妙法蓮華經玄義 釋名·境妙

Do you see a snake, or a vine? In the half-light, a vine is mistaken for a snake. The fear is real, yet the snake was never born. Once the lamp is lit, there is no need to kill the snake; one need only see clearly that what lies before one was a vine all along.

The question asked by the subtlety of objects is precisely how we see the world before us. Ignorance and karma paint the six paths as an artist uses five colors to form myriad images. The twelve links of dependent origination renew this painting thought after thought, from ignorance through aging-and-death, like a wheel turning without cease. If one sees only successive arising and cessation, cause and effect are distinct. If one sees all things as illusory, arising and cessation have no fixed self-nature right where they occur. If one illuminates the still deeper ignorance and transformational birth-and-death, there remains something not yet exhausted even after release. If, within affliction, karma, and suffering themselves, one sees bodhi, liberation, and the Dharma-body, there is no need first to destroy this shore and then imagine another shore.

Thus coarseness and wondrousness do not divide the world into two halves; they lie in whether one takes the object shallowly or deeply. The elder gives the poor son vessels, rice, and flour, and the goods already belong to the son. Once father and son recognize one another, how could the household vessels still be called an outsider’s property? The Buddha first teaches skillful means according to faculties, not so that people will guard those skillful means forever, nor so that they will later despise them, but so that, when opened and revealed, they return to the family estate that was theirs all along.

The ten suchnesses, dependent origination, the Four Truths, the Two Truths, the Three Truths, the One Truth, and no truth are likewise different focal lengths of the same compassion. One person must first see clearly how suffering arises; another can see that illusory existence is immediately empty; another must enter through the two aspects of true and conventional; another can see all three perfectly interpenetrate. In the end, even “the one real” cannot be grasped, for once reality is seized as a sentence, true speech still turns into a new falsehood.

Why are there so many names? Because some sentient beings are mature and others are not. Teaching a profound Dharma too early may cause someone to slander it; failing to teach it when the time has come may cause someone to miss the moment. The Buddha is like a skillful painter, blending the depths and shades of five colors. The painting’s thousandfold differences do not mean that the Buddha faces many mutually conflicting truths; the same light is shining into different eyes.

The heart-essence of the subtlety of objects is not to select the “one correct” member of the six objects. It is to let each teaching complete its work of carrying sentient beings across without turning any teaching into a prison. When the vine is seen clearly, fear of the snake naturally ceases. Looking back, even that mistaken perception has become a road toward clarity.

This is the beginning of the separate explanation of wondrous meaning in the Fahua Xuanyi (Profound Meaning of the Lotus). Zhiyi first lists the ten subtleties as a whole, establishes them one by one from passages in the Lotus Sutra, and explains the sequence in which they arise from one another. When he enters the extensive explanation, the first is the subtlety of objects. The chapter first explains separately the ten suchnesses, the twelve links of dependent origination, the Four Truths, the Two Truths, the Three Truths, the One Truth, and no truth. It then opens and combines these objects with one another, showing that although their names are many, the wondrous principle they indicate is unobstructed.

[Section One] General Outline of the Separate Explanation of Wondrous Meaning

The separate explanation of “wondrous” has three aspects. If the three teachings at the Deer Park are called coarse and the one teaching at Vulture Peak wondrous, these belong to teaching within the Trace. When the Trace Gate is unfolded, it has ten layers of wondrous meaning. The Origin Gate, based on the original event of buddhahood in the distant past, likewise teaches the wondrous in ten layers. Trace and Origin both belong to teaching; when contemplation is cultivated in reliance on teaching, contemplation of mind likewise has ten layers of wondrous meaning.

Within the Trace, the dharmas of sentient beings, the dharmas of buddhas, and the dharmas of mind each have ten layers, making thirty in all. Some of their meanings agree with other scriptures, while others differ. The thirty layers of subtlety in the Origin differ entirely from other scriptures. Each of these sixty layers again has relational wondrousness and absolute wondrousness, making one hundred and twenty layers. When coarse Dharma is broken and wondrous Dharma disclosed, the relational wondrousness explained earlier is used. When coarse Dharma is opened so that it manifests the wondrous right where it stands, the absolute wondrousness explained earlier is used.

[Section Two] Headings of the Ten Subtleties and the Meaning of Each Chapter

The ten subtleties within the Trace are: first, the subtlety of objects; second, the subtlety of wisdom; third, the subtlety of practice; fourth, the subtlety of stages; fifth, the subtlety of the Three Dharmas; sixth, the subtlety of stimulus and response; seventh, the subtlety of supernormal power; eighth, the subtlety of teaching the Dharma; ninth, the subtlety of retinues; and tenth, the subtlety of meritorious benefit. The explanation of these ten subtleties has five passes: first, setting out the chapter headings; second, citing scripture as proof; third, explaining their sequence of arising; fourth, extensive explanation; and fifth, concluding with a judgment of provisional and real.

First is setting out the headings. What is the subtlety of objects? It consists of such objects as the ten suchnesses, dependent origination, the Four Truths, the Three Truths, the Two Truths, and the One Truth. These are truths that the buddhas take as their teacher, and they are therefore called the subtlety of objects.

What is the subtlety of wisdom? It consists of the twenty wisdoms, four wisdoms of bodhi; the four wisdoms called lower, middling, higher, and highest; seven kinds of provisional and real; five kinds of three wisdoms; and one wisdom of things as they really are. Because the object illuminated is wondrous, the wisdom that illuminates is wondrous accordingly. Because the Dharma abides constantly, the buddhas also abide constantly. Object and wisdom accord like a case and its lid and are inconceivable; this is called the subtlety of wisdom.

What is the subtlety of practice? It consists of practices taught through increasing numbers, the sequential five practices, and the nonsequential five practices. Wisdom guides practice, and this is therefore called the subtlety of practice.

What is the subtlety of stages? It consists of the stages of three grasses, two trees, and one reality. The stages entered through wondrous practice are called the subtlety of stages.

What is the subtlety of the Three Dharmas? It consists of the general Three Dharmas, vertical Three Dharmas, horizontal Three Dharmas, Three Dharmas that are neither vertical nor horizontal, and analogically penetrating Three Dharmas. All belong to the secret treasury, and they are therefore called the subtlety of the Three Dharmas.

What is the subtlety of stimulus and response? It consists of fourfold stimulus and response, thirty-sixfold stimulus and response, twenty-five forms of stimulus and response, and stimulus and response in the Distinct and Perfect Teachings. The water does not rise, nor does the moon descend, yet one moon can appear universally in all waters at once. The buddhas do not come, nor do sentient beings go, yet through the power of compassionate wholesome roots the event of stimulus and response is seen. This is therefore called the subtlety of stimulus and response.

What is the subtlety of supernormal power? It consists of supernormal powers attained through recompense, attained through cultivation, exercised through intention, embodied in Dharma, and the transformation of a transformation that is karmically indeterminate. This is function that, without prior planning, can be skillful, correspond to causes and conditions, and transform. Whether another is far from or near the Buddha, and whether wholesome roots still need to be planted, are already maturing, or are ready for liberation, all supernormal powers serve the One Buddha Vehicle. This is therefore called the subtlety of supernormal power.

What is the subtlety of teaching the Dharma? It consists of teaching the twelve divisions, the lesser divisions, the great divisions, Dharma that follows faculties and conditions, the Dharma signified, and the perfectly wondrous Dharma. The Buddha teaches fully and in accord with principle as it really is, enabling all sentient beings to open, reveal, awaken to, and enter the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing. This is therefore called the subtlety of teaching the Dharma.

What is the subtlety of retinues? It consists of retinues through karma, supernormal powers, vows, response, and Dharma-gates. They are like clouds surrounding a bright moon, and like ministers and powerful clans surrounding a sovereign before and behind. This is therefore called the subtlety of retinues.

What is the subtlety of meritorious benefit? It consists of benefit as fruit, cause, emptiness, provisionality, Middle, and transformational birth-and-death. It is like the ocean receiving the great rain poured down by dragon kings. This is therefore called the subtlety of meritorious benefit.

[Section Three] Establishing the Ten Subtleties from the Lotus Sutra

The second pass is scriptural proof. Here only passages from the Trace Gate are cited. Passages from the Origin Gate are not yet cited, much less passages from other scriptures.

The scripture says that all Dharmas have suchness of characteristics and so forth, and that only a buddha together with a buddha can exhaust the true mark of all dharmas. The true mark is the gate into buddha-wisdom, and this gate is the object. The scripture also says that the profound and wondrous Dharma is difficult to see and difficult to understand, and that only the Buddha and the buddhas of the ten directions can know this characteristic. These passages establish the subtlety of objects.

The scripture further says that the Buddha’s wisdom is wondrous and foremost; that the Buddha seeks the unsurpassed path through this wondrous wisdom; and that the uncontaminated, inconceivable, profound, and wondrous Dharma is known in its true characteristic only by the Buddha. These passages establish the subtlety of wisdom.

The scripture further says that the Buddha originally approached innumerable buddhas and fully practiced the various paths, and that after completing these paths he finally attained the fruit at the place of awakening. It says that the assembly joined palms reverently and single-mindedly wished to hear the complete path. It also says that all Dharmas from the beginning constantly bear the characteristics of quiescent extinction, and that after buddha-children complete the practice of the path, in a future life they attain buddhahood. These passages establish the subtlety of practice.

The four kinds of flowers raining from heaven represent four classes of stages: abiding, practice, dedication, and grounds. Opening, revealing, awakening to, and entering also carry the meaning of stages. Riding the great jeweled cart to roam in the four directions indicates stages of cause; going directly to the place of awakening indicates the stage of fruit. These passages establish the subtlety of stages.

The scripture says that the Buddha himself abides in the Great Vehicle and, according to the Dharma attained, is adorned by the powers of concentration and wisdom. The Great Vehicle is true nature, concentration is supporting accomplishment, and wisdom is contemplative illumination. This therefore establishes the subtlety of the Three Dharmas.

The scripture says that the Buddha reflected upon this matter for three times seven days; that the Buddha contemplated with the buddha-eye and saw sentient beings in the six paths; that all sentient beings are the Buddha’s children; and that the poor son saw his father seated on the lion couch from afar. These passages show the Buddha who can respond illuminating the faculty that provides stimulus, and they establish the subtlety of stimulus and response.

At that time the Buddha, the World-Honored One, entered samādhi and manifested a rare and inconceivable event. This establishes the subtlety of supernormal power.

The scripture says that the Tathāgata can distinguish in various ways, skillfully teach the Dharmas, and delight the minds of the assembly through gentle words. Śāriputra also says that on hearing the Buddha’s gentle voice, he found it profound, far-reaching, and exceedingly wondrous. The scripture further says that all the Dharma taught by the Buddha reaches the ground of omniscience; that the Buddha teaches only the unsurpassed path; and that among scriptures taught in the past, present, and future, this scripture is the most difficult to believe and understand. These passages establish the subtlety of teaching the Dharma.

The scripture says that the Buddha teaches only bodhisattvas and has no śrāvaka disciples. This establishes the subtlety of retinues.

The scripture further says that people in the present or future who hear even one line or one verse will all receive a prediction of unsurpassed bodhi; that those who hear for even a moment can reach ultimate unsurpassed bodhi; that if the Buddha transformed beings only through the Small Vehicle, he would fall into the fault of stinginess and greed concerning the Dharma, which is impossible; and that the Buddha will ultimately not let one person alone attain extinction, but will cause everyone to become extinct through the Tathāgata’s extinction. These passages establish the subtlety of meritorious benefit.

[Section Four] The Sequence in Which the Ten Subtleties Arise

The third pass explains arising. The object of the true mark is not made by a buddha, a god, or a human being. It is originally thus and did not first appear today, so it is listed first. Delusion about truth gives rise to confusion, while understanding truth produces wisdom. Wisdom is the basis of practice. With the eyes of wisdom, the feet of practice arise. Eyes, feet, and object form one vehicle. Riding this vehicle, one can enter the cooling pool and ascend the various stages.

Where does one abide after ascending the stages? One abides in the secret treasury of the Three Dharmas. Having abided in this Dharma, one is quiescent yet constantly illuminating and universally illuminates the faculties of sentient beings in the ten Dharma realms. When faculties offer stimulus, the Buddha must respond. In descending in response to faculties, the Buddha first uses the wheel of the body to manifest supernormal powers and awaken people. When sentient beings have seen the transformations and can receive the Dharma of the path, the Buddha then uses the wheel of speech to teach, reveal, and guide. Having received the Dharma-rain and accepted the path according to the teaching, sentient beings become Dharma-retinues. Practicing according to the teaching, the Dharma-retinues uproot birth-and-death, open the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing, and obtain great benefit.

The first five subtleties concern one’s own practice; their causes and fruits are complete. The latter five concern transforming others; both the transforming agent and those transformed are complete. Although Buddha-Dharma is immeasurable, these ten meanings complete its purport. One’s own practice and the transformation of others, from beginning to end, both reach the ultimate. Here the first part of Fascicle Two of the Xuanyi ends. The second part of Fascicle Two begins below and is still titled as spoken by the Great Master Zhiyi of Tiantai.

[Section Five] Extensive Explanation of the Six Objects and the Four Chapters on Dependent Origination

The fourth pass extensively explains the subtlety of objects. It has two major parts: first explaining the various objects, and second discussing the similarities and differences among them.

Six kinds of objects are explained: first, the ten suchnesses; second, dependent origination; third, the Four Truths; fourth, the Two Truths; fifth, the Three Truths; and sixth, the One Truth. The scriptures each accord with faculties and conditions and teach an enormous number of objects. It is impossible to record them all, so only these six are briefly presented.

The sequence of the six objects has an intent. The ten suchnesses are directly taught by the Lotus Sutra, so they come first. Next are the twelve links of dependent origination, which disclose the complete continuity of transmigration through the three times. After the Buddha appears in the world and distinctly and skillfully reveals them, the name Four Truths arises. The text then moves from the extensive to the concise and clarifies the Two Truths. The meaning of the Two Truths remains comparatively general, so the Middle Way is specially disclosed through the Three Truths. The Three Truths still carry provisionally established names; reality is therefore directly disclosed as the One Truth. The One Truth still has name and characteristic, so no truth is taught last. From ignorance all the way through the limit of reality, these six objects are sufficient in brief. The first object, the ten suchnesses, was explained earlier.

The second explains dependent origination as an object and has four chapters: first, direct explanation; second, judging coarse and wondrous; third, opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous; and fourth, contemplation of mind. The direct explanation has four kinds: first, conceivable arising-and-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination; second, conceivable non-arising and non-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination; third, inconceivable arising-and-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination; and fourth, inconceivable non-arising and non-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination.

[Section Six] Conceivable Arising-and-Ceasing Twelvefold Dependent Origination

The first two kinds of conceivable dependent origination explain Dharmas within the three realms for two classes of people, those of sharp and dull faculties. The Treatise on the Middle says that the arising-and-ceasing characteristics of the twelve links of dependent origination are taught for disciples of dull faculties. This distinguishes them from the false views of non-Buddhists. Some non-Buddhists falsely maintain that all Dharmas are born from Īśvara, some that they are born from primordial nature, some that they are born from atoms, some that they are born from parents, and some that they arise without cause. None of these investigations accords with correct principle.

Correct dependent origination differs from these false views. All fair and ugly differences among the fruits of suffering in the six paths come from the volitional activities made by the inverted mind of ignorance in the past. The Saddharma-smṛty-upasthāna Sūtra uses the simile of a painter: a painter distributes five colors and paints every kind of fair and ugly image, more than can be counted. When the root of all the images is investigated, all come from the painter’s hand. The differences among the six paths are not made by Īśvara and the others; all emerge from one thought of ignorance.

When ignorance combines with a high grade of unwholesome karma, it produces the dependent origination of hell, like painting the color black. When ignorance combines with a middling grade of unwholesome karma, it produces the dependent origination of animals, like painting red. When ignorance combines with a low grade of unwholesome karma, it produces the dependent origination of hungry ghosts, like painting blue. When ignorance combines with a low grade of wholesome karma, it produces the dependent origination of asuras, like painting yellow. When ignorance combines with a middling grade of wholesome karma, it produces the dependent origination of humans, like painting white. When ignorance combines with a high grade of wholesome karma, it produces the dependent origination of gods, like painting the finest white.

One should therefore know that when ignorance combines with volitional activities, within the six paths there are name-and-form, the six sense fields, contact, feeling, craving, grasping, existence, birth, aging, illness, death, and so forth. These in turn differ according to high, middling, and low grades of karma. The suffering and pleasure among humans, gods, and the other destinies differ in ten thousand ways, yet all move from birth toward death and are born again after death. The three times revolve like a wheel or an unceasing ring of fire. A scripture says that a swirling and rapid river submerges sentient beings; blinded by ignorance, they cannot emerge. Scriptures also call the twelve links twelve interlocking chains that restrain beings, twelve fortified cities, and twelve gardens of thorns. These twelve links of dependent origination constantly arise anew and cease, unable to abide from thought to thought. They are therefore called arising-and-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination.

The following makes further distinctions. The fourth fascicle of the Yingluo says that ignorance conditions volitional activities and that one link produces a complete set of twelve, and so on through birth conditioning aging-and-death, each link producing twelve. This makes one hundred and twenty forms of dependent origination. The initial ignorance is delusion, and there is still delusion all the way through aging-and-death. Because there is no awareness, it is called delusion; from the beginning through aging-and-death there is no awareness. One is born through delusion and dies through delusion. If one can become aware of dependent origination, dependent origination no longer operates. When delusion no longer operates, future birth-and-death is exhausted. This is called keen wisdom, and keen wisdom accords with the correct path.

Are the twelve originating conditions and the twelve conditionally arisen the same or different? Both belong to all conditioned Dharmas, so they can be said not to differ. Yet a distinction can also be made: cause is called originating condition and fruit conditionally arisen. In the cause and fruit of the three times, the two past links of ignorance and volitional activities are originating conditions; the five present links of consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense fields, contact, and feeling are conditionally arisen. The three present links of craving, grasping, and existence are again originating conditions; the two future links of birth and aging-and-death are again conditionally arisen. Link by link, ignorance is originating condition and volitional activities conditionally arisen. Continuing to the end, birth is originating condition and aging-and-death conditionally arisen.

