liberation. If sentient beings are seen only with the eyes of cattle and sheep, labels of good and evil conceal the mutual inclusion of provisional and real.

How Appearance through Recompense Becomes an Observable Causal Sequence

The shared explanation of the ten suchnesses first proceeds without dividing the realms. Outwardly discernible manifestation is appearance. The internal portion that does not change is nature. Principal material is substance. Ability is capacity. Operation and construction are activity. Habituation of the same kind is cause. Assisting conditions are condition. What the habitual cause produces is fruit. What action draws one to undergo is recompense. Appearance is the beginning and recompense the end; where beginning and end ultimately arrive is their ultimate equality.

This is not a static list. Appearance reveals a tendency that has not yet unfolded. Nature allows a kind of conduct to emerge when conditions gather. Substance is the body and mind that undergo and act. Capacity is possibility not yet put into motion; activity puts possibility into operation as the three kinds of action. Cause continues through repeated habituation, and conditions moisten it like water moistening a seed. Fruit lets a tendency arise again in the body one has obtained, while recompense is what one actually undergoes when action ripens. From appearance to recompense, the direction of a thought and of a life becomes progressively visible.

The explanation of the four lower destinies turns abstract terms into sharp images. Calamity has not arrived, but the complexion of decline appears first: this is appearance. Fire is present within wood and emerges when conditions meet: this is nature. Body and mind are crushed: this is substance. Mountains of knives and forests of swords, swallowing molten copper and eating iron, the strong subduing the weak: these are evil capacities. The activity of the three kinds of action is activity. The continuity of evil habit is cause. The self, what belongs to the self, and other supporting things that assist it are condition. When confronted with instruments of suffering, one gives rise to defiled craving again: this is habitual fruit. Moving toward the desired object, one undergoes copper pillars and iron beds: this is recompense. Fruit and recompense are separated within the same scene—one is the habitual response continuing as before, the other the suffering undergone through the force of action.

The ultimate equality of beginning and end then illuminates the causal chain from three sides. Beginning and end are both without self-nature and therefore equal in emptiness. Initial appearance and nature already contain the later fruit and recompense, while the later fruit can reveal the prior cause, so they are equal in provisional establishment. A single color and fragrance do not depart from the true mark, so they are equal in the middle. “Equal” does not erase distinctions among wholesome and unwholesome results. It keeps emptiness and the true mark from being lost within differentiated cause and effect.

Why Nine and Ten Must Be Distinguished at Different Levels of Life

The ten dharmas of humans and gods are explained through goodness and happiness: an appearance that rises toward clarity, a nature of pure dharmas, a substance of peaceful body and mind, a capacity fit for wholesome dharmas, and so on through the recompense of naturally undergoing happiness. The Two Vehicles are explained through the real and uncontaminated. Uncontaminated wisdom answers to the cause of cultivation and is therefore fruit, but it damages birth and does not draw a later existence, and so recompense is normally not established. The first three fruits still have a later recompense because residual afflictions of thought have not been cut off, not because the uncontaminated itself draws birth. From the finer perspective of the Mahāyāna, one may speak of recompense because subtler delusion and transformational birth remain.

Bodhisattvas likewise cannot be merged into one category. Bodhisattvas of the six perfections, bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching, and bodhisattvas of the Distinct Teaching are each discussed through merit, the uncontaminated, and the sequential middle. Some receive recompense because residual afflictions of thought remain. Some support residual habits through vows and manifest birth. Some have subdued or cut off one portion of distinct delusion and receive transformational birth. The text further distinguishes three cases: no severance at all, subdual without severance, and severance of one portion. It does so precisely to prevent the single phrase “bodhisattva birth” from flattening differences in cause, condition, subdual, and severance.