They can also be arranged in four alternatives. First, only originating condition and not conditionally arisen: the two future links of birth and aging-and-death. Second, only conditionally arisen and not originating condition: the two past links of ignorance and volitional activities, and the five aggregates at the final death of an arhat in the present. Third, both originating condition and conditionally arisen: all past and present Dharmas other than the two past links and the five aggregates at the present final death of an arhat. Fourth, neither originating condition nor conditionally arisen: unconditioned Dharmas.

The Dharmakāya Sūtra makes a different distinction. If ignorance certainly produces volitional activities, the two are not separated and always follow one another; this is called originating condition and not conditionally arisen. If ignorance does not certainly produce volitional activities and the two are sometimes separated and do not follow one another, this is called conditionally arisen and not originating condition. The distinction can be carried all the way through aging-and-death. Venerable Vasumitra says that a cause is originating condition and a Dharma born from the cause is conditionally arisen; conjunction is originating condition and a Dharma born from conjunction is conditionally arisen.

Teaching the two past links in the twelve links of dependent origination can stop the view of permanence. Teaching the two future links can stop the view of annihilation. Teaching the eight present links reveals the Middle Way that falls into neither annihilation nor permanence. From the three present causes of craving, grasping, and existence, one infers the two future fruits of birth and aging-and-death. From the five present fruits of consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense fields, contact, and feeling, one infers the two past causes of ignorance and volitional activities. In fact, each of the three times fully possesses the twelve links. They are established in this way only to clarify cause and fruit by inference.

The twelve links can also be explained according to twelve periods in a human life. Ignorance is the period when the various past afflictions and fetters operate. Volitional activities are the period when the various past karmas are made. Consciousness is the period when the mind of continuity and its accompanying mental Dharmas operate. Name-and-form is the period after the continuity of birth has been received, when the four material faculties have not yet emerged and the six sense fields are not yet complete. It includes the five embryonic stages: first kalala, second arbuda, third peśī, fourth ghana, and fifth praśākhā.

The six sense fields are the period when the four material faculties have emerged and the six sense fields are complete but the faculties still cannot serve as the bases of contact. Contact is the period when the faculties can serve as bases of contact but one still cannot distinguish suffering from pleasure or avoid danger: one grasps fire, touches poison, and picks up knives and impure things. Feeling is the period when one can distinguish suffering and pleasure, avoid danger, and produce ordinary craving, but sexual desire has not yet arisen and one is not yet defiled by attachment to all things. Craving is the period when the three feelings—painful, pleasant, and neither painful nor pleasant—are complete and craving arises from them. Grasping is the period when, through attachment to objects, one seeks in the four directions. Existence is the period when, during this seeking, the three karmas of body, speech, and mind are set in motion. Birth is the period when present consciousness will turn to take future birth. Aging-and-death is the period when present name-and-form, the six sense fields, contact, and feeling will turn to future decline and destruction.

All twelve links of dependent origination can also be complete in one instant of killing. If a person kills through greed, the delusion corresponding to the mind of killing is ignorance; the corresponding act of volition is volitional activities; the corresponding mind is consciousness. Once an active karma has arisen, it necessarily possesses name-and-form and the six sense fields. Corresponding contact is contact, corresponding feeling is feeling, and greed itself is craving. The corresponding entanglement is grasping. The karma of killing performed by body and speech is existence. The arising of these corresponding Dharmas is birth; their alteration is aging; and their destruction is death.

Someone asks: why is illness not separately established as a link? The answer is that only a Dharma necessarily present at every time and in every place is separately established as a link. Some people pass a lifetime without illness. Bakula, for example, did not even know a headache from birth onward, much less another illness. Illness is therefore not established as a link.

Another question is asked: are sorrow, lamentation, and distress a link? The answer is no. The scriptural wording only uses the sorrow and lamentation at the end of life to reveal what is contained in the link of aging-and-death.

Another question is asked: does ignorance have a cause, and does aging-and-death have a fruit? If they have cause and fruit, these should also be separately established as links; if they do not, one falls into absence of cause and fruit. The answer is that both have them, but they are not separately established as links. The cause of ignorance is improper attention, and the fruit of aging-and-death is sorrow and lamentation. It can also be said that ignorance takes aging-and-death as cause and aging-and-death takes ignorance as fruit. Present craving and grasping are the ignorance of the past. If the four present links of name-and-form, the six sense fields, contact, and feeling are viewed in the future, they are called aging-and-death. Since it is said that feeling conditions craving, one should likewise know that aging-and-death again conditions ignorance. Like a wheel whose front and back connect, they condition one another.

Those born from a womb in the desire realm possess all twelve links. Some say that the form realm has only eleven links, lacking name-and-form, while the formless realm has only ten, lacking name-and-form and the six sense fields. Another interpretation holds that all three realms possess all twelve links. When beings of the form realm are newly born and their faculties are not yet keen, this can be called name-and-form. Although the formless realm lacks form, it still has mental Dharmas and can therefore still be said to possess all twelve links.

Another question is asked: how do ignorance and volitional activities differ from craving, grasping, and existence? The answer is that the first two links and latter three links belong respectively to past and present; one set is old and the other new. The first two have already given the present fruit; the latter three have not yet given the future fruit. Their difference is established on this basis.

The Remaining Three Kinds of Twelvefold Dependent Origination

Second is conceivable non-arising and non-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination. Through a skillful method, it breaks the preceding direct but clumsy understanding. The Treatise on the Middle says that the non-arising and non-ceasing of the twelve links of dependent origination is taught for disciples of sharp faculties. Delusion is like empty space, and so is aging-and-death. Ignorance is like an illusion and cannot be obtained, and so are all the links through aging-and-death. The Golden Light Sūtra says that the substance and characteristics of ignorance originally do not exist and exist only through the conjunction of deluded thought and conditions.

Ignorance is made through the mental activity of improper attention, like an illusionist at a crossroads conjuring various elephants, horses, necklaces, and people. Foolish people believe that all are real; the wise know that they are not. Ignorance conjures the dependent and primary retributions of the six paths. One should know that they never existed of themselves and are made only by ignorance. It is also like someone seeing a vine and mistaking it for a snake. Once one knows the vine was never a snake, fear no longer arises; because it does not arise, there is nothing to cease. This is the characteristic of conceivable non-arising and non-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination.

Third is inconceivable arising-and-ceasing dependent origination. This gate breaks the Small Vehicle and discloses the Great Vehicle, teaching for two classes of sharp and dull faculties beyond the realms. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra says that the mind is like a skillful painter making the various five aggregates, and that within all worlds there is nothing not made from mind. The painter represents the ignorant mind. “All worlds” includes provisionally named sentient beings in the ten Dharma realms, the real Dharmas of the five aggregates, and the various lands.

Treatises differ in how they say the mind produces all Dharmas. Some say ālaya is true consciousness and that all Dharmas arise from it. Some say ālaya is the non-disappearing consciousness, a karmically indeterminate ignorance, and that all Dharmas arise from it. If this consciousness is grasped as possessing a fixed real nature, one falls into the error of primordial darkness producing awareness and awareness then producing an ego-mind. This cannot even establish conceivable dependent origination within the realms; how could it establish inconceivable dependent origination beyond the realms? If the delusion contemplated were not an inconceivable object, how could the understanding obtained by reversing delusion become inconceivable wisdom? This attachment is separately refuted in the Mohe Zhiguan.

The ignorant mind now under discussion does not arise from itself, from another, from self and other together, or without cause. When sought through the four alternatives, it cannot be obtained and is therefore inconceivable. If one relies on the conditions of the four siddhāntas, it can nevertheless still be explained according to conditions. A dream itself cannot be found when sought through the four alternatives, yet one can still say that a person sees all events in a dream. In the same way, ignorance cannot be found when sought through the four alternatives, yet one can still say that all Dharmas within and beyond the realms emerge from ignorance. Twelvefold dependent origination within the realms is as explained earlier. What follows concerns the twelve links beyond the realms.

The Ratnagotravibhāga says that when arhats and pratyekabuddhas observe through emptiness-wisdom, there are still spheres in the Tathāgata’s body that they have never seen. Although people of the Two Vehicles cultivate the four counteractive practices of impermanence, suffering, no-self, and impurity, when seen in relation to the Tathāgata’s Dharma-body these understandings remain inverted. Inversion is ignorance. Abiding in the uncontaminated realm, they still have four obstructions: condition, characteristic, arising, and destruction.

First, condition is the ground of abiding in ignorance serving as the condition for volitional activities. Second, characteristic is ignorance and volitional activities jointly serving as cause. Third, arising is the ground of abiding in ignorance together with uncontaminated karma serving as cause to produce three kinds of mind-made body. Fourth, destruction is the three kinds of mind-made body being destroyed in dependence on inconceivable transformational birth-and-death. This remains like the twelve links within the realms, from ignorance through aging-and-death. Condition is the link of ignorance. Characteristic is the link of volitional activities. Arising includes the five links beginning with name-and-form. The three links of craving, grasping, and existence can be known according to the preceding example. Destruction includes the two links of birth and death. Although the number of links is the same as within the realms, their meaning is profoundly different.

The Ratnagotravibhāga further says that because the three kinds of mind-made body have not left the defilement of ignorance, they have not attained the ultimate unconditioned great purity. Because ignorance and subtle conceptual proliferation have not been extinguished forever, they have not attained the ultimate unconditioned great self. Because ignorance and subtle conceptual proliferation accumulate, the mental aggregates produced through uncontaminated karma have not been extinguished forever, so they have not attained the ultimate unconditioned great bliss. Because the defilements of affliction, karma, and birth have not been ultimately extinguished, they have not realized the ultimate permanence of the deathless.

Therefore, through the affliction-track represented by condition, great purity cannot be attained. Through the karma-track represented by characteristic, the self of eight forms of mastery cannot be attained. Through the suffering-track represented by arising, great bliss cannot be attained. Through aging-and-death represented by destruction, unchanging permanence cannot be attained. This is the characteristic of inconceivable arising-and-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination beyond the realms.

Fourth is inconceivable non-arising and non-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination, which directly reveals principle within phenomena for people of sharp faculties. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that the twelve links of dependent origination are called buddha-nature. Ignorance, craving, and grasping are the affliction-track, and the affliction-track itself is bodhi. Bodhi penetrates and clearly understands, so affliction no longer exists. Once affliction is exhausted there is ultimate purity, which is the buddha-nature as understanding-cause. Volitional activities and existence are the karma-track, and the karma-track itself is liberation. Liberation is mastery, which is the buddha-nature as condition-cause. Name-and-form and aging-and-death are the suffering-track, and the suffering-track itself is the Dharma-body. The Dharma-body transcends suffering and pleasure and is therefore great bliss. Neither born nor dying, it is permanence, which is the buddha-nature as direct cause.

The scripture therefore says that the interval between the two ends of ignorance and craving is the Middle Way. Ignorance belongs to the past and craving to the present. Neither the two sides nor the interval is anything other than buddha-nature; all are permanence, bliss, self, and purity. Ignorance does not arise and likewise does not cease. This is inconceivable non-arising and non-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination.

[Section Seven] Judging, Opening, and Contemplating Dependent Origination

Dependent origination as an object does not itself have fixed coarseness or wondrousness. Only because the understanding of it is shallow or deep do differences arise level by level.

The first understanding is that ignorance produces volitional activities, all the way through birth conditioning aging-and-death. The three links of affliction—ignorance, craving, and grasping—produce the two karmic links of volitional activities and existence. The two karmic links produce the seven links of suffering: consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense fields, contact, feeling, birth, and aging-and-death. The seven links of suffering again produce the three links of affliction. Three produce two, two produce seven, and seven again produce three; they turn in succession as causes and conditions. Affliction conditions karma, and karma in turn conditions suffering; all is impermanent, arising and ceasing. The Treatise on the Middle judges this to have been taught for people of dull faculties. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra calls it the repeatedly diligent teaching of the half-word. The Lotus Sutra says that merely leaving the false and deluded is called liberation. Taking the object on this level is therefore still coarse and shallow.

The second understanding is that the substance and characteristics of ignorance originally do not exist and exist only through the conjunction of deluded thought and conditions. Because the object contemplated is illusory, the wisdom that contemplates likewise cannot be obtained. A scripture says that even if there were one Dharma surpassing nirvāṇa, the Buddha would teach it to be like an illusion and a transformation. The Treatise on the Middle calls this a teaching for people of sharp faculties. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra calls it the elder’s instruction. The Pi-jiā-luo Treatise and the Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra call it truthful and skillful crossing. The Lotus Sutra uses the simile of a small tree. Compared with the preceding kind, this object is more skillful and wondrous.

The third understanding is that ignorance serves as condition; from condition arises characteristic, from characteristic comes arising, and because of arising there is destruction. Extinguishing condition attains purity; removing characteristic attains self; exhausting arising attains bliss; absence of destruction attains permanence. The Treatise on the Middle says that Dharmas produced through dependent origination are also called provisional names. The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra calls the twelve links a Dharma exclusive to bodhisattvas. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that by extinguishing ignorance one attains blazing radiance. The Lotus Sutra uses the simile of a growing great tree. This level is more wondrous than the preceding one but is still coarse beside the next.

The fourth understanding is that the three tracks of ignorance, karma, and suffering are immediately the three virtues of Dharma-body, prajñā, and liberation. The three tracks need not first be severed and the three virtues then sought somewhere else. The Treatise on the Middle says that Dharmas produced through dependent origination are also called the meaning of the Middle Way. The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra explains that the twelve links are precisely sitting at the place of awakening. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that the interval between the two ends of ignorance and craving is the Middle Way. The Lotus Sutra says that the seed of buddhahood arises from conditions and therefore teaches the One Buddha Vehicle; it also calls this the one matter that is most real. How could this not be wondrous? The first three kinds are skillful means and are therefore judged coarse. The last reveals the real and is therefore judged wondrous.

If these four kinds of dependent origination are placed within the teachings of the five flavors, the milk flavor simultaneously has two kinds, one coarse and one wondrous. The curds flavor has only one coarse kind. Raw ghee has three coarse and one wondrous. Refined ghee has two coarse and one wondrous. The Lotus Sutra teaches only one wondrous kind. This is the disclosure of wondrous dependent origination in relation to coarse dependent origination.

Next is opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous. The Lotus Sutra says that Buddha-Dharma is wondrous and difficult to conceive. Since the first three kinds of dependent origination are all Buddha-Dharma, how could one of them be a conceivable coarse Dharma permanently separated from inconceivable wondrous Dharma? The meaning of liberation cannot be taught apart from words. One should precisely realize that the conceivable itself is inconceivable.

It is like an elder giving the poor son vessels, rice, and flour; these things then belong to the poor son. Once the natural relation of father and son is certain, the poor son is no longer an outside hired laborer. The vessels have also returned to his own household; how could they still be called another’s property? Likewise, only within inconceivable Dharma does the Tathāgata use skillful means to teach coarse dependent origination. How could students guard that coarse Dharma and regard it as something outside wondrous Dharma? The śrāvaka Dharma is now decisively clarified, showing that the Lotus Sutra is king among all scriptures. This opens the first two kinds of dependent origination so that they likewise manifest the wondrous.

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra further says that the Buddha opens and develops the wisdom-eye for śrāvakas. Their former wisdom-eye saw emptiness but not nonemptiness. Once opened and developed, it can now also see nonemptiness, and seeing nonemptiness is seeing buddha-nature. The scripture therefore says that although the wisdom-eye can see, it does not see with complete clarity; only when the Buddha sees with the buddha-eye is there complete clarity. This decisively clarifies what the bodhisattva wisdom-eye sees and opens the third kind of dependent origination so that it enters absolute wondrousness.

Last is contemplation of mind. Contemplate the present thought of ignorance as itself illumination. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that ignorance that is illumination is ultimate emptiness. When emptiness-wisdom illuminates ignorance, ignorance is pure right where it stands. It is like a thief in a house: once the master has become aware, the thief can do nothing. Not being stained by ignorance is purity of the affliction-track. When affliction is pure there is no karma; without karma there is no bondage; without bondage there is the freedom of self.

When self is free and not bound by karma, who could receive name-and-form, contact, and feeling? Without receiving there is no suffering. Without the aggregates of suffering, who could migrate and be destroyed? This is the virtue of permanence. One thought already fully possesses the twelve links of dependent origination. When contemplating the twelve links, one should constantly contemplate permanence, bliss, self, and purity. When thought after thought abides in the secret treasury and constantly performs this contemplation, it is called entrusting oneself to the noble womb. When contemplative practice matures, the respective parts of the noble womb gradually become complete. When ignorance is broken, this is called emerging from the noble womb.

[Section Eight] Direct Explanation of the Four Kinds of Four Truths

Third are the Four Truths as objects. This topic likewise has four chapters: first, clarifying the Four Truths; second, judging coarse and wondrous; third, opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous; and fourth, contemplation of mind. The first chapter has two parts: first listing an old interpretation, then directly teaching the four sets of Four Truths.

An old master explained the boundless noble truths in the Śrīmālā Sūtra as showing the Buddha’s ultimate realization in contrast with the Two Vehicles, for whom something still remains. What the Two Vehicles contemplate are the constructed Four Noble Truths, which are the measurable Four Noble Truths. What the Buddha realizes are the unconstructed Four Noble Truths, which are the immeasurable Four Noble Truths. According to this explanation, constructed and unconstructed concern practice, while measurable and immeasurable concern the Dharma contemplated. Those of the Two Vehicles contemplate the truths, but the Dharma attained is not exhausted and there is still something to be done; they are therefore called constructed. Because the Dharma attained is not exhausted, it has a definite measure. The scripture’s statement “knowing through another” indicates constructed practice. Since knowledge depends on another, it is not omniscience and cannot know immeasurable Dharma; it is therefore called constructed and measurable. Buddha-wisdom is inexhaustible and nothing remains to be done, so it is called unconstructed. Knowing all through one’s own power is unconstructed practice; all that is known is immeasurable Dharma. Although this interpretation lists four names, it actually produces only two meanings and is not the account adopted in this treatise.

The four kinds of Four Truths taught in this treatise are: first, arising-and-ceasing; second, non-arising; third, immeasurable; and fourth, unconstructed. Their meanings come from the “Noble Practice” chapter of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra and are divided into four according to partial and perfect, phenomena and principle.

First are the arising-and-ceasing Four Truths. People in this class are heavily deluded about truth, so the names are established from phenomena. Suffering and accumulation are actually one Dharma but are divided into two truths as fruit and cause. The path and cessation are likewise one Dharma but are divided into two truths as cause and fruit. A verse in the Saṃyuktābhidharmahṛdaya Treatise says that the fruit-nature of all contaminated conditioned activities is called the truth of suffering; their causal nature is called the truth of accumulation; the ultimate extinction of all contaminated Dharmas is called the truth of cessation; and all uncontaminated conditioned activities are called the truth of the path.

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that the five aggregates and twelve sense fields press down like a heavy burden and bind sentient beings; this is the truth of suffering. The delusions of views and craving can call forth future recompense; this is the truth of accumulation. Precepts, concentration, wisdom, and contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and emptiness can remove the root of suffering; this is the truth of the path. The complete severing of the causal and resultant bonds of the twenty-five forms of existence is the truth of cessation. The Sūtra of the Buddha’s Bequeathed Teaching says that accumulation truly is the cause of suffering, with no other cause, and that the road extinguishing suffering is the true path. These passages all clarify the characteristics of the arising-and-ceasing Four Noble Truths.

The Four Truths are arranged from coarse to fine. The characteristic of suffering as fruit is coarsest, so suffering is taught first. Although cessation is not ultimate truth, it can be used to join the true, and its characteristic is comparatively coarse, so it is taught before the path. Again, the worldly fruit of suffering is first presented so that one becomes disenchanted with the cause of accumulation that produces worldly suffering. Cessation is then taught as joining the supramundane fruit so that one aspires to the road leading to cessation. Suffering, accumulation, cessation, and path are therefore arranged as a sequence of guidance.

They are called “noble” because they are correct and can break false Dharmas. “Truth” has three explanations. First, its own nature is not false, so it is called truth. Second, illuminating these four Dharmas produces undeluded awakening, so they are called truth. Third, one can use these four Dharmas to show others clearly, so they are called truth. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that ordinary beings have suffering but no truth, while śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas have both suffering and the truth of suffering. Ordinary beings do not see noble principle, lack corresponding wisdom, and cannot explain it to others; they therefore undergo suffering but have no truth. Śrāvakas possess all three meanings—the nature is not false, they see without inversion, and they can explain it to others—and only then is it called truth. This explanation accords with the scripture.

Second are the non-arising Four Truths. People in this class are lightly deluded about truth, so the names are established from principle. Suffering has no characteristic of oppression, accumulation no characteristic of conjunction, the path no characteristic of duality, and cessation no characteristic of arising. It can also be said that accumulation corresponds with suffering; when accumulation is contemplated as empty, suffering is also empty. The other three truths can be understood by analogy. Going farther, what can produce are accumulation and path. Accumulation and path are empty right where they stand, and because they are empty neither accumulation nor path arises. When accumulation and path do not arise, there is likewise no fruit of suffering or cessation. Truth is revealed immediately within phenomena; it is not another truth that appears only after phenomena have first been extinguished. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that bodhisattvas understand suffering as without suffering and therefore have no fixed characteristic of suffering but possess the true truth. The other three truths are likewise. These are called the non-arising Four Noble Truths.

Third are the immeasurable Four Truths. People in this class are heavily deluded about the Middle Way, so the names are established from phenomena. Suffering has immeasurable characteristics because the fruits of the ten Dharma realms differ. Accumulation has immeasurable characteristics because the five abodes of affliction differ. The path has immeasurable characteristics because Buddha-Dharmas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges differ. Cessation has immeasurable characteristics because the various pāramitās differ. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that merely knowing the aggregates as suffering is called middling wisdom. The ability to distinguish the immeasurable characteristics of the aggregates is not something śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas can know, and the Buddha did not explain it for the Two Vehicles in that scripture. The other three truths likewise have immeasurable characteristics. They are therefore called the immeasurable Four Noble Truths.

Fourth are the unconstructed Four Truths. People in this class are lightly deluded about the Middle Way, so the names are established from principle. Through delusion about principle, bodhi turns into affliction and is called the truth of accumulation; nirvāṇa turns into birth-and-death and is called the truth of suffering. Through understanding, affliction itself is bodhi and is called the truth of the path; birth-and-death itself is nirvāṇa and is called the truth of cessation. Phenomena themselves are the Middle Way, without calculation, a constructing mind, or a separate agent who constructs. They are therefore called unconstructed.

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that the conventional truth itself is the ultimate truth. Only through skillful means in accord with sentient beings does the Buddha teach them as Two Truths. Supramundane people know that the conventional truth itself is ultimate meaning. The one real truth has no falsehood or inversion and possesses permanence, bliss, self, and purity. These are therefore called the unconstructed Four Noble Truths.

When the Śrīmālā Sūtra teaches the unconstructed Four Truths, however, it specially selects the one truth of cessation and says it is that which the Buddha realizes ultimately, is permanent, is truth, and is a refuge. The other three truths—suffering, accumulation, and path—are said to be impermanent, not truth, and not a refuge. The reason is that the three truths lie within conditioned characteristics and are therefore impermanent. What is impermanent is false, so it is not truth. What is impermanent is unstable, so it cannot serve as a refuge. The truth of cessation is apart from the conditioned and therefore permanent. It is not false and is therefore truth. It is most stable and is therefore a refuge. It is therefore also called ultimate truth and inconceivable.

Dharmottara objects to this: the scripture says that the Buddha’s path of bodhi is permanent through three meanings. First, delusion has been exhausted and it is therefore permanent. Second, it does not arise from affliction and is therefore permanent. Third, wisdom and liberation are complete, like all waters returning to the sea, and it is therefore permanent. If so, how can the truth of the path be called impermanent?

The answer says that the Śrīmālā Sūtra speaks this way because the truth of the cessation of suffering described earlier does not mean that an already existing Dharma is destroyed and then called cessation. Rather, Buddha-Dharmas without beginning, unconstructed and more numerous than the sands of the Ganges, are originally accomplished. The scripture says that the Tathāgata’s Dharma-body is inseparable from the store of afflictions. When speaking of the truth of suffering, concealment is called tathāgata-garbha and revelation is called Dharma-body. The emptiness-wisdom of the Two Vehicles neither sees nor knows the four undeluded objects of permanence, bliss, self, and purity. The scripture teaches this meaning by saying that the single truth of cessation is permanent, real, and a refuge. Because the path has the function of counteraction, removing obstructions and making the Dharma-body manifest, the truths of suffering, accumulation, and path are provisionally said not to be permanent or real, while cessation alone is said to be permanent and real.

The treatise then asks in return: according to this answer, only the one truth already revealed counts as an unconstructed truth, while the other three truths not yet revealed are not unconstructed truths. One truth is definitive and three are not. One should know that this passage of the Śrīmālā Sūtra teaches a sequence from shallow to deep and remains differentiated rather than interpenetrating. It is a gate within the immeasurable Four Truths that borrows the name “unconstructed,” not the perfectly interpenetrating unconstructed in which the initial aspiration and ultimate mind do not differ. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra speaks of possessing truth and reality. One should know that each of the four kinds of Four Truths can be called truth, reality, and permanence according to its own meaning.

[Section Nine] Judging, Opening, and Contemplating the Four Truths

Whether in the Great or Small Vehicle, the Four Truths do not go beyond these four kinds. If teaching, practice, and realization do not interpenetrate, they are coarse. If teaching interpenetrates but practice and realization do not, they remain coarse. Only when all three perfectly interpenetrate are they wondrous.

Within the teachings of the five flavors, the milk flavor has two kinds of Four Truths. People of the Two Vehicles have heard neither, and because the Great Vehicle is separated from the Small, one is coarse and one wondrous. The curds flavor has only one kind. The Great Vehicle does not use it, and because the Small Vehicle is separated from the Great, people of the Two Vehicles are like those whose faculties have decayed and who are deaf and mute; it is therefore coarse. Raw ghee has four kinds: the first is broken by the latter three; the second does not enter the latter two; and although the third can enter the fourth, its doctrinal meaning does not yet interpenetrate. There are therefore three coarse and one wondrous. Refined ghee has three kinds: the first is broken by the latter two, the second can enter the third, and the third does not again enter another. Although the second can enter the third, its doctrinal meaning does not yet interpenetrate. There are therefore two coarse and one wondrous. Clarified essence teaches only one kind of Four Truths, solely wondrous and without coarse. This is relational wondrousness disclosed in contrast with the coarse.

Opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous first recounts the intent of the scriptures. The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra clarifies only three kinds of Four Truths. It says that form itself is emptiness, not that form must first be destroyed before emptiness exists; this is the meaning of non-arising. It says that all Dharmas tend toward form and that no Dharma passes beyond this tendency; this is the meaning of the immeasurable. It says that even form itself cannot be obtained, how much less tending or not tending; this is the meaning of the unconstructed. Verses in the Treatise on the Middle likewise have these three levels of meaning, while the final two chapters also teach Small Vehicle contemplation and therefore contain the meaning of arising-and-ceasing.

The Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings says that immeasurable Dharmas emerge from one Dharma; it opens the other three kinds of Four Truths from the single unconstructed kind. The Lotus Sutra says that immeasurable Dharmas enter one Dharma; it integrates the first three kinds of Four Truths into the one unconstructed kind. The “Noble Practice” chapter of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra retraces and distinguishes the scriptures and therefore teaches all four kinds. The “King of Virtue” chapter retraces and effaces the differences among the scriptures and therefore says all four are quiescently extinct. The scripture lists: arising-arising is inexpressible; arising-non-arising is inexpressible; non-arising-arising is inexpressible; non-arising-non-arising is inexpressible.

When explaining the first statement, the scripture asks why arising-arising is inexpressible. It answers that through arising-arising there is arising, and through arising-arising there is also non-arising, and it is therefore inexpressible. If one looks only at the words, the scripture uses arising and non-arising to explain arising-arising. This “arising-arising” is therefore already equivalent to “arising-non-arising”; how could it be grasped as only a separate arising-arising? By giving one example to people of sharp faculties, the Buddha enables them to penetrate the other three statements. If the original intent is understood, arising-arising is arising-non-arising and is also non-arising-arising and non-arising-non-arising. One cannot grasp only one statement. The latter three should be understood in the same way.

Someone asks: why does the Buddha explain only the first statement? The answer is that the audience had sharp faculties and that the conditions at the time made this suitable. They were like swift horses that advance upon seeing the shadow of the whip without waiting until the whip strikes to the bone. When the four statements are retraced and effaced in this way, what teaching could fail to return to quiescent extinction?

Many judgments can be made on this basis. The first three kinds insofar as they are expressible can be called coarse, and the last kind insofar as it is expressible wondrous. The first three kinds insofar as they are inexpressible can be called coarse, and the last kind insofar as it is inexpressible wondrous. All four kinds insofar as they are expressible can be called coarse, and all four insofar as they are inexpressible wondrous. Each of the four kinds insofar as it is expressible can possess coarse and wondrous, and each insofar as it is inexpressible can likewise possess coarse and wondrous. Or all four insofar as expressible can be neither coarse nor wondrous, and all four insofar as inexpressible can likewise be neither coarse nor wondrous. All these differences are finally decisively clarified and enter the wondrous, opening provisional skillful means and revealing the real.

All four being inexpressible shows that the stage reached is high. All four being expressible shows the breadth of the Dharma’s substance. All four being both expressible and inexpressible shows that the function is deep and long. All four being neither expressible nor inexpressible transcends high and low, broad and narrow, long and short, one and different; all can be called wondrous. As for contemplation of mind through the Four Truths, it can be understood according to the preceding contemplation of dependent origination, so the original treatise does not record it again.

[Section Ten] Direct Clarification of the Seven Kinds of Two Truths

Fourth are the Two Truths, which likewise have four chapters: first, briefly recounting the views of the various schools; second, directly clarifying the Two Truths; third, judging coarse and wondrous; and fourth, opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous.

The name Two Truths appears in many scriptures, but its meaning is difficult to clarify, so arguments have proliferated through the ages. The Miaosheng Ding Jing even says that, in the past, the Buddha and Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī disputed over the Two Truths and both fell into hell. Only in the time of Kāśyapa Buddha did they ask their shared question. If two sages in the causal stage could not yet understand, how much less should ordinary people rely only on their own affective views, forcibly choose one teaching, and reject another?

Someone asks: when Śākyamuni Bodhisattva met Kāśyapa Buddha, he was a bodhisattva only two more lives from buddhahood. How could he have understood the Two Truths only then? Moreover, before that time he should no longer have fallen into an evil destiny. The answer is that the word “before” spans a very broad time and does not require that the fall into an evil destiny occurred shortly before the final two lives. Further, a two-life bodhisattva is already near the stage of succession. That stage is mostly described according to the Distinct and Perfect teachings, in which falling back is indeed impossible. One who has seen according to the Shared Teaching has already escaped the evil destinies and likewise would not fall. The scripture must therefore refer to a bodhisattva of the Tripiṭaka Teaching, who has still not severed delusions even in the last two lives. If such a bodhisattva understands the Two Truths only then, there is no fault; falling into an evil destiny earlier also accords with the meaning of this teaching.

Another question is asked: if only a Tripiṭaka bodhisattva can fall and bodhisattvas of the other three teachings cannot, why does the Golden Light Sūtra say bodhisattvas on the ten grounds still fear tigers, wolves, lions, and other beasts? The answer is that being killed by an evil friend can, through unwholesome karma, lead to hell; being killed by an evil elephant does not thereby lead to hell. A practitioner of the Perfect Teaching can, in one lifetime and in a body of flesh, leap upward through the ten grounds. Although affliction has been broken and there is no karma for hell, the body of flesh remains, so one can still encounter evil beasts. A fleshly body within the other teachings cannot ascend the ten grounds in one lifetime and can only practice and understand according to those teachings. If tigers and wolves are interpreted as afflictions, the meaning can be made to work in principle, but the evil beasts in the scriptural wording cannot be erased as phenomena.

Attachments have differed through the ages. Sengmin of Zhuangyan Monastery based his interpretation on buddhahood transcending beyond the Two Truths. Masters of the Treatise on the Middle pressed him: if buddha-wisdom lies outside the Two Truths, what principle does it illuminate and what delusion does it break? If there is no other principle to illuminate, one should not say it lies beyond the Two Truths. If it lies beyond the Two Truths but has no separate principle to illuminate, on what basis does it lie beyond? Going forward, a third truth cannot be established; retreating, even the Two Truths cannot be preserved.

Liang-era students of the Satyasiddhi Treatise also held different attachments concerning the conventional truth. Some said its name, function, and substance all exist. Some said only name and function exist, without substance. Some said only the name exists, while both substance and function are absent. Chen-era students of the Treatise on the Middle likewise differed in refutation and establishment. Some refuted the ancient teachings of twenty-three schools on the Two Truths and then separately established their own. Some, after refuting the others, clarified the Two Truths through four kinds of provisionality: provisionality established through causes, through continuity, through relation, and through conditions. Ancient and recent schools all cited a passage from scripture or treatise as their basis, preserving only their own passage and refusing to trust the others.

This treatise holds that the matter should not be understood in this way. Differing statements in the scriptures and treatises are all varied teachings given by the Tathāgata through skillful means, knowing sentient beings’ faculties and desires. In broad terms, they can be divided into three: according to dispositions, according to dispositions and wisdom, and according to wisdom.

First is teaching according to dispositions. Sentient beings’ dispositions differ, so the Buddha teaches different Dharmas according to them. The Vibhāṣā says that the highest worldly Dharma has immeasurable kinds. If even that which approaches the true truth is so, how much more so are other objects? This is like following the sensations of many blind people and telling them separately that milk is white and has other different features. When blind people hear different teachings, they dispute with one another, not knowing that “white” does not equal the whole of milk. The various masters did not understand this intent. Each grasped one passage and raised disputes over views, mutually judging right and wrong, believing one statement and rejecting another. Their discussions spread in disorder because they did not know which statement suited which condition. If the twenty-three schools and those who refuted them each have scriptural evidence, all can be judged Two Truths taught according to dispositions. If a view has no scriptural evidence at all, it is only a false conjecture, the same as a non-Buddhist teaching, and is not included within the Two Truths.

Second is teaching according to dispositions and wisdom. Both truths recognized by sentient beings’ affective views actually belong to the conventional; only when truth is awakened to can it be called true, and the true principle is only one. Five hundred bhikṣus, for example, each explained the cause of the body’s formation. The causes they taught were many, but correct principle was one. A scripture says that what is seen in the minds of worldly people is called the conventional truth, while what is seen in the minds of supramundane people is called the ultimate truth. This is the Two Truths according to dispositions and wisdom.

Third is teaching according to wisdom. When sages awaken to principle, they not only see the true but also understand the conventional. It is like seeing both forms and empty space when a film is removed from the eye. It is also like a meditator emerging from concentration: body and mind become open and spacious, like a light cloud floating in the sky, already different from a distracted mind. How, after awakening to the true, could one instead fail to understand conventional phenomena? A treatise says that small clouds can produce obstruction and great clouds can also produce obstruction; the deeper uncontaminated wisdom becomes, the purer worldly wisdom becomes. A scripture says that ordinary people move through the world without knowing the world’s characteristics, while the Tathāgata moves through the world and clearly understands them. This is the Two Truths according to wisdom. If these three intents are understood and the various scriptures and treatises then studied, one knows that each pair of Two Truths can fully possess the three aspects of dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom.

In directly clarifying the Two Truths, the most concise statement need only indicate that Dharma-nature is the true truth and ignorance and the twelve links of dependent origination are the conventional truth; the meaning is then complete. But human minds are coarse and shallow and do not readily discern the profound and wondrous within this. The teaching must therefore be expanded into seven kinds of Two Truths. Each is further opened into dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom, making twenty-one kinds of Two Truths. The first kind of Two Truths alone can burn all false attachments without leaving a blade of grass, like the fire at the end of a kalpa. How much more so when all the subsequent Two Truths are spread out? Their import far exceeds ordinary language and cannot be measured by worldly dispositions.