The Buddha realm takes the condition-cause as appearance, the understanding-cause as nature, and the direct cause as substance. The superior arising of the resolve is capacity, the four universal vows are activity, wisdom and merit are cause and condition, great awakening is habitual fruit, and great parinirvāṇa is recompense-fruit. From the perspective of successive stages, growth on the path diminishes birth through the forty-one stages; one portion of delusion ceases and one portion of true illumination arises, so every stage may possess ten. From the perspective that there is no further birth after wondrous awakening, wisdom-virtue is complete and there is no later recompense, so one may speak of nine. From the perspective of unsurpassed recompense and related meanings, one may again speak of ten.

Nine and ten therefore do not reflect indecision in counting. They examine what “recompense” means in different contexts. Does delusion remain? Does it draw a later birth? Is the attainment being discussed stage by stage? Is the ultimate recompense of a buddha in view? The answers differ accordingly. Careful distinction does not weaken the unsurpassed Buddha realm. It keeps unsurpassedness from being proved merely by roughly filling out a list of ten.

Why Three Short Verses Can Gather So Many Vertical and Horizontal Meanings

After the natures and appearances of the ten realms have been unfolded at length, the text gathers them through three short verses. The dependent-arising verse illuminates the six destinies, the Two Vehicles together with bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching, bodhisattvas of the six perfections together with those of the Distinct Teaching, and the Buddha realm respectively as dependently arisen, empty, provisionally named, and the middle way. The impermanence verse illuminates them as conditioned activities, impermanence, the cessation of arising and ceasing, and the bliss of quiescent cessation. The shared precept verse illuminates the four lower destinies, humans and gods, the Two Vehicles, bodhisattvas, and buddhas through refraining from evil, practicing good, and purifying one’s own mind.

This does not mean that each line of verse has only one fixed object. The text itself points out that “when arising and ceasing have ceased, quiescent cessation is bliss” can reveal the Distinct Teaching if understood sequentially. If quiescent cessation is precisely at the point of arising and ceasing, without waiting until after their extinction for bliss, the same line reveals the perfect meaning. One sentence opens different depths according to the level of contemplation. This returns directly to the shared and the specific at the beginning: words and phrases may be specific while the principle they reveal is shared; even where principle is shared, the gates of entry must remain clear.

How Can One Begin When the Dharmas of Buddhas Are So High and Those of Sentient Beings So Broad?

The hundred realms and thousand suchnesses are the object illuminated by the Buddha. Buddha-wisdom covers its great container like a great lid and exhausts its source and bottom; this is following the Buddha’s own intent. It also illuminates the natures and appearances of the nine realms without missing a single thread, manifests one’s own body or another’s body in accord with sentient beings, and teaches language expressing one’s own intent or another’s intent; this is following the intent of others. Provisional and real do not diminish the dharmas of buddhas. They are not fixed as provisional or real, yet can respond to the provisional of the nine realms and the real of the one realm.

But when the dharmas of sentient beings are so broad and the dharmas of buddhas so high, how can a beginner enter? Zhiyi brings the question back to mind. When faculty and object meet, a single thought necessarily belongs to one of the ten realms. Since it belongs to one realm, it does not depart from the hundred realms and thousand dharmas. Mind is like an illusionist, making all kinds of sentient beings, aggregates, and lands day and night, from the most painful modes of life through the Buddha realm. Practice does not first require mastery of every name at a distance. It begins by recognizing which realm the illusionist is making now and which road one intends to follow.

If one asks where mind arises, to say that it arises from itself would make conditions unnecessary; to say that it arises from conditions would leave mind with no power of self-arising. Mind and conditions each lack the power to arise; arising cannot be obtained from their union, nor can it occur apart from them. When even one fixed arising cannot be found, still less can the hundred realms and thousand dharmas be grasped as entities. Because mind is empty, the dharmas it produces are empty. Emptiness too cannot be grasped, and within emptiness the provisional may be established. The provisional too cannot be grasped; emptiness and provisional establishment are both pure. Mind is thus equal above to the dharmas of buddhas and below to the dharmas of sentient beings.