The seven kinds of Two Truths are, in order: first, real existence is conventional, and the extinction of real existence is true. Second, illusory existence is conventional, and illusory existence as immediately empty is true. Third, illusory existence is conventional, and illusory existence as immediately empty together with nonempty is true. Fourth, illusory existence is conventional, and illusory existence as immediately empty and nonempty, with all Dharmas tending toward empty and nonempty, is true. Fifth, illusory existence and illusory existence as immediately empty are both called conventional, while what is neither existent nor empty is called true. Sixth, illusory existence and illusory existence as immediately empty are both called conventional, while what is neither existent nor empty, with all Dharmas tending toward what is neither existent nor empty, is called true. Seventh, illusory existence and illusory existence as immediately empty are both called conventional, while all Dharmas tending toward existence, emptiness, and neither existence nor emptiness are called true.

The first, the Two Truths of real existence, teaches that the aggregates, sense fields, elements, and so forth are all Dharmas that truly exist. The profusion of the myriad phenomena is formed from these real Dharmas and is therefore called conventional. A practitioner cultivates the path through skillful means and, only after extinguishing this conventional, joins the true. The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says “emptying form, form as empty.” Because conventional form must be extinguished, it speaks of emptying form. Because the nature of form is not extinguished, it also says that form itself is empty. There is no medicine within illness, and no bodhi within words; these are meanings of the same level. This is the characteristic of the Two Truths of real existence, and each truth likewise has the three meanings of dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom.

The second, the Two Truths of illusory existence and emptiness, refutes the first. If one grasps real existence, then while the conventional exists there is no true, and when the true appears the conventional has already been extinguished. True and conventional cannot stand at once, so the meaning of Two Truths is incomplete. If one understands all as illusory, illusory existence itself is conventional; because illusory existence cannot be obtained, it is immediately true. The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says that form itself is emptiness and emptiness itself is form. Only when empty and form are mutually immediate do the Two Truths stand at once. These are the Two Truths of illusory existence and emptiness, and each likewise has the three meanings of dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom.

Within the meaning according to wisdom in this kind, a brief distinction must still be made. The illumination of the true according to wisdom in the Two Truths of real existence does not differ from the true illuminated in the Two Truths of illusory existence; their illumination of the conventional according to wisdom does differ. People of the Shared Teaching enter contemplation skillfully and emerge from contemplation to illuminate the conventional with equal skill. It is like a hundred rivers flowing into the ocean and becoming one salty flavor without difference; when traced back from the sea to their sources, each river differs from the others. The conventional consists of phenomenal Dharmas, so what is illuminated naturally differs. The true is the Dharma of principle, so what is realized cannot differ. Even among people of the Shared Teaching who emerge from emptiness and enter the provisional, each person’s skill differs; this can be inferred from principle. Practitioners of the Tripiṭaka Teaching emerging into the provisional can be understood by the same example.

The second, third, and fourth kinds share the same conventional truth of illusory existence, but their true truths differ in three ways. One conventional turns according to three kinds of true, making three kinds of Two Truths. The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says “neither contaminated nor uncontaminated.” The first class thinks “not contaminated” removes conventional Dharmas and “not uncontaminated” removes attachment to the uncontaminated. A practitioner again produces attachment in relation to uncontaminated Dharma, like producing a new bond by taking the truth of cessation as object. Attachment must therefore be destroyed so the practitioner reenters the uncontaminated. This forms the first pair of Two Truths.

The second class hears neither contaminated nor uncontaminated and thinks it simultaneously leaves the two extremes and separately discloses the principle of the Middle, taking that principle as true. This forms another pair of Two Truths. The third class hears neither contaminated nor uncontaminated and immediately knows that the double negation directly discloses the Middle Way. The function of the Dharma realm of the Middle Way is as vast as empty space, and all Dharmas tend toward neither contaminated nor uncontaminated. This forms yet another pair of Two Truths.

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that śrāvakas see only emptiness and do not see nonemptiness, while the wise see both emptiness and nonemptiness. This is precisely the threefold difference. If people of the Two Vehicles are attached to emptiness, the scripture uses nonemptiness to break that attachment. After the attachment to emptiness is broken, they still only see emptiness and have not truly seen nonemptiness. Those with sharper faculties know nonemptiness is not only the removal of attachment but wondrous existence, and they therefore speak of nonemptiness. Those of sharpest faculties hear “nonempty” and know it to be the tathāgata-garbha, toward which all Dharmas tend. Thus emptiness and nonemptiness alone can also form three kinds of Two Truths.

Three kinds can further be distinguished through “all Dharmas tend toward neither contaminated nor uncontaminated.” The first class hears this and thinks all Dharmas do not depart from emptiness, like a jar traveling throughout the ten directions while the space within the jar remains only that space. The second class hears it and knows this principle of the Middle must be approached through all practices before it can be revealed. The third class hears it and knows that all Dharmas immediately and wholly tend toward neither contaminated nor uncontaminated, where all Dharmas are originally complete.

The same conventional truth can therefore turn according to three true truths: one empty true, the compound true of emptiness and nonemptiness, or the inconceivable true. The forms are immeasurable and move in and out according to faculties to benefit sentient beings. Each also has the three meanings of dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom. When speaking according to the realization of wisdom, the conventional truth likewise turns according to wisdom. Realizing the partial true makes the Two Truths of the Shared Teaching. Realizing the nonempty true makes the Two Truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared. Realizing that all Dharmas tend toward the nonempty true makes the Two Truths of the Perfect receiving the Shared. The wisdom attained by these three kinds of people differs, and when they emerge from contemplation and again illuminate the conventional, each differs as well.

Why do three kinds of people hear the same Two Truths yet understand them at different depths? Because this is the prajñā not shared with the Two Vehicles taught together with them, so listeners naturally take it differently. The Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says there are bodhisattvas who, on first arousing the aspiration, immediately correspond with omniscience; bodhisattvas who, on first arousing the aspiration, sport in supernormal powers and can purify buddha-lands; and bodhisattvas who, on first arousing the aspiration, immediately sit at the place of awakening and resemble the Buddha. This precisely shows differences of depth in understanding the same teaching.

The fifth kind takes illusory existence and illusory existence as immediately empty together as conventional, and neither existence nor nonexistence as true. Existence and nonexistence are two and therefore remain conventional. The Middle Way is neither existence nor nonexistence and transcends the two characteristics, so it is true. When people of the Two Vehicles hear this pair of true and conventional, they understand neither, as if deaf and mute. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that the Buddha discussed the conventional truth with Maitreya, yet five hundred śrāvakas mistook this discussion of the conventional truth for the true truth. This is the meaning. This pair likewise has the three aspects of dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom.

In the sixth kind, the Two Truths of the Perfect receiving the Distinct, the conventional truth is the same as in the Distinct Teaching, but the true truth differs. People of the Distinct Teaching think nonemptiness is only one principle. To reveal this principle, various skillful means must be cultivated in sequence, so it is said that all Dharmas tend toward nonemptiness. When people of the Perfect Teaching hear the principle of nonemptiness, they know immediately that it fully possesses all Buddha-Dharmas without any deficiency. It is therefore said that all Dharmas wholly tend into nonemptiness. This pair likewise has the three aspects of dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom.

The seventh kind, the Two Truths of the Perfect Teaching, directly teaches inconceivable Two Truths: the true itself is the conventional, and the conventional itself is the true. It is like a wish-fulfilling jewel. The body of the jewel represents the true and its function represents the conventional. The jewel itself is function, and function itself is the jewel. Only because the nondual is provisionally divided in two are true and conventional established. This pair likewise has the three aspects of dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom. Śāriputra says the Buddha teaches skillfully through various causes, conditions, and similes; the Buddha’s mind is settled like the sea, and after hearing him Śāriputra’s net of doubt is severed. This is precisely the meaning.

Someone asks: true and conventional should stand in mutual relation; why do the seven teachings differ? The answer can be arranged through four alternatives: different conventional but same true; different true but same conventional; both true and conventional different yet mutually related; and both true and conventional the same yet mutually related. The true in the Tripiṭaka and Shared teachings is the same while their conventional differs. The true in the Distinct receiving the Shared and Perfect receiving the Shared differs while their conventional is the same. In the Distinct Teaching, true and conventional both differ and stand in mutual relation. In the Perfect receiving the Distinct, the conventional is the same as the Distinct Teaching while the true differs. In the Perfect Teaching, true and conventional are originally not different yet remain provisionally related: precisely different and yet the same. If two teachings do not receive one another, true and conventional still stand in mutual relation within the separate bounds of each teaching.

The above is the extensive teaching of the seven kinds of Two Truths. In brief, they can be gathered into four: within the three realms, immediately identical and not immediately identical; and beyond the three realms, immediately identical and not immediately identical. Adding the Distinct receiving the Shared makes a fifth, the Perfect receiving the Shared a sixth, and the Perfect receiving the Distinct a seventh.

Someone asks: why not speak of the Distinct and Perfect receiving the Tripiṭaka? The answer is that the Tripiṭaka belongs to Dharma within the three realms that is not immediately identical. After Small Vehicle practitioners take realization, they are like those whose faculties have decayed and cannot advance, so being received is not discussed. The remaining six kinds are all Great Vehicle gates. If practitioners wish to advance, they can still enter upward, so being received can be discussed.

Another question is asked: if one is not received, can one also not be integrated into the Lotus? The answer is that being received and being integrated do not have the same meaning. Before the time of integration, the only question is whether a faculty can be received by a deeper teaching. The absence of such receiving cannot be used to conclude that final integration is impossible.

[Section Eleven] Judging and Opening the Two Truths

Third is judging coarse and wondrous. The Two Truths of real existence belong to the half-word gate and guide people of dull faculties in clearing away the filth of conceptual proliferation. But because they cannot let true and conventional stand simultaneously, they are judged coarse. The Two Truths of illusory existence and emptiness belong to the full-word gate and teach the true mark of all dharmas for people of sharp faculties. People of all three vehicles can realize them, so they are more wondrous than the first kind; but because all three see only emptiness, they remain coarse beside the latter kinds.

The Distinct receiving the Shared can see nonemptiness and is therefore more wondrous than emptiness alone, but because the principle discussed in the teaching does not yet interpenetrate, it remains coarse. The principle seen in the Perfect receiving the Shared is already wondrous and does not differ from the later Perfect principle, but because it still carries the skillful means of the Shared Teaching, it is judged coarse. The Two Truths of the Distinct Teaching no longer carry the skillful means of the Shared Teaching and are therefore more wondrous than the preceding, but their principle still does not interpenetrate and is again coarse. The principle seen in the Perfect receiving the Distinct already perfectly interpenetrates and is therefore wondrous, but because it still carries the skillful means of the Distinct Teaching, it is coarse. Only the Two Truths of the Perfect Teaching directly teach the unsurpassed path and are therefore ultimately wondrous.

They are next judged according to dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom. Take the Tripiṭaka Teaching first. A practitioner initially hears Two Truths taught according to dispositions and mistakes the Tathāgata’s true speech, spoken in accord with the conventional, for false speech. The practitioner further grasps language and produces views; birth-and-death therefore spreads vast, without even the savor of Buddha-Dharma. If the practitioner diligently cultivates the four establishments of mindfulness and arouses the four wholesome roots of warmth, summit, patience, and the highest worldly Dharma, the Two Truths earlier heard according to dispositions are both called conventional. When uncontaminated wisdom arises, the Two Truths it illuminates are both called true. After realizing the four fruits, true and conventional illuminated through uncontaminated wisdom are both called the Two Truths according to wisdom.

According to dispositions is coarse and according to wisdom is wondrous, like milk turning into curds. Once it has become curds, mind and Dharma trust and accord with one another, and moving in and out is no longer difficult. The Buddha can then teach the Shared, the Distinct receiving the Shared, and the Perfect receiving the Shared according to dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom. This makes practitioners feel ashamed of the Small and aspire to the Great, grieve for themselves as decayed seeds, and thirst after the higher vehicle. It is like turning curds into raw ghee.

As the mind gradually becomes open and at ease, the Buddha again teaches the Distinct and the Perfect receiving the Distinct according to dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom. He reveals prajñā not shared with the Two Vehicles and orders practitioners to receive and manage the family estate, making them know every coming and going of gold, silver, and treasures. Once they understand these, it is like raw ghee turning into refined ghee. After a long time, the buddhas finally teach the true treasure: they teach the Perfect Two Truths according to dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom, like refined ghee turning into clarified essence. The first six kinds of Two Truths mature sentient beings. Although they become the four flavors of milk, curds, raw ghee, and refined ghee, they are still judged coarse; only the final flavor, clarified essence, is wondrous.

If the seven are gathered into three classes of judgment, the first two teachings, although each possesses the three aspects including wisdom, are as a whole teachings following sentient beings’ affective views and expressing what is in others’ minds. They are therefore coarse. Beginning with the Distinct receiving the Shared, although each likewise possesses the three aspects, all are as a whole mixed teachings of dispositions and wisdom, expressing the intents of both the Buddha and others, and are therefore both coarse and wondrous. Although the Perfect Two Truths likewise possess all three aspects, as a whole they are entirely taught according to buddha-wisdom and express the Buddha’s own intent. They are therefore called wondrous.

Someone asks: if the first two kinds of Two Truths are judged as a whole to be according to dispositions, practitioners should neither see truth nor attain the path. The answer is that they are called according to dispositions as a whole only because the Middle Way has not yet been attained. The buddhas and tathāgatas never teach empty and useless Dharmas. Although these teachings are not the siddhānta of the Middle Way as ultimate meaning, they do not lack the benefits of the worldly, individually adapted, and counteractive siddhāntas. They are judged coarse and according to dispositions only in general terms; this does not mean that cultivating through them produces no attainment at all.

The seven kinds of Two Truths are next placed within the teachings of the five flavors. The milk flavor has three kinds—the Distinct, the Perfect receiving the Distinct, and the Perfect—two coarse and one wondrous. The curds flavor has only the Two Truths of real existence, all coarse. Raw ghee has all seven, six coarse and one wondrous. Refined ghee has six kinds, five coarse and one wondrous. The Lotus Sutra teaches only the one Perfect kind and none of the other six skillful means, solely wondrous and without coarse. The character “wondrous” is established in the scripture’s title precisely for this reason. This is the relational judgment of coarse and wondrous.

Fourth is opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous. The original intent for the tathāgatas of the three times to appear in the world is to cause sentient beings to open the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing and attain patience with non-arising. This is precisely the Buddha’s appearance in the world through the one great matter as cause and condition. The Treatise on the Lotus Sutra explains the lotus emerging from water by saying that it emerges inexhaustibly from the muddy waters of the Small Vehicle, enabling entry to sit within the Tathāgata’s great assembly. It is like the bodhisattvas sitting upon lotuses and hearing the pure sphere of unsurpassed wisdom.

This certainly does not mean sitting upon a lotus leaf. It means that the bodhisattvas hear one perfect path, realize one perfect fruit, abide in the Lotus-King realm, and sit together with Vairocana Buddha upon the lotus dais.

The Buddha’s intent was originally such. Those who saw the Buddha’s body at first, heard the teaching of the one real at first, and awakened and entered had already ascended the lotus dais. For those who had not yet awakened and entered, the Buddha opened the gradual from the sudden and used various skillful means to assist in disclosing ultimate meaning. The Two Truths taught were sometimes single, sometimes compound, and sometimes inconceivable; their various forms were all skillful means leading people to ascend the lotus dais. The Tathāgata originally constantly abides in quiescence while transformation pervades the Dharma realm. He does not first calculate and plan in the mind and only then act. The power of compassionate wholesome roots that draws in sentient beings simply enables them to enter through various skillful means.

Some say that all teachings beginning at the Deer Park were advance guidance for the Lotus Sutra. This treatise considers even that statement incorrect because its span of time is too short. Speaking only from the near, everything since the place of quiescent extinction served as guidance for the Lotus. The Buddha’s emission of light illuminating other lands and buddhas also served to open the gradual from the sudden. Mañjuśrī’s account of past buddhas likewise served the same matter. Yet this is still too near.

Since Mahābhijñā-jñānābhibhū Buddha, the Buddha has been making skillful means for the Lotus on behalf of sentient beings; it did not begin only at the place of quiescent extinction. Even this is too near. Since attaining buddhahood in the distant past, the Buddha has continuously made skillful means for sentient beings to ascend the lotus dais; this can still be called too near. Since the time when the Buddha practiced the bodhisattva path in the distant past, he has already made skillful means of the lotus dais for sentient beings. The scripture says that the Buddha originally made a vow to cause all sentient beings likewise to attain this path. How could guidance have begun only in the present lifetime?

Those transformed since the distant past who have already ascended the lotus dais form one class. For those who had not yet entered, the Buddha continuously guided them through the preceding skillful means, life after life in the intervening time. Some ascended the lotus dais through the Distinct receiving the Shared, the Perfect receiving the Shared, and the Perfect receiving the Distinct in the Avataṃsaka, Vaipulya, Prajñāpāramitā, and other teachings; they do not differ from those who entered at first and form another class. Those still not entered passed through maturation in the four flavors and all ascended the lotus dais in the Lotus Sutra. Those remaining at three flavors, two flavors, one flavor, or not matured at all are likewise decisively opened and revealed in this scripture, making the originally coarse Dharma wondrous; all ascend the lotus dais.

Practitioners of the Tripiṭaka Teaching most firmly guard the fruit they have realized; this is hardest to break and hardest to open. Now even it has been broken and opened, how much more so the other skillful means that are easier to break and open? People of all kinds still follow their own dispositions, yet the real is disclosed within their original Dharma-gates and they directly ascend the lotus dais. The scripture says that the father gave each child one of his innumerable seven-jeweled great carts. This is opening the provisional to reveal the real, making all coarse Dharmas into absolute wondrousness.

According to what has been taught above, the Lotus Sutra gathers all scriptures. The Buddha’s original intent in appearing in the world and the destination of every teaching reach their utmost here. Some fail to see this principle and treat the twelve links of dependent origination and the other objects only as ordinary phenomena, despising them without end; their tongues will rot within their mouths. If the purport of this chapter is attained, one can deeply see seven, twenty-one, and even immeasurable teaching gates. Their meanings are vast and profound and enter one another in intricate patterns like the subtle depths and shades of embroidery. Horizontally they pervade all; vertically they exhaust the whole; finally they all integrate into the Lotus. The teachings of twenty thousand Sun-Moon-Lamp Radiance Buddhas, Kāśyapa Buddha, and other ancient buddhas reach the utmost of the wondrous here. Maitreya’s future teaching will likewise reach the utmost of the wondrous here. Śākyamuni Buddha looks upward and accords with buddhas of past, present, and future, and likewise reaches the utmost of the wondrous here. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra is like using a weighty treasure to redeem one’s life; it only solemnly repeats this essential purport. Seeing the vast magnificence and all-embracing quality of this wondrous purport, a student should open the measure of the mind and not confine empty space through their own narrow affective views.

The Mahāyānasaṃgraha teaches ten superior characteristics. People of the world all regard its meaning as extremely profound, and it even caused students of the Treatise on the Ten Grounds to change their doctrine. Compared with the ten subtleties, however, it can still be seen to leave something out. Take only the subtlety of principle in comparison with the superior characteristic of the foundation. This treatise uses inconceivable dependent origination to break attachments through the four alternatives of arising from self, from another, from both, or without cause. How could it then fix ālaya-consciousness or amala-consciousness as a foundation? This treatise further uses the four siddhāntas to establish teachings according to conditions; it does not establish only one doctrine of ignorance arising from another.

The Mahāyānasaṃgraha explains meaning along only one road. It does not see how the sudden and gradual teachings of the scriptures open and combine to benefit sentient beings, nor does it, through teaching, contemplative practice, dispositions, and wisdom, broadly encompass the Buddha’s entire career of transformation and deeply gather its beginning and end. The single object of dependent origination is already broader than the superior characteristic of the foundation. When the four kinds of Four Truths, seven kinds of Two Truths, five kinds of Three Truths, the One Truth, and so forth are compared with it, no equal scale can be found. Even the ten subtleties within the Trace are not fully possessed by it; the ten subtleties in the Origin are absent from the other scriptures. How much more so from a single treatise?

The ten subtleties in contemplation of mind can still more immediately be put into practice and function, unlike a poor person who only counts the treasures on another’s head. The Dharma-gates of the ten subtleties overlap like fish scales and accumulate layer upon layer. How could they be exhausted in words? Even India’s Dazhidu Lun cannot be classed with them, much less the Chinese masters. This is not an intentional exaggeration of the characteristics of Dharma; the Dharma-gates themselves are truly such. Students can see this by reflecting for themselves; no more words need be wasted.

[Section Twelve] The Five Kinds of Three Truths

Fifth are the Three Truths. All scriptures possess the meaning of the Three Truths, while the name Three Truths appears explicitly in the Pusa Yingluo Benye Jing. The Renwang Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra calls them the truth of existence, the truth of nonexistence, and the ultimate truth of the Middle Way. The Lotus Sutra likewise contains this meaning. “The Lifespan of the Tathāgata” chapter says “neither thus nor different.” Neither thus nor different discloses the Middle Way; “thus” can correspond to the true, and “different” to the conventional.

Someone asks: the Lotus Sutra does not contain such names as the four kinds of dependent origination. How can these meanings be used? The answer is that the names five abodes and two deaths come from the Śrīmālā Sūtra; does this mean the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra should not use their meanings? Without the five abodes, there would be no way to speak of breaking ignorance. Without the two deaths, there would be no way to disclose permanence. The names of the three buddhas come from the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra; this likewise cannot be used to say other scriptures lack the meaning of the three buddhas. All scriptures are taught by the Buddha. Although their names differ, meaning cannot be obstructed by names.

The Three Truths have three chapters: first, directly clarifying the Three Truths; second, judging coarse and wondrous; and third, opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous. The first two of the preceding seven kinds of Two Truths do not clearly teach the Middle Way and are therefore first removed and not considered. Each of the latter five kinds of Two Truths can open the Middle Way, making five kinds of Three Truths.

First are the Three Truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared. The Three Truths are indicated right within the phrase neither contaminated nor uncontaminated: contaminated is conventional; uncontaminated is true; and neither contaminated nor uncontaminated is Middle. But the Middle taught by this teaching only means different from emptiness. It has no autonomous function and does not possess all Dharmas.

Second are the Three Truths of the Perfect receiving the Shared. The true and conventional truths are the same as in the preceding kind. The Middle disclosed through neither contaminated nor uncontaminated, however, fully possesses all Dharmas and therefore differs from the Middle Truth in the preceding kind.

Third are the Three Truths of the Distinct Teaching. The original conventional truth is opened into the two truths of existence and emptiness, while the original true truth becomes the Middle Truth. This Middle is only one principle; it has not yet been clarified as fully possessing all right where it stands.

Fourth are the Three Truths of the Perfect receiving the Distinct. The first two truths are the same as in the Distinct Teaching, but it is made explicit that the Middle Way disclosed through the true truth fully possesses all Buddha-Dharmas.

Fifth are the Three Truths of the Perfect Teaching. Not only does the Middle Way fully possess all Buddha-Dharmas; the true and conventional truths each fully possess all as well. The Three Truths perfectly interpenetrate: one is three and three are one. Their meaning is explained extensively in the Mohe Zhiguan.

Next they are judged as coarse or wondrous. The Distinct receiving the Shared and the Perfect receiving the Shared both carry the skillful means of the Shared Teaching and are therefore coarse. The Distinct Teaching does not carry the skillful means of the Shared and is more wondrous than the first two. The Perfect receiving the Distinct still carries the skillful means of the Distinct Teaching and is therefore coarse. The Perfect Teaching carries no skillful means at all and is therefore most wondrous.

Within the teachings of the five flavors, the milk flavor has three kinds of Three Truths, two coarse and one wondrous. The curds flavor has only coarse and no wondrous. Raw ghee and refined ghee both possess all five kinds of Three Truths, each with four coarse and one wondrous. The Lotus Sutra has only the one kind belonging to the Perfect Teaching. This is relational wondrousness. As for opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous, all the preceding coarse Dharmas are decisively clarified and integrated into one wondrous. There is no separate Dharma left to stand in relation to the Three Truths; this is absolute wondrousness.

[Section Thirteen] The One Truth and No Truth

Sixth is the One Truth. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that the so-called Two Truths are actually only One Truth and are taught as two only through skillful means. It is like a drunk person who has not sobered seeing the sun and moon revolve and supposing there are both a revolving sun and moon and a nonrevolving sun and moon. A sober person sees only that the sun and moon do not revolve and does not separately see something that revolves. Dividing revolving and nonrevolving into two is coarse; seeing only the one nonrevolving is wondrous.

The Tripiṭaka Teaching lies entirely within the two that revolve, like what is seen by the drunk person. Other Great Vehicle scriptures simultaneously carry the skillful means of the two that revolve and teach the one that does not revolve. The Lotus Sutra straightforwardly casts aside skillful means and teaches only the unsurpassed path, disclosing the one real that does not revolve; it is therefore wondrous.

The Bodhisattvabhūmi Sūtra uses the characteristics of the ground to clarify resembling Dharmas and the reality of the ground to clarify real Dharmas. One can also call the skillful means of the teaching gate the path of teaching that clarifies meaning, and the Dharma actually realized the path of realization that clarifies meaning. Borrowing these names now: the buddhas, after a long time, must finally teach the real; this belongs to the reality of the ground clarifying meaning. The Dharma the Buddha attained at the place of awakening belongs to the path of realization clarifying meaning. It is therefore called wondrous.

But if one again grasps this real, turning true speech into a new false utterance and producing a fixed view through language, it becomes coarse. Only allowing the one real to interpenetrate freely without attachment is called wondrous. The meaning of opening the coarse to reveal the wondrous can be understood by the same principle.

Next, all truths are said to be inexpressible. All Dharmas from the beginning constantly bear the characteristics of quiescent extinction. How could many truths clamor in confusion and obstruct one another? Even the One Truth cannot be grasped, much less the many truths. Each truth is inexpressible. The expressible is judged coarse, the inexpressible wondrous. If even “inexpressible” is not grasped, this is wondrous; and this wondrous cannot itself be grasped as wondrous, because the path of language has been cut off.

Speaking generally of the various kinds of inexpressibility, arising-arising is inexpressible, all the way through non-arising-non-arising being inexpressible. The first three kinds of inexpressibility remain coarse in comparison with the last, while non-arising-non-arising as inexpressible is wondrous. If coarse and wondrous were permanently different, their relational contrast could not interpenetrate. If coarse and wondrous are nondual, there is absolute wondrousness.

Within the teachings of the five flavors, the milk flavor has one coarse no-truth and one wondrous no-truth. The curds flavor has only one coarse no-truth. Raw ghee has three coarse no-truths and one wondrous no-truth. Refined ghee has two coarse no-truths and one wondrous no-truth. The Lotus Sutra teaches only one wondrous no-truth. How the coarse is opened is the same as explained earlier.

Someone asks: why can no truth be discussed in both Great and Small Vehicles? The answer is that the Dazhidu Lun does not destroy the nirvāṇa genuinely realized in the minds of sages. Rather, people who have not realized grasp nirvāṇa and thereby produce conceptual proliferation, like producing a fetter by taking non-arising as object. Their attachment must therefore be destroyed, and this is called no truth.

Another question is asked: if so, both those who have attained in the Small Vehicle and those who have not should be broken; both those who have attained in the Great Vehicle and those who have not should likewise all be broken. The answer is that the two cannot be treated as entirely analogous. In the Small Vehicle sphere there remains another portion of delusion to remove and another portion of principle to reveal, so even what has been attained must still be opened and broken. The Middle Way is not like this. Once it is genuinely realized, what remains to be broken?

The next question is: if so, the Middle Way should have only the one real truth and no truth should not be taught. The answer is that those who have not yet realized may grasp the Middle Way and produce a further delusion, so no truth must still be used to break attachment. For those who have genuinely realized, the one real exists. For those who use it to produce conceptual proliferation, it is said not to exist.

Here the second part of Fascicle Two of the Xuanyi ends. The first part of Fascicle Three begins below and is still titled as spoken by the Great Master Zhiyi of Tiantai.

[Section Fourteen] First Half of Opening and Combining the Objects

The second major chapter teaches the opening and combining of the objects, beginning with the ten suchnesses. The reason is that the Lotus Sutra opens its chapter by praising the ten suchnesses in a way that transcends language. The text now also teaches the five objects of dependent origination, the Four Truths, the Two Truths, the Three Truths, and the One Truth. Are these five objects the same as or different from the ten suchnesses? Their names differ, so this is called opening; their meanings are the same, so this is called combining.

First the twelve links of dependent origination are combined, link by link, with the ten suchnesses. The link of ignorance combines with suchness of nature. Volitional activities combine with suchness of characteristic. The five links from consciousness through feeling combine with suchness of substance. Craving combines with suchness of condition. Grasping combines with suchness of power and suchness of activity. Existence combines with suchness of cause. Birth and aging-and-death combine with suchness of fruit and suchness of recompense.

An overall correlation can also be made. Suchness of characteristic combines with the two links of volitional activities and existence. Suchness of nature combines with the three links of ignorance, craving, and grasping. Suchness of substance combines with the seven links of consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense fields, contact, feeling, birth, and aging-and-death. Suchness of power is again apportioned to the three links of the affliction-track—ignorance, craving, and grasping—because they have the power to produce karma. Suchness of activity is again apportioned to volitional activities and existence because they can make karma that calls forth suffering. Suchness of cause is again apportioned to volitional activities and existence because they are causes of the seven fruits of suffering. Suchness of condition is again apportioned to ignorance, craving, and grasping because they can moisten karma and seize suffering. Suchness of fruit is apportioned to the habitual fruits produced by volitional activities and existence. Suchness of retribution is apportioned to the recompenses of name-and-form and so forth called forth by the karma of volitional activities and existence. The link-by-link and overall correlations above both use conceivable twelvefold dependent origination to correspond to the ten suchnesses of the six paths.

Next inconceivable twelvefold dependent origination is used to correspond to the ten suchnesses of the four noble Dharma realms. The link of ignorance turns into illumination. Illumination is the understanding-cause and becomes suchness of nature in the noble. The link of unwholesome activity turns into wholesome activity. Wholesome activity is the condition-cause and becomes suchness of characteristic in the noble. The suffering-track of consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense fields, contact, feeling, and so forth turns into the Dharma-body and becomes suchness of substance in the noble. The two links of craving and grasping turn into the mind of bodhi and become suchness of power in the noble.

The link of existence contains future fruit. It turns into the practice of the six pāramitās and thereby becomes suchness of activity in the noble, and it also becomes suchness of cause in the noble. The transformation of existence further has two aspects, correct and assisting: the correct path turns into suchness of cause, while the assisting path turns into suchness of condition. The link of aging-and-death turns into the constant abiding of Dharma-nature and becomes suchness of fruit and suchness of recompense in the noble.

In a further overall statement, the three Dharmas of substance, power, and activity are originally only affliction, karma, and suffering. After transformation, they become the three Dharmas of Dharma-body, the mind of bodhi, and the practice of the six pāramitās. Diligently cultivating these three Dharmas inwardly perfumes suchness of nature and outwardly manifests suchness of characteristic. Correct intent becomes suchness of substance; a profound vow becomes suchness of power; establishing practice becomes suchness of activity; drawing forth the virtue of fruit becomes suchness of cause; assisting correct practice becomes suchness of condition; and actual arousal and attainment become suchness of fruit and suchness of recompense. If the four noble Dharma realms were finely distinguished, every segment would still differ. Only the broad outline is taken here, so a common explanation is made. The scripture says that the aspiration for omniscience still remains and is not lost. On this basis, a common correlation can also be made for the Two Vehicles.

Next the four kinds of Four Truths are combined with the ten suchnesses. Suffering and accumulation within the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising Four Truths are the ten suchnesses of the six paths: suchness of characteristic and nature correspond to accumulation; suchness of substance corresponds to suffering; suchness of activity, power, cause, and condition also correspond to accumulation; and suchness of fruit and recompense again correspond to suffering.

The path and cessation within the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising Four Truths are the ten suchnesses of analytical-Dharma practitioners of the Two Vehicles, embodied-Dharma practitioners of the Two Vehicles, and bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching. Suchness of characteristic and nature correspond to the path; suchness of substance corresponds to cessation; suchness of power, activity, cause, and condition all correspond to the path; and suchness of fruit and recompense again correspond to cessation.

Suffering and accumulation within the immeasurable and unconstructed Four Truths are the ten suchnesses of the recompenses beyond the realms in the four noble Dharma realms. The truth of accumulation corresponds to suchness of characteristic, nature, power, activity, cause, and condition beyond the realms. The truth of suffering corresponds to suchness of substance, fruit, and retribution beyond the realms.

The path and cessation within the immeasurable and unconstructed Four Truths are the ten suchnesses of nirvāṇa beyond the realms in the four noble Dharma realms. The truth of the path corresponds to suchness of nature, characteristic, power, activity, cause, and condition in nirvāṇa—that is, prajñā and liberation. The truth of cessation corresponds to suchness of substance, fruit, and retribution in nirvāṇa, and also becomes the constantly abiding Dharma-body.

[Section Fifteen] Second Half of Opening and Combining the Objects

Next the four kinds of Four Truths are correlated with the four kinds of twelvefold dependent origination. Suffering and accumulation within the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising Four Truths are the circulation of the two conceivable kinds of twelvefold dependent origination. The path and cessation within the arising-and-ceasing and non-arising Four Truths are the two conceivable kinds of twelvefold dependent origination from the cessation of ignorance through the cessation of aging-and-death. Suffering and accumulation within the immeasurable and unconstructed Four Truths are the circulation of the two inconceivable kinds of twelvefold dependent origination. The path and cessation within the immeasurable and unconstructed Four Truths are the two inconceivable kinds of twelvefold dependent origination from the cessation of ignorance through the cessation of aging-and-death.

When the seven kinds of Two Truths are combined with the ten suchnesses, the four conventional truths of the Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct receiving the Shared, and Perfect receiving the Shared all correspond to the ten suchnesses of the six paths. The two true truths of the Tripiṭaka and Shared correspond to the ten suchnesses of the Two Vehicles. Within the two conventional truths of the Distinct and the Perfect receiving the Distinct, the side of existence corresponds to the ten suchnesses of the six paths, while the side of emptiness corresponds to the ten suchnesses of the Two Vehicles. The conventional truth of the Perfect Teaching generally corresponds to the ten suchnesses of the nine Dharma realms. The five true truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared, the Perfect receiving the Shared, the Distinct, the Perfect receiving the Distinct, and the Perfect all correspond to the ten suchnesses of the buddha Dharma realm.

When the seven kinds of Two Truths are combined with the four kinds of twelvefold dependent origination, the four conventional truths of the Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct receiving the Shared, and Perfect receiving the Shared are the circulation of the two conceivable kinds of twelvefold dependent origination. The two true truths of the Tripiṭaka and Shared are conceivable twelvefold dependent origination from the cessation of ignorance through the cessation of aging-and-death. Within the two conventional truths of the Distinct and the Perfect receiving the Distinct, the side of existence is the circulation of conceivable twelvefold dependent origination, while the side of emptiness is conceivable twelvefold dependent origination from the cessation of ignorance through the cessation of aging-and-death. The conventional truth of the Perfect Teaching simultaneously penetrates the four kinds of twelvefold dependent origination within and beyond the realms. The five true truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared, the Perfect receiving the Shared, the Distinct, the Perfect receiving the Distinct, and the Perfect are the inconceivable dependent origination beyond the realms from the cessation of ignorance through the cessation of aging-and-death.