The text leaves one final question: how can one thought contain the hundred realms and thousand dharmas? The answer says that three additional similes will explain this in detail. It does not hurry to import those similes and fill the present passage. Instead, it preserves the work of this section: turning what is too broad and too high into something contemplable and indicating that one thought is not a small container but the place where the mutual inclusion of the ten realms actually occurs.

Is Relational Wondrousness Merely Comparative Better and Worse?

Only after the explanation of Dharma is complete does the text explain wondrousness, first distinguishing the relational from the absolute. The relational uses half and full, arising-and-ceasing and non-arising-and-non-ceasing, small and great, coarse and wondrous to reveal one another. Many scriptures take the first turning at the Deer Park as what is awaited and reveal the later full principle. The present sutra also contrasts the past turning of the Four Truths with the present turning of the unsurpassed Dharma wheel. If wondrousness meant only that the later is superior to the earlier, the preceding objections to Guangzhai would have been pointless.

The text therefore asks itself whether all teachings since the Vaipulya period should be called wondrous because they already revealed the full principle. The reply first concedes that bodhisattvas of sharp faculties entered the wondrous in earlier teachings and that what they entered does not differ from the present sutra. Bodhisattvas of dull faculties and the Two Vehicles, however, still carried skillful means and had to be tempered through the several flavors. Earlier teachings carried skillful means while penetrating the full principle; the present sutra directly reveals the full principle. The meaning of wondrousness has not changed. The relational distinction concerns carrying or not carrying skillful means.

The ferry simile draws this boundary clearly. The state has three ferries—large, medium, and small—and there is also a private boat. Some reach a river island; some reach the farther shore. All three ferries belong to the state and are therefore called full, but their capacities differ. The great ferry is the most splendid and carries the most, and therefore it alone is called wondrous. “Equally full” answers whether the truth is the same; “uniquely wondrous” answers how a teaching carries sentient beings. If either side is omitted, either every boat becomes identical or the river island is mistaken for the farther shore.

Why Must Even the Absolute Be Released in Absolute Wondrousness?

Absolute wondrousness first unfolds through four levels. When the three provisional constructs that arise according to sentient beings’ dispositions enter the truth, words cease: this is the first level. At the second, all worldly things are like illusions, phenomena themselves are true, and there is no phenomenon that is not true—what else must be awaited in order for something to be true? At the third, this prior identity with truth may still be judged a conventional truth; only entry into the middle way ends what is awaited. In the Perfect Teaching, boundary is itself the middle, no Dharma is outside the Buddha-Dharma, and no comparison remains outside the Dharma realm: this is the fourth.

The fourth is most easily misread as one vast and solitary absolute thing. The text therefore asks: if there truly were a Dharma standing apart from everything and called absolute, that “absolute” would already be something possessed—what would it have severed? Space is not called great because there is another small space, and the wondrous is not called wondrous because there is a fixed coarse Dharma elsewhere. Speech ceases and thought ceases. Emptiness itself is emptied, and even the opposition between relational and absolute is not retained. Only then does “absolute” cease to manufacture a final graspable Dharma.

If phrases continue to be added among absolute, non-absolute, and both relational and absolute, names and words merely chase more names and words. The text makes its strongest distinction with the foolish dog and the clever lion. The dog chases the clods a person throws, one after another without end. The lion does not chase the clods; it seeks the person throwing them. When the root comes to rest, the clods naturally stop. The question is not whether every sentence has been debated to the end, but whether the wind of initial and sustained thought has stilled and the water of mind grown clear.

The swift horse that enters the right road on seeing the shadow of the whip makes the same point more lightly. One who truly enters does not wait for the whip to touch the body, much less collect every clod. Fully knowing that there is no Dharma outside the Dharma realm to be severed is the gate of being; severing even this absolute is the gate of emptiness. Absolute wondrousness does not add a final highest concept at the end of language. It lets the root that produces opposition come to rest.

Why Must the Two Wondrousnesses Finally Return to the Three Dharmas?

The relational reveals the distinction between skillful means and direct revelation, between carrying and not carrying. The absolute prevents either side, including the “absolute” itself, from being grasped as a real Dharma. The two wondrousnesses are not assigned to two separate worlds. The dharmas of sentient beings, the dharmas of buddhas, and the dharmas of mind each possess both. If only the relational were taught, the wondrous would forever depend on the coarse. If only the absolute were taught, the distinct work of teaching, practice, and principle could be erased.

The four kinds of the absolute contemplate the four teachings horizontally, each with a different depth in the cessation of what is awaited; Trace, Origin, and contemplation of mind advance vertically. When teachings of skillful means cease, the great teaching within the Trace is revealed. When that great teaching within the Trace is no longer made the final boundary, the Origin is revealed. Even after the teaching of the Origin has been spoken, if contemplation of mind has not arisen, it remains only words; when contemplated conditions become quiescent and the road of language is cut off, the teaching is completed in the practitioner’s mind.

Explaining the name has thus traveled a great circle and returned to its beginning. Teaching has shared and specific, practice has shared and specific, and principle has shared and specific. The title puts wondrous first; the explanation puts Dharma first. Dharma expands as three, while wondrousness is explained through two. The conclusion does not stack all these numbers into a system. It lets sentient beings, buddhas, and mind each receive their boundaries through the relational without being sealed by those boundaries through the absolute. “Wondrous” cannot be merely praise because it must perform both tasks at once.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first locates this passage at the beginning of the separate explanation of the Five Chapters and points out that the three pairs of teaching, practice, and principle cannot be omitted. Without them, shared and specific would be empty names. What looked like a brief opening distinction therefore becomes the skeleton of the entire passage: the later distinctions among the ten realms, the mutual inclusion of the three dharmas, and the relational and absolute all answer how there can be distinction together with passage across distinction.

Treatment within each division and treatment across divisions are also mirrored forward into the two wondrousnesses. The former applies throughout the teachings of the Buddha’s lifetime and becomes relational in the position of the present sutra; the latter is established by the present sutra’s opening of skillful means and revelation of reality. The opening exchange is not a digression before wondrousness begins. It first prepares the reading position for comparison and revelation. Each meaning must also return to teaching, practice, and principle; treatment across divisions cannot be read only as a single transformation of the Buddha’s body.

The determination of sequence is divided into statement, earlier explanations, present meaning, and integration. The title follows the convenience of naming and places wondrous before Dharma; explanation follows the convenience of meaning and places Dharma before wondrous. There is therefore no contradiction in the sequence. Earlier explanations first list the masters and then receive the objections of the present tradition. The first three are not separately refuted because Guangzhai gives the fullest account; once the criteria of his six items are overturned, the rest can be understood accordingly.

Two textual judgments among the twenty-four difficulties particularly reveal the limits of the mirror. The text cites a treatise as saying that bodhisattvas receive a Dharma-nature body and practice bodhisattva practices, and calls this the stage of the cause; Zhanran thinks that “stage” may need to be “practice.” In the example of Māra kings, the mirror further distinguishes the received scripture’s “many” from the base text’s “all.” These are Zhanran’s textual judgments. They can guide reading but must not be used to rewrite Zhiyi’s text silently.

After the present meaning is stated positively, the mirror reads the ten realms, five flavors, contemplation of mind, and six identities as the unfolding of the four unities of principle, teaching, practice, and person respectively. Nanyue first raises the three dharmas of sentient beings, buddhas, and mind; Zhiyi then follows his intent in explaining them extensively. The layers of the two patriarchs therefore remain distinct. Not every account of the three dharmas is indiscriminately assigned to one speaker.

The point of the three readings of the ten suchnesses requires an even finer cut. Zhanran states explicitly that Zhang’an first records the number and the textual basis; only from “one reading says” onward do the three modes of reading unfold. This is one of the few places in the passage where the recorder’s layer can be identified directly. Guanding’s record, Zhiyi’s teaching, and the later commentary each have their place. Preserving this seam does not reduce the whole of the three readings to a recorder’s aside.