When the seven kinds of Two Truths are combined with the four kinds of Four Truths, the Two Truths of real existence are the arising-and-ceasing Four Truths. The Two Truths of illusory existence and emptiness are the non-arising Four Truths. The two conventional truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared and Perfect receiving the Shared remain the suffering and accumulation of the non-arising Four Truths. The true truth of the Distinct receiving the Shared is the path and cessation of the immeasurable Four Truths. The true truth of the Perfect receiving the Shared is the path and cessation of the unconstructed Four Truths. The conventional truths of the Distinct and the Perfect receiving the Distinct are the suffering and accumulation of the immeasurable Four Truths. The conventional truth of the Perfect is the suffering and accumulation of the unconstructed Four Truths. The true truth of the Distinct is the path and cessation of the immeasurable Four Truths. The true truths of the Perfect receiving the Distinct and the Perfect are the path and cessation of the unconstructed Four Truths.

When the five kinds of Three Truths are combined with the ten suchnesses, the two conventional truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared and the Perfect receiving the Shared are the ten suchnesses of the six paths. Within the two conventional truths of the Distinct and the Perfect receiving the Distinct, the side of existence is the ten suchnesses of the six paths and the side of emptiness is the ten suchnesses of the Two Vehicles. The meaning of the conventional truth of the Perfect Teaching penetrates the ten suchnesses of the nine Dharma realms. All five true truths are the ten suchnesses of the Two Vehicles, bodhisattvas, and others. All five Middle Truths are the ten suchnesses of the buddha Dharma realm.

When the five kinds of Three Truths are combined with the four kinds of twelvefold dependent origination, the two conventional truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared and the Perfect receiving the Shared are conceivable twelvefold dependent origination in the six paths. Within the two conventional truths of the Distinct and the Perfect receiving the Distinct, the side of existence is the arising of conceivable twelvefold dependent origination in the six paths and the side of emptiness is the cessation of conceivable twelvefold dependent origination. The meaning of the conventional truth of the Perfect Teaching penetrates the four kinds of twelvefold dependent origination. If the fourfold distinction is provisionally used, the five true truths are all the cessation of conceivable twelvefold dependent origination and are also the arising of inconceivable twelvefold dependent origination. The five Middle Truths are all the cessation of inconceivable twelvefold dependent origination.

When the five kinds of Three Truths are combined with the four kinds of Four Truths, the two conventional truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared and Perfect receiving the Shared are the suffering and accumulation of the non-arising Four Truths. The conventional truths of the Distinct, Perfect receiving the Distinct, and Perfect can all be the suffering and accumulation of the non-arising Four Truths, can also be the path and cessation of the non-arising Four Truths, and can further be the suffering and accumulation of the immeasurable Four Truths.

The two true truths of the Distinct receiving the Shared and the Perfect receiving the Shared originally take only the side of emptiness and are therefore the path and cessation of the non-arising Four Truths. The true truths of the Distinct and the Perfect receiving the Distinct are the path and cessation within the non-arising Four Truths but become suffering and accumulation within the immeasurable Four Truths. The true truth of the Perfect is the path and cessation within the non-arising Four Truths but becomes suffering and accumulation within the immeasurable and unconstructed Four Truths.

The Middle Truth of the Distinct receiving the Shared is the path and cessation of the immeasurable Four Truths. The Middle Truth of the Perfect receiving the Shared is the path and cessation of the unconstructed Four Truths. The Middle Truth of the Distinct Teaching is the path and cessation of the immeasurable Four Truths. The Middle Truth of the Perfect receiving the Distinct is the path and cessation of the unconstructed Four Truths. The Middle Truth of the Perfect Teaching is precisely the path and cessation of the unconstructed Four Truths.

When the five kinds of Three Truths are combined with the seven kinds of Two Truths, the first two kinds—the Two Truths of real existence and of illusory existence and emptiness—are first removed and not included in the correlation. The two conventional truths of the next two kinds of Two Truths are the five conventional truths within the five kinds of Three Truths. Within their two true truths, the side of emptiness is the true truth within the five kinds of Three Truths, while the side of nonemptiness is the Middle Truth within the five kinds of Three Truths. Within the three conventional truths of the last three kinds of Two Truths, the side of emptiness is the true truth within the five kinds of Three Truths, while the side of existence is the conventional truth within the five kinds of Three Truths. Their three true truths are the Middle Truth within the five kinds of Three Truths.

It can also be put another way. The first two kinds of Two Truths are again removed and not correlated. Each conventional truth in the latter five kinds of Two Truths contains the true and conventional within the Three Truths. Each true truth in the latter five kinds of Two Truths contains the true and Middle within the Three Truths.

When the one real truth is combined with the ten suchnesses, each Dharma realm contains all ten realms. The other nine are now removed, and only what agrees with the ten suchnesses of the buddha Dharma realm is taken. When combined with the twelve links of dependent origination, the first three kinds are removed and it agrees only with the cessation of inconceivable non-arising and non-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination. When combined with the Four Truths, the first three kinds are removed and it agrees only with the one real unconstructed Four Truths. When combined with the seven kinds of Two Truths, it is both the same as and different from only the latter five true truths. When combined with the five kinds of Three Truths, it agrees only with the five Middle Truths.

No truth as inexpressible combines with the ten suchnesses because “such” indicates no difference and immediate quiescent emptiness. The extinction of verbal characteristics and their inexpressibility is precisely the meaning that all ten are “such.” From the cessation of ignorance through the cessation of aging-and-death, the meaning is extremely profound; the extremely profound therefore agrees with no truth. Arising-arising as inexpressible through non-arising-non-arising as inexpressible likewise all agree with no truth.

All the true truths within the seven kinds of Two Truths are inexpressible. Even the first true truth is inexpressible, just as Śāriputra said that within the liberation he had heard there was no speech; how much more so the latter six true truths? Neither birth-and-death nor nirvāṇa, neither the two extremes nor an apprehensible Middle Way: the five Middle Truths therefore agree with no truth. The one real is also called empty space. If even one cannot be obtained in empty space, how could there be another “real”? The one real therefore also agrees with no truth.

No truth itself establishes nothing. Within the great wisdom of equality there are no numerous differences. Although there are no numerous differences, it can be extended into immeasurable differences that fill the Dharma realm, without knowing where they come from. Although immeasurable differences appear, when gathered again not one thing remains, without knowing where they go. Neither coming nor going is the Dharma-body Buddha.

[Section Sixteen] Why the Objects Open and Combine, and Establishing Their Meaning from the Scripture

Going farther, the seven kinds of Two Truths open and combine and turn into one another in response to sentient beings’ conditions. Each kind also has the three intents of dispositions, dispositions and wisdom, and wisdom. The remaining five objects—the ten suchnesses, dependent origination, the Four Truths, the Three Truths, and the One Truth—should likewise each possess the three intents by analogy; the original treatise simply does not record them in detail. The Buddha teaches the Dharma through one sound, yet sentient beings each attain understanding according to their own kind. Students should reflect for themselves on this basis.

Someone asks: since the principle indicated by the various objects already perfectly interpenetrates and integrates, why must it still be opened into a profusion of colorful names and made to link with and enter one another? The answer is that the Tathāgata illuminates every nature and characteristic in the ten Dharma realms and knows which sentient beings are mature and which are not. People whose Great Vehicle faculties are not yet mature cannot have it forcibly taught to them, causing them to slander it. People whose Small Vehicle faculties are mature likewise cannot be allowed to miss the moment of liberation. The Buddha therefore follows what suits each person, sometimes teaching singly and sometimes in compound form, making the partial and perfect enter one another and gradually mature sentient beings. As long as sentient beings hear the Dharma suited to them, they can obtain benefit.

Although the Avataṃsaka Sūtra fully illuminates the ten realms, only two classes of faculties were mature at that time, so it matured them through the two gates of the Distinct and Perfect. The Tripiṭaka likewise illuminated the ten realms, but the faculties of the Two Vehicles were mature at that time, so it matured them through the arising-and-ceasing Four Truths. The Vaipulya scriptures likewise illuminated the ten realms, but four classes of faculties were mature at that time, so they matured them by making four gates enter one another. The Prajñāpāramitā scriptures likewise illuminated the ten realms, and four classes of faculties were mature, so they matured them by making three gates enter one another. The Lotus Sutra likewise illuminates the ten realms; now the nature and characteristics of the One Buddha Vehicle have matured, so it uses only the one perfect truth to mature sentient beings.

Without these skillful means, alternately concealing and revealing and maturing people level by level, how could objects and wisdom finally perfectly interpenetrate and become wondrous? A painter can make the depths and shades of blue, yellow, red, white, and black intermingle to paint various images. How much more so can the Buddha, the Dharma-king with mastery over all Dharmas, use various crisscrossing and mutually entering methods to train sentient beings?

Finally someone asks: perhaps the Lotus Sutra does not use all the names of the six objects taught above. Does it actually possess their meanings? The answer is that the names and meanings of the ten suchnesses were already explained completely earlier.

The meanings of all four kinds of twelvefold dependent origination are likewise present in the scripture. “The Parable of the Conjured City” chapter teaches arising-and-ceasing twelvefold dependent origination. “The Parable” chapter teaches that merely leaving the false and deluded is non-arising twelvefold dependent origination. The “Skillful Means” chapter says that the seed of buddhahood arises from conditions; these are the two kinds of twelvefold dependent origination beyond the realms, immeasurable and unconstructed.

The meanings of the four kinds of Four Truths are likewise complete. “The Parable” chapter says that the cause of all suffering has craving as its root; these are the arising-and-ceasing Four Truths. “The Parable of the Medicinal Herbs” chapter speaks of comprehending empty Dharmas; these are the non-arising Four Truths. That chapter further speaks of the unsurpassed path, while the “Skillful Means” chapter likewise speaks of teaching only the unsurpassed path, the Tathāgata’s extinction, and so forth. These are the two kinds of Four Truths beyond the realms, immeasurable and unconstructed.

The differences among the ten suchnesses are the conventional truth; only a buddha together with a buddha being able to exhaust the true mark of all dharmas is the true truth. The “Peaceful Practices” chapter says that one likewise does not distinguish conditioned from unconditioned or real from unreal Dharmas. Existence is the conventional truth and nonexistence the true truth; no longer distinguishing stops the two extremes and discloses the Middle Way. “The Lifespan of the Tathāgata” chapter says neither thus nor different: neither different stops the conventional; neither thus stops the true; together they disclose the meaning of the Three Truths.

The “Skillful Means” chapter says that other skillful means are further used to assist in disclosing ultimate meaning; this is the one real truth. It also says that only this one matter is real, which has the same meaning. The scripture further speaks of teaching the Dharma without discrimination and says the characteristics of all Dharmas are quiescently extinct and cannot be proclaimed in words; this is the meaning of no truth. It can therefore be known that although the names of the six objects open and combine, the meanings disclosed by the Lotus Sutra are complete.

This chapter preserves Zhiyi’s teaching on wondrous meaning as recorded in writing by Guanding. Within the chapter, the fascicle division moves from the first part of Fascicle Two to the second part, and then, at the opening and combining of the objects, into the first part of Fascicle Three. Although the text crosses fascicles, its question remains one: if the truth illuminated by the Buddha was never made by anyone, why do the scriptures and teachings nevertheless speak of it as the ten suchnesses, dependent origination, the Four Truths, the Two Truths, the Three Truths, the One Truth, and even no truth?

The treatise master does not begin by collapsing the many names into the vague statement that “all are the true mark.” He first lets each kind of object unfold in full, showing how it treats one kind of delusion and receives one kind of faculty. Only then does he let each later object turn back toward the preceding objects and integrate with them level by level. What is wondrous about the subtlety of objects does not lie in having few names. It lies in the fact that, although the names are many, no name is fixed as the boundary of truth.

[Section One] One Hundred and Twenty Layers: A Number or a Way of Seeing?

The separate explanation of wondrous meaning first divides into the three aspects of Trace, Origin, and contemplation. Trace and Origin each have ten layers. Within the Trace, the dharmas of sentient beings, the dharmas of buddhas, and the dharmas of mind can each unfold into ten, making thirty; the Origin likewise has thirty. Each layer is then viewed through relational wondrousness and absolute wondrousness, making one hundred and twenty layers.

This does not ask the reader to memorize an enormous number. It first prevents “wondrous” from being reduced to a single word of praise. Relational wondrousness becomes manifest through comparison: coarse Dharma is broken and wondrous Dharma appears. Absolute wondrousness goes a step further: coarse Dharma is not left forever outside the wondrous. Once opened and revealed, the Dharma formerly judged coarse can itself manifest the wondrous right where it stands. The first keeps one from taking skillful means as ultimate; the second keeps one from treating skillful means as refuse to be discarded.

Trace, Origin, and contemplation are likewise not three unrelated domains. Trace and Origin are both teaching; contemplation arises in reliance on teaching. If teaching does not return to contemplation, it becomes no more than a topic for discussion. If contemplation does not rely on teaching, it loses the correct object it illuminates. By listing these three aspects at the general gate, the text has already indicated how the whole chapter should be read: what the scripture teaches, the Buddha’s guidance from the distant past, and the practitioner’s present single mind must illuminate one another within the same wondrous meaning.

[Section Two] Why Do the Ten Subtleties Begin with Objects?

The ten subtleties, in order, are objects, wisdom, practice, stages, the Three Dharmas, stimulus and response, supernormal powers, teaching the Dharma, retinues, and benefits. The first question should be: why do objects come first? Because an object is not something manufactured by wisdom. It is the constant Dharma that the buddhas take as their teacher. If an object existed only in dependence on the knower, buddha-wisdom would merely be constructing its own world. Because objects are so of themselves, wisdom has something real to illuminate.

The subtlety of objects comprises the ten suchnesses, dependent origination, the Four Truths, the Two Truths, the Three Truths, and the One Truth. Wisdom and objects correspond like a case and its lid; because the objects are wondrous, wisdom becomes wondrous accordingly. Wisdom is also like the eyes, while practice is like the two feet. With eyes but no feet one cannot advance; with feet but no eyes one does not know the direction. Wisdom guides practice, practice accords with the stages, and these three together with the object traversed form the One Vehicle. Truth, knowing, practice, and the stage realized thereby form a complete road.

Once a stage has a place in which to abide, it abides in the secret treasury of the Three Dharmas. After abiding there, one does not sink into quiescence; one is quiescent yet constantly illuminating. By illuminating the faculties of sentient beings, stimulus and response occur. In responding to the faculty, the Buddha first manifests supernormal powers through the wheel of the body, making people capable of receiving the path. The Buddha then teaches through the wheel of speech, enabling them to practice according to the teaching and become Dharma-retinues. These retinues practice, pull out the root of birth-and-death, and finally obtain benefit.

Thus the first five subtleties concern one’s own practice, while the latter five concern transforming others. One’s own practice is not merely attending to oneself, for once one abides in the secret treasury one naturally illuminates constantly. Transforming others is not an added task, for stimulus and response, supernormal powers, and teaching the Dharma all flow from the accomplishment of the first five. The sequence of the ten subtleties shows precisely that, once the causes and fruits of one’s own benefit are complete, the agent and recipients in benefiting others are complete as well.

[Section Three] How Does the Scripture Itself Establish the Ten Subtleties?

The ten subtleties are not a framework established by the treatise master apart from the scripture. Immediately after setting out the headings, he therefore cites only the Trace Gate of the Lotus Sutra as proof. The subtlety of objects is shown by the statements that only a buddha together with a buddha can exhaust the true mark of all dharmas and that the profound and wondrous Dharma is difficult to see and difficult to understand. The subtlety of wisdom is shown by the statements that the Buddha’s wisdom is wondrous and foremost and that the Buddha seeks the unsurpassed path through this wondrous wisdom. Once what is illuminated and what illuminates have both been set out by the scripture, the ten subtleties possess their root.

The subtlety of practice does not refer vaguely to cultivating goodness. It is shown by long following innumerable buddhas, fully practicing all paths, and by buddha-children who become buddhas in a future life after practicing the path. The subtlety of stages is shown by abiding, practice, dedication, and grounds, represented by the four kinds of flowers raining from heaven; by opening, revealing, awakening to, and entering; and by the jeweled vehicle roaming in the four directions until it reaches the place of awakening. Causal stages and the stage of fruit are not conflated, yet both belong to the same journey of the One Vehicle.

The subtlety of the Three Dharmas is shown by the Buddha abiding in the Great Vehicle and being adorned with concentration and wisdom: the Great Vehicle is true nature, concentration is supporting accomplishment, and wisdom is contemplative illumination. The subtlety of stimulus and response is shown by the Buddha’s reflection for three times seven days, the buddha-eye seeing the six paths, all sentient beings being the Buddha’s children, and the father seeing the poor son from afar. These passages do not only say that the Buddha sees sentient beings; they also say that sentient beings and the Buddha have long had the relationship of father and son. What responds and what stimulates are therefore not two alien worlds.

The Buddha enters samādhi and manifests a rare event, showing the subtlety of supernormal power. The Tathāgata skillfully distinguishes, speaks in gentle words, and teaches Dharmas that all reach the ground of omniscience, showing the subtlety of teaching the Dharma. Teaching only bodhisattvas shows the subtlety of retinues. All who hear a line or verse receive a prediction, and not a single person is allowed to attain extinction alone, showing the subtlety of meritorious benefit. From the true mark at the beginning to all sentient beings sharing the Tathāgata’s extinction at the end, these ten proofs join the ten subtleties into the scripture’s own complete course of guidance.

[Section Four] A Pair of Eyes, a Pair of Feet, and One Vehicle

The passage on arising turns abstract doctrinal items into a picture of a journey. The object of the true mark is not made by a buddha, a god, or a human being; it exists of itself and is therefore established first. Delusion about principle gives rise to confusion, while understanding principle gives rise to wisdom. Wisdom is the basis of practice, like the eyes; practice arises through wisdom, like the two feet. Eyes, feet, and object together form the vehicle. Riding it, the practitioner enters the cooling pool and ascends the stages.

If one asks whether the journey ends after ascending the stages, the answer is no. The practitioner abides in the secret treasury of the Three Dharmas, where stillness constantly illuminates. Stillness prevents illumination from being disturbed by grasping; illumination prevents stillness from falling into annihilation. When faculties in the ten Dharma realms offer stimulus, there must be a corresponding response. The wheel of the body moves first and the wheel of speech teaches afterward. Dharma-rain falls, retinues form, and those retinues in turn uproot birth-and-death through practice and open the Buddha’s knowing-and-seeing.