When earlier masters divide provisional and real between the first and last portions of the ten suchnesses, the mirror identifies their error as ignorance of the mutual inclusion of every realm. The pivot of the present explanation is that one mind possesses all ten realms. Treating the nine realms as provisional and the Buddha realm as real is only a rough judgment; in finer analysis every realm contains both provisional and real. The hundred realms and thousand suchnesses are therefore not numerical display, but reveal the mutual identity of provisional and real through every realm’s inclusion of the others. The shared explanation of the ten suchnesses, their fourfold specific explanation, and the subsequent analysis of the Two Vehicles, three kinds of bodhisattvas, and nine or ten in the Buddha realm all unfold from this structure of mutual inclusion.

The mirror divides the extensive explanation of the dharmas of sentient beings into listing the numbers and explaining the characteristics. The numerical list increases from one mind, name-and-form, life-consciousness-warmth, and so on until it reaches the ten suchnesses of the present sutra. Explanation then proceeds from shared to specific; the specific treatment unfolds through the four lower destinies, humans and gods, the Two Vehicles, and bodhisattvas and buddhas. This analysis prevents the long passage from becoming a loose catalogue. The first half establishes how the ten dharmas encompass everything; the second examines how the same ten appear as characteristics, causes, and recompenses at different levels of life.

The repeated analysis of nine and ten in the Buddha realm is also read first in terms of stage-by-stage attainment and then in terms of the ultimate state of wondrous awakening. To see only “both nine and ten” and call the text indecisive is to miss its three questions about arising and ceasing, a later body, and unsurpassed recompense. Zhanran’s layered reading keeps the same word “recompense” from being forced into a single meaning at the stages of practice and at ultimate buddhahood.

The question at the end of the dharmas of mind asks how one thought contains the hundred realms and thousand dharmas. The mirror says that although the question is put in terms of mind, its meaning should include the dharmas of sentient beings and buddhas as well. This keeps the three dharmas from becoming three unrelated chapters. Mind is the gate easier for a beginner to enter, but it does not reduce sentient beings and buddhas to psychological phenomena.

In the relational passage, all five flavors from milk through clarified essence are called full, yet one alone is still wondrous. The base text itself raises this difficulty. The mirror reads the ferry simile through distinctions such as inclusive, exclusive, contrasted, and accompanied. The point is not to rank five boats on a single line. It is whether a teaching, while penetrating the full principle, still carries skillful means that reaches only a river island. Only this preserves both those who entered the wondrous earlier and the present sutra’s direct revelation.

For the absolute, Zhanran gives seven divisions: a shared explanation of the four absolutes; revelation of the three dharmas through the two wondrousnesses; application of the four absolutes to the five flavors; opening the coarse within the several flavors; gathering the absolutes into the wondrous; and finally the Trace, Origin, contemplation of mind, and the horizontal and vertical conclusion. The apparently continuous exchange thus reveals a complete sequence. In particular, what opening the provisional opens is the coarse within the several flavors; it does not erase the wondrousness already revealed in earlier teachings.

The mirror also identifies the line on non-arising that the base text titles as belonging to another scripture as reflecting the wording of the Huashou. This source judgment belongs to the commentator’s layer. Readers must still let what the base text records and what the commentator identifies retain their respective levels. Its value lies not in silently replacing words in the base text, but in showing how later patriarchs understood the citation used to explain the absolute.

Finally, the four teachings each have their own absolute and are therefore called horizontal. The sequence within the Perfect Teaching from Trace to Origin and onward to contemplation of mind is called vertical. These two axes do not add a new conclusion. They realign the entire passage: the horizontal axis reveals the depths at which different teaching gates bring the relational to rest, while the vertical axis reveals how scriptural teaching proceeds through opening the Trace, revealing the Origin, and coming to rest in contemplation of mind. Seen in this light, the name “Wondrous Dharma” finally becomes at once a classification of teachings, an opening of the sutra’s meaning, and an entrance for practitioners.