This image also clarifies the relation between objects and compassion. If an object were only a pure substance remote from sentient beings, abiding in it would never produce stimulus and response. If response were only an emotional impulse, it would have no still truth on which to rely. What the treatise master speaks of is stillness that constantly illuminates: the more fully one abides in reality, the more fully one illuminates faculties; the more precisely one illuminates faculties, the less abruptly one administers the teaching of body and speech.

[Section Five] The Six Objects Are Not Six Blocks of Truth

The extensive explanation first lists the six objects and then accounts for their sequence. The ten suchnesses are directly taught by the present scripture and therefore come first. The twelve links of dependent origination disclose transmigration through the three times. When the Buddha appears in the world and distinguishes and skillfully reveals them, the name Four Truths arises. Moving from the extensive to the concise, the text next speaks of the Two Truths. Because the language of the Two Truths remains comparatively general, the Middle Way is separately disclosed as the Three Truths. Because the Three Truths still carry names provisionally established, reality is directly disclosed as the One Truth. Because even the One Truth still has name and characteristic, no truth is taught last.

From ignorance through the limit of reality, the six objects are not six worlds set side by side. They are one guidance that progressively changes the way one sees. The twelve links ask how suffering continues. The Four Truths ask how suffering and release are seen as they truly are. The Two Truths ask how differentiated phenomena and reality can both stand at once. The Three Truths then prevent true and conventional from hardening into two extremes. The One Truth points directly to the reality that does not turn, while no truth removes attachment even to the name “one real.”

A later object should therefore not cancel an earlier one. If no truth rendered the twelve links useless, there would be no way to explain the circulation of birth-and-death or the sequence of cultivating the path. If one guarded only the successive arising and cessation of the twelve links, one would not see how they reveal principle in phenomena themselves. The six objects are wondrous precisely because each exhausts its own work and, in the end, all can open into and combine with one another.

[Section Six] Why Does One Chain of Dependent Origination Have Four Readings?

The direct explanation of dependent origination gives four kinds. The first reads the twelve links through arising and cessation. It begins by refuting non-Buddhist teachings: the differences among the six paths are not made by Īśvara, primordial nature, atoms, parents, or no cause, but are formed when ignorance combines with wholesome and unwholesome activities. The three grades—high, middling, and low—of unwholesome karma paint the three colors of hell beings, animals, and hungry ghosts. The three grades of wholesome karma paint the three colors of asuras, humans, and gods. Sentient beings are the myriad images in the painting, and the ignorant mind is the painter holding the brush.

The twelve links arise anew and cease without abiding for even a thought. They are like a chain of interlocking bonds, twelve fortified cities, and twelve gardens of thorns. The treatise master also extends them in both directions: each link contains all twelve links, making one hundred and twenty forms of dependent origination. Cause and fruit can be distinguished as originating condition and conditionally arisen, and four alternatives can distinguish whether a Dharma is only originating condition, only conditionally arisen, both, or neither. Teaching the two past links blocks the view of permanence; teaching the two future links blocks the view of annihilation; teaching the eight present links reveals causal continuity without falling into either extreme.

The twelve links can also be spread across one lifetime. Past afflictions are ignorance, and the making of karma in the past is volitional activities. Consciousness continues and takes birth; the embryo passes through five stages and becomes name-and-form. The faculties are complete but cannot yet engage objects: the six sense fields. They can engage objects but cannot yet distinguish suffering and pleasure: contact. They can distinguish suffering and pleasure but have not yet become defiled by attachment: feeling. The three feelings all occur and give rise to craving; pursuit of objects is grasping; activity through body, speech, and mind is existence; the future continuation of consciousness is birth; and the future decay of name-and-form through feeling is aging-and-death.

They can also be compressed into one thought of killing. The corresponding delusion, volition, mind, the name-and-form and six sense fields possessed by an active karma, corresponding contact and feeling, greed, binding, bodily and verbal karma, arising, alteration, and destruction are all twelve links complete at one time. This expansion and compression show that the twelve links are not merely a diagram across three times; they are also the structure of karmic activity in every thought.

Why is illness not established as a separate link? Because it is not necessarily present for every person, in every place, and at every time. Why are sorrow and lamentation not established? Because at life’s end they disclose what aging-and-death contains. Does ignorance have no cause, and does aging-and-death have no fruit? Both do, but these are not established as separate links. Improper attention can be the cause of ignorance; sorrow and lamentation can be the fruit of aging-and-death; and aging-and-death and ignorance can also condition one another like a wheel. Although the number of links in the desire, form, and formless realms may seem different, on the basis of mental Dharmas and the dull faculties of a newly born being, all three realms can still be said to possess all twelve. The difference between ignorance and volitional activities, on the one hand, and craving, grasping, and existence, on the other, lies in past and present, and in having already given fruit and not yet given fruit.

The second reading sees the twelve links as illusory. Ignorance never existed of itself; it exists only through the conjunction of deluded thought and conditions. It is like an illusionist at a crossroads conjuring elephants, horses, and people: the foolish take them as real, while the wise know they are illusions. It is also like seeing a vine and mistaking it for a snake. Once one knows it was a vine, fear does not arise; because the fear does not arise, there is nothing to cease. This does not deny the phenomena before one. It teaches non-arising and non-ceasing from the fact that phenomena lack self-nature.

The third reading extends the field of vision beyond the realms. The mind is like a painter making all Dharmas, but this cannot be used to fix some kind of consciousness as the substance of all Dharmas. If one grasps it as possessing a real self-nature, one has not left behind the non-Buddhist type of first principle. When ignorance is sought through the four alternatives—arising from self, arising from another, arising from both, and arising without cause—it cannot be found. Yet just as a dream cannot be found but all events are still seen within a dream, ignorance cannot be found and the Dharmas inside and beyond the realms can still be said, according to conditions, to emerge from it.

Practitioners beyond the realms still have four obstructions: condition, characteristic, arising, and destruction. Condition corresponds to the ground of abiding in ignorance; characteristic corresponds to ignorance acting together with activity; arising corresponds to mind-made bodies born from uncontaminated karma; and destruction corresponds to transformational birth-and-death. These can still be correlated with the twelve links. Their number is the same as inside the realms, yet their meaning is far subtler. If the defilement of ignorance has not been left behind, ultimate purity has not been attained. If subtle conceptual proliferation has not ceased, ultimate self has not been attained. If the mental aggregate has not ceased, ultimate bliss has not been attained. If the three defilements have not been exhausted, ultimate permanence has not been attained.

The fourth reading directly reveals principle in phenomena. The affliction-track of ignorance, craving, and grasping is itself bodhi; the karma-track of volitional activities and existence is itself liberation; the suffering-track of name-and-form and aging-and-death is itself the Dharma-body. The three tracks need not first be destroyed so that the three virtues can be sought somewhere else. The Middle Way lies between ignorance and craving, and neither the two ends nor the interval is anything other than buddha-nature. At this point the four readings are not four mutually exclusive answers. They unfold on four levels: directly seeing arising and cessation, comprehending their illusory nature, illuminating subtle transformational birth-and-death, and revealing the three virtues right within the three tracks.

[Section Seven] Do Coarseness and Wondrousness Lie in Dependent Origination, or in the Mind That Takes It as an Object?

The treatise master first says that dependent origination as an object is not fixed as either coarse or wondrous. Differences arise only because one takes the object shallowly or deeply. Seeing only impermanent arising and cessation is direct but clumsy. Knowing that the object is illusory and that the contemplating wisdom also cannot be found is already more skillful. Seeing condition, characteristic, arising, and destruction beyond the realms, and manifesting purity, self, bliss, and permanence by extinguishing condition, removing characteristic, exhausting arising, and having no destruction, is more wondrous than the preceding view but still coarse beside the last. Only when the three tracks are themselves the three virtues is the most real disclosed.

Judgment, however, is not the end. The first three are all Buddha-Dharma; how could a pile of conceivable coarse Dharmas remain forever outside inconceivable wondrous Dharma? The meaning of liberation is not spoken apart from words; one must precisely realize that the conceivable itself is inconceivable. The elder gives the poor son vessels, rice, and flour, and the goods already belong to the son. Once their natural relation as father and son has been established, the poor son is no longer a hired outsider, and the vessels are not another family’s property. The Buddha teaches the coarse as skillful means only so that people can enter. He does not permit them to preserve those skillful means permanently outside the wondrous.

Contemplation of mind draws this opening and revealing back into the present thought. Once the master knows there is a thief in the house, the thief can do no harm. When emptiness-wisdom illuminates ignorance, ignorance is pure right where it stands. When affliction is pure, karma is not made; when karma is not made, there is no bondage; without bondage there is freedom; without receiving there is no suffering; without suffering aggregates there is no migration or destruction. The twelve links present in one thought are thereby contemplated as permanence, bliss, self, and purity. Thought after thought abides in the secret treasury, like entrusting oneself to a noble womb. As contemplative practice matures, the parts of the womb are completed; when ignorance is broken, this is called birth from the noble womb.

[Section Eight] Why Is There More Than One Kind of Four Truths?

The Four Truths first exclude an older explanation. If constructed is equated with measurable, and unconstructed with immeasurable, four names actually reduce to only two meanings; this treatise does not adopt that interpretation. The genuine four kinds are arising-and-ceasing, non-arising, immeasurable, and unconstructed. They are distinguished according to whether delusion about the true and the Middle is light or heavy, and according to phenomena and principle, partiality and perfection.

The arising-and-ceasing Four Truths are named from phenomena. Suffering and its accumulation are originally one Dharma but are divided in terms of fruit and cause; the path and cessation are likewise originally one Dharma but are divided in terms of cause and fruit. Suffering is taught before accumulation so that, from the fruit of suffering, one will become disenchanted with its cause. Cessation is taught before the path so that one will aspire to the supramundane fruit and cultivate its cause. “Truth” has three meanings: the Dharma itself is not false; illuminating it produces undeluded awakening; and it can be shown to others. Ordinary beings have suffering but no truth, because they do not see it, know it, or explain it. Śrāvakas possess all three meanings and therefore have the truth of suffering.

The non-arising Four Truths are named from principle. Suffering has no characteristic of oppression; accumulation has no characteristic of conjunction; the path has no characteristic of duality; and cessation has no characteristic of arising. Accumulation and path are empty right where they stand, so neither accumulation nor path arises and there is no fixed suffering or cessation. The true does not appear after phenomena have been extinguished; it appears precisely within phenomena.

The immeasurable Four Truths are named from phenomena beyond the realms. The fruits of the ten Dharma realms differ, so suffering has immeasurable characteristics. The five abodes of affliction differ, so accumulation has immeasurable characteristics. Buddha-Dharmas numerous as the sands of the Ganges differ, so the path has immeasurable characteristics. The pāramitās differ, so cessation has immeasurable characteristics. Merely knowing that the aggregates are suffering remains limited; distinguishing their immeasurable characteristics is entry into this gate.

The unconstructed Four Truths are named directly from principle. In delusion, bodhi becomes affliction and is accumulation; nirvāṇa becomes birth-and-death and is suffering. In understanding, affliction itself is bodhi and is the path; birth-and-death itself is nirvāṇa and is cessation. The Middle is present right within phenomena, without a separate agent constructing it; it is therefore called unconstructed.

The Śrīmālā Sūtra specifically says that the truth of cessation is permanent, is truth, and is a refuge, while the other three truths enter conditioned characteristics and are therefore provisionally called impermanent, not truth, and not a refuge. The treatise master first cites an objection: since the Buddha’s path of bodhi is permanent in three senses—delusion has been exhausted, it does not arise from delusion, and understanding is complete—how can the truth of the path be called impermanent? The answer says that the scriptural passage singles out cessation in order to disclose the Dharma-body of the tathāgata-garbha. If one therefore says that one truth is definitive and the other three are not definitive, this remains the sequential and differentiated gate of the immeasurable, not the gate of unconstructed Four Truths in which all four perfectly interpenetrate. Here the old master’s view is cited, challenged, and delimited. It cannot in turn replace the treatise’s four correct meanings.

[Section Nine] How Do the Four Truths Move from the Expressible to Quiescent Extinction?

Judging the Four Truths as coarse or wondrous does not look only at their names. It asks whether teaching, practice, and realization perfectly interpenetrate. If the three do not interpenetrate, they are coarse. If teaching interpenetrates but practice and realization do not, they remain coarse. Only when all three interpenetrate are they wondrous. In opening and revealing, the teachings of the various scriptures are placed back upon one road: Prajñāpāramitā discloses the three meanings of non-arising, immeasurable, and unconstructed; the Treatise on the Middle also encompasses the Small Vehicle’s arising-and-ceasing; the Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings opens the immeasurable from the one; the Lotus returns the immeasurable to the one; and the Nirvāṇa Sūtra first retraces and distinguishes the four, then retraces and effaces the four.

Retracing and effacing is taught through four statements: arising-arising, arising-non-arising, non-arising-arising, and non-arising-non-arising are all inexpressible. Why is it sufficient that the scripture explains only the first statement? A person of sharp faculties is like a swift horse that moves upon seeing the shadow of a whip and need not wait until the whip strikes to the bone. More importantly, arising-arising is itself explained through arising and non-arising and therefore already penetrates the other three statements. If one grasps that each statement can only be itself, one misses the intent that all four interpenetrate.

The expressible and inexpressible can therefore be judged in crisscrossing ways. What is expressible can be judged coarse and what is inexpressible wondrous. The first three kinds of inexpressibility can be judged coarse and the last wondrous. Each of the four kinds, whether expressible or inexpressible, can contain both coarse and wondrous, or all can be neither coarse nor wondrous. All four being inexpressible shows the height of the stage. All four being expressible shows the breadth of the substance. Being both expressible and inexpressible shows the length of the function. Being neither expressible nor inexpressible transcends high and low, broad and narrow, long and short, one and different. The wondrous is not silence overpowering speech. It is that neither speech nor silence can be fixed.

[Section Ten] In the Dispute over the Two Truths, What Is Actually in Dispute?

The Two Truths have occasioned the most intense disputes. Some place buddhahood outside the Two Truths. Some dispute whether the conventional truth ultimately has name, function, and substance, or only one or two of these. Others refute twenty-three schools and then establish their own Two Truths. The treatise master does not first join one side. He points out that the differing scriptural and treatise statements are the Tathāgata’s skillful means in knowing faculties and desires. If one leaves aside the faculties addressed and grasps a single passage, one is like blind people each hearing one feature of milk and then equating whiteness with the whole of milk.

The differing statements can be settled through three intents. According to dispositions means teaching in accord with sentient beings’ different dispositions; all views supported by scripture can be placed on this level. According to dispositions and wisdom means judging everything seen in worldly minds to be conventional and calling only the one principle realized by supramundane people true. According to wisdom means that sages, after realizing the true, also illuminate the conventional, like seeing both form and space when a film has been removed from the eye. The deeper uncontaminated wisdom becomes, the purer worldly wisdom becomes. These three intents are not three mutually exclusive truths. They view one act of teaching from recipients’ affective views, the passage from dispositions into wisdom, and noble wisdom’s illumination of the conventional.

The seven kinds of Two Truths unfold from here. First, the real existence of the myriad Dharmas is conventional, and extinguishing the conventional joins the true. Second, illusory existence is conventional, and because illusory existence cannot be obtained, it is immediately true. Third, the same illusory conventional is set against the compound true of emptiness and nonemptiness. Fourth, the same illusory conventional is set against the true in which all Dharmas tend toward emptiness and nonemptiness. Fifth, illusory existence and its immediate emptiness are both gathered within the conventional, while what is neither existent nor empty is the true. Sixth, all Dharmas are further shown to tend toward neither existence nor emptiness. Seventh, true and conventional are like a wish-fulfilling jewel and its function: the jewel itself is function and function itself is the jewel; they are nondual yet provisionally divided in two.

The crucial turn is how the same conventional changes according to three kinds of true. One person hears “neither contaminated nor uncontaminated” and understands only the destruction of attachment to the uncontaminated. Another sees through the double negation a separately disclosed principle of the Middle. Another sees through it that the Dharma realm of the Middle Way fully possesses all Dharmas. Likewise, one person hears that all Dharmas tend toward neither contaminated nor uncontaminated and understands only that the myriad Dharmas do not leave emptiness. Another thinks all practices must be used to approach the principle of the Middle. Another knows at once that all Dharmas are originally complete. The words heard are the same, but the faculties receiving them make what is seen shallow or deep.

This also explains why “receiving” is not “integrating.” To be received is for a deeper understanding, before the final universal integration, to guide within the original teaching gate a faculty capable of advancing. Integration into the Lotus is the final resolution of all provisional teachings. Because practitioners in the first gate take Small Vehicle realization and advance no farther, being received is not discussed there. Since the other gates still leave open the possibility of advancing, one can speak of the Distinct receiving the Shared, the Perfect receiving the Shared, and the Perfect receiving the Distinct. If receiving and integrating are confused, a transition of faculties during the process will be mistaken for the final universal integration.

[Section Eleven] From Milk and Curds to the Lotus Dais: How Are the Two Truths Opened and Revealed?

The seven kinds of Two Truths are judged coarse or wondrous according to whether they interpenetrate. The Two Truths of real existence, in which the conventional is extinguished to join the true, cannot let true and conventional stand at once. Illusory existence as immediately empty is more wondrous, but it still sees only emptiness. Seeing nonemptiness is deeper than emptiness alone, yet if principle still does not interpenetrate or the teaching still carries earlier skillful means, it is not ultimate. Only when true is immediately conventional and conventional immediately true, as the jewel is function and function the jewel, is there the straight unsurpassed path.

The treatise master also uses milk, curds, raw ghee, refined ghee, and clarified essence to explain maturation. According to dispositions is like milk turning into curds. When the mind gradually trusts and submits, deeper gates can be taught, causing a person to feel ashamed of the small and aspire to the great, like curds turning into raw ghee. The person is then made to receive and manage the family business and to know the coming and going of gold, silver, and treasures, like raw ghee turning into refined ghee. After a long time the true treasure is finally taught, like refined ghee turning into clarified essence. The first six kinds are not an accumulation of errors; maturation has simply not yet been completed. Nor does the final flavor come from nothing; the direction of the preceding guidance has at last become manifest.

Opening and revealing centers on the image of the lotus dais. A bodhisattva sitting upon a lotus does not mean sitting on a petal. It means hearing the one perfect path, realizing the one perfect fruit, and sitting with the Buddha upon the lotus dais. Those who first see the Buddha, hear the real, and enter form one class. For those who have not yet entered, the Buddha opens the gradual from the sudden, using single, compound, and inconceivable forms of the Two Truths as skillful means. The Buddha is originally constantly quiescent, while transformation pervades the Dharma realm; there is no prior scheming followed by action. Compassionate wholesome roots naturally draw beings in according to their faculties.

Nor can this drawing-in be counted only from the Deer Park. It can be traced back through the place of quiescent extinction, Mahābhijñā-jñānābhibhū Buddha, buddhahood in the distant past, and even the time when the Buddha originally practiced the bodhisattva path. What those who entered earlier and later realize does not differ. Those not yet entered pass through maturation in the four flavors, and in the present scripture all are resolved out of the coarse into the wondrous. The hardest to open are those who guard a Lesser fruit. If even that fruit can be opened, the other skillful means can still more readily reveal the real at their own gates. The jeweled great carts equally given to the children directly show that, once the provisional is opened, all that was coarse becomes wondrous.

The treatise master therefore says this chapter broadly encompasses the Buddha’s transformation and deeply gathers its beginning and end. Explaining the origin of the myriad Dharmas solely through a theory of a foundational consciousness still cannot encompass the four alternatives that break attachment, the provisions of the four siddhāntas, teaching according to dispositions and according to wisdom, the opening and combining of sudden and gradual teachings, and the practice and function of contemplation of mind. The point of the criticism is not victory for one school. It is whether a single-line theory can contain all the times, faculties, and return of the Buddha’s transformation of sentient beings.

[Section Twelve] Why Are the Three Truths Not Simply One More Item Added beside the Two?

Although the name Three Truths appears in other scriptures, the Lotus Sutra’s “neither thus nor different” already possesses their meaning. Different scriptural names do not prevent the same meaning from being used. Some scriptures, for example, may not use the original names “five abodes,” “two deaths,” or “three buddhas,” but the meanings they indicate cannot therefore be denied.

The first two kinds of Two Truths speak only of real existence and immediate emptiness and do not clearly disclose the Middle Way; the Three Truths are therefore not opened from them. The latter five can all open the truth of the Middle. The Middle in the Distinct receiving the Shared differs only from emptiness and still lacks function. The Middle in the Perfect receiving the Shared already possesses all Dharmas. The Distinct Teaching opens the conventional into two aspects and treats the former true as the Middle, but that Middle remains principle alone. The Perfect receiving the Distinct makes clear that the Middle possesses Buddha-Dharmas. The Perfect Teaching goes farther: not only does the Middle possess all, but true and conventional each possess all as well.

The Three Truths therefore do not arrange true, conventional, and Middle into three boxes. “One is three; three are one” means that none of the truths is apart from the other two. If the Middle Way were only a point standing between two sides, it would still be limited by them. Perfect interpenetration is wondrous precisely because the true does not obstruct the conventional, the conventional does not obstruct the true, and the Middle does not become a third entity standing above the two truths.

[Section Thirteen] Once the One Truth Has Been Taught, Why Teach No Truth?

The One Truth uses the simile of a drunken person seeing the sun and moon turn. The drunken person distinguishes a turning sun from a nonturning sun; the sober person sees only that the sun and moon never turned. Provisionally teaching the two is like seeing turning while drunk, while directly teaching the one real is like seeing nonturning when sober. Other Great Vehicle teachings speak at once of the two that turn and the one that does not. The present scripture straightforwardly casts aside skillful means and teaches only the unsurpassed path.

But if, once sober, one grasps “nonturning,” true speech again becomes new false speech. When language gives rise to a view, even the one real becomes coarse; only unobstructed interpenetration without attachment is wondrous. The One Truth must therefore be followed by no truth. All Dharmas are originally quiescently extinct. Even the One Truth cannot be grasped—how much less the many truths? The expressible and inexpressible, the wondrous and nonwondrous, must all be released again until the path of language is cut off.

No truth does not destroy what sages have attained. What it destroys is the conceptual proliferation of those who have not attained and who take nirvāṇa or the Middle Way as their object. Even after Lesser Vehicle realization, there remains a distinct delusion to remove and a distinct principle to reveal, so it can still be opened. Once the Middle Way is genuinely realized, there is nothing to destroy. For those who have truly attained, the one real exists; for those who grasp its name and produce conceptual proliferation, it is said not to exist. No truth thereby protects realization from being possessed anew by names and characteristics.

[Section Fourteen] How Do the Twelve Links Return to the Ten Suchnesses?

The opening and combining of the objects begins with the ten suchnesses because the present scripture opens its chapter by praising them. The names of the twelve links and the ten suchnesses differ, so they can be opened apart; their meanings communicate, so they can be combined. Seen link by link, ignorance combines with nature; volitional activities with characteristic; consciousness through feeling with substance; craving with condition; grasping with power and activity; existence with cause; and birth and aging-and-death with fruit and recompense.

Seen as wholes, there is another correlation. Ignorance, craving, and grasping are the affliction-track; because they initiate karma, moisten karma, and seize suffering, they are apportioned among nature, power, and condition. Volitional activities and existence are the karma-track; because they create suffering, function as its cause, and call forth retribution, they are apportioned among characteristic, activity, cause, fruit, and retribution. The remaining seven links are the suffering-track and therefore correspond to substance. The link-by-link and overall correlations do not exclude one another. One views temporal sequence; the other views the functional structure of affliction, karma, and suffering.

Inconceivable dependent origination can also be correlated with the ten suchnesses of the four noble realms. Ignorance turns into illumination and becomes the nature of the understanding-cause; unwholesome activity turns into wholesome activity and becomes the characteristic of the condition-cause; the suffering-track turns into the Dharma-body and becomes substance; craving and grasping turn into the mind of bodhi and become power; existence turns into the practice of the six pāramitās and becomes activity and cause. The correct path serves as cause, the assisting path as condition, and aging-and-death turns into the permanence of Dharma-nature and becomes fruit and recompense. The ten suchnesses are not discarded through transformation. Transformation reveals the complete nature and characteristics of noble Dharma within them.

[Section Fifteen] Why Does Each Later Object Always Integrate with the Preceding One?

The Four Truths can be combined with the ten suchnesses and also with the four kinds of dependent origination. The seven kinds of Two Truths then combine with the ten suchnesses, dependent origination, and the Four Truths. The five kinds of Three Truths combine with the ten suchnesses, dependent origination, the Four Truths, and the Two Truths. The one real then integrates with the preceding five objects. Finally, no truth integrates with the six objects and even with everything inexpressible.

The same item can change position under different correlations. A certain true truth, for example, is path and cessation from the perspective of the non-arising Four Truths but may become suffering and accumulation from the perspective of the immeasurable Four Truths. A certain conventional truth can include the two sides of existence and emptiness and can also penetrate the nine Dharma realms. If names are treated as fixed boxes, these transformations appear contradictory. If one sees that, within different gates of teaching, they indicate what a particular faculty sees, one understands that the same Dharma-meaning can occupy different positions according to the question addressed.

The one real takes from the preceding objects only what accords with the buddha realm, the cessation of the most profound dependent origination, the path and cessation of the unconstructed, and the truth of the Middle. No truth is more thorough still: the “such” of the ten suchnesses is originally without difference; the meaning of the cessation of dependent origination is extremely profound; all four kinds of Four Truths are inexpressible; the true truths in all seven kinds of Two Truths are inexpressible; the Middle Way leaves behind the two extremes of birth-and-death and nirvāṇa; the one real is like empty space, where even “one” cannot be obtained. When extended, differences fill the Dharma realm and one does not know whence they come. When gathered, not one thing remains and one does not know whither they go. Neither coming nor going reveals the Dharma-body.

[Section Sixteen] If All Has Been Integrated, Why Does the Buddha Still Teach in Such Complexity?

The final objection strikes the core of the whole chapter: if the principle of the objects has already been integrated, why open it into such profusion and make the objects mutually enter one another? The answer begins not from a conceptual need but from whether sentient beings are mature. If the Great Vehicle faculty is not mature, teaching a profound Dharma too early will cause slander. If the Lesser Vehicle faculty is mature, failing to teach the corresponding Dharma in time will cause the moment of liberation to be lost. The Buddha therefore sometimes teaches singly and sometimes in compound form, making partial and perfect enter one another to mature sentient beings.

A painter can blend the depths and shades of five colors to form myriad images. The Buddha, sovereign over Dharma, can still more readily use various teaching gates to train faculties. The Avataṃsaka taught two gates to the two classes mature at that time. The Tripiṭaka taught arising-and-ceasing to the mature practitioners of the Two Vehicles. The Vaipulya and Prajñāpāramitā teachings each made multiple gates enter one another according to the faculties then mature. The Lotus teaches only the one perfect truth when the nature and characteristics of the One Buddha Vehicle have matured. The complexity of the scriptural teachings does not show the Buddha uncertain about truth. It shows compassion unwilling either to let the immature slander or the mature miss their time.

Although the present scripture does not everywhere list the special names of the six objects, it possesses their meanings in full. “The Parable of the Conjured City” and “The Parable” chapters disclose arising-and-ceasing and non-arising dependent origination; the “Skillful Means” chapter discloses the two kinds beyond the realms. The causes of all suffering and comprehending empty Dharmas disclose the first two kinds of Four Truths, while the unsurpassed path and the Tathāgata’s extinction disclose the latter two. The differences among the ten suchnesses and the true mark of all dharmas disclose true and conventional. Not distinguishing conditioned from unconditioned discloses freedom from the two extremes. Neither thus nor different discloses the Three Truths. Other skillful means assisting in the disclosure of ultimate meaning and “only this one matter is real” disclose the one real. The quiescent extinction of all Dharmas, which cannot be proclaimed in words, discloses no truth.

The subtlety of objects thus emerges from the scripture and returns to the scripture. The six objects are not six theories added onto the Lotus Sutra. They unfold levels of guidance already present within the scripture, enabling one to see why the Buddha can make sentient beings each understand according to kind through one sound, and how all differences finally remain inseparable from the same reality.

Through the Eye of the Shiqian

Zhanran first divides the separate explanation into two parts: concluding the number and showing the wondrous, then directly explaining the wondrous. This eye keeps the opening one hundred and twenty layers from being read as decorative numerology. They first mark relational and absolute ways of seeing; the ten subtleties and the subtlety of objects below can then share one standard.

Setting out the ten subtleties likewise does more than list ten names. The Shiqian points out that the detailed divisions later unfolded within each chapter have already been set out at the same time. Scriptural proof first indicates that only Trace passages are cited and then cites the proofs themselves item by item. Arising first directly explains how the ten subtleties arise from one another and ends by gathering them into the first five concerning one’s own practice and the latter five concerning transforming others. These three passages each have a task; setting out the headings, proving them from scripture, and explaining their arising cannot be flattened into a single summary of the ten subtleties.

On entering the subtlety of objects, Jingxi brings to light five steps: listing the chapters, listing the number, explaining the intent of the number, explaining their arising, and extensively explaining them. The direct explanation of dependent origination itself has four chapters. Within the arising-and-ceasing gate are further divisions for originating condition and conditionally arisen, twelve times, the twelve links in a single instant, and many rounds of analysis. This articulation keeps the long passage from being flattened under the name “twelve links” and shows that the questions and answers are not digressions. They are part of the treatise master’s correct meaning, sealing off doubts about annihilation and permanence, absence of cause and fruit, and the number of links.

Within the inconceivable non-arising and non-ceasing gate, the Shiqian correlates the three tracks with the three virtues and the three contemplations, and it supplements scriptural proof for the meaning of the Middle Way. But a supplemental citation belongs to the mirror that assists illumination; it cannot be turned backward into a citation originally present in Zhiyi’s main text. The Shiqian also points out Guanding’s separate explanation of the interval between the two links. This shows that the recorder’s explanation and Zhiyi’s direct teaching must be read on different levels. The fact that a later note names Zhang’an does not permit the adjacent treatise text to be arbitrarily reassigned.

Judging, opening, and contemplating dependent origination are also separated into three stages. Judging coarse and wondrous first restates the four views and then judges them according to depth. Opening the coarse and revealing the wondrous separately opens the first two and the third; it does not erase all four names in a single stroke. Contemplation of mind proceeds from the direct contemplation and the virtues and functions it accomplishes through entrusting the womb and emerging from the womb. The image of the noble womb is therefore not an isolated simile. It is the point at which dependent origination as an object turns from doctrinal judgment into present contemplative practice.

The most important boundary in the Four Truths passage is that the old interpretation of the Śrīmālā Sūtra and the objection that follows belong to the extensive refutation of ancient masters. Constructed and unconstructed in terms of practice, and measurable and immeasurable in terms of Dharma, form only a twofold division under review. The correct establishment of the treatise remains the four kinds: arising-and-ceasing, non-arising, immeasurable, and unconstructed. Within the mirror, each kind’s headings, list, explanation, judgment, and opening are kept distinct, preserving the three levels of another’s view cited, the treatise master’s challenge, and the treatise master’s own establishment.

The word “retrace” in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra’s retracing and distinguishing and retracing and effacing is explained in the mirror as withdrawing and looking back. The first looks back across the scriptures and distinguishes the four kinds; the second further effaces the four into inexpressibility. This single word makes the direction of opening the coarse clear. A fifth kind of Four Truths is not being invented. What was taught earlier is first distinguished, and then one withdraws a further step to illuminate the interpenetration of the four statements.

The Two Truths are the most intricate part of the chapter. The Shiqian first separates setting out and listing from the four chapters of direct explanation, and then divides each of the seven kinds item by item. It especially keeps receiving, the three intents, resolution of doubts, and what the three persons see apart. This makes clear how the same illusory conventional turns according to single true, compound true, and inconceivable true, and it prevents the Distinct receiving the Shared, the Perfect receiving the Shared, and the Perfect receiving the Distinct from being read as three school names set side by side. Receiving precedes integration; integration occurs when the provisional is opened. Their temporal positions differ.

Within the judgment of coarse and wondrous, the mirror further distinguishes judging each kind, judging according to dispositions and wisdom, and gathering the judgments as a whole. The first two teachings as a whole are speech from the other’s intent. All receiving into the various gates as a whole is speech from the intents of both self and other. The Perfect Two Truths as a whole are speech from the Buddha’s own intent. This does not cancel the fact that each individual gate also possesses the three intents. The local threefold division and the overall single judgment each govern a different level.

The mirror also says, “Zhang’an used the seven kinds of Two Truths to explain it.” This means that Guanding elsewhere explained scripture through the seven kinds of Two Truths; it does not say that the seven kinds in the present treatise were inserted by the recorder. Like the earlier phrase “Zhang’an explains,” it requires a distinction: when a later commentator names the author of one separate explanation, this establishes only the author of that explanation. It cannot rewrite the authorial layers of Zhiyi’s main text.

The opening of the provisional within the Two Truths is further illuminated as such levels as skillful means entering the real, originally entering the real, and entering the real in the present scripture. The simile of the lotus dais therefore spans a long period. It does not begin as a temporary measure at the Deer Park, nor does integration occur only in the present lifetime. Since the Buddha practiced the bodhisattva path in the distant past, he has continuously made skillful means through which sentient beings can enter the real. The later evaluation of other treatise teachings likewise asks whether they can broadly encompass the Buddha’s transformation and include the practice and function of contemplation of mind; it does not merely dispute a term for a foundation.

Although the Three Truths, One Truth, and no truth are brief, the mirror keeps each in its own structural place. The One Truth divides into direct clarification, judgment as wondrous, and opening and revealing. No truth first receives direct clarification and then distinguishes genuine attainment from conceptual proliferation through questions and answers. Inexpressibility does not cancel the preceding teachings. It prevents the practitioner from turning the final name into another object of attachment.

Nor are the five kinds of Three Truths added from nowhere. The Shiqian first distinguishes between their meaning already being present in the scripture and the Middle Way being opened on the basis of the latter five kinds of Two Truths, and then judges which carry skillful means and which do not. Thus the argument that the name comes from one scripture while the meaning appears in the present scripture is not confused with the doctrinal judgment of the five kinds of Three Truths themselves.

Zhanran judges the general direction of the opening and combining of the objects as follows: every later object integrates upward with the preceding objects. Dependent origination and the Four Truths first combine with the ten suchnesses; the seven kinds of Two Truths combine with the preceding three objects; the five kinds of Three Truths combine with the preceding four; the one real combines with five; no truth combines with six and then uses no-thing to combine with no-thing. This directional line turns what looks like a dense table of correspondences into a level-by-level retrospective view. A later object does not replace an earlier one; it proves that the earlier one can preserve its function within a deeper seeing.

The passage on no truth is especially divided into using no-thing to combine with the six and using no-thing to combine with no-thing. The first successively illuminates the inexpressibility of the ten suchnesses, dependent origination, the Four Truths, the Two Truths, the Three Truths, and the one real. The second then releases even the fact that no position has been established. If one said only that “all six objects are empty,” the second level would disappear and no truth would instead become the final fixed answer that is preserved.

The final resolution of doubts and the penetration of the scripture each form their own section. The first answers why, even after meanings have been integrated, teachings still must open out in profusion; it culminates in whether faculties are mature and in not causing slander or letting the proper time be lost. The second returns to the chapters of the Lotus Sutra and verifies that, even where the names of all six objects are not listed together, none of their meanings is absent. Looking back through this mirror, the whole chapter begins from scriptural proof for the ten subtleties, proceeds through the opening and combining of dependent origination and the truths, and returns to scripture at the end. The subtlety of objects is not a doctrinal maze established apart from scripture; it is a complete map of how the Buddha’s one sound reaches faculties and finally makes differences interpenetratingly wondrous.

The Shiqian also gathers the final sentence of penetrating the scripture within the meaning of no truth; only the next section turns to the subtlety of wisdom. This line of closure is crucial. The opening and combining of the objects and the penetration of the scripture are not a preface to the subtlety of wisdom. They are the subtlety of objects’ final verification through its return to scripture. Only by preserving this boundary does the first of the ten subtleties become complete from beginning to end, and only then is the sequence from objects to wisdom not confused.